The Hawthorne EffectThis is based on a five year study done in 1920s at the Western Electric Hawthorne Plant in Cicero, Illinois by Professor from Harvard Business School. Management wanted to optimum light levels for the production employees to work. Actually, they really wanted to find the least amount of light to “stream” into the plant to save money and still get good production from the workers. So they commission a team of students to watch, document, and observe the line workers. The premise was to find the physical and environmental influences of the workplace such as brightness of lights, humidity, and the psychological aspects such as breaks, group pressure, working hours, managerial leadership. The lumens were manipulated up and down. Lo and behold, when more light was fed into the factory, the workers were happy, productivity went up and everything was honkey dory. Then they started to dim the light. The expectation was that productivity will go down. Our students continued to run around the workers, measuring, taking notes, observing, gauging, calculating, and whatnot. To everyone’s surprise productivity continued to climb. They made the decision to dim the lights some more and to observe even more feverishly the effect on the workers. To everyone’s bigger surprise, productivity climbed higher. This continued for a while. The Western Electric employees were practically working in the dark, yet productivity was exceedingly high. Plant management was happy. Employees were happy. They looked forward to going to work each day. Win-win situation: happy employees, low electric bill. Life was good. Commissioned study was coming to an end. Our diligent observers packed their notebooks, clocks, calculators, white coats and left. Within two days productivity started to go down. More light maybe? Productivity was still going downward spiral. After much analysis, the conclusion was that the real issue was the attention the workers were getting and how valued they felt. where otherwise they don’t get any; except when something goes wrong . That alone kept the moral and the productivity up. It had nothing to do with the amount of lumens in the factory. Why is this important? • Management needs to understand that there are unintended, un-thought of factors that affect productivity. • Management should be mindful of what has become know as the “post Hawthorne Effect” and how to deal with the emptiness after a project was managed, implemented, and life return to normal. • The relations that supervisors develop with workers tend to influence the manner in which the workers carry out directives. • The group is important; there is a social system that is interdependent in the workplace. Just like in quantum physics or quantum mechanics: “The very act of observing a system will in itself affect that system. In this case, behavior is altered because it is being observed. ------------ For more information on managing change and the effects of change, see the following pages:
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