HAWTHORNE EXPERIMENT by ThEME

The Hawthorne Experiment was the result of a confluence of factors—a CEO open to outsiders, a team of researchers who knew which questions to ask, and a country searching for answers about productivity.

Hawthorne Works was a Western Electric plant near Philadelphia, and was a learning center studied between 1924 and 1932, roughly coinciding with Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.

The president of the company was an Army colonel who was persistent in seeking answers. Five teams of engineers had studied the plant and could not find methods for enhancing the productivity or improving attendance on a particularly troubling line. These firms had instituted financial incentives, but they’d failed completely.

The engineers at the facility who were first-rate in matters of applied science. . . wished to find out why human co-operation could not be as exactly and as accurately determined by the administrative organization.

The major breakthrough from these works was the realization that collaboration cannot be left to chance. As Mayo wrote:

“For at least a century of the most amazing scientific and material progress and by inadvertence we have abandoned the effort of collaboration. Our methods are all pointed at efficiency; none at the maintenance of cooperation. . . we do not know how to ensure spontaneity of cooperation—that is, teamwork.”

“The desire for continuous and intimate association in work and with others remains a strong, possibly the strongest human capacity.”

This was a sharp break form the rigid Scientific Management of the leading theorist of the time, Frederick Taylor.

The project can be divided up into three “sections”: the Illumination studies, the Relay assembly experiments, and the Interviewing experiment. In the early Illumination Studies, researchers experimented on several different departments of Hawthorne to determine the optimal level of lighting for proficient productivity. The experiment was confounding, and set the stage for deeper research: The attempt to relate changes in physical circumstances to variations in output resulted in not a single correlation of statistical significance. In fact, everyone showed an increase of productivity, no matter whether light levels were increased or decreased—unless it got too dark.

The Relay Assembly Experiments identified other variables on productivity of workers assembling telephone relays. Some of the variables: Changing payment to a group amount, as opposed to individual payments; changing the length of breaks; shortening the work day; introducing a sympathetic chief observers.

The conclusion: changing a variable was almost guaranteed to increase productivity and output, even if the variable was just a change back to the standard environment. Mayo and his team decided that human nature can adapt quickly and regain “equilibrium.” More important, when the group returned what it considered the “normal” environment, production increased because they were now functioning as a team that “gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment”. All the experiments demonstrated the importance of employee attitudes and sentiments.

The pay incentives, meanwhile, failed to boost productivity, apparently because workers feared the company would lower the base rate if one performed particularly more efficient than another. The output was a social behavior. The men were on group piecework, where the more they turned out the more they earned. One expected that they would maximize output and put pressure on the slower workers. In fact, there were four cultural norms: (1) You should not turn out too much work—or you are a “rate buster.” (2) You should not turn out too little work—you are a “Chiseler.” (3) You should not say anything to a supervisor that would hurt your co-worker.

(4) You should not be too officious. To be an accepted member of the group a man had to act in accordance with these social standards.

In the Interviewing experiments, workers would open up often to the interviewer about personal and business matters. Again, productivity increased, bolstering Mayo’s notion that cooperation provides for social needs. The takeaway: An effective supervisor is one who can look at the whole of the human problem, and remain personal, while maintaining enough distance to remain impartial.

Conclusions of the experiments:

• The behavior of workers could not be understood apart from their feelings or sentiments. Sentiments are easily disguised. Manifestations of sentiment could not be understood as things in and by themselves, but only in terms of the total situation of the person.

• People respond well to an environment that seems less threatening and more familiar.

• People will respond positively to a novel change at work, since they are working in an environment that does not feel like it is working against them.

• Rest periods are potent in fighting against worker frustration.

• Allowing worker to air grievances without feeling that they’re on the verge of being fired feel improves production.

• A human problem to be brought to a human solutions requires human data and human tools.

• “A man whose job is without social function is like a man without a country; the activity to which he has to give the major portion of his life is robed of all human meaning and significance.”

Probably the most perceptive synopsis of the experiment came from Stuart Chase, in a 1941 Reader’s Digest Article, who said, “There is an idea here so big that it leaves one gasping—a management man and a union man did not have a difference of opinion.”

Chase added, “Their whole attitude had changed from that of separate cogs in a machine to that of a congenial group trying to help the company solve a problem.”