The Hawthorne experiments and their contribution to management theory

Background

Classical management (Taylor's scientific management and Fayol's administrative theory) treated the worker mainly as an economic being who responds to wages and good physical conditions. The Hawthorne experiments, conducted in the 1920s and early 1930s at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company near Chicago (the NCERT text calls the company GEC), with Elton Mayo as their best-known figure, showed that this view was incomplete. They gave rise to the human relations (neo-classical) approach, which sees workers as people with feelings and social ties, whose effort depends on far more than pay and rules.

The Hawthorne experiments

1. Illumination experiments. The researchers varied the lighting for a test group and kept it constant for a control group. Output rose in both groups, and even when lighting was reduced in the test group. Physical conditions alone could not explain productivity; something social was at work.
2. Relay assembly test room. A small group of women assembling telephone relays were placed in a separate room and given changes in rest pauses, working hours and refreshments over many periods. Output generally rose throughout, even when the original conditions were restored. The women had become a close group, were consulted, and felt their work was noticed.
3. Mass interviewing programme. Thousands of employees were interviewed. When interviewers allowed workers to talk freely, they learned of workers' feelings and attitudes, and workers felt better simply for being heard.
4. Bank wiring observation room. A group of men wiring telephone equipment were observed. They had set their own informal standard of a fair day's work, and pressure from the group kept output at that level, regardless of the incentive scheme.

Conclusions

• Work is a group activity, and the worker is a social being, not merely an economic one.
• Attention, recognition and a sense of belonging raise morale and output.
• Informal groups exist within the formal organisation and set their own norms of behaviour and output.
• Workers respond to management as members of groups, not only as individuals.
• Supervisory style and communication strongly affect productivity.
• Participation and being heard improve attitudes to work.

Contribution to the development of management theories

1. Birth of the human relations movement. Managers began to study human needs, attitudes and group behaviour.
2. Recognition of informal organisation. The idea that informal groups shape behaviour entered management theory.
3. Foundation of behavioural science and organisational behaviour. Later theories of motivation (Maslow, Herzberg, McGregor), leadership and group dynamics built on these findings; McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y grew out of Mayo's attack on the old assumptions about workers.
4. New view of supervision and leadership. Supportive, democratic supervision and two-way communication came to be valued.
5. Development of personnel management. Counselling, welfare, employee attitude surveys and participation schemes followed.
6. Social systems view. The organisation came to be seen as a social system, which prepared the way for the systems approach.

Criticism

The studies were small, the conclusions went beyond the evidence, the effect of the economic depression and of changes in pay was underplayed, and conflict between workers and management was ignored. The Hawthorne effect: people behaving differently because they know they are being studied: also complicates the results. Yet their main message, that human and social factors matter at work, has lasted.