Summary
Highlights
The 1920s, known as the Roaring Twenties, was an era of significant change in American history, marked by new dances like the Charleston, changing fashion, and Prohibition. The automobile, propelled by Henry Ford's assembly line, revolutionized American lifestyles, boosting employment and wages. However, amid rapid industrialization, workers often faced difficult conditions, feeling exploited and overlooked in the rush for production.
Western Electric's Hawthorne Works in Chicago, employing 40,000 people to manufacture telephone equipment, was considered a progressive workplace for its time. Employees had company-paid pension plans since 1906, vacations after five years, and sickness disability pay, making it a desirable place to work.
In 1924, the National Academy of Science began an experiment at Hawthorne to study how illumination affected worker efficiency, assuming better lighting would improve output. Surprisingly, output increased for all studied employees, even those with unchanged or reduced lighting. These inconclusive results led to the discontinuation of the studies.
Western Electric, however, decided to further investigate the puzzling results. A new experiment was initiated in a relay assembly room with six young women. Changes in routine, such as rest breaks and different hours, were discussed with the workers, leading to dramatically increased output and involvement, with a 30% production increase recorded over five years. This marked the beginning of modern industrial psychology.
Building on the relay room's findings, the Hawthorne Harvard cooperative inquiry continued into the 1930s. They launched the first formal employee interviewing program, with 20,000 Hawthorne employees sharing their feelings about their jobs and working conditions. Investigators discovered clues about the social organization of people at work, finding that this organization often had a greater impact on output than management's actions.
The Hawthorne Studies' significant contribution was introducing the idea of viewing a business organization as a social system. This new perspective allowed for the consideration of workers' satisfactions and dissatisfactions in relation to output and productivity, fostering new approaches to management and improving understanding of worker value.