Fonte: Harvard Business School Baker Library Historical Collections (www.library.hbs.edu)
Endereço específico: http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/09.html
A New Vision
Fritz J. Roethlisberger, ca. 1958. Yousuf Karsh, photographer.
© YOUSUF KARSH
The Hawthorne Studies began in 1924 as an attempt to improve worker productivity (tentativa de
melhorar a produtividade dos trabalhadores) at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in
Cicero, Illinois (então um subúrbio de Chicago). Ultimately, though, many managers and scholars
regarded this comprehensive study, the results of which were published in 1939 in the midst of the
Great Depression under the title Management and the Worker, as a manifesto that offered a new vision
for reconstructing a shattered world of meanings for both management scholarship and organizational
life. (o estudo durou até 1933 e, por fim, foi publicado em 1939 como um manifesto que ofereceu uma
nova visão para reconstruir os significados e os sentidos das atividades gerenciais tanto no campo
acadêmico como na vida organizacional)
Two distinct aspects of vision characterize the Hawthorne Studies. The first is the more conventional
definition of the term—vision as the act of perceiving a particular object or event. Through examining
the everyday realities of organizational life, Fritz Roethlisberger and his colleagues found that the
“person” and the “organization” could not be compartmentalized. Beneath the formalities of the
organization chart was not chaos but a robust, informal organization, constituted by the activities,
sentiments, interactions, norms, and personal and professional connections of individuals and groups
that had developed over extended periods of time. Dois aspectos distintos de visão caracterizam os
estudos de Hawthorne: o primeiro, é a definição mais convencional do termo visão – como o ato de
perceber um objeto ou evento. Através do exame minucioso da realidade do dia a dia da vida
organizacional, os pesquisadores descobriram que “pessoa” e “organização” não podiam ser
compartimentalizadas. Sob as formalidades da estrutura ou do organograma organizacional, havia não o
caos, mas uma robusta organização informal, constituída pelas atividades, sentimentos, interações,
normas e conexões pessoais e profissionais de indivíduos e grupos que tinham se desenvolvido por
extensos períodos de tempo.
The existence of the informal organization, argued the Hawthorne researchers, meant that shaping
human behavior was much more complicated than the then-dominant paradigm of scientific
management had led managers to believe. A existência da organização informal, argumentam os
pesquisadores de Hawthorne, significa que moldar o comportamento humano era muito mais
complicado do que o paradigma da administração científica – então dominante – tinha levado os
gerentes a acreditar.The social system, which defined a worker’s relation to her work and to her
companions, was not the product of rational engineering but of actual, deep-rooted human associations
and sentiments. O sistema social, que definia as relações dos trabalhadores com seu trabalho e com
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seus companheiros, não era o produto de uma engenharia racional, mas de associações e sentimentos
reais, próprios e profundamente enraizados. For example, on the question of the link between financial
incentives and output, the Hawthorne researchers found that a worker might feel rewarded if she had
pleasant associations with her co-workers and that this might mean more to her than a little extra
money. Indeed, the researchers found that many workers resisted incentive plans because they felt they
would be competing against people whose good will and companionship they valued. Por exemplo,
quanto à questão da relação que existe entre o volume de produção e os incentivos financeiros (salariais
ou não), os pesquisadores descobriram que uma trabalhadora podia se sentir recompensada se ela
tivesse, em suas atividades, parcerias agradáveis com suas companheiras e que isso poderia significar
para ela mais do que um “dinheirinho” extra. To take another example of the broader conception of
human beings uncovered by the researchers, consider, for instance, an entry about a test room operator
who was asked, “If given three wishes, what would they be?” “Health, to take a trip home at Christmas
time, and to take a wedding trip to Norway next spring,” she replied. By noting these and other
responses, the researchers highlighted that their conceptual blurring of person and organization was not
a weak surrender of the possibility of applying science to administration, but an actual scientific
working-through of the nature of human behavior based on careful empirical observation. A concepção
ampla dos seres humanos em suas relações que foi descoberta baseou-se em inúmeras entrevistas
diretas cujas respostas foram anotadas e estudadas, o que levou os pesquisadores a ressaltar que a
indistinção entre pessoas e organização não inviabiliza, nem enfraquece a possibilidade de aplicação da
ciência à administração, ao contrário fundamentam uma análise científica real da natureza do
comportamento humano baseada em observações empíricas.
A second definition of vision is when one talks about a vision of the future. Here, vision operates in the
realm of possibility, not actuality—creating, in effect, a new vocabulary of human motives. A segunda
definição de visão é quando se fala da visão do futuro. Aqui a visão opera nos domínios das
possibilidades, não da atualidade – criando, em decorrência, uma nova nomenclatura das motivações
humanas. Confronted with the chaos and human suffering of the Depression, even the most avowed
scientific scholars like Roethlisberger and his colleagues felt a moral imperative to identify what the
right pattern of an society should be. Like most great researchers, the possibility for developing an
imaginative reordering of life through the careful observation of a subject was part of the original
impulse for why they studied these workers for so long. Confrontados com o caos e o sofrimento
humano da Depressão, mesmo os mais renomados cientistas acadêmicos como Roethlisberger e seus
colegas sentiram como um imperativo moral, a identificação de qual deveria ser o padrão adequado ou
correto de uma sociedade. Como a maioria dos grandes pesquisadores, a possibilidade de desenvolver
uma reordenação imaginative da vida através de observações cuidados de um objeto, foi parte do
impulso original pelo qual eles estudaram estes trabalhadores durante tanto tempo. Consequently, we
must ask what did they hope to gain in the way of describing the patterns of organizations as systems
and human beings with sentiments and connections? Consequentemente, nós podemos perguntar o
que eles esperavam ganhar descrevendo padrões de organizações como sistemas e pessoas com
sentimentos e relações (conexões) ?
As Fritz Roethlisberger later revealed in his autobiography, his aim, as well as that of Elton Mayo and
others working in the organizations group at Harvard Business School, was nothing less than an absolute
commitment (compromisso, engajamento) to lessen (diminuir, reduzir) the gap between the
possibilities grasped (possibilidades de compreensão ou as compreensões atuais ou possíveis) and the
actualities illuminated (realidades iluminadas ou desvendadas ou postas à prova, ou à mostra) through
the application of theory and careful observation. Whereas scientific management made the
simplification of work and the indifference of workers to anything but a financial reward seem almost
both inevitable and desirable, the Hawthorne researchers identified that much of what individuals
found meaningful in work was their association with others. Enquanto a teoria da administração
científica fez a simplificação do trabalho e a indiferença dos trabalhadores a tudo que não fosse uma
recompensa financeira parecerem, ambas, quase inevitáveis e desejáveis, os pesquisadores de
Hawthorne identificaram que muito mais significativo para os indivíduos no trabalho era sua associação
(seu agrupamento, suas relações) com outros. The economic rewards of work were potentially picayune
(pouco importante, pequeno, reduzido) compared to the feeling of solidarity and worth created among
individuals working together toward a common end. A manager’s effectiveness, therefore, could be
measured on the extent to which those in the organization internalized a common purpose and
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perceived the connection between their actions and the organization’s ability to fulfill this common
purpose. A eficácia gerencial, por conseguinte, pode ser medida em sua extensão nas situações em que
sejam introduzidos na organização tais aspectos, ou seja, um propósito comum e a percepção das
conexões entre as ações em seu interior e a capacidade da organização em preencher este objetivo
comum. Management, then, was not about controlling human behavior but unleashing human
possibility. A administração, então, não tratará de controlar o comportamento humano, mas sim liberar
possibilidades, potencialidades. By viewing the organization as a rationally engineered machine,
scientific management had perverted the social character of work and thereby negated the individual.
Tratando ou enxergando a organização como uma máquina ou uma engenharia racionalmente
estruturada, a adminstração científica perverteu o caráter social do trabalho e, consequentemente,
negou o indivíduo. By reconceptualizing the organization as a social system that constantly adjusted to
the needs, sentiments, and emotions of its members, and the members to it, Roethlisberger and his
colleagues believed that organizational life presented a context—for both management and worker—to
cultivate a meaningful existence. Pela reconceitualização da organização como um sistema social que
constantemente ajusta as necessidades, sentimentos e emoções de seus membros e os membros entre
si, os pesquisadores de Harvard acreditavam que a vida organizacional representa um contexto – tanto
para os gerentes como para trabalhadores – para cultivar uma existência/convivência significativa.
The Hawthorne Studies were not perfect. Flaws in both method and interpretation appear with the
perspective of hindsight. Os estudos não foram perfeitos. Um olhar retrospectivo mostra erros ou
falhas, tanto em métodos como em interpretações. Perhaps most troubling is the researchers neglect of
power. In their view, the manager or boss is morally chaste. Power is conceived only as the capacity to
influence another person. Talvez o principal problema tenha sido os pesquisadores terem negligenciado
o poder. Em sua visão, o gerente ou chefe é moralmente casto, puro. Once power is seen as a matter of
influence over someone else, for the sake of a goal like productivity, the actual conditions of power tend
to disappear from view. But by having plunged into the experience of organizational life and then
reflected on the meaning of it, the Hawthorne researchers came closer to outlining an integrated theory
of human behavior than any other perspective before them and to describing a humanistic vision for
workers inside an organization at precisely the time when industrial capitalism needed to be
reconnected to addressing human concerns. Uma vez que o poder seja visto como objeto de influências
de uma ou outra pessoa ou interesse (como é na vida real) essa abordagem dos pesquisadores, se perde
de vista, desaparece da análise (ou seja, os gerentes ou chefes são executores de políticas, de
determinações superiores e, eles próprios, tem interesses também. Mas pelo fato de ter mergulhado na
realidade interna de uma experiência organizacional real e refletido sobre os significados e o sentido
dessa organização, os pesquisadores chegaram mais próximos da formulação de uma teoria integrada
do comportamento humano, do que qualquer outra perspectiva antes deles e descreveram uma visão
humanística dos trabalhadores no interior de uma organização e precisamente no momento em que o
capitalismo industrial precisava ser reconectado com os rumos da preocupação com os seres humanos.
Michel Anteby is Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Rakesh Khurana is Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
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Introduction
The Hawthorne Plant
Employee Welfare
Illumination Studies and Relay Assembly Test Room
Enter Elton Mayo
Human Relations and Harvard Business School
Women in the Relay Assembly Test Room
The Interview Process
Spreading the Word
The "Hawthorne Effect"
Research Links
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Introduction
The Human Relations Movement:
Harvard Business School and
the Hawthorne Experiments (1924-1933)
In the 1920s Elton Mayo, a professor of Industrial Management at Harvard Business School, and his
protégé Fritz J. Roethlisberger led a landmark study of worker behavior at Western Electric, the
manufacturing arm of AT&T. Unprecedented in scale and scope, the nine-year study took place at the
massive Hawthorne Works plant outside of Chicago and generated a mountain of documents, from
hourly performance charts to interviews with thousands of employees. Harvard Business School’s role in
the experiments represented a milestone in the dawn of the human relations movement and a shift in
the study of management from a scientific to a multi-disciplinary approach. Baker Library’s exhaustive
archival record of the experiments reveals the art and science of this seminal behavioral study—and the
questions and theories it generated about the relationship of productivity to the needs and motivations
of the industrial worker.
The Hawthorne Plant
Any company controlling many thousand workers…tends…to lack any satisfactory criterion of the actual
value of its methods of dealing with people.
—Elton Mayo, Professor of Industrial Management, Harvard Business School, 1933
Airplane View of Hawthorne Works, ca. 1925
Telephone in the Modern Home, ca. 1928From the time of its founding
in 1876, AT&T’s rapid and pervasive expansion gave it a virtual monopoly over the telephone industry
until the time of its break-up in 1984. Like other conglomerates of its day, the Bell Telephone System, as
the entire enterprise was known, combined production, distribution, and marketing under one
corporation as a way to centralize its operations and eliminate competition. Western Electric, the
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manufacturing unit of the company, produced telephones, cables, transmission equipment, and
switching equipment.
Hawthorne Works for the Manufacture of Power Apparatus, ca.
1920Construction of the Western Electric Hawthorne Works on over 100 acres in Cicero, Illinois, began
in 1905. By 1929 more than 40,000 men and women reported to work at the massive plant, which
included offices, factories, a hospital, fire brigade, laundry facilities, and a greenhouse. Employees were
assigned to precisely measured tasks in highly specialized departments, from switchboard wiring to
punch-and-die tool making. The manufacture of some equipment, such as automatic telephone
exchanges, required hundreds of separate assembly and inspection operations, and Western Electric
became one of the forerunners in applying scientific management (inspired in part by Frederick Taylor’s
time and motion studies) to its production units.
Employee Welfare
We stand on the threshold of a new era in which attention and interest are beginning to shift
from…things that are worked with, to the worker; from the machinery of industry, to the man who
made, owns, or operates it.
Robert Yerkes, Chairman of the Personnel Research Federation, National Research Council, 1922
Track and Field Events, ca. 1925
In the early 1900s labor unions, social reformers, journalists, and photographers brought to national
attention poor working conditions experienced by industrial workers. In the ensuing economic climate
of the late 1920s and 1930s, many executives came to believe that the foundation of business and of a
democratic society itself rested in part in affirming the role of the worker. To inspire company loyalty,
discourage high employee turnover and unionization, and present a good face to the public, corporate
managers began to focus on the well-being of the employee through the practice of welfare
capitalism.
In addition to pensions, sick pay, disability benefits, and stock purchase plans, Western Electric workers
could participate in a range of recreational and educational programs from running meets, tennis
games, and baseball leagues to lunchtime concerts, beauty pageants, and evening classes. The
company’s accident prevention programs included the introduction of safety shoes, eye goggles, and
guards for heavy machinery. To better understand worker productivity and job satisfaction, Western
Electric became increasingly interested in studies from the social, behavioral, and medical sciences.
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Illumination Studies and Relay Assembly Test Room
They say figures don’t lie, but we have shown that we can take a set of figures and prove anything we
want to.
Donald Chipman, Supervisor, Western Electric, 1931
Illumination Study, 1926
Research on productivity at massive manufacturing complexes like the Hawthorne Works was made
possible through partnerships among industries, universities, and government. In the 1920s, with
support from the National Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and eventually Harvard
Business School, Western Electric undertook a series of behavioral experiments. The first, a sequence of
illumination tests from 1924 to 1927, set out to determine the effects of lighting on worker efficiency in
three separate manufacturing departments. Accounts of the study revealed no significant correlation
between productivity and light levels. The results prompted researchers to investigate other factors
affecting worker output.
Performance Recording DeviceThe next experiments beginning in 1927
focused on the relay assembly department, where the electromagnetic switches that made telephone
connections possible were produced. The manufacture of relays required the repetitive assembly of
pins, springs, armatures, insulators, coils, and screws. Western Electric produced over 7 million relays
annually. As the speed of individual workers determined overall production levels, the effects of factors
like rest periods and work hours in this department were of particular interest to the company.
Women in the Relay Assembly Test Room, ca. 1930 In a separate test
room, an operator prepared parts for five women to assemble. The women dropped the completed
relays into a chute where a recording device punched a hole in a continuously moving paper tape. The
number of holes revealed the production rate for each worker. Researchers were unsure if productivity
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increased in this experiment because of the introduction of rest periods, shorter working hours, wage
incentives, the dynamics of a smaller group, or the special attention the women received. In 1928,
George Pennock, a superintendent at Western Electric, turned to Elton Mayo at Harvard Business School
for guidance. “We’re going to have a man come out from one of the colleges and see what he can tell us
about what we’ve found out,” Pennock wrote. 1
1
Daily History Record, Relay Assembly Test Room, February 20, 1928, Western Electric Company,
Hawthorne Studies Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. ←
Enter Elton Mayo
So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social
motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry.
Elton Mayo, Professor of Industrial Management, Harvard Business School, 1920
Elton Mayo, ca. 1950
Elton Mayo was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1880. Affable, witty, and a brilliant lecturer, he taught
mental and moral philosophy at the University of Queensland, where he conducted psycho-pathological
tests on World War I shell-shock victims. Well-read in the works of Freud, Jung, and Lévy-Bruhl, he
developed a close relationship with anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and began to formulate a view
of industry drawn from anthropology, psychology, and physiology. Mayo believed that unlocking the
psyche of the worker was key to understanding industrial unrest at home and abroad.
In 1923, Mayo became a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School,
studying the effects of fatigue on employee turnover. His science-based research and multi-disciplinary
approach caught the attention of Wallace B. Donham, Dean of Harvard Business School. In 1925,
Donham wrote to Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell asking for funds to appoint Mayo associate
professor in the study of human relations. Lowell at first responded that he could not justify the expense
or risk of supporting a new discipline, but Donham convinced him of the value of the field for both
industry and society and Mayo’s unique qualifications for the job.
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Human Relations and Harvard Business School
The subject of human relations in industry is one of the most important things in the whole field of
business and one which we must investigate and teach.
Wallace B. Donham, Dean of Harvard Business School to Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell, 1925
Harvard Fatigue Laboratory,
1946
At Harvard Business School, Dean Donham began to shift the focus from scientific management and
applied economics to human relations, a growing course of study. Mayo’s 1935 research course “Human
Problems of Administration” included readings and discussions on recent developments in physiological
and psychopathological studies, the French Sociological School, anthropological studies, and the
theories of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Mayo also formed a close partnership and friendship with
L. J. Henderson, physiologist and biochemist. Henderson ran the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, located in
the basement of the Business School’s Morgan Hall, where researchers studied human reactions to
environment, including the effects of fatigue on productivity.
Together, Donham, Mayo, and Henderson had a lasting influence on the direction of Harvard Business
School’s curriculum and research, which embraced applied, empirical-based studies and a multidisciplinary approach incorporating biology, physics, biochemistry, psychology, sociology, and
anthropology. “In Mayo’s time . . . the idea of considering human relations in factories and offices was
astonishing,” Abraham Zaleznik, Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, notes.2
In a letter to Donham in 1939, Mayo expressed his gratitude for Donham’s “steady support through
difficult years and the part it played in the development of this work.”3 Human relations was later
integrated into other programs at Harvard and further developed by Business School professors such as
George Lombard, a leader in the field of organizational behavior.
2
3
Abraham Zaleznik in Richard C.S. Trahair, The Humanist Temper: The Life and Work of Elton
Mayo. New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1984, p. 1. ←
Letter from Elton Mayo to Wallace B. Donham, November 8, 1939. Wallace B. Donham Office
Files, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. ←
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The Women in the Relay Assembly Test Room
I had no idea there would be so much happening and so many people watching us.
Theresa Layman Zajac, Relay Assembly Test Room Operator, 1976
Women in the Relay
Assembly Test Room, ca. 1930
Comparison of Output with Hours of Sleep, ca. 1930George Pennock
welcomed Mayo’s arrival at the Hawthorne Works in 1928. “We have become…skeptical of being able to
prove anything in connection with the behavior of human beings under various conditions,” he wrote. 4
Other Hawthorne experiments taking place at the time included the effect of wage incentives in the
mica splitting department. In the study of fourteen men in the bank wiring test room, where conditions
were unaltered, no change in productivity occurred—attributed in part to an implicit understanding
among the workers not to exceed what they considered a fair quota.
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Daily History Record, October 16 and 17, 1929The studies monitoring
the output of relay assembly workers, which began in 1927, continued until 1932, becoming the longest
running Hawthorne experiments. Homer Hibarger and later Donald Chipman, Western Electric
supervisors, reviewed production performance tapes and the results of routine physical exams and
maintained a log sheet of work, daily events, and supervisor’s observations. The six operators studied in
a separate test room were single women in their teens and early twenties. They came from Polish,
Norwegian, and Bohemian families, whom they helped support.
Theresa Layman Zajac’s Paycheck, August 13, 1927
The women noted that the intimate atmosphere of the test room gave them a sense of freedom not
experienced on the factory floor. They felt more at ease to talk and over time developed strong
friendships. “We’ve been the best friends since the day we were in the test room,” one of the operators
remembered. “We were a congenial bunch.”5 Through the years, productivity in the relay assembly test
room rose significantly. Mayo reasoned that “the six individuals became a team and the team gave itself
wholeheartedly and spontaneously to co-operation in an experiment.” 6 These views contributed to
Mayo and Roethlisberger’s conclusion that mental attitudes, proper supervision, and informal social
relationships experienced in a group were key to productivity and job satisfaction.
4
5
6
George Pennock to Dugald Jackson, October 22, 1930, quoted in Richard Gillespie,
Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991, p. 76. ←
Relay assembly room test operator in Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, "Shedding Light on the Hawthorne
Studies," Journal of Occupational Behavior, Vol. 6, 1985, p. 124. ←
Elton Mayo, Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization. Boston: Division of Research, Graduate
School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1945, p. 64. ←
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The Interview Process
I think interviewing is a good idea. It helps some people get a lot of things off their chest.
Western Electric employee, in Comments and Reactions on Interviewing Program, ca. 1930
Factory Cabling Department, ca. 1925Assisting Mayo was his research
assistant, Fritz Roethlisberger. Unassuming, bookish, and disciplined, Roethlisberger had studied
philosophy at Harvard. He worked as a psychological counselor for Harvard students and became known
as an expert listener. Roethlisberger, who found himself “spellbound by Mayo’s…creative imagination
and clinical insights,” would himself become one of Harvard Business School’s beloved and highly sought
after professors.7
Long Stroke Lead Sheathing Press, ca. 1925Under Mayo and
Roethlisberger’s direction, the Hawthorne experiments began to incorporate extensive interviewing.
The researchers hoped to glean details (such as home life or relationship with a spouse or parent) that
might play a role in employees’ attitudes towards work and interactions with supervisors. From 1928 to
1930 Mayo and Roethlisberger oversaw the process of conducting more than 21,000 interviews and
worked closely training researchers in interviewing practices.
Magnetic Wire Insulating Department, ca. 1925Mayo and
Roethlisberger’s methodology shifted when they discovered that, rather than answering directed
questions, employees expressed themselves more candidly if encouraged to speak openly in what was
known as nondirected interviewing. “It became clear that if a channel for free expression were to be
provided, the interview must be a listening rather than a questioning process,” a research study report
noted. “The interview is now defined as a conversation in which the employee is encouraged to express
himself freely upon any topic of his own choosing.” 8
11
Factory Cabling Department,
ca. 1925
Interviews, which averaged around 30 minutes, grew to 90 minutes or even two hours in length in a
process meant to provide an emotional release. The resulting records, hundreds and hundreds of pages
in which employees disclose personal details of their day to day lives, offer an astonishingly intimate
portrait of the American industrial worker in the years leading to and following the Depression. In a precomputer age, thousands of comments were sorted into employees’ attitudes about general working
conditions, specific jobs, or supervisors and among these categories into favorable and unfavorable
comments used to support interpretations of the data. Both workers’ and supervisors’ comments would
aid in the development of personnel policies and supervisory training, including the subsequent
implementation of a routine counseling program for employees.
In his autobiography The Elusive Phenomena, Roethlisberger wrote of grappling with objective, hard
data versus subjective, soft data. “I felt very strongly,” he noted, "that in the gooey soft data there
existed uniformities about human behavior that had to be coaxed out by…the method of clinical
observation and interviewing which I was advocating for the administrator to use.9 Roethlisberger
discovered that what employees found most deeply rewarding were close associations with one
another, “informal relationships of interconnectedness,” as he called them. “Whenever and where it
was possible,” he wrote, “[employees] generated them like crazy. In many cases they found them so
satisfying that they often did all sorts of nonlogical things…in order to belong. 10 In Mayo’s broad view,
the industrial revolution had shattered strong ties to the workplace and community experienced by
workers in the skilled trades of the 19th century. The social cohesion holding democracy together, he
wrote, was predicated on these collective relationships, and employees’ belief in a sense of common
purpose and value of their work.
7
8
9
10
Paul Lawrence quoted in Andrea Gabor, The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern
Business—Their Lives, Times, and Ideas. New York: Random House, 1999, p. 92. ←
"Hawthorne Studies Research Report," 1932. Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Studies
Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. ←
Fritz J. Roethlisberger, The Elusive Phenomena: An Autobiographical Account of My Work in the
Field of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School. Boston: Division of Research,
Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1977, p. 238. ←
Fritz J. Roethlisberger, The Elusive Phenomena: An Autobiographical Account of My Work in the
Field of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School. Boston: Division of Research,
Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1977, p. 165. ←
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Spreading the Word
This is the most important book on the subject which has appeared in recent years.…It should be read
by every industrial and social administrator, by industrial and social workers of every grade, and by
every politician.
Review of Elton Mayo’s The Human Problems of Industrial Civilization, in the journal The Human Factor,
1934
The Depression and massive layoff of employees at Western Electric helped bring the Hawthorne
experiments to a grinding halt in the early 1930s. But the studies took on a new life in public lectures
given by Mayo, accounts of the experiments in headlines from New York to Texas, and Fortune
magazine’s 1946 feature article praising Mayo’s studies. In keeping with its research mission, Harvard
Business School published numerous monographs and articles on the studies, and reviews appeared in
professional journals.
Classic texts on the experiments included The Industrial Worker, by Harvard Business School professor
Thomas North Whitehead in 1938, and the 600-page, best-selling tome Management and the Worker,
by Roethlisberger and Hawthorne supervisors William Dickson and Harold Wright in 1939. In 1933,
Mayo published The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. Modern society, he wrote, had
destroyed “the belief of the individual in his social function and solidarity with the group.” 11 It would be
up to an administrative elite to develop methods for improving worker morale and ultimately securing
national stability at a time of economic and social unrest.
11
Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. New York: MacMillan, 1933, p.
159. ←
The “Hawthorne Effect”
What Mayo urged in broad outline has become part of the orthodoxy of modern management.
Abraham Zaleznik, Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, Harvard Business School, 1984
Completion of Counseling in an
Organization, December 6, 1966
In 1966, Roethlisberger and William Dickson published Counseling in an Organization, which revisited
lessons gained from the experiments. Roethlisberger described “the Hawthorne effect” as the
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phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being
observed. Many critics have reexamined the studies from methodological and ideological perspectives;
others find the overarching questions and theories of the time have new relevance in light of the current
focus on collaborative management. The experiments remain a telling case study of researchers and
subsequent scholars who interpret the data through the lens of their own times and particular biases. 12
Paul R. Lawrence, ca. 1960
Mayo and Roethlisberger helped define a new curriculum focus, one in alliance with Dean Donham’s
desire to address social and industrial issues through field-based empirical research. Harvard’s role in
the Hawthorne experiments gave rise to the modern application of social science to organization life
and lay the foundation for the human relations movement and the field of organizational behavior (the
study of organizations as social systems) pioneered by George Lombard, Paul Lawrence, and others.
“Instead of treating the workers as an appendage to ‘the machine’,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld notes in his
detailed analysis of the studies, the Hawthorne experiments brought to light ideas concerning
motivational influences, job satisfaction, resistance to change, group norms, worker participation, and
effective leadership.13 These were groundbreaking concepts in the 1930s. From the leadership point of
view today, organizations that do not pay sufficient attention to ‘people’ and ‘cultural’ variables are
consistently less successful than those that do. From the leadership point of view today, organizations
that do not pay sufficient attention to people and the deep sentiments and relationships connecting
them are consistently less successful than those that do. “The change which you and your associates are
working to effect will not be mechanical but humane.”14
12
See Richard Gillespie, Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, and Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, "Shedding Light on
the Hawthorne Studies," Journal of Occupational Behavior, Vol. 6, 1985. ←
13
Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, "Shedding Light on the Hawthorne Studies," Journal of Occupational
Behavior, Vol. 6, 1985, p. 125. ←
14
Letter from Elton Mayo to George A. Pennock, October 28, 1929. Elton Mayo Papers, Box 7,
Baker Library, Harvard Business School. ←
Guides to Archival Collections
14
1.
Lawrence Henderson Papers
Online finding aid
Lawrence Joseph Henderson established the Fatigue Laboratory at Harvard Business School in
1927 to discover physiological norms for human biological processes and to study the
physiological changes that cause fatigue in workers. He was instrumental in the establishment
of the Harvard undergraduate concentrations in biochemistry and in history of science, as well
as the doctoral program in the history of science and learning. His papers include memos,
correspondence, lecture notes, speeches, reviews, certificates, and financial records, as well as
documentation regarding the effects of fatigue on productivity and the need for crossdisciplinary exchange in academia.
2.
George F. F. Lombard Papers
Online finding aid
George Lombard’s teaching and research interests focused on Human Relations and
Organizational Behavior. He taught courses at both Harvard College and Harvard Business
School. His office files cover his activities as administrator, researcher, and professor of
Industrial Research and Human Relations at Harvard Business School from 1937–1990.
Documentation includes correspondence, minutes, research materials, teaching materials,
conference papers, articles, and administrative materials.
3.
Elton Mayo Papers
Online finding aid
Elton Mayo became head of the new Department of Industrial Research at Harvard Business
School in 1926. His papers contain personal correspondence, articles and speeches, notebooks
from his student days at the University of Adelaide, teaching notes and committee records
from Harvard Business School, correspondence with Harvard Business School dean Wallace
Donham, and materials regarding his interest in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and
psychology. Also included are interviews and reports on industrial relations and efficiency
studies conducted at various locations as well as extensive documentation of his involvement in
15
the Hawthorne Studies, including correspondence, interviews, research reports, and statistical
analyses.
4.
Fritz Roethlisberger Papers
Online finding aid
The papers of Fritz Jules Roethlisberger cover his activities as researcher and professor of
Industrial Research and Human Relations at Harvard Business School from 1927 to 1974.
Documentation associated with his role as a key member of the Hawthorne Studies includes
extensive transcripts of interviews with employees at Western Electric as well as administrative
files, speeches, writings, and correspondence with colleagues on the project. His papers also
contain documentation regarding his interest in improvements in education and training, the
importance of psychology and sociology in personnel management, and the nature of
organizational behavior.
5.
Western Electric Company Hawthorne Studies Collection
Online finding aid
This collection includes correspondence, research materials, progress reports, and other
documentation associated with the Hawthorne Studies in both paper-based and microform
records. The materials contain information on overall organization, methodology, and
particular test groups (such as records on job performance and employee attitudes).
Documentation on the employee interview program is extensive and includes interview
transcripts, summaries, and analyses.
Selected Digital Historical Resources
1.
Hawthorne works for the manufacture of power apparatus.
[Chicago, Ill.] : Western Electric Company, [19--]
Full text available as a networked resource
16
Construction of the Western Electric Hawthorne Works on over 100 acres in Cicero, Illinois,
began in 1905. By 1929 more than 40,000 men and women reported to work at the massive
plant, which included offices, factories, a hospital, fire brigade, laundry facilities, and a
greenhouse. This pamphlet provides a complete introduction to this manufacturing plant.
2.
Interview with Operator No. 2 from Relay Assembly Test
Room, 1927 – 1932. (Western Electric Company Hawthorne Studies Collection, box 3C, folder
22)--(197 p.)
Full text available as a networked resource
From 1928 to 1932 Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger oversaw the process of conducting
more than 21,000 interviews and worked closely training researchers in interviewing practices.
Interviews, which averaged around 30 minutes, grew to 90 minutes or even two hours in length
in a process meant to provide an emotional release. The resulting records, hundreds and
hundreds of pages in which employees disclose personal details of their day to day lives, offer
an astonishingly intimate portrait of the American industrial worker in the years leading to and
following the Depression The studies monitoring the output of relay assembly workers, which
began in 1927, continued until 1932, becoming the longest running Hawthorne experiments.
The six operators studied in a separate test room were single women in their teens and early
twenties. For a period of five years, they were extensively interviewed. After seventy years,
restrictions regarding access to these interviews have been lifted.
3.
The Management and the worker, Chicago, New York [etc.]
A.W. Shaw Company [c1920].
Full text available as a networked resource
Published by the Harvard Business School Bureau of Business Research, this monograph
provides a summary of findings of the Hawthorne Experiments by HBS professor Fritz
Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickinson of Western Electric. The Bureau of Business Research was
established in 1911 to conduct organized research in the field of business administration. The
monograph precedes their later account of the experiments, Management and the Worker,
published in 1939.
17
4.
Research studies in employee effectiveness and industrial
relations: papers presented at the annual autumn conference of the Personnel Research
Federation at New York, November 15, 1929. [S.l.]: The Company, [1929]. Courtesy of AT&T
Archives and History Center
Full text available as a networked resource
This paper, with contributions by George Pennock and M. L. Putnam of Western Electric and
Harvard Business School professor Elton Mayo, was presented at the annual conference of the
Personnel Research Federation in New York in 1929. It includes findings from the experiments
and a summary of the relay assembly test room studies.
5.
Thomas N. Whitehead. The Industrial Worker: a Statistical Study of Human Relations in a
Group of Manual Workers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, v. 1, 1938.
Foreword, Preface and Introduction available electronically.
Considered one of the classic texts on the Hawthorne Experiments, this account by Harvard
Business School professor Thomas North Whitehead offers a detailed statistical analysis of the
studies.
6.
Western Electric Company Photograph Album, 1925.
Full text available as a networked resource
This album contains 81 black and white photographs documenting the operations of the
Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in 1925. The images depict general views of the
plant’s buildings and grounds, the offices and laboratories, the various shop departments,
including the telephone apparatus, cable, rubber, and insulating operations, and the rod and
wire mill. Many of the photographs show factory employees at work at their stations.
7.
Western Electric News. New York, Western Electric Co., 1930.
Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center
Full text available as a networked resource
Western Electric News was the employee magazine at the Western Electric Company,
published from 1912 to 1933. Baker Library holds volumes 1–20, March 1912–February 1932.
Bibliography
18
A Selection of Publications by Principal Researchers
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Mayo, Elton. The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1933.
Mayo, Elton. The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization. Boston: Harvard University,
Graduate School of Business Administration, 1945.
Roethlisberger, Fritz Jules and W.J. Dickson with the assistance of Harold A. Wright.
Management and the Worker: an Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western
Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939.
Roethlisberger, Fritz Jules and W.J. Dickson. Counseling in an Organization: a Sequel to the
Hawthorne Researches. Boston: Harvard University, Graduate School of Business
Administration, 1966.
Roethlisberger, Fritz Jules. The Elusive Phenomena: an Autobiographical Account of My Work
in the Field of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School. Boston: Division of
Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1977.
Whitehead, Thomas North. The Industrial Worker: a Statistical Study of Human Relations in a
Group of Manual Workers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Secondary Sources
1.
2.
Adams, Stephen B. and Orville R. Butler. Manufacturing the Future: a History of Western
Electric. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Bendix, Reinhard and Lloyd H. Fisher. "The Perspectives of Elton Mayo," The Review of
Economics and Statistics, vol. 31, no. 4, Nov. 1949, pp. 312-319.
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
3.
Brammel, D. and R. Friend. "Hawthorne, the Myth of the Docile Worker and Class Bias in
Psychology," American Psychologist, no. 36, 1981, pp. 867-878.
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
4.
5.
6.
Cass, Eugene Louis and Frederick G. Zimmer, eds. Man and Work in Society: a Report on the
Symposium Held on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Original Hawthorne Studies.
Oakbrook, Illinois, November 10-13, 1974. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1974.
Copeland, Melvin T. And Mark an Era: the Story of the Harvard Business School. Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1958.
Cruikshank, Jeffrey L. A Delicate Experiment: the Harvard Business School, 1908-1945.
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987.
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
7.
Gabor, Andrea. The Capitalist Philosophers: the Geniuses of Modern Business: Their Lives,
Times, and Ideas. New York: Random House, 1999.
8. Gillespie, Richard Pearson. Manufacturing Knowledge: a History of the Hawthorne
Experiments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
9. Horvath, Steven M. and Elizabeth C. Horvath. The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory: its History and
Contributions. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973.
10. Landsberger, Henry A. Hawthorne Revisited: Management and the Worker, Its Critics, and
Developments in Human Relations in Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1958.
11. Parsons, J.M. "What Happened at Hawthorne?" Science, vol. 183, March 8, 1974, pp. 922932.
19
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
12. Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey A. "Shedding Light on the Hawthorne Studies," Journal of Occupational
Behavior, vol. 6, 1985.
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
13. Trahair, Richard C. S. The Humanist Temper: the Life and Work of Elton Mayo. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1984.
14. Yogev, Ester. "Corporate Hand in Academic Glove: The New Management's Struggle for
Academic Recognition —"The Case of the Harvard Group in the 1920s," American Studies
International, vol. XXXIX, no. 1, February 2001.
Full text available as a networked resource
(valid Harvard ID required).
Websites
1.
The History of AT&T
www.corp.att.com/history
2.
Hawthorne Works Museum
www.morton.edu/museum/index.html
3.
BBC Radio 4: Mind Changers, Series 4: The Hawthorne Effect, August 2009
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lv0wx
1.
The Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne Effect
LISTEN:
Listen now (30 minutes)
AVAILABILITY:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Mon, 3 Aug 2009, 11:00 on BBC Radio 4 (FM only).
SYNOPSIS
Claudia Hammond presents a series looking at the development of the science of psychology during the
20th century.
In the 1920s, at the enormous Western Electric Hawthorne Factory in Cicero outside Chicago,
management began an experiment which was to improve the working life of millions and give rise to a
phenomenon that anyone planning a psychology experiment would have to take into account in their
design.
20
Keen to improve productivity at a time when the telephone industry was growing and Western Electric
was building the components for all the telephone exchanges in the United States, management
decided to see whether working conditions affected production. But the initial 'illumination studies'
were inconclusive; whether lighting was increased or decreased to no better than moonlight,
productivity increased. Whatever the intervention, it seemed to promote faster work.
Confused, management turned to economists from Harvard Business School to design a more complex
study. So, in April 1927 five women were removed from the factory floor and put in a separate room the relay assembly test room. For the next five years, as they assembled the complex relays they were
minutely monitored. Their working conditions were regularly altered, but whether breaks were included
or removed, their working day lengthened or shortened, their productivity continued to rise.
The study improved working conditions throughout the factory, as breaks were introduced for all, but it
also gave rise to a phenomenon known as The Hawthorne Effect, which has to be taken into account in
the design of any experiment - the mere fact that subjects know that they are being studied may alter
their behaviour.
Yet The Hawthorne Effect is widely questioned. How can an experiment using such a small sample - five
women, two of whom were changed during the study - have given rise to such a ubiquitous theory?
With the help of the Hawthorne Museum in Cicero, the Baker Library archive and Professor Michel
Anteby at Harvard Business School, Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale Business School who met the
original participants in the study back in the 1970s, and Mecca Chiesa of the University of Kent, Claudia
Hammond re-examines the classic Hawthorne Studies.
RELATED LINKS

Michel Anteby (drfd.hbs.edu)

Mecca Chiesa (www.kent.ac.uk)

Laura Linard (publications.hul.harvard.edu)

Lee Ross (lee.ross.socialpsychology.org)

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (mba.yale.edu)

Hawthorne Museum (www.morton.edu)

Harvard Business School Baker Library Historical Collections (www.library.hbs.edu)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Making sense of social research: how useful is the Hawthorne Effect? By Mecca Chiesa and Sandy
Hobbs, European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol 38, Issue 1, pages 67-74
BROADCAST
1.
Mon 3 Aug 2009
11:00
BBC Radio 4 (FM only)
MORE DETAILS
Episode 2 of 4 from
21
1.
Mind Changers
2.
Series 4
In this series
THE PSEUDO-PATIENT STUDY
AVAILABLE TO LISTEN
HARLOW'S MONKEYS
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