The Hawthorne Studies
Hawthorne studies
The Hawthorne studies showed that people’s work performance is dependent on social issues and job satisfaction. Tangible motivators such as monetary incentives and good working conditions are generally less important to improving employee productivity than intangible motivators such as meeting individuals’ desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making.
The studies originally looked into how making the lighting brighter or dimmer would affect productivity. While they expected brighter light would lead to better productivity, in some instances dimming the lights also led to the same result. At that point, Mayo joined the study and began to do experiments on job redesign, length of workday and workweek, length of break times, and incentive plans.
Social Factors Influence Motivation
The results were surprising. Mayo found that workers were more responsive to social factors—such as their manager and coworkers—than the lighting and environmental factors the researchers set out to investigate. Mayo claimed that workers developed a sense of group pride because they had been selected to participate in the studies. The pride that came from this special attention motivated the workers to increase their productivity. Supervisors who allowed the employees to have some control over their situation appeared to further increase the workers’ motivation.
The studies also provided evidence that informal work groups (the social relationships of employees) and the resulting group pressure have positive effects on group productivity. In addition to the personal economic needs that Taylor emphasized, social needs play an important role in influencing work-related attitudes and behaviors.
Employee Perceptions as Motivators
One of the experiments conducted in the Hawthorne studies, included one in which two women were chosen as test subjects. They were asked to choose four other workers to join the test group. Together, the women worked assembling telephone relays in a separate room over the course of five years (1927–1932). Their output was measured during this time—at first, in secret. It started two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they were assigned to a supervisor who discussed changes with them and, at times, used the women’s suggestions. The researchers then spent five years measuring how different variables affected both the group’s and the individuals’ productivity. Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. Researchers concluded that the employees worked harder because they thought they were being monitored individually. Researchers hypothesized that choosing one’s own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase.