Using relevant theories and examples. Explain what the Hawthorne Experiments demonstrated in relation to group norms, motivation and leadership.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

The extensive Hawthorne Works was a large factory in Chicago. It was a part of the Bell System’s Western Electric Company and manufactured parts for their rapidly expanding telephone networks. Prior to the depression, there was booming growth in telecommunications and as many as 40,000 employees worked there. It was a prosperous industry, with money available to conduct extensive experiments.

The management at Hawthorne was concerned about the possibility of union activity in their plant and sought to undermine its development. However, it is also clear that they were concerned about the well being of their workers. There were extensive social, health, education and financial support programs made available to the Hawthorne workers. Management wanted its workers to be proud of their employer and to a large extent this was the case. The workers felt that they had good jobs with a good organisation.

Nevertheless, a level of scepticism remained amongst the workers. Throughout the country, and the world, there was a belief that the relationship between employer and worker was exploitative. It was assumed that management, representing the employer, would strive to get as much work from the employees for as little payment as possible. There was a basic assumption that work was something, which must be gained from the workers against their will. This was done through the threat of discipline and the promise of financial reward. The workplace contract was a subtle form of extortion. This should not be seen as shocking. We find that a similar relationship exists in many organisations today. And, as indicated earlier, at Hawthorne the relationship between management and worker was relatively positive and stable.

The Hawthorne effect refers to the phenomenon that when people are observed in a study, their behaviour or performance temporarily changes. Others have broadened the definition to mean that people’s behaviour and performance change, following any new or increased attention. Parsons (1974) described it as "Generalizing from the particular situation at Hawthorne, I would define the Hawthorne Effect as the confounding that occurs if experimenters fail to realize how the consequences of subjects' performance affect what subjects do." The term gets its name from the factory called the Hawthorne Works, where a series of experiments on the factory workers were carried out between 1924 and 1932. In this essay I will explain what the experiments showed and how they were demonstrated in relation to group norms, motivation and leadership.

The Hawthorne experiments were groundbreaking studies in human relations. Originally designed as illumination studies to determine the relationship between lighting and productivity, the initial tests were sponsored by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1927 a research team from the Harvard Business School was invited to join the studies after the illumination tests drew unanticipated results.

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Elton Mayo was one of the professors from Harvard, his studies grew out of preliminary experiments at the Hawthorne plant from 1924 to 1927 on the effect of light on productivity. Those experiments showed no clear connection between productivity and the amount of illumination but researchers began to wonder what kind of changes would influence output. Specifically, Elton Mayo wanted to find out what effect fatigue and monotony had on job productivity and how to control them through such variables as rest breaks, work hours, temperature and humidity. In the process, he stumbled upon a principle of human motivation that would help to revolutionize the theory and practice of management and leadership.

Mayo’s 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 giving 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’ to 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 now known as ‘the Hawthorne Effect’). The work of Mayo also 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 were important in determining employees' confidence and productivity than, the physical conditions in which an employee works. There was ongoing growth in the women’s motivation to produce more. Their motivation increased over time. This was not a direct result of the introduction of a different payment scheme. However, the payment scheme did give further definition to the group and gave the women a common goal around which to organise. Elton Mayo demonstrated that the experiments showed that the worker’s motivation improved, I am now going to show what the experiments demonstrated in relation to group norms.

The power of group membership over individual behaviour and work performance was illustrated clearly in the experiments. The purpose of the next study was to find out how payment incentives would affect group productivity. The surprising result was that they had no effect. Ironically, this contradicted the Hawthorne effect: although the workers were receiving special attention, it didn’t affect their behavior or productivity. However, the informal group dynamics studied were a new milestone in organizational behavior.

A significant feature was the attention drawn to the importance and influence of group values and norms. Mayo conducted the study between 1931 and 1932 involving the observation of a group of 14 men who put together telephone-switching equipment in the bank wiring room. The men formed their own sub-groups of cliques, with natural leaders emerging with the consent of the members. Despite a financial incentive scheme where workers could receive more money the more work they did, the group decided on 6000 units a day as a fair level of output. This was well below the level they were capable of producing. Group pressures on individual workers were stronger than financial incentives offered by management. The researchers found that although the workers were paid according to individual productivity, productivity did not go up because the men were afraid that the company would lower the base rate. The group developed its own pattern of informal social relations and codes and ‘norms’ of what constituted proper group behaviour. The group had their own system of sanctions including sarcasm, damaging completed work, hiding tools, playing tricks on the inspectors, and ostracising those members who did not conform with the group norms. Threats of physical violence were also made, and the group developed a system of punishing offenders by hitting them on the arm. The men also ostracized coworkers, and created a social hierarchy that was only partly related to the difference in their jobs. The cliques served to control group members and to manage leaders; when leaders asked questions, clique members gave the same responses, even if they were untrue. According to Riches (2001), one way to improve team performance is to establish agreed norms or rules for how the team is to operate and rigorously stick to them.

Mayo attributed the results of the first two studies to the pride of the women in being part of something important and the satisfaction of having some control over their own destiny. Merely by asking for their cooperation in the test, Mayo believed the investigators had stimulated a new attitude among the employees. The assemblers considered themselves to be part of an important group whose help and advice were being sought by the company.

The single most important discovery of the Hawthorne experiments was that workers had a strong need to cooperate and communicate with fellow workers. The study discovered that workers did not respond to the classical motivational approaches suggested in Frederick W. Taylor’s Scientific Management theory. According to Taylor’s popular theory, workers were motivated solely by self-interest. Scientific management theorists assumed that workers desired to perform their work with a minimum of effort and to receive more money.

Mayo’s studies suggested that consultation between labour and leadership gave workers a sense of belonging to a team. The Hawthorne experiments encouraged the development of human factors engineering and ergonomics, and they created pressure for management to change the traditional way of managing human resources. The studies encouraged participative support at the lower levels of the organization in solving organization problems.

In conclusion the relationships between the leaders and workers affected productivity. Mayo discovered that the relationships between workers and their supervisors affected production. The working relationship that the supervisor established with the workers was not a usual one at that time. Women did not have a high social status at the workplace and when the supervisor asked for the feedback from the ladies and listened to their complaints, it gave them a sense of self-worth. Mayo believed that this spurred them on to produce more even when all the privileges were taken away. Workgroup norms significantly affected productivity. If most people produced at a particular level after a change was made, everyone tended to produce at that level, as it was ‘a fair day’s work’.

Whatever the interpretation of the results of the Hawthorne experiments, they did generate new ideas concerning the importance of group norms, leadership and motivation. They places emphasis on the importance of personnel management, and gave impetus to the work of the human relations writers. The Hawthorne experiments undoubtedly marked a significant step forward in providing a further insight into human behaviour at work and the development of management thinking. The Hawthorne experiments are regarded as probably the single most important foundation of the human relations approach to management and the development of organisational behaviour.

Word Count: 1832 words

Bibliography

“The Hawthorne Works” from Assembly Magazine

Parsons, H. M. (1974) What happened at Hawthorne?

Mullins, L. (2004) Management and Organisational Behaviour, Part 3; Pitman Publishing

Gilman, M. (2003) The Management of Human Resourcres, Second Edition

Emotionally Intelligent Teams, by Anne Riches. (2001)