In the early 1920s Chicago’s Western Electric Hawthorne Works employed 12,000 workers. The plant was a primary manufacturer of telephones, and in 1924 the company provided a site to cooperate with the NRC on a series of test room studies to determine the relationship between illumination and worker efficiency. The basic idea was to vary and record levels of illumination in a test room with the expectation that as lighting was increased, productivity would too. In another test room, illumination was decreased, with the correlating expectation that efficiency would decrease. The electric power industry provided an additional impetus for these tests, hoping to encourage industries to use artificial lighting in place of natural light.
The Hawthorne experiments were first developed in November 1924 at Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne plant in Chicago in Manufactured equipment for the bell telephone system and employed nearly 30,000 workers at the time of experiments. It’s named after a study at the Hawthorne Works factory, where researchers found that workers became more productive when they realized they were being observed, regardless of the actual working conditions. It is possible for regular evaluations by the experimenters to function as a scoreboard that enhances productivity.
The Hawthorne Studies led to the development of the Human Relations Movement in business management. The experiment was about measuring the impact of different working conditions by the company itself (such as levels of lighting, payment systems, and hours of work) on the output of the employees. The researchers concluded that variations in output were not caused by changing physical conditions or material rewards only but partly by the experiments themselves. The special treatment required by experimental participation convinced workers that management had a particular interest in them. The term ‘Hawthorne effect’ is now widely used to refer to the behavior-modifying effects of being the subject of social investigation.
On the first experiment workers were put on piece-work salary where they were paid on each part they produced, as a result the output increased. On the second experiment the workers were given 2 rest pauses of 5 minutes each for 5 weeks and again output went up. The third experiment further increased the pauses to 10 min and the output went up sharply. For the fourth experiments a 6, 5 min breaks were given and output fell slightly as the workers complained that the work rhythm was broken.
Effect of Monotony and Fatigue on Productivity
They concluded factors such as lighting, hours of work, rest periods, bonus incentives, and supervision affected workers, but the attitudes of the employees experiencing the factors were of greater significance. Almost as significant during the relay assembly tests was the introduction of a team of academics from the Harvard Business School into the experiments. J. Roethlisberger, this new group of researchers would have an enormous impact on the Hawthorne studies and the future of human relations in the workplace. At the beginning of the 20th century, companies were using scientific approaches to improve worker productivity. But that all began to change in 1924 with the start of the Hawthorne Studies, a 9-year research program at Western Electric Companies. The program, of which Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger played a major role, concluded that an organization’s undocumented social system was a powerful motivator of employee behavior.
The Legacy of the Hawthorne Effect in Organizational Behavior
The evidence indicates that the efficiency of a wage incentive is so independent on its relation to other factors and cannot be taken as an independent effect. The term “Hawthorne” is a term used within several behavioral management theories and is originally derived from the western electric company’s large factory complex named Hawthorne works. Starting in 1905 and operating until 1983, Hawthorne works had 45,000 employees and it produced a wide variety of consumer products, including telephone equipment, refrigerators and electric fans. As a result, Hawthorne works is well-known for its enormous output of telephone equipment and most importantly for its industrial experiments and studies carried out. Between 1924 and 1932, a series of experiments were carried out on the employees at the facility. The original purpose was to study the effect of lighting on workers’ productivity.
thoughts on “Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Experiment and It’s Contributions to Management”
It started two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they were assigned to a supervisor who discussed changes with them and, at times, used the women’s suggestions. The researchers then spent five years measuring how different variables affected both the group’s and the individuals’ productivity. Some of the variables included giving two five-minute breaks (after a discussion with the group on the best length of time), and then changing to two ten-minute breaks (not the preference of the group). The Hawthorne studies have been described as the most important social science experiment ever conducted in an industrial setting, yet the studies were not without their critics.
Not only did productivity increase when lighting was increased, but it also increased when lighting was decreased. This unexpected finding prompted further investigations into the psychological and social factors that influence worker motivation and performance. During the 1920s, a series of studies that marked a change in the direction of motivational and managerial theory was conducted by Elton Mayo on workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Illinois. Previous studies, in particular Frederick Taylor’s work, took a “man as machine” view and focused on the experiment hewthrone experiment was conducted by ways of improving individual performance.
- You always want to feel appreciated and taken into consideration from your boss or any other higher authority you are working with.
- This outcome was construed not necessarily as challenging the previous findings but as accounting for the potentially stronger social effect of peer groups.
- The working group as a whole actually determined the output of individual workers by reference to a standard that represented the group conception (rather than management’s) of a fair day’s work.
- There were a number of other experiments conducted in the Hawthorne studies, including one in which two women were chosen as test subjects and were then asked to choose four other workers to join the test group.
Their performance was observed in response to the minutest alterations in illumination. It is said that this reflects natural adaption to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were being monitored individually. Yes, in management, it suggests that giving attention to employees and making them feel valued can improve productivity and job satisfaction.
What is the Hawthorne effect in simple terms?
The limitations of the Hawthorne studies clearly render them incapable of yielding serious support of any sort of generalization whatever. However, if employees perceive ulterior motives behind the observation, a different set of outcomes may ensue. If, for instance, employees reason that their increased productivity could harm their fellow workers or adversely impact their earnings eventually, they may not be actuated to improve their performance.
The social cohesion holding democracy together, he wrote, was predicated on these collective relationships, and employees’ belief in a sense of common purpose and value of their work. Under Mayo and Roethlisberger’s direction, the Hawthorne experiments began to incorporate extensive interviewing. In 1927, researchers conducted an experiment where they chose two female workers as test subjects and asked them to choose four other women to join the test group.