The Hawthorn Experiment
George Elton Mayo:
The Hawthorne Experiment
George Elton Mayo:
The Hawthorne Experiment
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the management theory of George Elton Mayo and how it applies to the current status of management in business today. This will include the examination of the behavioral aspect of management by studying Elton Mayo 's Hawthorne Experiment and its conclusions.
Introduction
George Elton Mayo was born the second child of an Adelaide, South Australian colonial family on December 26, 1880. It was expected of Mayo that he would follow in his grandfather 's footsteps by studying medicine, but turned to writing when he failed at university studies. Elton Mayo was a self-taught public speaker appointed as a philosophy and logic teacher at the university in Queensland. It was at this university that he met and married Dorothea McConnel (Thoemmes Press 2007). Mayo immigrated to the United States under a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller fund. Here, he worked with the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania. His research studied worker productivity in various textile firms due to rest breaks. The foremen of these firms opposed rest breaks; therefore, they returned workers to past practices while Mayo was gone. Productivity declined, thus proving the effectiveness of rest breaks. Mayo realized that worker 's problems had to be dealt with in what he called "the psychology of the total situation" (Wren 1994, p. 240). After his research at the University of Pennsylvania, Mayo went to the Harvard Business School to continue his study of how changes in working conditions impact physical and psychological welfare of employees. Here, Western Electric Company 's controller of manufacturing approached Mayo regarding research findings on employee productivity due to rest periods. Mayo concluded that the behavior of employees seemed to be affected by their
The Hawthorne Experiment
George Elton Mayo:
The Hawthorne Experiment
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the management theory of George Elton Mayo and how it applies to the current status of management in business today. This will include the examination of the behavioral aspect of management by studying Elton Mayo 's Hawthorne Experiment and its conclusions.
Introduction
George Elton Mayo was born the second child of an Adelaide, South Australian colonial family on December 26, 1880. It was expected of Mayo that he would follow in his grandfather 's footsteps by studying medicine, but turned to writing when he failed at university studies. Elton Mayo was a self-taught public speaker appointed as a philosophy and logic teacher at the university in Queensland. It was at this university that he met and married Dorothea McConnel (Thoemmes Press 2007). Mayo immigrated to the United States under a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller fund. Here, he worked with the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania. His research studied worker productivity in various textile firms due to rest breaks. The foremen of these firms opposed rest breaks; therefore, they returned workers to past practices while Mayo was gone. Productivity declined, thus proving the effectiveness of rest breaks. Mayo realized that worker 's problems had to be dealt with in what he called "the psychology of the total situation" (Wren 1994, p. 240). After his research at the University of Pennsylvania, Mayo went to the Harvard Business School to continue his study of how changes in working conditions impact physical and psychological welfare of employees. Here, Western Electric Company 's controller of manufacturing approached Mayo regarding research findings on employee productivity due to rest periods. Mayo concluded that the behavior of employees seemed to be affected by their
References: Accel-Team.Com. (2007). Retrieved October 16, 2007, from http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_01_mayo.html DuBrin, Andrew J. (1997). Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior: An Applied Approach (pp Stuart-Kotze, Robin. (2007). Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Studies October 16, 2007, from http://www.thoemmes.com/encyclopedia/mayo.htm Work Force