what employees found most deeply rewarding were close associations with one another.

In Mayos broad view, the industrial The Hawthorne Effect revolution had shattered strong ties to the workplace and community experienced by workers in the skilled trades of the 19th century. The social structure holding democracy together was predicated on these collective relationships, and employees belief in a sense of common purpose and value of their work. It was speedily discovered that the question and-answer type of interview was useless in the situation.
Interview Program
1/16/2011 Group no.: 09

George Elton Mayo (1880-1949), an Australian psychologist, sociologist and organization theorist is famous for the Hawthorne Studies (1924-1932) as an attempt to improve worker productivity at the Western Electric Companys Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois and his book on this matter, The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (1933). Mayo is believed to be the founder of the Human Relation Movement as its source of origin is known to be his Hawthorne Studies. According to this study, factory productivity was based on social relations, motivation and employee satisfaction. This study originated as Mayo had a belief that the key to resolve the industrial unrest lies on the employees mental state. Now, Western Electric Company was the manufacturing arm of AT&T. More than 40,000 men and women reported to work at the massive plant, which included offices, factories, a hospital, fire brigade, laundry facilities, and a greenhouse. Involving hundreds of separate assembly and inspection operations, employees were assigned to precisely measured tasks in highly specialized departments. Thus, Western Electric became one of the forerunners in applying scientific management to its production units. But according to Elton Mayo, in modern large-scale industry the three persistent problems of management are: 1. The application of science and technical skill to some material good or product. 2. The systematic ordering of operations. 3. The organization of teamwork-that is, of sustained cooperation. Therefore, one of the scientific ways to compare productivity with another variable of the factory, the illumination studies revealed no significant correlation between productivity and light levels. Then, on a separate test, relay assembly test room, the company noticed increase in productivity as a result of introducing rest periods, shorter working hours, wage incentives, the dynamics of a smaller group, and/ or the special attention the workers received. At this point, , George Pennock, a superintendent at Western Electric, turned to Elton Mayo at Harvard Business School for guidance. George Pennock welcomed Mayos arrival at the Hawthorne Works in 1928.

Other Hawthorne experiments taking place at the time included the effect of wage incentives in the mica splitting department. In the study of fourteen men in the bank wiring test room, where conditions were unaltered, no change in productivity occurredattributed in part to an implicit understanding among the workers not to exceed what they considered a fair quota. Assisting Mayo with his experiments was his research assistant, Fritz Roethlisberger. Under Mayo and Roethlisbergers direction, the Hawthorne experiments began to incorporate extensive interviewing. It was speedily discovered that the question and-answer type of interview was useless in the situation. Workers wished to talk, and to talk freely under the seal of professional confidence to someone who seemed representative of the company. Some approximate rules to guide the interviewer in his work were therefore set down. These were, more or less, as follows: 1. Give your whole attention to the person interviewed, and make it evident that you are doing so. 2. Listen-don't talk. 3. Never argue; never give advice. 4. Listen to: (a) What he wants to say. (b) What he does not want to say. (c) What he cannot say without help. 5. As you listen, plot out tentatively and for subsequent correction the pattern (personal)that is being set before you. To test this, from time to time summarize what has been said and present for Always do this with the greatest caution, that is, clarify but do not add or twist. 6. Remember that everything said must be considered a personal confidence and not divulged to anyone. Mayo and Roethlisberger hoped that the details that might affect the employees attitudes towards work and interactions with supervisors. From 1928 to 1930 Mayo and Roethlisberger oversaw the process of conducting more than 21,000 interviews and worked closely training researchers in interviewing practices.

Mayo and Roethlisbergers tactic changed when they discovered that, rather than answering directed questions, employees expressed themselves more candidly if encouraged to speak openly in what was known as non-directed interviewing. Interviews, which averaged around 30 minutes, grew to 90 minutes or even two hours in length in a process meant to provide an emotional release. The records showed employees discussing their personal details of their daily lives, offering an astonishingly intimate portrait of the American industrial worker in the years leading to and following the Depression. Thousands of comments were sorted into employees attitudes about1. General working conditions 2. Specific jobs 3. Supervisors Among these categories, favorable and unfavorable comments used to support interpretations of the data. Both workers and supervisors comments would aid in the development of personnel policies and supervisory training, including the subsequent implementation of a routine counseling program for employees. Roethlisberger discovered that what employees found most deeply rewarding were close associations with one another. In Mayos broad view, the industrial revolution had shattered strong ties to the workplace and community experienced by workers in the skilled trades of the 19th century. The social structure holding democracy together was predicated on these collective relationships, and employees belief in a sense of common purpose and value of their work. The twenty-first century reader might pause to wonder why the Test Room was considered so interesting. It may seem self-evident that the girls became the centre of a lot of fuss, were accorded unheard-of autonomy and respect, bonded as a group, and gained a whole range of rewards and privileges in return for making relays faster. Why should there be anything surprising in that? The difficulty, or so I believe, lies in our twenty-first century eyes. We have seen too many costume dramas in which people from other times and places think and behave just as we do. They didnt. Talk to someone who lived through the 1920s, and the strangeness will not at first be apparentfor them the landscape has moved at the same speed as the train

but sooner or later they will say things were very different then. Things were very different. Let us therefore pause to adjust our focus. In a book titled The Scientific Outlook, and published in 1931, the philosopher Bertrand Russell mused about the future of industry: the pleasantest work, of course, he wrote, will be that which gives the most control over the mechanism. The posts giving most power will presumably be awarded to the ablest men (sic) as a result of intelligence tests. For entirely inferior work negroes will be employed wherever possible The society will not be one in which there is equality . In the following year, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, a satire in which factory workers are cloned, deprived of graded amounts of oxygen during fetal maturation, and classed beta to epsilon according to the technical skills they would require. This classification was not invented by Huxley, but by Robert M Yerkes, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, who produced the first mass tests of intelligence and applied them to 1.75 million US army recruits in World War 1. Those who could read were given a test known as Army Alpha; the remainders were given a pictorial challenge known as Army Beta; all were then graded from A to E according to intellectual capacity. The results of these tests horrified the educated classes, for they showed that the average mental age of White Americans came in at 13.08 years; it was now official that half the population was semi-morons. Needless to say, immigrants from Southern or Eastern Europe came in even lower (10.74 years for Poles), with Black people scoring lowest of all. The inescapable conclusion, or so it seemed, was that the masses were intellectually and biologically inferior to their social superiors. Without firm leadership from abovewhich democracy could not providesociety was on a one-way trip to the abyss. So, at least many right wing thinkers believed. Those of a more liberal disposition set out to study the working class using techniques developed by anthropologists, tried to improve them by education, advised them not to breed too enthusiastically, or aped their speech and manners. Seen from this perspective, the excitement of the Hawthorne investigators becomes easier to understand. They had bridged a social abyss and discovered a new alchemy. Treat working people with respect, understand their thinking and group dynamics, reward them appropriately, and they will work better for you. Everyone can be a winner. In the view of one investigator, the invitation to the girls to work like we feel had the emotional force of a Magna Charta or of a Declaration of Independence, and unwittingly it inaugurated a revolution in employee and

supervisory attitudes. George Pennock addressed the Personnel Research Federation in New York in this vein on 15 November 1929. Describing the Test Room, he claimed that a relationship of confidence and friendliness has been established with these girls to such an extent that practically no supervision is required. In the absence of any drive or urge whatsoever they can be depended upon to do their best. They say they have no sensation of working faster now than under the previous conditions they have a feeling that their increased production is in some way related to the distinctly freer, happier, and more pleasant working environment.