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This is the official account of the experiments carried out at the Hawthorne Works of the Eastern Electric Company in Chicago. These were divided into test room studies, interviewing studies and observational studies. The test room studies were experiments into what variables in a workplace environment might affect worker fatigue. The findings of these tests led to extensive interviewing on the attitudes of the workers. The final phase of the Hawthorne experiment focused on social factors, using techniques of cultural anthropology to observe small working groups. The results of these experiments profoundly influenced the Human Relations movement.
What motivates workers to work harder? What can management do to create a contented and productive workforce? Discussion of these questions would be incomplete without reference to the Hawthorne experiments, one of the most famous pieces of research ever conducted in the social and behavioral sciences. Drawing on the original records of the experiments and the personal papers of the researchers, Richard Gillespie has reconstructed the intellectual and political dynamics of the experiments as they evolved from the tentative experimentation to seemingly authoritative publications. Manufacturing Knowledge raises fundamental questions about the nature of scientific knowledge, and about the assumptions and evidence that underlay debates on worker productivity.
Taylorism was criticised for its over-simplistic view of what motivated the worker. Oliver Sheldon's theme was that though Taylorism had helped the development of a science of management, such work should not detract from the predominantly human job of the manager to manage. His work prefigures the human relations approach to management theory of Elton Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger in rejecting the notion that economic incentives largely explain employee behaviour.
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