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The Hawthorne Effect


The Hawthorne effect is an observer effect; the very act of observing something can impact on its behaviour and the outcome. The learning from this has far wiser relevance than the original remit of the experiment which was work conditions and their impact on worker productivity.

The experiment

The Hawthorne Experiments were conducted by Professor Elton Mayo, from 1927 to 1932, at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Chicago. The experiments were primarily started with the intention of studying the relationship between productivity and work conditions. Professor Mayo started these experiments by examining the physical and environmental influences of the workplace (e.g. brightness of lights, humidity) and then moved on to the psychological aspects (e.g. breaks, group pressure, working hours, managerial leadership).

Elton and his team of researchers took a group of six women and segregated them. They then altered their conditions of work in a number of ways, over a five year period, and observed the effects on production and the morale of the group. The experiments were started examining the physical and environmental influences of the workplace (e.g. brightness of lights, humidity). They then moved to the more psychological aspects such as changes such rest breaks of different sorts and lengths, varying the length of the working day, offering food and refreshments, managerial leadership, group pressure etc. In almost all cases, productivity improved.

At the end of the experiment, Mayo felt that he had proven his point and closed it down, returning the women to their original conditions, a six day week, with long hours and no rest breaks or refreshments. Surprisingly, productivity in the group rose to the highest levels yet and Mayo had to re-think his conclusions.

The learning
At its simplest the learning is that the very act of paying attention to these workers had an impact on productivity which far exceeded the actual interventions being measured. Thus it being referred to as an observer effect.

There are, however, further conclusions that can be drawn in terms of motivation and its impact on productivity, and employee effectiveness. These include:

  • work based relationships have a considerable impact
  • leadership is critical
  • engagement and understanding what is going on is also important
  • environmental factors can be irrelevant (this is particularly interesting since in the absence of higher level motivations these factors can take on a considerable significance - put in today's content people complain about their office, desk, etc when they are unhappy rather than these things make them unhappy. An analogy would be the highly motivated project team, working long hours in a cramped project room)

One of Mayo's conclusions was that work satisfaction depends, to a large extent, upon the informal social relationships between workers in a group and upon the social relationships between workers and their bosses. Thus, the effects of the group should never be underestimated.



Published by: Lisette on 03/02/2009 - Add a comment

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