German industrial management commissioned social research to uncover workers’ underlying opinion formation

Evidence

The executive board of Mannesmann wanted an answer to the questions `What does our company’s workforce think and what does it want, and why does it think and want this?’ They wanted information on the social atmosphere in their workplaces and on the factors that were decisive in producing this atmosphere. According to a lecture given at a company conference by Hermann Winkhaus, a member of the executive board at Mannesmann Ltd at the beginning of 1955, what really mattered to management was information about the deeper reasonsthe roots and causes in ideas and feelingsthat lay behind the formation of opinion, because it was only on this basis that the research results would be able to be used effectively in solving company problems. It was precisely in this respect that the Institute of Social Research, with its experience, the technique of group discussion it had developed and its programmatic claim to be able to penetrate beneath surface opinions seemed to be a promising choice. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2059

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Institute’s earlier group-discussion method from the ‘Studies in Authority and Family’ era and to Adorno’s later work; management commissioning depth psychology of its own workforce anticipates the critique of administered society. — connects to: Industrial research data served management interests, not workers’; Early market research funded social-psychological studies in Red Vienna — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 676; Fromm saw the workers questionnaire as a methodological proving ground — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 698 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Business-ideology sociology reframed the factory as collaborative convivium #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2095