The Hawthorne studies were conducted with the workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger in the 1920s. The Hawthorne studies were part of a refocus on managerial strategy incorporating the socio-psychological aspects of human behavior in organizations.
Western Electric Company, the location of the Hawthorne studies
This is where the studies where conducted—a factory outside of Chicago.
The studies suggested that employees have social and psychological needs—along with economic and financial needs—which must be met in order to be motivated to complete their assigned tasks. The human relations movement is concerned with morale, leadership, and factors that aid in the cooperation of workers.
This theory of management was a byproduct of the issues that arose from the classical, scientific perspectives on management (i.e., Taylorism). The simplest explanation of the hypothesis being investigated is quite intuitive. Employees (i.e. human resources) are not merely motivated by financial gain, and productivity is not simply a byproduct of incentives and optimized working spaces. People are motivated by inclusion, constructive feedback, interest, autonomy, and a wide variety of other 'soft' factors (i.e. factors aside from money and other tangible resources).
Results of the Hawthorne Studies
The studies originally looked into whether workers were more responsive and worked more efficiently under certain environmental conditions, such as improved lighting. The results were surprising, as Mayo and Roethlisberger found that workers were more responsive to social factors—such as the people they worked with on a team and the amount of interest their manager had in their work—than the factors (lighting, etc.) the researchers had gone in to inspect.
The Hawthorne studies helped conclude that workers were highly responsive to additional attention from their managers and the feeling that their managers actually cared about, and were interested in, their work. The studies also concluded that although financial motives are important, social factors are equally important in defining the worker productivity.
There were a number of other experiments conducted in the Hawthorne studies, including one in which two women were chosen as test subjects and were then 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), and their output was measured.
The measuring began in secret. It started two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes with them and, at times, used their suggestions. The researchers then spent five years measuring how different variables impacted both the group's and the individuals' productivity. Some of the variables included giving two five-minute breaks (after a discussion with the group on the best length of time), and then changing to two 10-minute breaks (not the preference of the group).
Intangible Motivators
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.
The Hawthorne studies showed that people's work performance is dependent on social issues and job satisfaction, and that monetary incentives and good working conditions are generally less important in improving employee productivity than meeting individuals' need and desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making and work.