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Economics and Human Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

V. W. Bladen
V. W. Bladen*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

This paper is the product of the rather unusual experience of interdisciplinary collaboration which I have had during the last two years. It will, I believe, be more intelligible if it is prefaced by a brief indication of the character of that experience. After a long residence in the ivory tower of economic theory I was thrown, some two years ago, into the muddy field of industrial relations, being appointed director of a new Institute of Industrial Relations in the University of Toronto. Though an economist by profession, I had for a long time subscribed to the view that economics is but a part, albeit an important part, of social science. It was therefore not too difficult for me to decide to put a good deal of the new Institute's resources into the study of what has come to be known as “Human Relations in Industry,” where the contributions of anthropology, psychology, and sociology appear to be more valuable than does that of my own specialty, economic theory.

My interest in the work on human relations of Dr. Elton Mayo and his colleagues at Harvard had been stimulated by Professor Hart, whose article on the “Hawthorne Experiments” in this Journal stressed their methodological importance as “steps towards a unified social science.” “The experiments,” he wrote, “started with, continued with, and ended with, attention focussed exclusively on one thing and one thing only, what people do. This was the new procedure and it was revolutionary.”

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , August 1948 , pp. 301 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1948

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References

1 May, 1943.

2 Boston, 1945. See Chapter II.

3 P. 59.

4 Pp. 42-3.

5 P. 34.

6 Economic Fragments (London, 1931).Google Scholar

7 The Journal of Political Economy, Aug., 1947.

8 New York, 1946. See p. 64.

9 Econometrica, Apr., 1946.

10 New York, 1921, p. 67.

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12 No. 2, May, 1939.

13 Cf. my remarks on “Wealth and Welfare” in Chapter I of my Introduction to Political Economy (Toronto, 1941).Google Scholar

14 Principles of Economics (6th ed., London, 1910), p. 3.Google Scholar

15 Economics of Welfare (London, 1921), p. 5.Google Scholar

16 “Scope and Method of Economics” (Economic Journal, Sept., 1938).

17 Introduction to Political Economy, p. 391.

18 “Scope and Method of Economics,” p. 391.

19 In his foreword in Roethlisberger, F. J., Management and Morale (Cambridge, Mass., 1946).Google Scholar