History and Leadership by Mark E. Blincoe & John R. Shoup

Author:Mark E. Blincoe & John R. Shoup
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Natural Systems

As social scientists continued to conduct efficiency studies, an industrial psychologist by the name of Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and his team made an accidental discovery of why and how people ultimately perform the way they do in the workplace. Mayo was investigating the relationship between work conditions and employee productivity in the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company located on the West Side of Chicago. When the study commenced in 1927, the company “employed approximately 29,000 workers, representing some 60 nationalities” (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939/1961, p. 6). A series of studies on different work conditions, including how much illumination the factory floor needed, was conducted to optimize efficiencies and output. The initial results revealed that something else besides physical work conditions was influencing output, resulting in additional studies at the Hawthorne site for the next five years. Mayo and his team discovered that varying the conditions on the work floor, such as lighting, did not impact output as expected, but rather the fact that the workers on the floor knew that they were being observed by social scientists heightened their levels of engagement. The Hawthorne studies discovered that worker output was better explained by informal rules and social norms inherent in various subgroups than by formal rules and expectations.3

The conclusions of the study enlarged the view of organizations as having two major functions. In their detailed account of the Hawthorne Study, researchers on Mayo’s team, Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939/1961) noted:

The first function is ordinarily called economic. From this point of view the function of the concern is assessed in such terms as cost, profit, and technical efficiency. The second function, while it is readily understood, is not ordinarily designated by any generally accepted word. It is variously described as maintaining employee relations, employee good will, co-operation, etc. From this standpoint the function of concern is frequently assessed in such terms as labor turnover, tenure of employment, sickness and accident rate, wages, employee attitudes, etc. The industrial concern is continually confronted, therefore with two sets of major problems: (1) problems of external balance, and (2) problems of internal equilibrium.

(p. 552)

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