Hawthorne Studies (I)

There is a big news coming out! Mr. John’s class will be included as a part of the school’s Open Course, and the entire class will be recorded! Before, you were determined to hang out with friends, but now you’ve taken out your Catcher in the Rye to jot down some more detailed notes. Quickly, you got your notes down and filtered all the pages with astonishing efficiency. When the bell rang, several supervising teachers and camera guys push their cumbersome machines in. You cannot control your nervousness as sweat lined down the forehead. In the middle of the lesson, when the camera guy carried the DV machine approaching, you smile as much as possible, pretending that you had mastered the “copying motif” talked by Mr. John. Maybe you don’t like that smile but the camera guy liked it because that should be a normal student’s reaction. You kept disguising yourself with a smile, but nervousness had already abased you attention.

Figure 1 The Output Against the Time Progress

Figure 1 The Output Against the Time Progress

Needless to say, that’s maybe one of the scenes you were trapped. And when you tried to change the performance, that’s called the “Hawthorne Effect”. Maybe someone would prefer it as the “Observer Effect”. It illustrates the performance of individuals when you know you are being watched. This effect was concluded from the famous “Hawthorne Experiment” and this was established as the cornerstone of Behavioral Sciences. Since people don’t get much touch with the studies of psychology, this conclusion was not something that a bunch of psychologists bent on working in the so-called “psychology labs” all day, watching people how to do and behave in these closed environments. In fact, this effect was created to meet the production needs. At the beginning, there was a factory “Hawthorne Works”. Because of the lack of efficiency and productivity in the factory workers, the famous psychologist at that time, George Elton Mayo, was sent to check the situation and determined to find out the cause. Therefore, he conducted several experiments to test the productivity of workers.

The first one is Illumination Experiment. You know, when rows of workers are working, there are a great amount of factory lights dangling right ahead of them. Therefore, the psychologists wanted to see whether the luminosity of lights would change the productivity of workers. Surprisingly enough, as lights turned on more brightly, the productivity of workers decreased. However, the experiment was conducted pretty badly. The psychological team investigated too many variables in conducting the experiment. Therefore, the initial conclusion was then invalidated. What’s much worse, near the end of the experiment, since there are inconsistencies in the data collected and there were protests from workers, the illumination experiment was finally terminated in fiasco. After all, after many attempts, the investigation results were that the illumination barely had any effect on the productivity of workers. The picture right above the paragraph illustrate the productivity of workers as the time progressed.

Figure 2 Track and Field Events

Figure 2 Track and Field Events

The second one is called Relay Assembly Test Room Experiment. Because there were unsuccessfulness in the former “illumination experiment”, a new research team was formed to specialize researching the causes of the productivity. What can you think of welfare? You know, when the experiment was conducted, several workers were chosen and they were given some welfare, for example, reduction in working hours, extension in break time, etc. After the Motivation was given, factory output received a great increase. It’s like when you

Figure 3 Women in the Relay Assembly Test Room

 tell a naughty boy that he can have a candy bar when he finishes the homework. Especially under such circumstances, Interpersonal Relationship was exhibited in the form of reciprocity. This could be considered that we are attracted quite powerfully to those who are attracted to us. Specifically, the supervision and control could change the attitude and, more precisely, productivity of workers. Therefore, workers would be more motivated to increase the output of factory. In other words, the workers chosen felt a great sense of satisfaction and pride so they would be in a good mood while working. This element was later proved as one of the most crucial factors that determine workers’ productivity, even more important than the Stimulus of welfare (motivation).

Overall, as we have mentioned so much about the specific procedures of Hawthorne Studies, there are some mistakes or misconduct during the whole experiments. In summary, when the Illumination Experiment was conducted, there were so many variables that the experiment conclusion could be highly unreliable. The reason is that when the luminosity of the factory lights was changed, there might be more change than only that of luminosity. Also, when the Relay Assembly Test Room Experiment was conducted, workers could not figure out whether their efficiency has been enhanced. Therefore, it would be unclear either to the research team or to us whether there is a relationship between the motivation factors and the efficiency of workers. However, it is known that after the efficiency was improved little after all these motivation factors had been given. OK. I think I have talked about much about the first 2 experiments in the whole Hawthorne Studies. Next time, we would keep focusing on the rest 2 experiments. Most importantly, don’t forget to be awesome!

References: 1. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne

           2. http://www.slideshare.net/RajeshPandey29/elton-mayos-hawthorne-experiment-and-its-contributions-to

           3. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/images/09/wehe_115.jpg

           4. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/images/big/wehe_019.jpg

           5. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/images/big/wehe_131.jpg

           6. http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/management/4-phases-of-hawthorne-experiments-discussed-business-management/27888/

           7. http://www.slideshare.net/RajeshPandey29/elton-mayos-hawthorne-experiment-and-its-contributions-to

           8. http://kalyan-city.blogspot.com/2011/04/hawthorne-studies-experiments-4-parts.html