Elton Mayo
George Elton Mayo (born December 26, 1880 in Adelaide (Australia), † September 1, 1949 in Guildford , Surrey (England)) was an Australian sociologist . He taught at the University of Queensland in Australia from 1911 to 1923 , then at the University of Pennsylvania , but for the greater part of his professional life from 1926 to 1947 as a professor at Harvard Business School , where he was a co-founder and main exponent of US industrial sociology .
As the initiator of the Hawthorne Studies , he began to develop methods of improving interpersonal relationships in the company in the 1930s. With the help of employee surveys - personal discussions with specially trained interviewers - the willingness of the workers to cooperate should be promoted and their sense of belonging to the company (instead of the union ) strengthened. A useful side effect of these surveys, which were later carried out in large companies by their own sociological services, was the fact that management gained information about impending conflicts and the expansion of the possibilities for strike prevention .
In 1936 Mayo was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Fonts
- The social problems of an industrial civilization (1933), German, Problems of industrial working conditions , Frankfurt a. M.: Verl. D. Frankfurter Hefte, 1949.
Secondary literature
- Kyle Bruce, "Henry S. Dennison, Elton Mayo, and Human Relations historiography" in: Management & Organizational History , 2006, 1: 177-199
- Richard CS Trahair, Elton Mayo: The Humanist Temper , Transaction Publishers, US 2005 ISBN 1-4128-0524-4
- Helen Bourke: Mayo, George Elton (1880-1949) . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Volume 10. Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1986, ISBN 0-522-84327-1 (English).
Web links
- Literature by and about Elton Mayo in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 27, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mayo, Elton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian sociologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 26, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Adelaide , Australia |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 1, 1949 |
| Place of death | Guildford , Surrey, England |