Roethlisberger Wins Ledlie Prize For Study of Worker Motivations

The Ledlie Prize, top Faculty honor of the University, was yesterday awarded to Fritz J. Roethlisberger, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Human Relations, who recently challenged business management to free "the vast amount of frozen human energy that exists in our modern organizations."

After a recent factory study, Roethlisberger warned that management has lost control of rewards and punishments that determine the satisfaction of workers at all levels. It must assume a new leadership role in freeing the creative impulses of workers in organizational settings, he claimed.

Established by the late George Ledlie, newspaper executive and associate of Joseph Pulitzer, the award is given semi-annually to recognize the individual at Harvard who has "by research discovered or otherwise made the most valuable contribution to science, or in any way for the benefit of mankind."

A pioneer in studying the social structure of factories and shops, Roethlisberger recently published The Motivation, Productivity, and Satisfaction of Workers, suggesting that the standards of the work group, more than the goals of management, determine the worker's satisfaction in his job and the rate at which he produces.

Based on a study of workers in a New England factory, Roethlisberger's book states that workers who are "in" with the shop group are "on-the-line" producers--turning out what the group considers "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay."

In a footnote to his latest study, Roethlisberger said that, beyond management's first goal of "immediate survival in the economic environment," business organization now "has come to a stage of its development when it starts to seek high-volume, low-cost business and to perform a service to society at the same time."