The Hawthorne Experiments: Management Takes A New Direction
General Electric, the major manufacturer of light bulbs, had preliminary evidence that better lighting of the work place improved worker productivity, but wanted to validate these findings to sell more light bulbs, especially to businesses. GE funded the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an impartial study. AT&T's Western Electric Hawthorne plant located in Cicero, Illinois, was chosen as the laboratory. Beginning with this early test, the “Hawthorne Experiments” were a series of studies into worker productivity performed at the Cicero plant beginning in 1924 and ceasing in 1932.
Illumination Studies, 1924 -1927
The earliest experiment (1924) was conducted by the NRC with engineers from MIT. The study would end in 1927 with the NRC abandoning the project. The group examined the relationship between light intensity and worker efficiency. The hypothesis was that greater illumination would yield higher productivity. Two work groups of female employees were selected for “control” and “experimental” groups. By comparing the changes on worker productivity by manipulating lighting in the experimental group with the production of the control group, the researchers could validate and measure the impact of lighting. The study, however, failed to find any simple relationship as poor lighting and improved lighting seemed in increase productivity. Indeed, in the final stage, when the group pretended to increase lighting the worker group reported higher satisfaction.
The preliminary findings were that behavior is not merely physiological but also psychological. This was a break with the Scientific Management school that saw work productivity as “mechanical”, and led to the decision to learn more about worker behavior. George Pennock, Western Electric’s superintendent of inspection suggested that the reason for increased worker productivity was simply that the researchers interacted with the female employees; and, this was first time any one had shown an interest in the workers. Basically, the workers were trying to please the researchers by continuing to increase their output and report satisfaction in the study, no matter what the intervention was. Later, the phenomenon of a researcher corrupting an experiment simply by his presence would be termed the “Hawthorne effect”.
Relay Assembly Test Room Experiments, 1927-1929
The NRC started an experiment to probe the unexpected findings of the Illumination study but would depart in 1927, at which time Western Electric continued the project drawing on support from Harvard researchers. An experimental group was established of five young women from the Relay Assembly room of the plant. The experiments involved the manipulation of a number of factors, to include pay incentives, length of workday and workweek, and use of rest periods, to measure impact on productivity and fatigue. Again, the relationship between pay, incentives, rest, and working hours seemed to have little effect on productivity, even when the original, more demanding conditions were re-implemented.
Mica-Splitting Test group, 1928 – 1930
Disturbed by the inconclusive evidence that rewards and incentives improved worker performance, a second experiment was conducted to look only at this relationship using workers in the Mica-Splitting Room. In his experiment the workers’ piece wages were held constant while work conditions were varied. Productivity increased by about 15%. The researchers concluded that productivity was affected by non-pay considerations. Members of the research team began to develop the theory that social dynamics were the basis of worker performance.
Plant-wide Interview program, 1928-1931
As early findings indicated that concern for workers and willingness to listen impacted productivity, Western Electric implemented a plant-wide survey of employees to record their concerns and grievances. From 1928 to 1930, 21,000 employees were interviewed. This data would support the research of the Harvard team for years and lead them to conclude that work improved when supervisors began to pay attention to employees, that work takes place in a social context in which work and non-work considerations are important, norms and groups matter to workers.
Bank Wiring Observation group, 1931-1932
The final Hawthorne experiment was conducted studying 14 male workers assigned to the Bank Wiring factory. The objective was to study the dynamics of the group when incentive pay was introduced. The finding was that nothing happened! The work group had established a work “norm” – a shared expectation about how much work should be performed in a day and stuck to it, regardless of pay. The conclusion: informal groups operate in the work environment to manage behavior.
Importance of the Hawthorne Plant Studies
Despite modern criticism that the research was flawed and that incentives played a larger role in improving worker productivity than the Hawthorne plant researchers concluded. These studies changed the landscape of management from Taylor’s engineering approach to a social sciences approach. Worker productivity would, henceforth, be interpreted predominately in the United States in terms of social group dynamics, motivation, leadership, and “human relations”. The practice of management could not be the aloof technician of Taylor’s Scientific Management, designing the job, selecting and training the “right” worker, and rewarding for performance. The manager was an immediate part of the social system in which work is performed, responsible for leading, motivating, communicating, and designing the social milieu in which work takes place.
The studies also developed the scholars that would continue to influence the American way of thinking about management at Harvard Business School and elsewhere. Included among these researchers were:
Elton Mayo came to Harvard from Wharton where as a psychologist he had researched the impact of social and home life on worker performance. At the Harvard University School of Business his reputation led him to consult with the FBI and the movie industry. Mayo’s reporting of the Hawthorne experiments became the most influential in that he laid out a programmatic interpretation, which would be called the “Human Relations” approach that dominated management thinking until the 1950’s. Mayo’s views lead to the construction of manager as a leader supported by knowledge and skills to build social cooperation.
Fritz Roethlisberger and W.J. Dickson were the first to publish comprehensive findings of the Hawthorne experiments in 1937 and authored Management and the Worker in 1939, a comprehensive statement of the research and findings. Roethlisberger, educated as an engineer, started the Harvard Industrial Research Department, was a lead researcher in the Hawthorne project and a leader in the Human Relations movement. Dickson was Chief of Employee Relations Research Department at the Hawthorne plant and an instrumental contributor to the project.
W. Lloyd Warner, an anthropologist who designed the group experiments, pioneered the field of social anthropology at Chicago and Michigan. His work includes classics in the American class system and race.
L.J. Henderson a chemist and physiologist in charge of the Fatigue Laboratory at the Harvard Business School provided a theoretical foundation to the research. He would contribute to the development of “systems theory”, influencing management theorists Chester Barnard and George Homans. He became the first president of the History of Science Society.
This group of scholars permanently influenced the study of management and the development of Organizational Behavior as a disciplines
The “Hawthorne Effect”
What Mayo urged in broad outline has become part of the orthodoxy of modern management.Abraham Zaleznik, Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, Harvard Business School, 1984 Mechanical Laboratory, ca. 1925 -->Completion of Counseling in an Organization, December 6, 1966
In 1966, Roethlisberger and William Dickson published Counseling in an Organization, which revisited lessons gained from the experiments. Roethlisberger described “the Hawthorne effect” as the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being observed. Many critics have reexamined the studies from methodological and ideological perspectives; others find the overarching questions and theories of the time have new relevance in light of the current focus on collaborative management. The experiments remain a telling case study of researchers and subsequent scholars who interpret the data through the lens of their own times and particular biases.12
Paul R. Lawrence, ca. 1960
Mayo and Roethlisberger helped define a new curriculum focus, one in alliance with Dean Donham’s desire to address social and industrial issues through field-based empirical research. Harvard’s role in the Hawthorne experiments gave rise to the modern application of social science to organization life and lay the foundation for the human relations movement and the field of organizational behavior (the study of organizations as social systems) pioneered by George Lombard, Paul Lawrence, and others.
“Instead of treating the workers as an appendage to ‘the machine’,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld notes in his detailed analysis of the studies, the Hawthorne experiments brought to light ideas concerning motivational influences, job satisfaction, resistance to change, group norms, worker participation, and effective leadership.13 These were groundbreaking concepts in the 1930s. From the leadership point of view today, organizations that do not pay sufficient attention to ‘people’ and ‘cultural’ variables are consistently less successful than those that do. From the leadership point of view today, organizations that do not pay sufficient attention to people and the deep sentiments and relationships connecting them are consistently less successful than those that do. “The change which you and your associates are working to effect will not be mechanical but humane.”14
Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne effect - an increase in worker productivity produced by the psychological stimulus of being singled out and made to feel important.
Along with Frederick Taylor's work, this study gave rise to the field known as "Industrial Psychology." Social group influences and interpersonal factors must also be considered when performing efficiency research such as time and motion studies.
Individual behaviors may be altered because they know they are being studied was demonstrated in a research project (1927 - 1932) of the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois. This series of research, first led by Harvard Business School professor Elton Mayo along with associates F.J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson started out by examining the physical and environmental influences of the workplace (e.g. brightness of lights, humidity) and later, moved into the psychological aspects (e.g. breaks, group pressure, working hours, managerial leadership). The ideas that this team developed about the social dynamics of groups in the work setting had lasting influence - the collection of data, labor-management relations, and informal interaction among factory employees.
The major finding of the study was that almost regardless of the experimental manipulation employed, the production of the workers seemed to improve. One reasonable conclusion is that the workers were pleased to receive attention from the researchers who expressed an interest in them. The study was only expected to last one year, but because the researchers were set back each time they tried to relate the manipulated physical conditions to the worker's efficiency, the project extended out to five years.
Four general conclusions were drawn from the Hawthorne studies:
1. The aptitudes of individuals are imperfect predictors of job performance. Although they give some indication of the physical and mental potential of the individual, the amount produced is strongly influenced by social factors.
2. Informal organization affects productivity. The Hawthorne researchers discovered a group life among the workers. The studies also showed that the relations that supervisors develop with workers tend to influence the manner in which the workers carry out directives.
3. Work-group norms affect productivity. The Hawthorne researchers were not the first to recognize that work groups tend to arrive at norms of what is "a fair day's work," however, they provided the best systematic description and interpretation of this phenomenon.
4. The workplace is a social system. The Hawthorne researchers came to view the workplace as a social system made up of interdependent parts.
For decades, the Hawthorne studies provided the rationale for human relations within the organization. Then two researchers used a new procedure called "time-series analyses." Using the original variables and including in the Great Depression and the instance of a managerial discipline in which two insubordinate and mediocre workers were replaced by two different productive workers (one who took the role of straw boss - see below). They discovered that production was most affected by the replacement of the two workers due to their greater productivity and the affect of the disciplinary action on the other workers. The occurrence of the Depression also encouraged job productivity, perhaps through the increased importance of jobs and the fear of losing them. Rest periods and a group incentive plan also had a somewhat positive smaller effect on productivity. These variables accounted for almost all the variation in productivity during the experimental period. Social science may have been to readily to embrace the original Hawthorne interpretations since it was looking for theories or work motivation that were more humane and democratic. – Franke, R.H. & Kaul, J.D. "The Hawthorne experiments: First statistical interpretation." American Sociological Review, 1978, 43, 623-643.
Note: Hay is dried grass, sometimes with a little alfalfa thrown in, used as feed for horses and cattle. Straw, on the other hand, is the stalks of wheat or other grains left over after harvesting the good parts, and is used primarily for livestock bedding. Since straw is a by-product of the real business of a farm, "straw boss" is not the "big boss" of any job, but rather an assistant or subordinate boss, usually on the level of the foreman of a work crew. It is now a metaphor for any low-level supervisor. And since straw bosses rarely wield any real power aside from the ability to make those under them miserable, "straw boss" today is often a synonym for a petty and vindictive superior.
This writen by Oshodi, Nnaji, Jospeh, Valentine and Reginald, Nanta
