Hawthorne Studies

Results, Conclusions, Implications, Criticisms

Experiment: Illumination Studies

Result:
Higher worker productivity and satisfaction at all light level

Conclusions:

Light intensity has no conclusive effect on output Productivity has a psychological component

Experiment: Relay Assembly Test Experiments

Result:
Higher output and greater employee satisfaction

Conclusions: Positive effects even with negative influence workers output will increase as a response to attention Strong social bonds were created within the test group. Workers are influenced by need for recognition, security and sense of belonging

Experiment: Relay Assembly Room #2

Result: Small group incentives resulted in highest sustained level of production 112% over standard output base Output dropped to 96.2% of base in 2nd session Conclusions: Pay relevant to output but not the only factor

Experiment: Mica Splitting Test Group

Result:
Productivity increased by 15% over standard output base

Conclusions: Productivity is affected by non-pay considerations Social dynamics are a basis of worker performance

Experiment: Plant Interview Program

Result: Remarkable positive employee perceptions

Conclusions: New Supervisory Style improved worker morale

Experiment: Bank Wiring Observation Group

Result:
No appreciable changes in output

Conclusions: Preexisting performance norms

Group dictated production standards Systemic Soldiering Work Group protection from management changes.

Implications
Work is a group activity. Need for recognition, security and sense of belonging. Complaints, commonly a symptom manifesting disturbance of an individuals status position.

Implications
Attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands. Informal groups at work are strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of a worker. Change from established society to adaptive society. Group collaboration.

Implications
Attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands. Informal groups at work are strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of a worker. Change from established society to adaptive society. Group collaboration.

Importance
Improved management
But Professor Mayos work also helped establish field based empirical research as the primary research Methodology at HBS.
- Mary Lee Kennedy

These studies changed the landscape of management

Taylor's engineering approach improved into a social science approach.

Criticisms
Parsons defines the Hawthorne effect as "the

confounding that occurs if experimenters fail to realise how the consequences of subjects' performance affect what subjects do
Dr. Richard Nisbett, calls the Hawthorne effect 'a glorified anecdote.Once you have gotten the anecdote,he said, you can

throw away the data.

Criticisms
Harry Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital argues that the studies showed that the workplace was not "a system of bureaucratic formal organisation on the Weberian model, nor a system of informal group relations, as in the interpretation of Mayo and his followers but rather a system of power, of class antagonisms.

Criticisms
Research on the demand effect also suggests that people might take on

pleasing the experimenter as a goal, at least if it does not conflict with any other motive, but also, improving their performance by improving their skill will be dependent on getting feedback on their performance, and an experiment may give
them this for the first time.

Legacy
Cooperation and communication with coworkers. Rearrange/reorganize job functions. Create an atmosphere of working as a team.