- Published: November 17, 2021
- Updated: November 17, 2021
- University / College: Babson College, F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business
- Language: English
- Downloads: 20
George Elton Mayo, born in 1880, was an Australian psychologist and industrial researcher and also an organisational theorist.
Elton Mayo’s importance to management lies in the fact that his approach and style in scientific management was incidental and ancillary to human behaviour. In the Second World War, Mayo worked as a supervisor and developed the training methods in his training within industry program which became famous in the USA . At one time he wrote:” The desire to stand well with one’s fellows, the so-called human instinct of association, easily outweighs the merely individual interest and the logic of reasoning upon which so many spurious principles of management are based”. He spent a lot of time in Britain, on the post of an advisor to the British government on the matters relating to industrial problems. He is known to have contributed to a number of fields like Business Management, Industrial Sociology, philosophy and organisational psychology.
He is also known to have established the scientific study of organization which is nowadays known as organisational behaviour. . In the early 1900s Mayo studied philosophy but gradually his focus shifted towards Industrial Research and he became a Professor at Harvard Business School. Initially, when Mayo started with the textile mill experiment he observed that the high rate of turnover had a big influence on the mental abnormality of the workers, and through this, he developed the idea of providing rest breaks to the workers for better results. . He also gave a very important study in the field of human relations which is popularly known as the Hawthorne studies which were conducted in the 1920 and early 1930. It was conducted to show the effect of an individual’s behaviour on his work.
In 1927 Elton Mayo became the Pioneer to a research project which was related to industries at the Western electric companies and Hawthorne work Chicago along with some of his Associates. His studies included Collection of data, management of labour relations and interaction of workers in a factory. The major purpose of Elton Mayo was to know if fatigue and monotony were really affecting the productivity of a person and what were the variables involved. To resolve this dilemma Mayo selected few women and kept them under a supervisor. Throughout the Experiment, a girl was kept as an observer to inform all that was going on in the room this happened continuously for 48 hours a week including Saturdays and no pauses after a certain time.
Mayo was able to come to the conclusion that individuals was strongly influenced by social factors and discovered life when working in groups. However, there were certain limitations to Hawthorne experiment. one of them was scientific managers thought that it lacked scientific analysis this was because they had preconceived perceptions and interpretations. People also said that the experiment was not very useful to give generalized explanations. Mayo’s pressure approach to human relation was a total cover to the human and social factors in any organisation.
Mayo encourage to support on personal counselling programs that were the need for an industry to gain satisfaction from employees in large organisations. When Mayo started with his experiment he realised that the workers in any organisation needed the attention of their superiors and subordinates to give satisfactory results. After this experiment, it was observed that, there was a certain increase in the productivity level of the workers when compared with the original value, the reason being attitude of employer towards the workers and the attention that was gained by the employees made them feel an important part of the organisation this phenomenon came to be known as Hawthorne effect. Mayo also emphasized on certain aspects that affected the work of industrial workers for example, 1.
the application of Science and Technical skills to some material good or product, 2. The chronological order of operations, and, 3. Cooperation and teamwork in an organisation. He explained that if these three went out of balance the organisation will suffer as a whole. He elaborated this in the form of an experiment which was conducted in the Western Electric Company, at Hawthorne. It was a continuous set of experiments which included many phases.
The first phase was conducted as “ the test room . In the test room phase the workers in the industry were studied on the basis of their collaboration, coordination and teamwork with their fellow beings. Gradually the working conditions in the industry were altered on the basis of rest periods given , working hours in a day, food breaks or tea breaks and so on. When these conditions were provided the female workers in the factory felt that they could do the work easily and needed no more extra efforts to do any work.
Also, the situation in the test room and that of the department outside could be compared easily. Another important study was conducted where two teams were made in which one team was allowed to have interactions with each other and the other was asked to work in a solitary manner. The team that was allowed to have interactions made themselves more participated and worked freely without giving any afterthoughts and felt that they were working without any coercion and limitations from above. They felt that they were working better than before and that was reflected in their performance.
By conducting this experiment, the teamwork in an organisation and the effect of the working environment was more clearly understood. In the second phase of the experiment, to better understand the workers’ psychology in the organisation mayo focused on their conversation, interactional skills and listening skills. He studied the individuals continuously but in combination with the group. In his interviewing session, Mayo discovered that the individuals wanted to get rid of emotional complications and were also willing to express their problems more clearly. Secondl , he noticed that an interview hard the capacity to allow the workers to make associations with their fellow workers or supervisors with whom they were in contact on a daily basis.
While interviewing the workers my realised do that, the workers cannot be left in isolation and to understand their behaviour it was necessary to collectively see them as a part of the group or the organisational team. He learnt that there were situations when the workers you are not willing for monetary incentives but felt the need of being a part of the group, therefore, mayo strongly got influenced with the behaviour of workers while they were in a group. Mayo could also analyse that collaboration in a group, better management of work capacity and teamwork could be developed if the workers were interviewed in an effective manna the interviewer had to keep in mind certain things like being attentive towards the person not arguing with him and also consider his level of confidence.
With this experiment, MAYO proved that an interview with the workers could be of great value to the management. In his human relation approach to management mayo gave the following features: Firstly, it was necessary for any manager to understand human behaviour in all respects especially when it comes to groups and Organisation this was because management is always defined as getting things done through and with people, so it was a manager’s responsibility to know the behaviour of his employees. Second, to have a satisfactory level of production, motivation was the key element required which could only be achieved by understanding and developing good human relations. Learning the psychology and sociology of human behaviour was also a part of Mayo’s study. Later on, Elton Mayo came to be known as the father of Human relation movement because of his revolutionary studies of human relations in management thought. Mayo give certain important points the feel of human behaviour like any Organisation was more of a psychosocial organisation rather than a techno-economic unit also the group formations that take place in any organisation play a significant role in the performance of workers and improving the productivity the psychological and social factors have a greater influence on worker as compared to financial incentives. He also concluded that it was important for the managers to recognise the interpersonal and group relations in the workplace.
With all these experiments being conducted by Mayo, he was still criticized for not going far enough in his interpretations relating to human relation School of Management. Mayo’s studies were further utilised by other scientific management development in various fields. After contributing to the field of Management Elton Mayo finally retired in 1947 and moved to Howard to the United Kingdom and died in 1949.
Submitted by : POORVI MODI ROLL NO. 64367 MBA (H. R) , Sec A .