Elton Mayo
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- Born in Adelaide, Australia in 1880
- Taught mental and moral philosophy at the University of Queensland, where he conducted psycho-pathological tests on World War I shell-shock victims.
- In 1923, Mayo became a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, studying the effects of fatigue on employee turnover.
The Hawthorne Effect
-The phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being observed
-Describes the special attention researchers give to a study's subjects and the impact that attention has on the study's findings.
-Describes the special attention researchers give to a study's subjects and the impact that attention has on the study's findings.
The Experiment
- The experiments initially concentrated on the relationship between productivity and workplace lighting. Wherein groups of six workers were to perform their normal task in an enclosed space where researchers changed the intensity of the electric lighting.
- Both high and low levels of lighting provided higher productivity levels
- When Mayo joined the experiments in early 1928, he noticed that the increased performance was due to their increased motivation. Productivity was related to social effects, not the level of lightning. Mayo called such social behavior the 'Hawthorne Effect'.
- Mayo expanded the research to look at pay and incentives, rest periods, hours of work, supervision and work pace. Again, he recorded remarkable increases that had little relation to these variables.
- Mayo concluded that the workplace was above all, a social system of interdependent actors in which workers are influenced more by the social demands of the work place, by their need for recognition, security and a sense of belonging, than by their physical working environment.
- The results of the experiment concluded that
- job satisfaction leads to higher job productivity;
- pay is a relatively low motivator;
- management is only one factor affecting behavior;
- the informal group exerts a strong influence on motivation.
- The results labeled the Hawthorne effect - suggested that relationships are important in understanding behavior in organizations.