Chapter 4 - 6

06 business

listen to a lecture in a business class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

M: All right. Productivity is always an important concern in business. It can either make your business succeed or fail. If your employees aren’t productive, there’s little chance that your business will succeed.

The converse is also true. If your workers are productive, there’s little chance it will fail … at least, way less of a chance.

There are still lots of other factors that can make a business fail . . . but anyway, what we’re going to be talking about today has to do with productivity.

It’s called the Hawthorne Effect. Basically, the Hawthorne Effect states that a simple increase in the attention that a worker gets will increase his or her productivity.

Sounds pretty unlikely, I know, but that’s what the theory says.

But, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of debate about whether it exists.

See, in the 1920s, a factory started doing these experiments on how different changes affected their employees’ productivity.

Uh, this factory was called Hawthorne Works, which is where the Hawthorne Effect got its name.

Anyway, this factory brought in lots of researchers to conduct their experiments.

So, today I’ll just talk about the experiments they did−uh, the ones that support the Hawthorne Effect and those that don’t, and I’ll let you all make your own decisions.

In the first tests, they altered the lighting in the factory, then measured the amount of productivity.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I would think that if the workers had more light, rather than less light, they would be more productive.

But actually, the initial findings suggested that the lighting really didn’t matter. See, the researchers found that, regardless of the lighting, the productivity in the factory went up.

This is puzzling. I mean, why would the productivity go up seemingly for no reason? Either there should be no effect at all, or there should be some correlation between light level and productivity.

So the scientists at Hawthorne Works got this idea. They thought that maybe it was just because extra attention was being devoted to the workers.

So, because they were getting more attention, the workers performed better.

A later test seemed to support the Hawthorne Effect. The researchers recorded that this time.

When the subjects were moved to another room they were consistently more productive, regardless of anything else that was done.

They felt that this was due to the extra attention the employees received, but I don’t really believe it.

Subsequent review of the experiments revealed other facts.

What do I mean? Well, the room the workers were moved to had better lighting, more air flow, and, on top of that, it was quieter.

So there are actually quite a few reasons that could have caused the increased productivity—not just the extra attention.

There are a few other things that help to disprove the Hawthorne Effect.

In one experiment, the researchers began with the subjects in the same room, and measured how productive they were.

Then, they took them to a different work area and measured it again. Everything stayed pretty much the same.

However, the researchers then gave the subjects breaks. This caused a notable increase in their productivity.

When they returned to their original work areas without breaks, their productivity felt. Therefore, the researchers concluded that the attention really had nothing to do with it.

The breaks caused the increase in productivity.

Another experiment done at Hawthorne Works also seems to undermine the Hawthorne Effect.

It also reinforces what the scientists learned with the last experiment I mentioned. Just like . . . just like um, in the . . . the last one, the workers were moved to a different work area, but the workers didn’t speed up.

In fact, individual workers accommodated to the average speed of all the workers combined . . . there were no great workers, no terrible workers, only average workers.

What I mean is, and this is really fascinating, even if a worker was particularly fast, he or she would slow down so that he or she wouldn’t make the whole group look bad.

Interesting, huh?

But this really seems to contradict the idea of the Hawthorne Effect. I mean, if it was just the attention causing increased productivity, the workers in each of these experiments should have done better.

But they didn’t.

So basically, the whole idea of the “Hawthorne Effect” has been called into question, and with good reason.

So, while the Hawthorne Effect may be one of the most welt-known ideas about productivity, extra attention toward your employees may not really cause them to do better.

Instead, your best bet is better working conditions and salary.

1) What is the professor’s general attitude toward the Hawthorne Effect?

2) What is the professor’s attitude when he says this:

Sounds pretty unlikely, I know, but that’s what the theory says.

3) What is the professor’s attitude when he says this:

What I mean is, and this is really fascinating, even if a worker was particularly fast, he or she would slow down so that he or she wouldn’t make the whole group look bad. Interesting, huh?