Iv 
NEEDS AND PURPOSES: MANAGERIAL OBJECTIVES OF 
EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION 
Whether initiated by the management, as in the majority of cases, 
or set up in response to the expressed wishes of employees, employee 
representation in the United States differs from most collective agree- 
ments, such as many employers have entered into with labor organi- 
zations, in the responsibility which the management has generally 
assumed for making the plan work. With the exception of those 
plans which resulted from wartime compulsion, employee representa- 
tion is primarily a product of that newer conception of personnel 
relations which perceives in the traditional conflict between employer 
and employee a prospect for constructive integration of apparently 
divergent aims in purposes common to all who function in industry. 
PASSING OF THE INEVITABLE CONFLICT THEORY 
The conflict theory would interpret the industrial situation by 
centering attention upon the buyer-seller relationship between em- 
ployers and employees. To do so is quite in accord with classical 
economic theory which arose at a time when the bargaining function 
of the merchant-capitalist class was especially predominant. The 
development and refinement of classical theory, furthermore, oc- 
curred under the influence of the evolving factory system which, 
through its simplification of tasks and its denying employees a pro- 
prietorship interest in either tools or products, was making plausible 
a commodity theory of labor. Such a theory moreover, through 
failure to distinguish between scientific description and ethical 
prescription, was regarded by many persons as justification for any 
sort of agreement into which an employer might induce a workman 
to enter. The spirit of the business world was exploitative and specu- 
lative: “Make use of every resource that comes to hand, buying 
labor and materials for as little as possible and selling dear, that you 
may profit well.” 
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