Horkheimer argued workplace opinion research benefits workers regardless of management’s motives.

Evidence

Even if one may have reservations about the theoretical value of research of this sort, information about the company, down to the smallest group of workers, will have to be encouraged in this country to the same extent that it has advanced in other countries, particularly the United States. What encourages a company owner to provide the opportunity for such research is of no importance: he may see human factors as creating the conditions for, or restricting, a desired increase in productivity and profitability, or else he may see them as ends in themselves; he may see the problem as one of leadership', or else as one of partnership’. Workers themselves have just as much interest in the development of scientific methods as management does. In spite of their understandable mistrust, they need to have clear information about their own working life and how to improve the factors affecting it. The factory matters to them. Where things are more or less right, a bond with the company forms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2087

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in The Frankfurt School’s uneasy accommodation with empirical social research and US-style opinion polling, relating to the McCloy-era ‘re-education’ lineage. — connects to: Horkheimer argued factory research serves workers regardless of employer motives; Worker-client relations reflect societal structure regardless of administrative guidelines.; Horkheimer publicly declared employers’ motives irrelevant to the value of workplace research. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 512 (+1 more)