Category: Science and Engineering
Problem description:
What is the Hawthorne effect?
Analysis:
The Hawthorne Effect is about a Harvard University researcher Mayo ($%&') who came to Hawthorne, New Jersey. Thorne, a power plant, wanted to study whether there was a direct and positive correlation between the improvement of the working environment and productivity. One experiment he conducted was to enhance the lighting in the factory, and productivity really improved. Then, in order to conduct other experiments , Mayo adjusted the lighting back to the original brightness to avoid affecting the experimental results, but the productivity was still improved. It can be seen that the level of worker productivity has nothing to do with the brightness of the lights in the factory, but is related to whether the employer cares about the workers.
Hawthorne or Hawthorne (the reason for the transliteration)
Hawthorne experiment and the theory of crowd relations.
Taylor's scientific management theory and Fayol's organization Management theory mainly discusses management issues from the perspective of money and strict control. Crowd relations theory is a management theory that studies human behavioral factors in organizations to mobilize people's enthusiasm. Crowd relations theory is an Australian Elton Mayo (1880-1949) and others summarized and established the management theory based on the famous Hawthorne experiment. The theory of crowd relations laid the foundation for the later establishment of behavioral science theory.
< p> The Hawthorne Test was conducted from 1924 to 1932 at the Hawthorne Factory of Western Electric Company in Chicago, USA. Mayo participated in this test from 1927. The test was conducted in four stages. The first stage: lighting Experiment to study the impact of the environment on production efficiency. The second stage: conduct a test on the working conditions of a group of relay assembly workers, including increasing breaks, providing lunch and refreshments, shortening working hours, etc.; the third stage: conducting a large-scale interview and conversation test, Conduct extensive free conversations with workers; the fourth stage: conduct observation tests on the wiring board wiring studio.After analyzing the above test results, Mayo et al. proposed the interpersonal theory as follows:
⑴ People are "social beings". Factors that affect people's work enthusiasm include, in addition to material aspects, social and psychological aspects.
⑵ Informal organizations exist in enterprises. Informal Organization is an important factor that affects people's enthusiasm for production. The reasons for the formation of informal organizations include geographical location, hobbies, relatives and friends, work relationships, etc. Formal organizations use efficiency logic as their action standard, while informal organizations use emotional logic as their action Standard. Generally speaking, managers think about problems with efficiency logic, while workers think with emotional logic.
⑶ Satisfying workers’ desires and improving workers’ morale is the key to improving productivity.
< p> The greatest contribution of crowd relations theory is to pioneer the study of human factors in organizations, laying the foundation for the establishment of modern behavioral science theory.