Hawthorne Studies

Do the Hawthorne studies deserve to be recognised as producing a fundamental change in the development of management thought?

Throughout the 20th  and 21st  century there has been much debate amongst researchers and the likes not about the impact of the Hawthorne studies but rather on who was the central facilitator in producing  a fundamental change in management thought, on the basis of the results produced in the studies.

There are those who believe that after the advent of World War 1, management was more than ever influenced by the ideas of Frederick Taylors and his scientific management theory. They believe that his efficiency methods may have alienated workers but however owing to the social contexts of the time; a rising participation rate due to heavy migration resulting in improved efficiency the scientific approach method to man management was able to be sustained.  The period of the red scare in the early 1920’s meant that personal man management was never seriously considered by managers. At the time of the Hawthorne studies Taylorism was as popular as ever. Consequently it was the pioneering ideas of Elton Mayo and his co researchers, who used the inconclusive results from the Hawthorne studies merely as a catalyst to inspire the so called Human relations movement. On the other hand there are those who believe that owing to the progressive ideas which were already prevalent in the Hawthorne plant before the studies, Elton Mayo simply advertised them to the wider business community. As a result a fundamental change in management thought was brought about by the pre-existing ideas present in the Hawthorn plant.

The ideas first advocated by Frederick Taylor’s theory “Taylorism” revolved around power, control and micro man management. He believed that every employee should be instructed and supervised. Manager ideas should be enforced onto workers, as workers are too simple to understand basic tasks.  This is illustrated in Taylors Principle of Management (1913), “ the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron”. Taylor despised the idea of craftsmanship instead dividing each step of production into small little steps.  He also argued that work rate would not go up as long as work pay didn’t go up. As a result he believed that worker motivation and hence output levels were solely tied to pay. His implementation of this theory brought about criticism “by the masses arguing that the fundamentals of scientific management was to exploit the masses rather than to benefit them” (Mullins, 2005). This culminated in a strike at Watertown Arsenal in 1912. An investigation reported that Taylor’s techniques lowered job morale as well as driving a dividing wedge between both worker and manager.

The most famous exponent of the scientific management theory is Henry Ford. Automobile production was divided into several steps. As a result the workers become a part of the great Ford production machine.  Nevertheless few workers could keep up with such a rapid pace of production and consequently many people quit. As the company was making record profits Henry Ford was able to incentivise the workers by doubling wages. This created an influx of workers, combined with the economic prosperity of the roaring twenties meant that there was a large supply of labour from arriving immigrants. Accordingly “workers on the line were as replaceable as the parts in the motor vehicles” (Degan, 2011). This meant that Henry Ford’s draconian method of management could be sustained.

The red scare of the 1920’s caused by the Russian revolution in 1918 helped to change manager perspective on worker relations. Communism championed the workers cause. An excerpt from the Communist Manifesto (1848) conveniently summarised the plight of the modern industrial worker “Modern Industry has converted the little workshop into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. They slaves of the bourgeois class; they are daily…enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.” Marx stressed the ideas of worker togetherness and unionism.  These thoughts peaked in 1919 with the Seattle General strike and the Boston Police strike. These strikes convinced corporate leaders to shelve personnel management. “Believing the most workers were in fact radicals, firms thus reverted to get tough labour policies that stressed worker discipline rather than moral”. (Loss, 2012)

However Elton Mayo was the first to deduce that the repetitive and mechanised routine of a scientifically managed workplace, “coupled with the mental and physical fatigue that were by-products of assembly-line production, would inevitably lead to destructive reveries (i.e. strikes), thus causing workers to act out in various non-productive ways” (Griffin, 2012). Furthermore having worked at a Philadelphia mill plant which had a high staff turnover rate, Mayo was able to experiment and find that by introducing rest breaks and allowing workers to socialise with each other at work, they were able to alleviate boredom as well as increase both productivity and reduce absenteeism.  Likewise at the Hawthorne plant, Mayo spent time interviewing the majority of staff in the workplace. By interviewing employees “you can alleviate tension by allowing them to vent their frustrations thus replacing industrial unrest with harmony” (Griffin, 2012).

Conversely “It is believed that Mayo’s interpretations of the Hawthorne experiments were more reflective of his pre-formed personal views” (Bruce and Nyland, 2011).This is supported by Mayo’s biographer Richard Trainhar; “Mayo was never responsible for doing any research as such at the Western Electric works”. Physically Elton Mayo arrived to the Hawthorne plant as the studies were already well underway. He manipulated the results in such a way that they were “based almost entirely on his own political interpretation of worker motivation” (Bruce and Nyland, 2011). As a consequence there is a strong argument that Elton Mayo merely used the results from the Hawthorne studies as a springboard to advertise his ideas of industrial and organizational psychology. The Humans relations movement examines the more personal relationship between worker and the company. In order to increase worker productivity, companies must pay attention to the social needs of the worker and that the workers themselves have incentives other than monetary reward.