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Humanizing the Corporate Culture

Humanizing a work setting means to organize it in a way that it develops rather than impedes human potential. Among the attempts to make bureaucracies more humane are work teams and corporate day care.

Employee stock ownership plans give workers a greater stake in the out- comes of their work organizations, but they do not pre- vent worker–management conflict.

Conflict theorists see attempts to humanize work as a way of manipulating workers. Workers and owners walk different paths in life, and their basic relationship is always confrontational.

Owners exploit workers to extract greater profits, and workers try to resist that exploitation. What employers call humanizing the work setting (or managing diversity) is just one of endless attempts to manipulate workers into co- operating in their own exploitation.