Survey data on worker attitudes served management, not the workers surveyed.

Evidence

The main report also gave other details, such as the fact that in the ironand steel-producing works and processing factories workers who had been there for less than three years, those expelled from the East German provinces, and those aged between twenty and forty, had particularly reserved attitudes towards the company. Information of this sort was useful to management, but there was no way the workers themselves could ever have taken advantage of it, even if they had known about it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2076

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls the Frankfurt School’s self-critique that empirical sociology becomes an instrument of social administration rather than emancipation. — connects to: Industrial research data served management interests, not workers’; Critics of workplace opinion surveys argued they could be manipulative tools — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1937; The Mannesmann study avoided business ideology despite not enlightening workers — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2095 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The Mannesmann study avoided business ideology despite not enlightening workers #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2095