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The Hawthorne Studies To understand the complex and baffling pattern of results, Mayo and his associates interviewed over 20,000 employees who had participated in the experiments during the six-year study. The interviews and observations during the experiments suggested that a human-social element operated in the workplace. Increases in productivity were more of an outgrowth of group dynamics and effective management than any set of employer demands or physical factors. The Hawthorne Experiments were headed by Elton Mayo and conducted at Western Electric, in Chicago (1927-1932). The original research plan was to study the effects of physical conditions (light, noise, temperature) on productivity. But what the researchers found was that productivity was largely determined by the social conditions at work. These conditions are shaped by the opportunities workers have to forge informal alliances. The thesis of these HR writers is aptly captured by Mayo (1945, p. 10): "... problems of absenteeism, labor turnover, 'wildcat' strikes, show that we do not know how to ensure spontaneity of cooperation; that is teamwork." Therefore, "collaboration in an industrial society cannot be left to chance..." The single most important discovery of the Hawthorne experiments was that workers had a strong need to cooperate and communicate with fellow workers. The focus of the human relations movement was on "winning friends" in an attempt to influence people. For many "winning friends" was a slick tactic that made the movement seem manipulative and dishonest. More can be found here Elton Mayo Other Contributors to the Human Relations Approach. Behavioral scientists considered both the classicists' rational-economic model and the human relationists' social model to be incomplete representations of employees in the work setting. A number of authors attempted to reconcile or show points of conflict between classical and human relations theory; thus, the behavioral science approach was born. The Individual and the Organization Behavioral scientests fueled a new interest in the individual and the way in which they relate to organizations. Particularly important to this field were the works of Chester Barnard, Bakke, Argyris, Getzels and Guba, Maslow, McGregor, Herzeberg and Likert.
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