I have found the following effect to be true:
The Hawthorne Effect is described as an increase in employee output resulting from the emotional & psychological impact of being communicated with and listened to.
I estimate a 10% increase in productivity when you talk to the operators!!
The effect was named after a district in Cicero, Illinois where the Western Electric Company had
a factory making telephone equipment in the 1920s and 30s. Starting in 1927, Elton Mayo conducted a five-year programme of investigation into the impact of changes in the physical environment (e.g. noise, temperature and light) of the production line workers on their output.As an example Mayo made changes in the hours of work and the duration and frequency of rest breaks and the total hours worked in a week. Irrespective of the changes made production either increased or remained static. On one occasion the number of breaks was increased and production dropped as the workers complained that the extra breaks interfered with their rhythm of work.
Even when the workers had all the improvements to their working conditions removed and they were returned to a five and half-day week of 48 hours the production levels increased to the highest ever recorded. He also observed that the social relationships within the work group could also result in lower production levels. This was observed when a group of male workers distrusted Mayo's motives in undertaking a study and as a result production fell drastically.
The conclusions reached by Mayo that production rose completely independently of any of the changes made was in contrast to contemporary researchers such as F.W. Taylor who considered that workers were motivated largely by self-interest and remuneration. Mayo realised that the workers had formed a social grouping; they talked, enjoyed their work and formed social relationships outside work. Mayo concluded that workplaces were social environments and that within them people were at least in part, motivated by social pressures rather than self-interest.
More recently these conclusions have been questioned with some writers putting the observations in a historical context. They argue that the 1920s was a time of economic depression in the USA and this probably also had an impact on employee behaviour.
Incredible isn't it!
Have a nice day,ives
(adopted from source)
1 comments:
Dear Mr. Ives
It is very interesting that you have a civil engineering background and then education in industrial engineering. Frank Gilbreth had the same combination. At NITIE, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, India, somehow civil engineers were not encouraged to take up industrial engineering seriously and some who got into the course became computer programmers and progressed in that industry. I recently came out with a suggestion to emphasize the special focus of industrial engineer on human effort in the definition of industrial engineering and I initiated to develop and compile a handbook of industrial engineering. I request you to have a look my handbook blog www.nrao-ie-handbook.blogspot.com and give your comments.
I came across your blog today only and I see you are making very interesting observations including this one on hawthorne effect. I feel the scientists of human behaviour unnecesarily took a line of opposing the thinking of industrial engineers instead of correcting and modifying the thinking of industrial engineers in the area of human behaviour.
It is up to us (current IE scientists, researchers, faculty and practitioners) now to identify the relevant concepts in human sciences and develop IE Science incorporating those concepts and then develop IE methods and techniques that embed them in the work systems that we design and improve.
KVSSNRAO
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