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Outline on the  Hawthorne Studies
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 See Also:  Examples of Social Science Research
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  Summary:  Elton Mayo headed a research project utilizing non-participatory, obtrusive observation at the Bank Wiring Room in the Western Electric Company Plant in Hawthorne, IL (Roethlisberger & Dickinson, 1939,  p. 379-408) & eventually developed the concept, of what is now known as the Hawthorne Effect, & also found that workers are socially motivated as well as economically motivated, & that workers control the pace of the work  
  The Hawthorne studies examined many setting including one w/ mostly young women working in a room at the plant wiring, soldering, & inspecting electrical boards in Hawthorne, IL  
  An obtrusive (overt) non-participatory observer sat w/ women in the plant for a number of days, watching their work & interactions  
  Initially, the observer noticed how the workers joked w/ & teased each other or occasionally helped one another  
  The researcher noted that the group's productivity was basically constant, despite company efforts to increase it  
  The research project eventually concluded that the small work group had developed an informal norm, as part of their organizational culture, defining an appropriate level of productivity  
  See Also:  Culture on folkways, mores, norms, laws, etc.  
  See Also:  Organizational Culture  
  The advent of the work-pace norm meant that for social scientists studying the workplace, the concept of the the Economic Person, often called Homo Economus, w/ the concept of the Social Person because the Hawthorne researchers found that the workers sought more from work than just money  
  The concept of Homo Socialus opened a whole new phase of workplace analysis whereby researchers, managers, & consultants all started examining workers' social needs & desires rather than just economic motivators  
  The Hawthorne Studies created the realization that the work-pace is informally set by workers via social relations of production, that mgt. efforts are secondary, that workers actively resist control were major findings that are still valid today  
  The findings of the Hawthorne Studies were found serendipitously through the FOUR phases of the study over several years  
  During Phase 1, the researchers noted some inconsistent data  
 
 During Phase 2, the researchers found that productivity increase irregardless of whether illumination was increased or decreased, which lead to the discovery of the concept of the Hawthorne Effect  
  See Also:  The Hawthorne Effect
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  The concept of worker norms on work-pace & the foundational research on organization culture were discovered in the latter stages of the Hawthorne Studies  
 
 During Phase 3, the researchers found that productivity was determined by an individual w/in a group  
 
 Roethlisberger conducted 20,000 interviews & was important at this phase of the research  
 
 People tended to give standard, stereotyped answers to direct questions & therefore a nondirect approach was substituted  
 
 During Phase 3, the researchers found that productivity was controlled by the workers, not managers  
 
 In the Bank Wiring Room:  
 
 1.  Workers restricted output  
 
 The workers restricted output because:  
 
 a.  The workers were afraid of working themselves out of a job  
 
 b.  The workers were afraid that if they did work faster, mgt. might raise standards, & then they wouldn't be able to achieve the goal set by mgt.  
 
 c.  The low rate protected slow workers  
 
 d.  Mgt. accepted the current rate  
 
 2.  Workers treated different mgrs. differently in that they had more respect for upper mgt.  
 
 3.  Cliques or subgroups formed lead by Gamesmen, Job-Traders, etc.  
 
 4.  Roethlisberger & Dickinson concluded that Workers form codes of conduct which held that:  
 
 a.  no rate-busters were allowed to turn out too much work  
 
 Contemporary terms for rate-busters are brown-noser, mgt. material, shrimp, slave, speed king, etc.  
 
 b.  no chiselers were allowed to turn out too little work  
  Contemporary terms for chiselers include slug, ghost, slacker, gold-brick (WW2), etc.  
  c.  no squealers were allowed to tell a superior anything that will hurt another worker or group  
  Contemporary terms for squealers were brown-noser, snitch  
  d.  no stand-off-ish-ness is allowed so that no one, not even an inspector, should maintain social distance or act officiously  

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