Dynamics of Industrial Change Little New Light are recognised as the pioneering work in the field. The concepts and theories of the classical sociological thinkers (Marx, Weber and Durkheim) are summaril'y brushed aside as having ''directly or indirectly influenced the thinking of industrial sociologists in recent times' (p XV). Yet Mayo's Hawthorne experiments in a sense actualises Weber's dread of cynical manipulation in the name of scientific research, and represents the efforts of moribund capitalism to resuscitate itself from the Depression of 1929. Sheth writes in his Introduction: "In the West, industrial sociology owes its origin to the studies of Elton Mayo and his colleagues whose well known Hawthorne researches brought out the significance of informal social relations among members of a work group in determining its efficiency and productivity" (p XIII). Compare this with the words of a different lexicon, the "Nanterre Manifesto": "Inshowing the importance of affective phenomena in small groups. and in suggesting that human relations should be regulated in order to improve the productivity of workers, Mayo did much more than open a new field of sociology. He closed the epoch of social philosophy and speculative systems concerning the society as a whole and opened the glorious era of empiricism and of 'scientific' data collection. At the same time, in selling his services to management of an enterprise, Mayo initiated the age of the large-scale collaboration of sociologists with all of the powers of the bourgeois world
