In Queensland, Mayo married to Dorothea McConnell, who has been educated in landscape art at the Sorbonne. They had two daughters, Patricia and Ruth Elton Mayo. Patricia followed her father’s management thinking. Ruth became a British artist and novelist.
Throughout the First World War, he served on government bodies and lectured about industrial and political psychology, and psychoanalysis. In 1916, Mayo wrote a book called, Lady Galway’s Belgium Book. After the First World War, he became a Professor of Philosophy in his own university.
In, 1921, Mayo became a directorship of adult education at the University of Melbourne and taught psychoanalysis, before taking sabbatical leave to Great Britain.
In 1922, Mayo emigrated in the United States to work as a professor and researcher in Wharton School in Philadelphia. In 1923, he attended to the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later, he was offered a choice of two job positions: a directorship of the new psychological laboratory at McGill University, or a Professor of Industrial Research at Harvard Business School, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. At Between 1926 and 1947, he chose to work as a Professor of Industrial Research at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and taught there for many years.
In 1927, Mayo worked on an industrial research project at the Hawthorne Works of the West Electric Company, a manufacturing plant of telephones, Western side of Chicago. His associates, F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson helped Mayo with his research on employees’ behaviour at work. The investigation lasted for five years and all of their results that they have recorded were written in a book called, Management and the Worker (1939). This book was authored by F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson.
Elton Mayo wrote two books, one of the books was called, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation (1933). This book contains information about his experiments and the conclusions of the Hawthorne Studies (his motivation theory) and school of the human relations.
In December 1947, he had a serious stroke and wasn’t capable to go to work. Few years of retirement, Elton Mayo had died in his apartment at the National Trust’s manor of Polesden Lacey, in Surrey.
The Hawthorne Experiments
Elton Mayo was the founder of the Human Relations Movement and Industrial Sociology. He has done a lot of research at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago.
Mayo and his expert team gathered a group of six women employees (assembly workers) and separated them. Then, the team altered their working conditions in different ways, for about five years, and observed the effects on production and the confidence of the group. During the period, Mayo and his team would make alterations such as, new paying systems, rest breaks of different durations, changing the duration of the working day, and give out refreshments. From the changes that the team has made to their working conditions, it caused the productivity to rise.
At the end of the experiment, Mayo was pleased that he had proven his point. When Mayo returned the employees’ their original working condition; a six days a week, with long hours and no rest breaks and refreshment, he recognised that the productivity in the group remained unchanged (the productivity was still increasing). From this surprising result, Mayo had to rethink his conclusions.
Mayo finally realised that it was the following factors that made the productivity to increase:-
- greater satisfaction from freedom and control over their working environment
- the individuals became a team and co-operated well with the experiment
- group standards are important and influenced by unofficial leadership
- better communication between employees and managers
- employees are influenced by the amount of interest shown in them (this is known as ‘the Hawthorne Effect’)
The work of Mayo shows, that group working relations and employees’ involvement are important in motivating staff. He believed that an employee’s attitude is the key of motivation. Also, Mayo believed that increased personal satisfaction is the suitable way of motivation. He felt that tension between employees and managers could guide to conflict within the organisations. Mayo felt that recognition, security and sense of belonging are important in determining employees' confidence and productivity than, the physical conditions in which an employee works. He thinks that informal groups within the workplace, effects strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of the individual worker.
