In our readings, it suggests that individuals tend to change their behavior if they believe they are
observed-this is called the Hawthorne Effect. As Organizational Leaders what does this phenomenon tell
you about observed behaviors and those you may not see? How does this impact the broader context of
an organization, particularly when trying to gather authentic data on organizational behavior?
The Hawthorne Effect was realized after sets of experiments were done at the Hawthorne
facility in order to see what are some variables that might influence workers productivity, for instance,
the amount of light in the workplace. The researchers found out that any variable manipulation attempt
brought an increase in productivity. The researchers concluded that the workers changed their behavior
because they knew that they were being observed and consequently made them think special (singled
out) and thus boosted their productivity ("Hawthorne Effect - Observation Bias", 2019).
As Organizational Leaders, this phenomenon could tell us two things; first, observed behavior
could trick the observer. In her video, Francesca Gino brings an example from a TV show, Steinfeld, in
which one of the workers left his car at work and made the boss think that the worker is working long
hours and eventually interpreted that to be working hard (Gino, 2013). For that reason, we need to take
the Hawthorne effect into account and judge what we see or do not accordingly ("Hawthorne Effect Observation Bias", 2019). An interesting fact that I found while researching about this topic was that
other studies found out that participants are not the only ones that get influenced by the Hawthorne
Effect but also the researchers themselves, particularly if their performance or efficiency is being
measured (Sedgwick & Greenwood, 2015). As it seems, this is a very challenging concept for research as
they have to take into account many variables such as expectations, attitudes, change, providing friendly
supervision or merely observing the participant. I have learned that there are attempts to lessen the
Hawthorne Effect in studies by using computer simulations, but there is still much work that needs to be
done in the subject (Bronack & Annetta, 2011, pp. 175-187).
The second thing that we can learn from the Hawthorne Effect is how to be an effective
Organizational Leaders. There are many ways in which leaders try to boost their employees’ morale and
productivity; money, incentives, various types of benefits and so on. However, if we pay real close
attention, we could see that the Hawthorne experiment showed us that no matter what variable the
researchers manipulated the results were similar (positive). Some speculate that the attention that they
received in of itself was sufficient to the productivity increase. This is a remarkable fact since we can see
from here that one of the best and simplest way of creating an environment that allows people to work
in their inventive and productive best is paying attention to them (Sedgwick & Greenwood, 2015).
References
1) Bronack, S. C., & Annetta, L. (2011). Mitigating the Hawthorne Effect Using Computer
Simulations. In Serious educational game assessment: Practical methods and models for
educational games, simulations and virtual worlds (pp. 175-187). Rotterdam: Sense.
2) Gino, F. (2013, March 05). Measure Employee Productivity Accurately. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/video/2235472805001/measure-employee-productivity-accurately
3) Hawthorne Effect - Observation Bias. (n.d.). Retrieved February 05, 2019, from
https://explorable.com/hawthorne-effect
4) Sedgwick, P., & Greenwood, N. (2015). Understanding the Hawthorne effect. Bmj.
doi:10.1136/bmj.h4672