BEHAVIOURAL MANAGEMENT THEORY

HUMAN RELATIONS APPROACH ELTON MAYO STUDIES

CAVENDISH UNIVERSITY ARMENIA 2008

Contemporary Trends in Developing and Organizing Management

Zeinab HasratiMakruhi KeshishyanHovhannes Petrosyan

THE BEHAVIORISTS TOOK MANAGEMENT ANOTHER STEP FORWARD

• They focused on employees • As individuals• As parts of work groups • As persons with needs to be met by the organization

George Elton Mayo (1880 - 1949)

The role that Mayo had in the development ofmanagement is usually associated with his discovery of

• Social man and the need for this in the work place.

• Mayo found that workers acted according to sentiments and emotion.

• He felt that if you treated the worker with respect and tried to meet their needs than they would be a better worker for you and both management and the employee would benefit.

The Hawthorne Plant of WESTERN ELECTRICChicago(29,000 employees)

The Hawthorne Studies (or Hawthorne Experiments) were conducted from 1927 to 1932 at the Western Electric

Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago)

The experiments

• There were four main phases to the Hawthorne experiments:

• The illumination experiments• The relay assembly test room• The interviewing program• The bank wiring observation room

1.The illumination experiments

The workers were divided into two groups

A. experiment group B. control group

Performance Recording Device

2.The relay assembly test room

Women in the Relay Assembly

A. Conditions of work

B. Hours of work

C. Rest pauses

D. Provision of refreshments

The experiment was divided into 13 periods during which the workers were subjectedto a series of planned and controlled changes to their:

3.The interviewing program

Factory Cabling Department

Interviewsperiod

30 min

20.000 interviews

90 min

A. An impartial and non-judgmental approach

B. Concentrated on listening

4.The bank wiring observation room

14 men

The group developed it’s own pattern of informal social relationsand norms of what constituted proper behaviour

Group pressures on individual workers were stonger than financialincentives offered by management

Workplaces are social environments and within them, people are motivated by much more than

economic self-interest

CONCLUSION

In the training world, the Hawthorne Effect is a chameleon

The mere act of showing people that you're concerned about them usually spurs them to better job performance

Carrying the theory to the edges of cynicism, some would say it doesn't make any difference what you

teach because the Hawthorne Effect will produce the positive outcome you want.

In fact, the contention is that about 50% of any successful training session can be attributed to the

Hawthorne Effect.

The Hawthorne Effect has also been called the 'Somebody Upstairs Cares' syndrome

When people spend a large portion of their time at work, they must have a sense of belonging, of being part of a team. When

they do, they produce better. That's the Hawthorne Effect.