The Hawthorne Effect: Why Workers Respond to More Than Just Money
75.9 هزار بار بازدید -
11 سال پیش
-
What’s better than watching videos
What’s better than watching videos from Alanis Business Academy? Doing so with a delicious cup of freshly brewed premium coffee. Visit https://www.lannacoffeeco.com and get free shipping on your online order.
Help us learn more about your experience by completing this short survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RRKS8LZ
Subscribe to Alanis Business Academy on YouTube for updates on the latest videos: https://www.youtube.com/alanisbusines...
The Hawthorne Effect was the product of a series of studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works plant of Western Electric beginning in the late 1920s. Used to produce switches and relays, the Hawthorne Works plant was located in Cicero, IL which is just outside of Chicago. Western Electric would later develop into Ma Bell, which was broken up in the 1980s due to competition concerns and created we what now know as AT&T.
Leading the Hawthorne studies was an Australian psychologist named Elton Mayo who, along with his colleagues at the Harvard Business School, was attempting to determine whether or not changes in the physical environment would affect worker productivity.
Over the course of the study, Mayo and his colleagues altered the frequency and duration of rest periods, the length of a workday, employee compensation, temperature settings, and even lighting to see how such changes would impact worker productivity. The researchers hypothesized among other things that increasing the frequency of meal periods would increase productivity, while decreasing lighting levels would decrease productivity. To the amazement of the researchers, these changes and many others resulted in increased worker productivity. So why did this happen? While researchers were using temperature, lighting, and duration of rest periods i.e. the independent variables to explain the impact on productivity i.e the dependent variable, they failed to consider another important independent variable at work: attention. It seemed that the employees being studied were not in fact responding the change physical conditions but were rather responding to the increased attention they were receiving during the study. This increased attention appeared to have caused employees to feel as if they were special for being singled out during the observation period.
Although several flaws in the Hawthorne Studies exist, like the absence of blind study to measure the impact of knowingly being observed and the extraordinarily small sample size, the Hawthorne Studies are considered to be one of the most important studies in human relations. For the first time ever, there was research that shed light on other factors beyond pay that could lead to increased worker productivity. Also, the study altered the common perception of employees as merely appendages of machines. So what is the Hawthorne Effect? The Hawthorne Effect is the phenomenon in which subjects alter their behavior in response to being observed. Think about your own behavior when your supervisor is nearby, or a police officer if traveling behind you down the street. Do you increase or elevate your performance or maybe alter your behavior? Chances are you answered yes and this is the Hawthorne Effect at work. Although this is not earth shattering in the 21st century, this research was groundbreaking during the 1930s. More importantly, the Hawthorne Studies led to greater interest in the study of human relations, spawning work by well known motivational theorists such as Maslow, McClelland, McGregor, and Herzberg.
This has been the Hawthorne Effect. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment box below and I'll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion. Be sure to subscribe to Alanis Business Academy for access to our latest videos, and also remember to like and share this video with your friends.
Thanks for watching.
To subscribe to Alanis Business Academy for access to additional business content select the following link: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...
To access the Alanis Business Academy Youtube channel select the following link: mattalanis
Help us learn more about your experience by completing this short survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RRKS8LZ
Subscribe to Alanis Business Academy on YouTube for updates on the latest videos: https://www.youtube.com/alanisbusines...
The Hawthorne Effect was the product of a series of studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works plant of Western Electric beginning in the late 1920s. Used to produce switches and relays, the Hawthorne Works plant was located in Cicero, IL which is just outside of Chicago. Western Electric would later develop into Ma Bell, which was broken up in the 1980s due to competition concerns and created we what now know as AT&T.
Leading the Hawthorne studies was an Australian psychologist named Elton Mayo who, along with his colleagues at the Harvard Business School, was attempting to determine whether or not changes in the physical environment would affect worker productivity.
Over the course of the study, Mayo and his colleagues altered the frequency and duration of rest periods, the length of a workday, employee compensation, temperature settings, and even lighting to see how such changes would impact worker productivity. The researchers hypothesized among other things that increasing the frequency of meal periods would increase productivity, while decreasing lighting levels would decrease productivity. To the amazement of the researchers, these changes and many others resulted in increased worker productivity. So why did this happen? While researchers were using temperature, lighting, and duration of rest periods i.e. the independent variables to explain the impact on productivity i.e the dependent variable, they failed to consider another important independent variable at work: attention. It seemed that the employees being studied were not in fact responding the change physical conditions but were rather responding to the increased attention they were receiving during the study. This increased attention appeared to have caused employees to feel as if they were special for being singled out during the observation period.
Although several flaws in the Hawthorne Studies exist, like the absence of blind study to measure the impact of knowingly being observed and the extraordinarily small sample size, the Hawthorne Studies are considered to be one of the most important studies in human relations. For the first time ever, there was research that shed light on other factors beyond pay that could lead to increased worker productivity. Also, the study altered the common perception of employees as merely appendages of machines. So what is the Hawthorne Effect? The Hawthorne Effect is the phenomenon in which subjects alter their behavior in response to being observed. Think about your own behavior when your supervisor is nearby, or a police officer if traveling behind you down the street. Do you increase or elevate your performance or maybe alter your behavior? Chances are you answered yes and this is the Hawthorne Effect at work. Although this is not earth shattering in the 21st century, this research was groundbreaking during the 1930s. More importantly, the Hawthorne Studies led to greater interest in the study of human relations, spawning work by well known motivational theorists such as Maslow, McClelland, McGregor, and Herzberg.
This has been the Hawthorne Effect. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment box below and I'll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion. Be sure to subscribe to Alanis Business Academy for access to our latest videos, and also remember to like and share this video with your friends.
Thanks for watching.
To subscribe to Alanis Business Academy for access to additional business content select the following link: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...
To access the Alanis Business Academy Youtube channel select the following link: mattalanis
11 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1392/04/20 منتشر شده
است.
75,988
بـار بازدید شده