JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

Volume 13, No. 4, Summer 1999

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMAN

RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT:
A CONSEQUENT OF RADICAL
CULTURAL CHANGE IN AMERICA
William G. Quill
Northeastern University

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the principal fea-
tures of an exciting new field concerned with developing HUMAN resources in
organizational settings, i.e., aiming at maximizing employees' pertinent talents,
productivity and well-being in the service of organizations. The Psychology of
Human Resources Development has arisen of practical necessity from the array
of functions and employee services commonly performed by personnel depart-
ments since the beginning of this century and their more recent consequents,
departments of human resources development. These services and functions in
turn were further stimulated by the growing social turbulence subsequent to the
early 1960's and the economic prosperity of the 1980's. Upon close examination,
however, the sophisticated deployment of these functions and services actually
necessitated substantial psychological knowledge and that of allied disciplines.
Moreover, in the current, rapidly emerging arena of global competition among
businesses, it is clear at present that America's economic fate will turn impor-
tantly upon how well business organizations can promote and effectively utilize
the intelligence and skill of its workforce. To this end, and those previously
stated, it is the mission of the Psychology of Human Resources Development to
explore any tactical methods and related subject matters within the purview of
ethical decorum that are helpful in promoting the development of employee abili-
ties and general well-being for organizations' strategic ends.

Let us first distinguish between the field of Human Resources De-

velopment and the applied science of Industrial Psychology. The former
had its modest beginning a mere fifteen or twenty years ago in the fi-
nancial and personnel departments of organizations dealing, for exam-
ple, with compensation and benefit programs for employees and screen-
ing and hiring new personnel. These functions and services also
Address correspondence to Dr. William G. Quill, Professor of Counseling Psychology,
Northeastern University, 208 Lake Hall, Boston, MA 02115.

525 c 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

526 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

included, among others, introducing incentives for enhancing job perfor-

mance, and retaining and attracting able employees (English, 1980).
There were, of course, earlier significant initiatives in this regard in the
traditional manufacturing sector; for example, in such blue collar com-
panies as Norton Abrasives in Worcester, Massachusetts, famous for the
past eighty years for employee disinterest in collective bargaining. At
Norton, even in the early decades of this century, personnel policy
evolved to a point where employees were generally very satisfied with
their benefits, job stability, opportunities for advancement, and recourse
for dispute resolution. Also, the Norton Company averted the typical
adversarial relationship between labor and management through profit-
sharing and other innovative measures (Norton, 1995).
After World War II, the Polaroid Corporation became known for its
fair and enlightened treatment of blue and white collar employees alike,
anticipating many of the services not available until the past decade or
two through human resources development departments, including
those dealing with personal counseling, alcohol and later drug counsel-
ing, career development, in-service and continuing education for person-
nel at all organization levels, and so on (Polaroid, 1995).
More recently, the Digital Corporation in the same pioneering vein,
raised its concept of human resources development to a very sophisti-
cated level of deployment with such organizational structures as work
units designed to maximize the creative output of employees. These en-
tailed a continuous cyclical process of team building, including pro-
cedures for the dissolution and reconstitution of employee groups ac-
cording to changing project needs. Procedures were formulated for
establishing employee compatibility, competence matching, and so on.
Also, Digital instituted a highly innovative approach to employee con-
flict resolution and grievance mediation, as well as a number of other
measures designed to liberate human potential (Digital, 1995). Finally,
organizations like Digital, Polaroid, and Norton have been acutely at-
tuned for years to the forces of both domestic and international competi-
tion, viewing the development of human resources as a variable vital to
surviving in these increasingly competitive arenas.
The field of Human Resources Development, then, emerged as a
practical consolidation and subsequently as an extension of various es-
tablished organizational functions such as: (a) those performed by per-
sonnel departments, including the classification of jobs, analyzing in-
herent skills for jobs, screening for applicants, hiring, etc., (b) an
incorporation of such formerly or often subcontracted consultation func-
tions as educating, training and assessing the performance of personnel;
strategic planning and program development; supervision and manage-
ment training; and so on, (c) a codification of diverse financial special-
izations dealing with compensation and benefits, including retirement
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 527

programs, health insurance, investments, etc., (d) legal matters con-

cerned with the protection of employees' rights; conflict resolution and
mediation; labor relations; workman's compensation, etc., and (e) the
newer, multifaceted initiatives for promoting employee mental health,
career development, wellness or fitness, and so on, subsumed under the
rubric of Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) (Schuler, 1992).
In sum, the field of Human Resources Development, presently still
in its infancy, grew out of the pragmatic need for improving organiza-
tional efficiency by uniting a diversity of employee services into a single
unit (ASTD, 1983). Later, it served to articulate employee incentive and
development systems for coping with employment demands of the pros-
perous 1980's (WSJ, 1984), and later with the newly emerging effects of
fierce international and domestic competition of the past decade (Mills,
1985). Finally, it is important to note that the even newer developmen-
tal consequent of the human resource development movement, the
emerging Psychology of Human Resources Development, addresses po-
tentially all applied scientific psychological aspects of "a" through "e,"
above, as well as related disciplines and subject matters (Quill, 1995).
This new subdivision of psychology is based on the premises that, in
principle, employees who contribute most to the productivity of organi-
zations are those (a) whose abilities are maximally developed relative to
the scope of their job role and aspirational level, (b) who work in a facili-
tative organizational structure where creativity and initiative are val-
ued and rewarded and dissatisfaction and conflict are minimized (e.g.,
through such measures as a fair salary, and other allied benefits; an
atmosphere of "team spirit" and reward for "personal contribution," a
work environment free from harassment and with provision for conflict
resolution via peer review grievance mediation, and so on), and (c) who
have readily available the tangible means for production, invention or
service delivery (Schuler, 1987).
Industrial Psychology, in contrast with the Psychology of Human
Resources Development, began in the early decades of this century vir-
tually as a psychophysics, dealing with "time-motion" productivity
studies of blue collar assembly-line workers in manufacturing sectors
and in offices among secretarial and clerical workers. The field grew
from the needs of mass production technology of the late nineteenth to
mid twentieth century, and its concepts were articulated by the behav-
ioristic/environmental, psychometric, and quantitative psychologies of
the time (Hackman and Oldham, 1980). The field has endeavored to
change with the times, stimulated by such provocative findings as those
of the famous Bell Laboratory Hawthorne Studies (Mayo, 1993), and
later, with the Sensitivity Group Management Training movement
(Bradford, Gibb, and Benne, 1964), but, the results have been mixed, at
best, because of its adherence to its past traditions and lack of vision in
528 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

dealing with the powerful forces of cultural change as these have pro-
foundly affected employees and organizations alike in the rapidly chang-
ing world of the past four decades (Schultz and Schultz, 1990).
In contrast, the Psychology of Human Resources Development has
gained its content and inspiration from counseling, organizational and
therapeutic psychology. It has, moreover, readily accepted guidance and
expanded vision from such fields as economics, cultural anthropology,
sociology, political science, and the speculative insights of futuristic
thinkers like Alvin Toffler, for example, in attempting to understand,
anticipate, and prepare for the emerging realities of rapidly increasing
global competition amid a national context of strife and accelerating cul-
tural change (Quill, 1995).
In more concrete terms, the emerging field of the Psychology of Hu-
man Resources Development has been driven in recent decades by the
onslaught of rapidly changing, powerful and often disquieting socio-
economic and cultural forces fundamental to our society. Like it or not,
we have arrived at a point in our national history where many of our
traditional institutions such as family, public education, churches, gov-
ernmentally operated programs, and so on cannot in themselves provide
sufficient directional guidance to help large sectors of our citizenry avert
many of life's great difficulties (Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim, 1994). The
workplace has increasingly become a significant environment in which
much human conduct learned in the world at large is displayed, both in
its positive and negative modalities. As Perrin (1990) notes, most strata
and sub-groups of society, of course, are increasingly represented here,
for basically it is the place where the large majority of our citizens earn
the vital income necessary for survival in a bewilderingly complex, ex-
pensive and often hostile social environment.
It appears, then, given the rapidly changing and increasingly per-
plexing events of our time, that organizations having significantly large
numbers of employees for reasons of their own survival as well as that of
their employees must, within the limits of economic practicality, work in
conjunction with other social institutions in helping troubled employees
cope with the increasing demands of our time (Burrough and Helyar,
1990). Lest this seem an overstatement, let us briefly examine a few of
the socio-economic and cultural forces that have imposed increasing
stress upon employees and organizations alike, hence, provoking into an
inevitable existence a Psychology of Human Resources Development.
These forces, as we have already seen, necessitate the creation in the
workplace of such novel instrumentalities as: career development routes
within organizations to retain valued employees; programs for assisting
employees with, for example, conflict resolution, fair treatment at all job
levels, substance abuse, marital and personal counseling, financial plan-
ning and investment programs; child care; wellness and fitness pro-
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 529

grams; and a multitude of other employee supportive measures. Why

has the workplace had to offer this variety of services for employees? As
we shall see, the reasons are profound and will have increasing impor-
tance for organizations in the future.
America, as it is still to be appreciated by many in attempting to
understand the troubling events of today, emerged from World War II
with the most intact and powerful economy on earth. Other major na-
tions whether among the Allies or those of the enemy lay largely in
chaos and ruin. America, in contrast, ingeniously in a mere few years
moved from its historically most depressed economy to that of an indus-
trial military giant. After the war, it again abruptly turned its vast re-
sources and ingenuity toward promoting its own domestic post-war re-
covery as well as that of much of the developed, non-Communist world.
Moreover, the posited growing threat of International Communism also
created an additional major demand for both ordinary and extraordi-
nary machines of war, including all of the expensive ancillary factors
requisite for maintaining a huge, internationally-based military force.
This economic demand persisted throughout the Cold War Years and
into the late 1980s. The Post World War II Era for America was clearly a
period of unparalleled opportunity for largely unimpaired growth and
prosperity (Thurow, 1992a).
Organized labor in the Post War Years, resuming its initiative to
transcend oppressive working conditions of the 1930s and earlier de-
cades, was able to institutionalize its presence as a powerful partner
with American business and the federal government, participating mea-
surably in the prosperity of the next twenty-five years. During most of
this time unionized labor consisted largely of blue collar workers em-
ployed by a variety of industries including manufacturing, energy, mate-
rials production, food distribution, transportation, mining, the various
trades, and so on. American labor enjoyed the highest wages in the
world and the cost of U.S. manufactured products reflected this. Non-
unionized, white collar office and service industry workers along with
agricultural workers did not similarly enjoy the same magnitude of
prosperity. Professional white collar workers, though not nearly compa-
rable in number, did generally earn good incomes and enjoy appreciable
social status (Kochan, Katz, and McKersie, 1986).
It is of course similarly well known that Western European nations
and those in the Far East such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. did,
often in face of virtual ruin, rapidly recover during the Post World War
II Era. This recovery was greatly facilitated by the economic policies
articulated and promoted by the United States in such remarkably suc-
cessful ventures as the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods Plan, and the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It resulted also from
the great domestic needs of these recovering nations, the high cost or
530 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

unaffordability of American manufactured products, and the expansion

of American corporations into many of these same nations, typically
having inexpensive, non-union labor. Thus by the 1960s and 1970s,
American manufacturers began to experience formidable competition
from those very nations, some of whom were formerly major adver-
saries, that the United States helped to rebuild. In the Post World War
II Era, given the appreciable salary differential between American and
foreign labor, particularly in the Far East, it was easy for these competi-
tors to make substantial inroads into many areas of manufacturing.
Later, in the 1970s and thereafter even when the spread in wages
among developed nations became lessened because of improved foreign
economies, America's domination of many world markets began to wane
because the quality of American products was often lacking while re-
maining most expensive. Today, many products from Japan and Ger-
many, for example, are viewed as superior in quality to those compara-
ble items manufactured in America, as cited in Thurow (1992b).
From the mid 1960s and thereafter, many children of the "baby
boom" generation, born in the early 1940s through the early 1950s, be-
gan to enter college. Often, these students came from "blue collar" or so-
called "working class" homes where a principal virtue was the pursuit of
higher education where one could be liberated from the routine and
drudgery of manual labor. Parents often urged their children to acquire
a college education—to "work with their minds, not their hands," and
"to do more with their lives than they had done." Throughout this epoch
of encouragement, of course, time was passing. Blue collar parents
themselves were aging and approaching retirement, and their children
were moving steadily and in increasingly large numbers to white collar,
professional careers. Foreign competitors were steadily displacing many
of their American manufacturing and financial counterparts both
abroad, in areas as diverse as electronics and the heavy industries, and
later in America itself, as with automotive and financial industries, real
estate and so on.
Meanwhile, in the United States blue collar union workers began to
wane markedly in number and in political influence in the rapidly
changing business scene. Alternatively, there arose: the growing de-
mand for post-secondary and higher education by children of the middle
class, facilitated by parental encouragement and often their monetary
support or that of government-offered student loan programs; the bur-
geoning number of white collar and professional positions made avail-
able by the explosive development of the new high technologies; and the
loss of many basic domestic industries to foreign competitors. The
unions that remained were greatly diminished in membership and un-
der corporate siege, while new initiatives were restricted largely to those
industries performing functions that were difficult to appropriate from
 WILLIAM G, QUILL 531

abroad, such as transportation and service industries. By the 1980s,

however, unions made appreciable inroads into white collar public and
higher education and among municipal governmental workers, but have
continued to retreat in manufacturing sectors. In the automotive and
high technology industries, for example, robotics and automation have
increasingly offered a formidable, cost effective, and less troublesome
alternative to human unskilled or semi-skilled labor (Kochan, Katz, and
McKersie, 1986).
Since the 1960s and henceforth, other major cultural changes were
occurring in the United States which would steadily revolutionize the
Post World War II mindset of the 1940s and 1950s. Some of those events
included: the Civil Rights Movement; the growth, as has been men-
tioned, of the educated middle class; the rise of information, high tech-
nology and service industries as sources of new employment; the wane
of many sectors of low and semi-skilled manufacturing along with allied
blue collar unions; the diminished faith in government by a generation
shaken by the Vietnam War and Watergate period; the growing concern
for women's and other minority rights; great influxes (legally and ille-
gally) of immigrants into American society thus increasing cultural di-
versity and strain on many social institutions such as schools and social
services; the growth of urban underclasses creating similar strains on
social service and criminal justice systems; the assimilation and rise of
Cuban exiles and several other Asian immigrant groups as influential
constituents of American society; the reconstitution of traditional con-
cepts of marriage, family, sexuality, work, sexual role identities, power,
and authority across all dimensions of society; the virtual replacement
of religious institutions with visual and auditory mass media as princi-
pal instrumentalities for social and moral education; the growth and
institutionalization of substance usage both for common recreational
purposes and as a major illegal industry; an unparalleled increase in
international competition among businesses, growing personal debt
among Americans, decades of turbulent economics fluctuation, massive
banking/real estate scandals in the late 80s and early 90s, dramatic in-
stances of stock market fraud, unparalleled National debt dramatically
increasing with the Reagan and Bush administrations, the increase of
corporate mergers with accompanying debt and employee disruption,
the marked increase in the size and economic difficulties of the under-
classes as the cost of living surges upward with each passing decade; the
rise of AIDS as a major health menace; the unparalleled increase in the
size of government at all levels and its cost of operation; a doubling of
women in the workforce in the past twenty years; a 40 percent downsiz-
ing of middle management in American corporations throughout the
1980s; a progressive shift in information dissemination from print to
electronic media; steadily growing crime, resulting from the illiteracy
532 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

and social disenfranchisement of underclass youth manifesting itself in

drug trafficking, its abuse, and in physical violence; white collar crime
stimulated by large drug profits, real estate, and financial institutional
scams, etc.; huge increases in military expenditures during the Reagan
years, with a subsequently precipitous, unexpected decline in Cold War
hostilities by the late 1980s and early 90s, with the predictably severe
economic consequences on those sectors of the nation heavily dependent
upon military production and services; an increase of turbulence in fam-
ily life in all imaginable respects, including divorce, single parenthood,
violence, sexual abuse, prolonged day care attendance, unattended chil-
dren, crossed familial relations, gender issues, substance abuse, etc.; a
growing awareness of the problems related to energy, including its cost
of production, reliability of sources, comparative types, significance for
environmental pollution and possible global warming, etc. Many more
events of this type could of course be mentioned, but let it suffice to say
that the decades since the early-sixties have been anything but quies-
cent (Krugman, 1990).
At present as we approach the mid-1990s, America has culturally
been fundamentally changed as a result of powerful events such as
those cited above, in contrast to the Post World War II Era when it was
indisputably supreme in terms of power, affluence and domestic tran-
quillity. This current disruptive and perplexing change is far from over.
Most of its institutions and citizens continue to become increasingly un-
der siege by forces of change and disorder even though America is still
at present the richest and most powerful nation on earth. The toll on
national well-being has yet to be realized by such formidable forces as:
dramatically increasing economic competition from abroad; unre-
strained growth in the size and cost of government; growing job insta-
bility throughout the workplace; a chaotic criminal justice system; grow-
ing mental health, stress, and substance abuse problems; a sharp rise in
the workplace of minorities and those who are socio-culturally, or other-
wise, different; a widening economic and cultural gap between many of
the "haves" and "have-nots" of society; a notable decline in the standard
of living and range of opportunities for the younger middle classes, as
compared with that of their parents during the Post World War II Era; a
faltering educational system for a majority of Americans, particularly of
the lower classes; and an increased social, economic, moral and spiritual
disintegration among the underclass youth. These are but a few of the
problems facing our nation (Bartlett and Steele, 1992).
These issues, among other formidable problems, are replete with
implications for the emergence of a Psychology of Human Resources De-
velopment in the 1990s and thereafter. Let us examine more carefully
the basis of this contention, for as we shall see, it will have great signifi-
cance for perhaps the greatest potential problem facing organizations in
the future; i.e., coping with CONFLICT among employees at all levels in
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 533

the workplace as a result of many issues affecting job security. This will
be perhaps the greatest challenge facing human resources development
departments—even greater than that of maximizing employee produc-
tivity.
As it has been argued, changing world economies and the unrelent-
ing domestic cultural turbulence subsequent to the early 1960s have in-
creased at present the disparity in standards of living and other qualita-
tive life factors among classes in American society. Though greatly
oversimplified, to dramatize the stark differences among social classes
this may be roughly schematized as follows (Council of Economic Advi-
sors, 1991):

/. "Haves"—Upper classes—$100,000 +
A greater percentage of the population occupies this station of soci-
ety than in the Post World War II Era, i.e., 5% as compared with 2% in
the 1940's.

II. "Haves"—Middle class—$35,000-$100,000

These are the largely intact nuclear families, often with both par-
ents working, frequently struggling to meet typical forms of debt such as
a mortgage, educational tuitions, car payments, child care, and so on.
Income surplus is often difficult to accrue for savings or investment.
This group consists principally of successful young professionals, two
income families and 1940s or early 50s educated "Baby Boomers" who
acquired higher education and entered white collar professions, and in a
decade or two will be approaching retirement. Also, most moderately
affluent retirees are within this class.

III. "Marginals"—Lower middle class—$25,000-$35,000

Many younger "white collar" children of "Baby Boomers," for exam-
ple, thus, in comparison with their parents at a comparable age in the
Post World War II Era are less well off in the sense that: their debt is
notably larger (e.g., homes are less affordable to potential buyers, a
much greater number of wives in two parent families—not to mention
single working mothers—work to help meet essential expenses) than
those of the 1950s and 60s; job security over the long temporal span is
now less attainable; upward mobility is less certain even with advanced
education than in the past; employee benefit programs are less secure;
health and educational costs are much less affordable for more people;
and so on.

IV. "Have Nots"—Below $25,000 plus government subsidies of varying

types
The effective income, housing and educational circumstances of poor
whites, blacks and Hispanic groups (not Cuban exiles), for example, has
534 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

diminished in the past two decades. This has resulted basically from a
worsening domestic economic situation, with a loss of many unskilled
and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs; and increasing national disin-
terest in the plight of urban centers resulting in rising crime and vio-
lence, a fearfully burdened criminal justice system, curtailed govern-
ment funding for social welfare programs, and so on.
With the rise of new high technologies and increased international
competition, and the corresponding loss of many lower level American
manufacturing jobs in related heavy industries, blue collar unions have
been rapidly losing membership hence power over the past two decades
(Weaver, 1989). This is conspicuously evidenced by: persistent reports of
U.S. trade deficits; widespread urban poverty; the manifest abundance
of foreign made automobiles, clothing, shoes, toys, cameras and video
equipment; and the virtual usurping of the domestic electronics, textiles,
and machine tools industries by Japan and other Pacific Rim nations,
etc. As it has been said, the fathers of the "baby boom" generation con-
stituted much of this union membership. With their approach toward
retirement and many of their children proceeding to higher education
and subsequent white collar professional employment, together with the
progressive loss of lower-level manufacturing jobs, the memory of Amer-
ican Union Movement and its forceful presence in the national political
arena is rapidly diminishing. Throughout the prosperity of the 1980s,
with larger segments of the young, educated classes moving into high
technology, information, financial and other advanced level industries,
rather little notice has been given to the fact that the vast majority of
the diversely constituted white collar workers—moderate to highly edu-
cated—are largely a NON-UNIONIZED LABOR FORCE (Kochan and
McKersie, 1989)! This situation to date has remained notably un-
problematic, even in the face of the substantial downsizing of middle
management in corporations throughout the 1980s and other manifesta-
tions of socio-economic turbulence of this period, since most of those who
had lost jobs were able to be accommodated by other sectors of the econ-
omy. However, with the persistent onslaught of foreign competitors into
financial, information, high technology and other sophisticated indus-
trial markets, not to mention their increasing productivity in areas of
invention, research, and development, American corporations and their
comparatively highly educated, non-unionized white collar work forces
can look forward to formidable, perplexing new problems that will pro-
foundly affect the stability of jobs in the workplace. For example, human
resources development departments were faced with an array of new
and compelling problems as prosperity for many during the 1980s
stalled late in the decade due to, for example, an abrupt diminishment
of the Cold War resulting in decreased military spending; massive and
rapidly increasing government debt; corporate mergers; unparalleled
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 535

fraudulent activity in the financial, banking, savings and loan and real-
estate industries; flattened GNP; and so on, along with the economically
aversive rippling effects of job loss and unemployment resulting from
these occurrences. This entailed the need for terminating many workers,
often with provision for out-placement; internally rearranging many em-
ployees to salvage jobs; promoting the early retirement of older person-
nel; curtailment of benefit programs due to increased operational costs;
dealing with the effects of increased competition among employees for
fewer jobs, addressing stress related problems such as conflict among
staff, substance abuse, family violence; and so on (Greenberg, 1987).
Essentially, as many businesses downsized and declined in the se-
vere recession of the late 1980s to the present, human resources devel-
opment departments, beyond dealing with the severe problems associ-
ated with actual job loss, had to contend with employees' PERCEPTION
of imminent unemployment and organizational instability. This height-
ened sense of insecurity often resulted in increased conflict among em-
ployees who were in fact competing with one another to retain their
jobs. Much of this workplace turbulence resulted from unforeseen global
events, and unfortunately, a large portion also occurred from domestic
considerations such as mismanagement of government debt, unlawful
conduct by professionals in influential financial places, mergers, and so
on. The same net effects of disquietude and conflict among the working
population at large can, of course, increase if foreign competitors con-
tinue to succeed in making substantial inroads in those markets that
American businesses now dominate or are at least competitive. As we
look at the trends in traditionally United States dominated industries of
the past twenty years or at the dramatic relative increase in foreign
acquired patents for new developments and foreign entrance into world
financial markets during this period (Lederman, 1987), for example,
there is little reason for comfort in pondering the future (Stewart, 1991).
Of course, as it has been suggested above, there are certainly sec-
tors of the economy that seem impervious by virtue of their inherent
nature to the forces of foreign competition, for example, in many of the
domestically-based direct service industries, utilities, transportation
and distribution, law enforcement, and in educational and governmental
sectors of employment. However, many of these domains though union-
ized are by no means free from turbulence, for most are conspicuously
situated before the critical eyes of their respective clientele or the voting
public. Thus, for example, if government employees in a given state or
municipality are receiving a notable increase in annual pay as a result
of union initiative during a currently difficult fiscal period, many citi-
zens who received no comparable salary increment at their places of
employment or those who perhaps had lost jobs would be greatly in-
censed. This issue would be further exacerbated by a state or local ad-
536 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

ministration who sought an income or property tax increase or preposi-

tional override to meet anticipated budget deficits.
One major consequence of the growing conflict in the workplace
arising from events such as those described above is that employees of
organizations in recent years have increasingly been pursuing litigious
means for solving problems (Olsen, 1991). This recourse is often the re-
sult of injustice or harassment in the workplace, perceived or factual,
exacerbated greatly by a growing sense of job insecurity among workers.
It is also an action initiated by many who have been terminated by orga-
nizations endeavoring to "rightsize," though perceived by affected em-
ployees as unnecessary or unjust. Legal professionals, viewing this phe-
nomenon as a lucrative new source for income, have advertised low or
no cost initial case review procedures for quickly identifying those cases
having the best potential for litigation. This, of course, promotes the
overall volume of cases deployed, and, thereby, the cost of conflict reso-
lution. The following illustration dramatically portrays the potential
danger, in terms of cost containment, of employees endeavoring to re-
solve conflicts or claims of negligence and unfair treatment in the work-
place solely through litigious means. The state of Massachusetts in the
mid 1980s spent roughly seventy million dollars in settling workmen's
compensation claims. Within a few years thereafter, as a result of a
slight relaxation of regulations and some creative marketing by the le-
gal profession, claim settlements quickly rose by 1990 to over three hun-
dred and sixty million dollars, according to the Department of Industrial
Accidents Report entitled "Worker's Compensation Claims Filed" (Com-
monwealth of Massachusetts, 1992). This increased litigation nearly
bankrupted the compensation system. Similar situations of rapidly ac-
celerating costs have occurred in the past decade with claims of medical
malpractice, civil rights violations, sexual harassment, and so on.
Beyond the many charges of diminished effectiveness or decline in
pedagogical rigor of public schools and institutions of higher learning in
recent decades (Cabot, 1986), a more subtle and fundamental cultural
change in students' attitude toward AUTHORITY has taken place
among the middle and lower classes during this time, accounting for
much of this educational deterioration (Bloom, 1987). The challenge to
systems of authority, just or otherwise, began notably with the Civil
Rights Movement of the early 1960s and, subsequently, on college cam-
puses with the student protest movement of the later 60s. Continuation
of this challenge was evident with the opposition to the Vietnam War,
persisting into the early 1970s, and culminated with Watergate and the
impeachment of President Nixon. Essentially, many young people of
these eras became notably articulate and tactically proficient in publicly
registering their views of protest. These newly acquired dispositions, ex-
ponentially amplified in efficacy through the contribution, the creative
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 537

usage and manipulation of various informational media, has fundamen-

tally transformed the way that Americans—and increasingly people
throughout the world—express and resolve their concerns.
The technological, communication, and information revolutions
since the 1960s have steadily produced the illusion of earth as a small
fragile, interconnected community where individual voices can be
readily heard and register their impact throughout the world. Moreover,
with media attention, certain facts or events can acquire monumental
significance while others of potentially comparable or greater impor-
tance remain obscured from public attention for they are not hypo-
statized as important by the media or otherwise not brought to its atten-
tion for definition and amplification (Toffler, 1981). We need only to
think of particular media personalities or such currents events as the
recent famines in Africa, the war with Iraq, or the disintegration of the
Soviet Empire to appreciate how close-knit and sensitive to public opin-
ion the world community has become in terms of media transmitted
events. In striking contrast, on the other hand, and of potentially explo-
sive consequence, is the quiet fact, for example, that American white
collar employees, who have been facing increased job insecurity because
of growing domestic and global political and economic causes, are not
organized into unions or other collective entities of power in this post-
blue collar era of the 1990s! This fact goes virtually unnoticed even
though the economic situation of most middle and surely lower class
workers has steadily diminished in the past decade. The memory of the
reasons for antagonism between unions and management is quickly fad-
ing from the current scene as workers of the Post World War II Era
proceed into retirement. However, the continued success of international
competitors with its resultant effects upon domestic job stability and
loss, and unrestrained government debt, sharp defense cuts, prohibitive
increases in housing, education and health care costs, and a host of
other comparable challenges to stable employment could, if effectively
articulated in the media as a major threat to the fundamental stability
of the American work force, provoke the rapid unionization of white col-
lar workers as an action of occupational self-preservation. Lest this
seem a frivolous speculation, we need only consider the quiet revolution
accomplished by professionals in the fields of education, social work, and
related areas of the human services, for example. They quickly union-
ized as a self-preservational measure in face of the economic downturn
of the mid 1970s to early 80s (Newkrug, 1993). Moreover, even in face of
the limited knowledge base of these various fields, licensure initiatives
were lawfully instituted which further introduced an unwarranted
boundary rigidity and intellectual stultification in the deployment of
services and development of these disciplines. These protectionistic
moves, of course, have resulted in a significant escalation in the cost for
538 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

services without a corresponding increase in their quality, or improve-

ment in social science knowledge. Similarly, if a hardened adversarial
relationship were to develop between white collar employees, generally,
led by their respective educated elites who would make liberal usage of
legal consultation and political force, and upper management of organi-
zations subject to the realities of growing international competition, the
destructive results upon American society could be quite devastating.
On the contrary, the hope of American business for effectively competing
in world markets is grounded importantly in the COOPERATIVE,
MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL WORKING RELATIONS THAT CAN BE
ACHIEVED BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES (Worchel
and Austin, 1986). If, however, the tactic of widespread organized con-
frontation is again deployed in the workplace, this time by a decidedly
more sophisticated workforce, the present state of largely cooperative
working relations will be very difficult to reestablish, for the destructive
attitudes of anger and distrust are so more readily available to most
people faced with personal threat than those of reasoned reflection, mu-
tual trust, and patience; conditions requisite for the more imaginative
response of working in consonance for mutually beneficial ends.
The preceding analysis of some of the revolutionary changes which
have occurred in American society since the mid 1960s, or subsequent to
the waning of Post World War II Era, clearly demonstrates the need for
the continued promotion of human resources development departments
in American organizations. This initiative, however, in order to attain
adequate sophistication to meet the growing organizational and social
challenges must be fully augmented by a related applied psychology
dedicated to the development and well-being of employees in order to
maximize organizational productivity. As we have seen, the survival and
prosperity of both organizations and their employees in this newly
emerging world of fierce international competition depends upon their
increasingly cooperative and mutually beneficial working relationship.
It was also argued that because of the past three decades of unre-
lenting turbulence in our domestic sphere and more recent develop-
ments in global competition, the material and spiritual well-being of
Americans has increasingly been under siege. Further, with the dra-
matic increase of working mothers, single parents, and other minorities
of all types increasingly entering the workforce (not to mention many
others from the underclasses who are capable of employment with
proper education and training) with all having unique problems and dis-
tinctive aptitudes, business organizations will increasingly, in conjunc-
tion with other social institutions, have to address the general well-
being of its employees in order to facilitate their own survival and
prosperity in domestic and world markets of the future (Perrin, 1990).
As we have seen, both the needs of employees and organizations, alike,
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 539

are indeed complex. MANY OF THESE NEEDS ARE PSYCHO-

LOGICALLY BASED; HENCE, THE NECESSITY FOR EMPLOYING
COMMENSURATELY SOPHISTICATED APPLIED PSYCHOLOGICA
PRACTITIONERS CAPABLE OF DEALING WITH HUMAN PROB-
LEMS AT ALL LEVELS OF ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONING. Ap-
preciable progress in this regard has already been made during the pros-
perous decade of the 1980s. Human resources development departments
evolved, as it has been said, as practical consequents of personnel and
financial departments of earlier decades in order to (a) consolidate for-
merly dispersed employee services, (b) to more effectively attract higher
caliber employees for enhancing organizations' competitive edge, and (c)
to improve via in-service training and education the skills, knowledge and
health of employees to, again, increase productivity (Schuler, 1992).
Finally, the economic downturn of the late 1980s and early 1990s,
revealed the need for retraining valued employees and expanding and
improving services for employees exhibiting the adverse behavioral ef-
fects of misfortune and uncertainty issuing from an economy in serious
recession. In the latter case, Employee Assistance Programs began ad-
dressing workers' stress disorders, typically manifested in substance
abuse and mental health problems, familial strife, and so on (Fisher,
Schoenfeldt, and Shaw, 1990). Also, a frequent outcome of this difficult
recessionary period was that conflict among employees at all organiza-
tional levels increased. Much of this was covert and insubordinate, or
internalized, often emerging as ill health or in substance abuse. Of
course, some was overtly adversarial, resulting in abject hostility, pas-
sive resistance, or in litigious action (Olsen, 1991). The effective organi-
zational cost of such employee behavior is well beyond that which is
specifically arithmetical, for the psychological quality of the working en-
vironment from top to bottom is quickly contaminated with anger, polar-
ization and mistrust. It is particularly with regard to this last matter of
conflict and its large inherent costs, again, both financial and psycho-
logical, that we now turn, for mediation programs deployed through hu-
man resources development departments are an organizational mecha-
nism having much to offer as a cost effective means for dealing with
non-union employee conflicts and grievances (Feuille and Delaney,
1992). Property conceived and instituted grievance mediation programs
can offer: (a) employees greater job satisfaction, at least insofar as a
sense of fair and equitable treatment in the workplace is concerned; (b)
greater understanding and thereby better cooperative working relations
between employees and managers; e.g., both groups are less likely to
characterize one another in stereotyped, forbidding, or adversarial
terms if representatives of each sector are trying honestly and cooper-
atively to resolve common problems; (c) tangible confirmation to em-
ployees that management is genuinely acknowledging a wide array of
540 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

employee concerns that affect daily performance in the workplace, hence

offering the possibility that employees are less likely to seek collective
bargaining as a means for protecting their interests or resolving conflict;
(d) a means for both organizations and employees to avert much of the
cost of litigation by making available grievance mediation programs,
which often produce more satisfying results, for problems of conflict and
fair treatment are concretely addressed in the actual milieu in which
they have arisen; and last, (e) increased organizational productivity and
market-place competitiveness for the previously stated reasons, consid-
erations of utmost significance for American organizations in coming de-
cades.
In developing the concept of grievance mediation programs, we shall
begin with the premise that to survive in the increasingly competitive
world of the foreseeable future, those organizations that can attain an
open-systemic level of operation, achieved importantly through unim-
paired communication among all employees without fear of reprisal and
by offering fair treatment and reward for productivity for all within rea-
sonable organizational limits, will be the most flexible, adaptable, and
resourceful in solving problems in an ever-changing environment (Jack-
son, 1991). This is perhaps as much an ethical postulation as it is an
intuitively cogent operational premise or functional objective for organi-
zations competing in a democratic society. Alternatively, it has the same
significance, though articulated in the jargon of systems theory and or-
ganizational psychology, as that of the Bill of Rights, concerning the
importance of free speech and fair treatment for all. The implication for
employee civil rights that can be drawn from these premises is that or-
ganizations have no basis to require that their employees become more
subservient to internal policy than that required by the laws of the land,
merely by taking a job. From this, the doctrine of fair treatment in the
workplace is inferred. Reciprocally, employees have an ethical obligation
to devote reasonable effort and dedication to performing their jobs and
keeping abreast of changing workplace requirements, for they willingly
receive payment for doing this work. In light of these premises, then,
peer review grievance mediation, as one form of conflict resolution strat-
egy, can be seen as an inherently simple, though powerful instrument
for facilitating open systemic communication, or free speech and fair
treatment for all personnel in the workplace (Reibstein, 1986). From
this, it is contended that environments maximally facilitative for em-
ployee productivity will be provided, assuming of course that the tech-
nology and materials of production are available.
The current state of grievance programs varies considerably among
organizations. Many, as one would expect, have no programs at all, ef-
fectively adopting a "fire at will" attitude, or one where conflicts are
essentially mediated by a superior or "boss." The latter may not be cate-
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 541

gorically ineffective, for some employees, in fact, prefer a single authori-

tative voice of judgment rather than peer involvement. Alternatively,
many white collar organizations (Jo have grievance policies, though ofte
not including lower echelon employees in the process of conflict resolu-
tion. Again, a member of management or of the human resources devel-
opment staff serves as confidant, investigator, and final referee in
a dispute, or a judge in a personal matter. In the final analysis, compar-
atively few organizations have peer review grievance mediation pro-
grams. These are usually situated in colleges and universities or in or-
ganizations having a high percentage of well-educated professional
personnel (McCabe, 1988).
Typically, regardless of the structure of grievance programs, the
guidelines for grievance definition and submission are quite tersely
stated. Invariably, they assume an unmistakably legalistic format even
though grievance programs and policies are conspicuously depicted as
NON-LITIGIOUS in nature. The grievant individual, then, with this
scant information, is free to make his or her case and specify the mode
of desired remediation in whatever stylistic or presentational format
that comes to mind. Too often, very little information or sound advice is
available to a grievant employee regarding (a) the actual method for
preparing a grievance statement, (b) its best mode of deployment or pre-
sentation before a singular authority, on the one hand, or a peer review
mediational committee on the other, or (c) the utilization of witnesses,
spokespeople, evidence, and so on (Quill, 1995). Moreover, grievance me-
diation committee members are often less than enthusiastic about serv-
ing on a peer review committee. It is frequently seen as a time-consum-
ing burden for which there is no personal reward. Also, many feel that
they even risk being viewed by management as insubordinate if decid-
ing in favor of the complainant. Additionally, the whole concept is sub-
verted if committee members are seen as pawns of management, co-
vertly sustaining the policies of the latter, or using committee membership
as a way of gaining favors or privileged access to management via their
role. To further complicate the matter, the grievant person is too often
viewed by many—peer review committee members, management, super-
visors, and even fellow employees alike—as a "trouble-maker" to be
summarily neutralized. Finally, and perhaps most sinister is where
management uses the mediation process as a vehicle for further en-
meshing employees in conflict with one another to divert their attention
from the former's covert initiatives. Anything, then, short of an atmo-
sphere of absolute fairness of conduct and seriousness of purpose exhib-
ited from all organizational sectors is problematic or even debilitating to
the peer review grievance process. Also, of course, it is requisite that
management underwrite, within reason, the findings of grievance com-
mittees when judging in favor of grievants' claims. An improperly or
542 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

unfairly deployed grievance mediation program will invariably provoke,

with an uncommon zeal, many complainants to seek litigious means for
gaining satisfaction. On the other hand, when grievant persons have (a)
felt that they have been permitted full expression of their concerns, (b)
without fear of reprisal, (c) having an opportunity to hear rejoining fac-
tors that they may not have considered, (4) receiving the reasoned and
sympathetic judgments of the peer review committee, and finally (e)
having the opportunity for final rejoinder that offers the possibility for
changing committees' findings, the result is generally quite positive.
Complainants are typically able to move on with their lives, unencum-
bered by residual anger. Also, it is essential that if their cases are pos-
itively evaluated, they have recourse to various types of compensation in
cases of unfair treatment (Feuille and Delaney, 1992).
Before leaving the topic of grievance mediation programs, it should
be noted that increasingly human resources development departments
are becoming the preferred organizational vehicle for employee conflict
resolution rather than through managerial modalities. Conflict resolu-
tion programs are in their early phases of articulation and deployment,
with troubled employees typically being referred to specially trained hu-
man resource development staff who serve as mediators or agents of
problem solving. Few programs have yet evolved into a genuine peer
review format, and similarly as with colleges and universities, most of
these latter programs are in need of considerable refinement, for again,
they are usually little more than a bare outline of quasi-legalistic policy
and often embody the problems cited in earlier discussion. Also, human
resources development departments in most organizations are too often
viewed pejoratively by employees as "merely personnel departments,"
having little actual authority or efficacy in resolving conflicts; or at the
other extreme, as simply agencies for stealthily enacting administrative
policy. Other problems might be cited, as well, including the ostensible
lack of structural isomorphism between colleges or universities, with
their systems of tenure, inherent academic freedom and so on, and busi-
ness organizations. However, upon closer examination, despite the dif-
ferences in services performed or products produced by each, they all
must acknowledge ultimate fiscal realities of profitability or cost effec-
tiveness. That is, all organizations must, particularly in highly competi-
tive or recessionary times, acknowledge and attend to conflict and other
difficulties with and among employees for obviously these factor into the
ultimate issues of productivity, competitiveness and hence profitability.
In conclusion, it is by no means an overstatement to say that a Psychol-
ogy of Human Resources Development can be of great value in helping
human resources departments and organizations, generally, in enhanc-
ing conflict resolution initiatives in all of their modes of deployment,
thus averting much litigation cost and other obstacles that impede the
operation of organizations.
 WILLIAM G. QUILL 543

Much of what has been argued in this paper, then, can be summa-
rized by saying that in view of the accelerating increase of international
competition and because of the revolutionary changes that have taken
place in American society after the Post World War II Era, organizations
of all types will have to become increasingly mindful of viewing em-
ployees as RESOURCES TO BE DEVELOPED in order to enhance orga-
nizational survival. Also, inextricably related is the issue of reducing
internal conflict among all levels of employees. Simply stated, happy
employees are far more likely to be productive, reliable, dedicated, and
amenable to successive retraining as compared with those who are de-
valued in one way or another (Leana and Florwoski, 1992). If such is-
sues are left unaddressed, the many forces of strife arising within both
the domestic and international environments will so assault the well-
being of much of our work force that they (e.g., educated, non-unionized
white collar employees who constitute a formidable group) may rise
against one another and the organizations that employ them in acts of
occupational self-preservation. This in turn would, of course, greatly di-
minish the ability of organizations to maintain flexibility in decision
making due to a more suspicious, resistant, and adversarial workforce,
and thereby increase operating costs and impair their position with
other market competitors. Thus, the new applied Psychology of Human
Resources Development can substantially enhance the efforts of human
resources departments and the organizations in which they are situated
in developing and deploying a large number of specific methodologies for
facilitating employee development, resolving conflict, and enhancing
strategic planning, all matters that will become increasingly important
to organization survival as competition on all fronts increases in the
future.

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