HAWTHORNE STUDIES

Hawthorne Studies

Hawthorne Studies

Introduction

From 1924 to 1933, a number of research investigations were carried out at the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne plant in Illinois that have become collectively known as the Hawthorne studies. All but the first of these were carried out by a research team led by Elton Mayo of Harvard University. Mayo and his research team were initially interested in how changes in the work environment would impact the productivity of factory workers. These research interests were quite consistent with the prevailing theories of classical management, especially Frederick Taylor's Theory of Scientific Management. That is, like Taylor and other supporters of scientific management, the research team at the Hawthorne plant attempted to discover aspects of the task environment that would maximize worker output and hence improve organizational efficiency. Four major phases marked the Hawthorne studies: the illumination studies, the relay assembly test room studies, the interview program and the bank wiring room studies.

Discussion

The Illumination Studies

The illumination studies were carried out before the Mayo and his team carried out their research. These studies were designed to determine the influence of lighting level on worker productivity. In these studies, two groups of workers were isolated(Adair, 2009). For one group (i.e. the control group), the lighting was held constant. For the second group (i.e. experimental group), the lighting was systematically raised and lowered(Dickson, 1966). To the surprise of the researches, there was no significant difference in the productivity of the control group and the experimental group. Indeed, except when workers were laboring in near darkness, productivity was expected to grow for both the groups under all the conditions. It was at this point that Mayo's research team entered the scene to further investigate these counter intuitive findings (Roethlisberger, 1977).

The researchers decreased the lighting at the test group's workstations. Surprisingly, both the test group and the control group continued to improve their productivity. There were no decreases in productivity until the light was reduced to the point where the workers could barely see. The researchers concluded that light did not have a significant impact on the motivation of production workers (Sonnenfeld, 1985).

The Relay Room Experiments

To better understand the productivity increases seen in the illumination studies, Mayo and his team of researchers isolated a group of six women who assembled telephone relay systems. A number of changes were then introduced to this group, including incentive plans, rest pauses, temperature, humidity, work hours and refreshments. All changes were discussed with the workers ahead of time, and detailed records of productivity were kept as these changes in the work environment were instituted (Katzell, 1992). Productivity went up in a wide variety of situations. After more than a year of the study, the researchers concluded that social satisfactions arising out of human association in work were more important determinants of work behavior in general and output in particular than were any of the economic and physical aspects of the work situation to which the attention had originally been ...