At the beginning of the 20th century, companies were

using scientific approaches to improve worker

productivity. But that all began to change in 1924 with

the start of the Hawthorne Studies, a 9-year research
program at Western Electric Companies. The program, of
which Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger played a

major role, concluded that an organization’s

undocumented social system was a powerful motivator
of employee behavior. The Hawthorne Studies led to the
development of the Human Relations Movement in

business management. The experiment was about

measuring the impact of different working conditions by
the company itself (such as levels of lighting, payment
systems, and hours of work) on the output of the

employees. The researchers concluded that variations in

output were not caused by changing physical conditions
or material rewards only but partly by the experiments

themselves. The special treatment required by

experimental participation convinced workers that
management had a particular interest in them. This
raised morale and led to increased productivity. The

term ‘Hawthorne effect’ is now widely used to refer to

the behavior-modifying effects of being the subject of
social investigation. The researchers concluded that the
supervisory style greatly affected worker productivity.

These results were, of course, a major blow to the

position of scientific management, which held that
employees were motivated by individual economic
interest. The Hawthorne studies drew attention to the

social needs as an additional source of motivation.

Economic incentives were now viewed as one factor, but
not the sole factor to which employees responded.

4 Phases of Hawthorne
Experiment

1. ILLUMINATION STUDIES
2. RELAY ASSEMBLY TEST ROOM EXPERIMENT

3. BANK WIRING TESTS

4. THE INTERVIEW PROCESS

The term “Hawthorne” is a term used within several

behavioural management theories and is originally
derived from the western electric company’s large
factory complex named Hawthorne works. Starting in

1905 and operating until 1983, Hawthorne works had

45,000 employees and it produced a wide variety of
consumer products, including telephone equipment,
refrigerators and electric fans. As a result, Hawthorne

works is well-known for its enormous output of

telephone equipment and most importantly for its
industrial experiments and studies carried out. Between

1924 and 1932, a series of experiments were carried out

on the employees at the facility. The original purpose
was to study the effect of lighting on workers’
productivity.

1. Illumination Studies

In the early 1920s Chicago’s Western Electric Hawthorne

Works employed 12,000 workers. The plant was a

primary manufacturer of telephones, and in 1924 the
company provided a site to cooperate with the National
Research Council(NRC) on a series of test room studies

to determine the relationship between illumination and

worker efficiency.

The basic idea was to vary and record levels of

illumination in a test room with the expectation that as
lighting was increased, productivity would also increase.

In another test room, illumination was decreased, with

the correlating expectation that efficiency would

decrease.
The electric power industry provided an additional
impetus for these tests, hoping to encourage industries

to use artificial lighting in place of natural light.

The Illuminating Engineering Society’s Committee on

Research also supported the tests and cooperated with
the NRC.

Workers were notified of the tests in order to attempt to

control interference from human factors. When
production increased in each test period, researchers
looked to other factors such as increased supervision

and a sense of competition that developed between the

test and control groups.

One of the conclusions which the impressive team of

industrial specialists and academics discovered was the

lack of a consistent correlation between lighting levels

and product output. No further tests were planned
originally, but researchers were surprised at the
unanticipated results.
The National Research Council researchers concluded
that a variety of factors must affect industrial output

other than just the lighting effect because they

continued to produce 7 million relays annually.

2. Relay Assembly Test Room

Experiment

In order to observe the impact of these other factors, a

second set of tests was begun before the completion of

the illumination studies on April 25, 1927.

The relay-assembly tests were designed to evaluate the

effect of rest periods (free time) and hours of work
would have on efficiency.

Researchers hoped to answer a series of questions

concerning why output declined in the afternoon: Did
the operators tire out? Did they need brief rest periods?

What was the impact of changes in equipment? What

were the effects of a shorter work day? What role did
worker attitudes play? Hawthorne engineers led by

George Pennock were the primary researchers for the

relay-assembly tests, originally intended to take place
for only a few months.

Six women operators volunteered for the study and two

more joined the test group in January 1928. They were

administered physical examinations before the studies
began and then every six weeks in order to evaluate the
effects of changes in working conditions on their health.

The women were isolated in a separate room to assure

accuracy in measuring output and quality, as
temperature, humidity, and other factors were adjusted.

The test subjects constituted a piece-work payment

group and efforts were made to maintain steady work

patterns. The Hawthorne researchers attempted to gain
the women’s confidence and to build a sense of pride in
their participation. A male observer was introduced into
the test room to keep accurate records, maintain cordial
working conditions, and provide some degree of

supervision.

The women were employed in assembling relays or

electromagnetic switches used in switching telephone
calls automatically. The women assembled more than 35

parts of the relay by hand. The relays were then carefully

inspected. The entire process was highly labour intensive
and the speed of assembly had an obvious effect on
productivity.
Initially the women were monitored for productivity, and
then they were isolated in a test room.

Finally, the workers began to participate in a group

payment rate, where extra pay for increased productivity

was shared by the group. The other relay assemblers did
not share in any bonus pay, but researchers concluded

this added incentive was necessary for full cooperation.

This single difference has been historically criticized as

the one variable having the greatest significance on test
results. These initial steps in the relay-assembly studies

lasted only three months.

In August, rest periods were introduced and other

changes followed over the rest of the test period,
including shortened work days and weeks.

As the test periods turned from months into years,

worker productivity continued to climb, once again
providing unexpected results for the Hawthorne team to
evaluate.

Productivity increased in excess of 30 percent over the

first two and-a-half years of the studies and remained
steady for the duration of the tests.
The physicals indicated improved worker health and
absenteeism decreased. By their own testimony, the

women expressed increased satisfaction with all aspects

of their jobs.

Researchers tentatively concluded that performance and

efficiency improved because of the rest periods, relief

from monotonous working conditions, the wage

incentive, and the type of supervision provided in the
test environment.

After additional study and consideration, the first two

factors were rejected and further tests were conducted

in an attempt to verify the effects of incentives and
working conditions.

The results were still not totally conclusive. Finally,

researchers realized worker attitudes within the group

were influential as was the more personal atmosphere of
the test room.
They concluded factors such as lighting, hours of work,
rest periods, bonus incentives, and supervision affected

workers, but the attitudes of the employees

experiencing the factors were of greater significance.

As a result, the Hawthorne team decided not to pursue

similar studies. Almost as significant during the relay

assembly tests was the introduction of a team of

academics from the Harvard Business School into the
experiments. Led by professors Elton Mayo and F. J.
Roethlisberger, this new group of researchers would

have an enormous impact on the Hawthorne studies and

the future of human relations in the workplace.

However the same experiment was done on a group of 6

women placed in the same room whereas the

production increased because they felt like a group

where they were all connected through a team work.
This is common sense, just like in a class room; as

students meet day by day and study together the same

materials, they will feel a sense of freedom that they do
not experience in a playground floor.

Mayo’s contributions became increasingly significant in

the experiments during the interviewing stages of the
tests. Early results from the illumination tests and the
relay-assembly tests led to surveys of worker attitudes,

surveys not limited to test participants.

Work Conditions and Productivity

Results

• Under normal conditions with a forty-eight hour

week, including Saturdays, and no rest pauses. The

girls produced 2,400 relays a week each.

• They were then put on piecework for eight weeks. –
Output increased
• They were given two five-minute breaks, one in the

morning, and one in the afternoon, for a period of

five weeks. – Output increased, yet again
 • The breaks were each lengthened to ten minutes. –
Output rose sharply

• Six five-minute breaks were introduced. The girls

complained that their work rhythm was broken by
the frequent pauses – Output fell only slightly
• The original two breaks were reinstated, this time,

with a complimentary hot meal provided during the

morning break. – Output increased further still
• The workday was shortened to end at 4.30 p.m.
instead of 5.00 p.m. – Output increased

• The workday was shortened to end at 4.00 p.m. –

Output levelled off
• Finally, all the improvements were taken away, and
the original conditions before the experiment were

reinstated. They were monitored in this state for 12

more weeks. – Output was the highest ever
recorded – averaging 3000 relays a week

3. Bank-Wiring Tests
The bank-wiring tests began in November 1931. The
foreman of the bank-wiring department resisted the

intrusion of observers into his work space and a bank-

wiring test room was set up. The test room housed nine
wirers, three solderers, and two inspectors. All were male
between the ages of 20 and 25. Their job was to wire

conductor banks, a repetitive and monotonous task. The

banks were one of the major components of automatic
telephone exchange. Between 3,000 and 6,000 terminals
had to be wired for a set of banks. The work was tiring

and required the workers to stand for long periods of

time. Pay incentives and productivity measures were
removed, but a researcher was placed into the test room
as an observer and the workers were interviewed. The

purpose of the bank-wiring tests was to observe and

study social relationships and social structures within a
group, issues raised by two other significant members of

the research team, W. Lloyd Warner and William J.

Dickson. Warner was on Mayo’s Harvard team, trained as
an anthropologist and primarily interested in Hawthorne
from an entirely different perspective, that of an

observer of the social behavior of a group. Perhaps the

most revealing aspect of the bank-wiring tests was that
the workers combined to slow down production-a clear
indication of the need for analysis of the social

relationships of workers. Research showed the most

admired worker among the group was the one who
demonstrated the greatest resentment of authority by
slowing down production the most.

The bank-wiring tests were shut down in the spring of

1932 in reaction to layoffs brought on by the deepening
depression. Layoffs were gradual, but by May the bank-
wiring tests were concluded. These tests were intended

to study the group as a functioning unit and observe its

behavior. The study findings confirmed the complexity
of group relations and stressed the expectations of the

group over an individual’s preference. The conclusion

was to tie the importance of what workers felt about one
another to worker motivation. Industrial plants were a
complex social system with significant informal

organizations that played a vital role in motivating

workers. The researchers found that although the
workers were paid according to individual productivity,
productivity decreased because the men were afraid that

the company would lower the base rate. There was no

trust between employees and researches, so they simply
held down production to the level they thought was in
their best interest; the same thing happens when a

classmates of yours steal the exam paper and the

administration finds out. You would not say who did it
because you wouldn’t want your classmate to be kicked
out of school. So, your interest is to say that you do not

know hoping that they don’t change the exam answers.

Employees had physical as well as social needs, and the

company gradually developed a program of human

relations including employee counselling and improved

supervision with an emphasis on the individual workers.
The results were a reinterpretation of industrial group
behavior and the introduction of what has become

human relations.

4. The Interview Process

Under 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.

Mayo 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.”

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. You always want

to feel appreciated and taken into consideration from
your boss or any other higher authority you are working
with. This can create a trusting circle between both. Just

like when you are supposed to learn from your teacher

the materials she is giving you and at the same time you
ask her for her advice on your personal life and start

telling her what is going on with you in your daily life.

You will feel a close relationship that connects you with
the teacher and you will start to listen to her more and
take into consideration what she is giving you as

materials because there is a trust circle between both.

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 pre-computer 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.
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, generated them like crazy. In many
cases they found them so satisfying that they often did

all sorts of non logical thingsâ ‚¬ ¦in order to belong. 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.

The Hawthorne Legacy

The Hawthorne studies were conducted in three
independent stages-the illumination tests, the relay-
assembly tests, and the bank-wiring tests, although each
was a separate experiment. The second and third each

developed out of the preceding series of tests. Neither

Hawthorne officials nor NRC researchers anticipated the
duration of the studies, yet the conclusions of each set
of tests and the Hawthorne experiments as a whole are

the legacy of the studies and what sets them apart as a

significant part of the history of industrial behavior and
human relations.

The tests challenged prior assumptions about worker

behavior. Workers were not motivated solely by pay. The

importance of individual worker attitudes on behavior
had to be understood. Further, the role of the supervisor
in determining productivity and morale was more clearly

defined. Group work and behavior were essential to

organizational objectives and tied directly to efficiency
and, thus, to corporate success. The most disturbing

conclusion emphasized how little the researchers could

determine about informal group behavior and its role in
industrial settings. Finally, the Hawthorne studies proved
beyond certainty that there was a great deal more to be

learned about human interactions in the workplace, and

academic and industrial study has continued in an effort
to understand these complex relationships.

Beyond the legacy of the Hawthorne studies has been

the use of the term “Hawthorne effect” to describe how

the presence of researchers produces a bias and unduly
influences the outcome of the experiment. In addition,
several important published works grew out of the

Hawthorne experience, foremost of which was Mayo’s

The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization and
Roethlisberger and Dickson’s Management and the
Worker.

The Hawthorne studies have been described as the most

important social science experiment ever conducted in
an industrial setting, yet the studies were not without

their critics. Several criticisms, including those of

sociologist Daniel Bell, focused on the exclusion of
unionized workers in the studies. Sociologists and

economists were the most commanding critics,

defending their disciplinary turf more than offering
serious criticisms. Despite these critical views, the flow of
writings on the Hawthorne studies attests to their lasting

influence and the fascination the tests have held for

researchers. The studies had the impact of defining
clearly the human relations school. Another contribution
was an emphasis on the practice of personnel

counseling. Industrial sociology owes its life as a

discipline to the studies done at the Hawthorne site.
This, in part, led to the enormous growth of academic
programs in organizational behavior at American

colleges and universities, especially at the graduate level.

Criticism of Hawthorne Studies

The influence of Hawthorne studies has declined in the

last ten years as a result of widespread failure of later
studies to reveal any reliable relation between the social
satisfaction of industrial workers and their work

performance but still, reputable textbooks still refers

almost reverentially to the Hawthorne studies as a classic
in the history of social science in industry. There have
been a broad criticism and assumptions, many of them

cogent. How is it that nearly all authors of textbooks

who have drawn material from the Hawthorne studies
have failed to recognize the vast discrepancy between
evidence and conclusions of those studies, have

frequently miss described the actual observations and

occurrences in a way that brings the evidence into line
with the conclusions reached by Hawthorne studies?

This part of the project will critically examine the

evidence and arguments from which the investigators

reached conclusions. The first hypothesis made states
that the change in work task and physical context help in

the 30 percent increase in the productivity of the

workers. Considering the girls on the relay room the one
who had several tasks to do has improved the less and
then when they put her in the group with the other girls

doing one task she improved but that was not a

conclusive evidence in favour of the hypothesis so the
investigator had to dismiss it. Second hypothesis states
that the reduced fatigue due to rest pauses and shorter

working hours played a role in the 30 percent increase

but medical examination could not provide evidence of
fatigue effect so this hypothesis was also dismissed. In
stage II, the girls wage was based on the average output

of the whole department and their productivity

increased by 13 percent. But it promptly dropped by 16
percent when the experiment was discontinued. Here a
hypothesis was made that the wage incentive was in

effect but the investigators also were not impressed by

this evidence and did not support it. A comparison is
made between the first three stages. Stage III produced

a claimed of 15 percent increase in rate of output over

14 months, thereafter the average rate of output
declined due to depressions. The investigators attribute
the decline and ignored the possibility that the increase

also could have been influenced by changing general

economic and employment conditions. Also, the peak
output for each girl did not occur at the same dates. It
turned out that there is no one period over which the

group achieved the increased claimed. In stage I, two

measures of the workers performance were used: Total
output per week and hourly rate of output per week. In
the report of this stage it is not clear in which output is

the increase. This has lead to misunderstanding and

misinterpretation of the Hawthorne studies results.

Here several points are of present importance. For stage

I, it is not clear wither the 30 percent increase in the

output claimed refers to rate of output or total output.

For stage III, if total output per week is used to measure
performance, the 15 percent increased claimed reduces

to less than zero because although output per hour

increased by 15 percent, the weekly hours decreased by
17 percent. From evidence to conclusion, the
investigator concluded that 15 percent remains as the

maximum amount to be attributed but they decided that

it is impossible to consider a wage incentive as a thing in
itself having an independent effect on individual. Here
we should appreciate how invalid are the influences

made. In stage I, friendly supervision and a change to a

preferred incentive system led to an increase in total
output about 30 percent. In stage III, friendly supervision
without a change in payment system led to no increase

In total output. The investigator concluded that the

effect of a wage incentive system is no greatly
influenced by social considerations that it is impossible
to consider it capable of independent effect. None of

the results of the three first stages gave the slightest

substantiation to the theory that the workers are
primarily motivated by economic interest. The evidence

indicates that the efficiency of a wage incentive is so

independent on its relation to other factors and cannot
be taken as an independent effect. This conclusion is a
contrast to the objectives results obtained.

The critical examination attempted here shows the error

and the incompetence in the understanding and use of
scientific method in the Hawthorne studies from
beginning to end. There are major deficiencies in stages

I, II and III. First there was no attempt to establish

sample groups representative any larger population
than the groups themselves, therefore no generalization
is legitimate. Second, there was no attempt to employ

control data from the output records of the girls who

were not put under special experimental conditions.
Third, even if both previous points had been met, the
experiments would still have been of minor scientific

value since a group of five subjects is too small to yield

statistically reliable results. These points make it clear
that the evidence obtained from stages I, II and III does

not support any of the conclusions derived by

Hawthorne investigators. The results of these studies are
far from supporting the various components of the
“human relation approach” and are surprisingly

consistent with a rather old-world view about the value

of monetary incentives, driving leadership and discipline.
It is only by massive and relentless reinterpretation that
the evidence is made to yield contrary conclusions. The

limitations of the Hawthorne studies clearly render them

incapable of yielding serious support of any sort of
generalization whatever.