The names Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne experiments They are quite popular in the world of management and psychology. Next, we will tell you a little about this renowned scientist and the interesting findings of the Hawthorne experiments.
George Elton Mayo He was an Australian academic born in 1880 in the city of Adelaide. Within his academic training, he had studies in sociology and psychology, which made him a great researcher and social theorist..
Advanced his studies, he devoted himself strongly to the industrial psychology, interested mainly in organizations and human relations within them. His studies focused mainly on the analysis of how productivity is influenced by the work environment in relation to the psychological component of workers.
His studies resulted in interesting theories about the logic of workers' sentiment and the logic of cost in productive organizations..
The Hawthorne experiments consisted of a series of modifications to the work environment based on Elton Mayo's theories about human relations.
During the experimental phase, test groups were selected and changes were made in the work environment to observe if they had any influence on individual and collective productivity.
Some of those changes were quite subtle like changes in lighting and others a little more substantial like changes in break times or small break increases and even economic incentives for production and cuts in working hours.
The increase in enlightenment was intended to have a dramatic effect on workers by putting in perspective the possibility of being observed and being better observers, the results were quite positive in productivity.
Schedule changes at rest began with increasing from one to two daily breaks. This had a fairly positive effect on productivity. So it was decided to increase the number of breaks, leaving each one of 5 minutes. This was quite problematic since the workers felt their work rhythm interrupted and within 5 minutes they really couldn't get to rest. (Productivity was reduced). Then it was changed again for the two breaks recovering productivity.
The reduction of working hours It also had a pretty positive effect on production, but only for a time. All this at first seemed to have a quite positive effect in the experimental group in relation to productivity. The study groups proved to respond quite well to each of the changes made.
The problem for the experiment, strangely enough, came after finishing the study with positive conclusions. It turns out that once the test sessions organized by the scientists were over, productivity returned to its normal level and even decreased.
This was a strong after foot for Elton Mayo who was already claiming victory in terms of his theories. But at the same time it was a great advance in his social studies on the behavior of workers.
In order to understand what happened during and after the experimental phases, Mayo decided to start a new experimental phase by carrying out individual interviews to the workers in order to know their opinion of the processes that were carried out in the company.
The results of the interview phase were surprising, they found that the workers had, so to speak, a informal organization by means of which they tried to protect each other from the decisions of the administration that they considered violated them.
As a result of this discovery, a new experimental phase using a group of 20 people, 18 of whom were producer workers and the other two supervisory workers. The experiment consisted of giving economic incentives to the experimental group if they managed to increase their production.
Supervisors were asked to carry out constant reports daily field type of everything that happened within the group, the other workers knew the situation.
The results were positive to the speculations of Elton Mayo. Production did not increase, in fact it decreased and it was relatively easy to show how workers and supervisors altered their production rhythms voluntarily so as not to increase production.
The reason was a simple factor, in their informal organization that occurs in social interaction, the workers concluded that increasing production could be a reason for requiring more production the workforce and on the other hand it could serve as a justification to carry out dismissals in the factory.
The effect of psychological reactivity or Hawthorne Effect it was postulated thanks to Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne experiments. This is about the results of psychological experiments in general..
The effect of psychological reactivity postulates that study subjects in most cases can modify their behavior more due to the psychological effect of being studied, than actually due to the factors that change during experimentation..
In other words and taking as a starting point the experiment we are studying, Observation by a benevolent supervisor (Experimenter) is very different from administrative supervision, therefore it serves as a social motivation to do the job better.
This explains why, in the variable light experiment, production increases were recorded both when they were observed working with high light and when the light level was decreased..
It also makes it clear why during the experiments production increased and at the end of the experimental phase it normalized, although the changes introduced during the experimental phase were maintained..
But the effect of psychological reactivity is even clearer in the last test where workers purposely they sabotaged production rhythms and they altered the reports based on the conclusions they drew about the possible consequences of increased production rates.
In this sense and by way of conclusion, it can be said that according to Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne experiments, the level of production in the strict sense does not depend on the physical capacities of a worker, but rather it is the social capacity and psychological reactivity to the work environment that determines these levels. In addition, the power of the group must be taken into account as a form of direct influence on individual behavior..
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