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The History of American
Technology -- Fall 1998 |
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C&S (14), "Personnel Management," pp. 218-220 |
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Once again, notice everybody else thought Taylor
had pioneered in this field while he proved "hostile" to the innovation.
Inspired by his work, it went in entirely different directions: developing worker
loyalty, providing aptitude testing and training, smoothing over labor-management
strife, and working to increase productivity through industrial psychology.
Elton Mayo and the famous Hawthorne experiments
on worker productivity show up here very briefly. The Hawthorne experiments
deserve more. Here's a brief outline of the major steps:
- In 1924, the National Research Council selected
Western Electric's Hawthorne Works on Chicago's west side as the site for
a simple experiment on factory illumination. The scientists wanted to know
if better illumination in factories would improve worker productivity. Being
scientists, they set up a controlled experiment: one group of workers got
better lighting in their work area; a control group got established to work
under the normal lighting conditions. Everyone was surprised when the productivity
of both groups increased. No one was more interested than the people in Western
Electric's management. The National Research Council Scientists packed up
and left--puzzled. The Western Electric management commissioned an inter-disciplinary
research from MIT to design new experiments.
- Over the next 12 years, Western Electric invested
more than $1 million in sponsoring productivity research at the Hawthorne
Works. Each time they got a firm result, they commissioned another research
step.
- In the first step, the MIT team isolated six
female assemblers in a room where they worked together. The research focused
on working conditions, monotony, and fatigue. They let the workers get situated
and accustomed to having their work monitored. Then they started introducing
special 'perks': extra rest breaks, different schedules from workers in rest
of the plant, free lunches focused on balanced nutrition, etc. Each time they
added a new 'perk', productivity rose. When they took them away--all except
the special pay rates--nothing happened to productivity until they were all
gone. As soon as they started adding them again, productivity rebounded. The
researchers couldn't get any handle on cause and effect until they began looking
at the 6 women as having formed a social network. The key finding was that
they had formed a 'group' and felt special. As long as they continued to feel
the group solidarity formed by being treated 'differently' they defined their
group as having a special relationship with management. These experiments
ran their course over a 2-year period.
- When the researchers were confident that somehow
group dynamics--and not any particular 'incentive'--lay at the heart of the
matter, Western Electric commissioned Elton Mayo from the Harvard Business
School to develop the next step of experiments. In 1931, Mayo began a study
that involved 6 1/2 months of watching the behavior of 14 male workers. He
saw that the group established 'norms' for output and that they definitely
pitted their own estimations of what a working day should involve against
the company's standards. Mayo's key insight was to compare the 'soldiering'
of the male workers to the productivity increases seen among the women in
the earlier studies. He concluded that the difference lay in the women's sense
of active participation and control. They wanted any experiments involving
them to succeed--thus, they had felt in 'control' and continued high productivity
even when they saw individual 'perks' withdrawn.
- In the next step, which Mayo convinced Western
Electric management to take, the company's managers began interviewing employees
about certain specific issues involving plant operations. The original research
design in this step fell apart very quickly. The managers couldn't get the
workers to answer their questions--not because they wouldn't talk, but because
they continually turned the interviews into sessions where they poured out
their views on working conditions and how the company should operate. Finally,
the managers sat back and listened, and the workers poured out their complaints
and their ideas.
In follow up interviews, these same workers commented frequently on the improved
working conditions in the factory, and some workers even talked about how
much they thought the higher wages had helped in making things better. In
fact, management hadn't changed anything in the working conditions, and there
weren't any wage increases in the time between the first interviews and the
follow ups interviews.
- That gave the management what they felt they
needed in order to change things across the whole plant. They identified the
problem as alienation between workers and management. In 1936--12 years and
$1 million after the first experiments with the lights--the company opened
an office of "personnel counseling" staffed by 5 senior, long service
employees who were instructed to try to deal with worker problems primarily
by listening. Productivity across the entire plant soared just as it had with
the 6 female workers.
A cynical interpretation might say Western Electric simply 'tricked' the workers
into believing somebody cared about them. What most people conclude, however,
is that the company was dealing with the real problem--the workers' sense
that nobody in the company cared enough about them even to listen to what
they had to say. Even the workers seemed to agree that the sense of belonging
was more important than any specific 'perks' or 'incentives'. Within 2 years,
the company doubled the number of counselors to 10. By 1954, the office was
staffed by 64 counselors.