Hawthorne Effect

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The Hawthorne effect can occur in group-based observational studies. According to this, participants change their natural behavior because they know that they are participating in a study and that they are being monitored. This can lead to a wrong assessment, e.g. B. the effectiveness of an intervention or a drug .

The Hawthorne effect is interesting from two angles:

  • In the methodology of sociology and psychology , it is understood to mean the effect that test subjects can change their natural behavior if they know that they are participants in an investigation ( artifact ). It is therefore possible that the results of a study are falsified by the study itself. In the extreme case, the observed effect is entirely due to the study situation itself. The Hawthorne effect thus represents a possible threat to the internal validity of test results.
  • In business administration , the discovery of the Hawthorne effect was one of the reasons for the realization that human work performance is not only shaped by objective working conditions, but also to a large extent by social factors (see Human Relations Movement ).

Compared to the following categories, it is the Hawthorne effect

discovery

The discovery of the effect goes back to the so-called Hawthorne experiments by Fritz Roethlisberger and Dickson. This is a series of studies conducted between 1924 and 1933 at the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne factory in Cicero, USA, on behalf of the National Research Council and the American Electricity Industry, to determine how to improve worker performance . Different research designs were applied and objectives were considered.

Experiment 1

The industry was working at that time from the Scientific Management dominates. Typical for this is the breakdown of the work process into the smallest possible but highly optimized steps. For further optimization, the Hawthorne studies began. It was first investigated whether the change in lighting conditions had an impact on work performance. In fact, the work performance of the experimental group increased with improved lighting conditions. However, the performance also increased in the control group, which worked in the same light. The increase in performance was even retained when the original illuminance was returned to.

The lighting experiment made the researchers aware of the psychological effect that the mere presence of the researchers and the awareness of the workers that they were part of an experiment and being observed produced the increase in performance. The experienced attention and recognition by the researchers led, according to the workers' own statements, to an increase in performance. The researchers initially saw this as a psychological disruptive factor and developed new test arrangements to rule them out.

Experiment 2

The workers in the experimental group were housed in a separate work room, were given cheaper working hours, more wages, and both managers and scientists cultivated a non-directive, understanding-oriented management style towards them . As a result, the productivity of this group increased by about 30 percent. There was heated debate about whether this increase was due to a more favorable wage structure or the more “humane”, non-directive treatment of managers. Subsequent experiments tested both hypotheses and came to the conclusion that this large increase was only due to the combination of both factors.

Results

The interpretation of the results was politicized between industry and trade unions . The human relations approach that emerged from the Hawthorne studies as a counterweight to Taylorism suggested that workers were less interested in an increase in wages than in a socio-emotional reorganization of working conditions, especially management style. By Elton Mayo , a scientist at Harvard Business School , which was contracted in 1927 to supporting research (interviews) in a big way managers were taught in non-directive leadership style.

In addition to the Hawthorne effect, the studies are also attributed to the “discovery” of the informal group and the productivity-increasing effect of a good working atmosphere.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the discussion about the Hawthorne studies revived because a re-examination of the data showed that the influence of wage incentives on work performance tended to be higher and that of socio-psychological factors to be lower than the researchers estimated at the time . Participants in the survey report that they have been pressured, threatened and replaced by cooperative individuals, received higher wages and constant feedback on performance.

Criticism of the Hawthorne Studies

Social science revisions of the Hawthorne studies have been in operation since the 1960s. Only a few such extensive empirical studies have “drawn so much subsequent research effort [...]. Filtering out the key points is difficult and relatively arbitrary. ”Due to the abundance of data, what most of the critical contributions have in common is that they only refer to partial studies.

Criticism came from US sociology : in 1967 Alex Carey criticized the unfair practices of the studies and especially the exchange of two out of five “talkative” workers for two “more willing to cooperate and known to be particularly productive” test subjects in a partial study. In 1978, a multiple regression analysis was able to prove that this exchange had a significant influence on partial results of the studies .

The criticism from a gender-sociological perspective began in 1974: Joan Acker and Donald van Houten stated that a group that was able to increase its productivity consisted exclusively of test subjects. The study conditions as well as the recruitment mechanisms for the all-female group differed from those of the all-male group.

H. Mcllvaine Parsons found in the 1970s that Elton Mayo and his colleagues had withheld important information; because the test subjects worked under privileged conditions. They received higher wages, but they were also reprimanded several times by the study directors for their talkativeness. The employees were even threatened with being sent back to their old jobs if they did not improve their work performance. In addition, the participants received regular performance feedback combined with the request to work as quickly as possible.

Due to its unclear meaning and the contradicting use in the literature, the term is also flatly rejected by some authors.

Finally, one of the most important results of the studies is "a new image of man that is referred to in the literature as the 'social man'". As a result of the Hawthorne studies, the understanding of the importance of social relationships prevailed in ergonomics. This insight "theoretically meant a turning point" and prepared the field for the human relations movement .

See also

literature

  • Fritz Jules Roethlisberger, William J. Dickson, Harold A. Wright (Designer): Management and the Worker. An Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company. Hawthorne Works, Chicago (1939). 14th edition: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1966, ISBN 0-6745-4676-8 .
  • Alfred Kieser , Mark Ebers (Ed.): Organization theories. 6th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-170-19281-2 .
  • Erich Kirchler: Industrial and organizational psychology. 2nd Edition. Facultas, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-2659-6 (UTB 2659).
  • Heinz Schuler : Textbook of Personnel Psychology. 2nd Edition. Hogrefe, Göttingen, Bern, Vienna, Toronto, Seattle, Oxford, Prague 2005, ISBN 978-3-8017-1934-0 .
  • Jean-Paul Thommen: Management and Organization. Concepts, instruments, implementation. Versus, Zurich 2002.
  • Emil Walter-Busch: The company's eye. Mayos Hawthorne Experiments and Harvard Business School, 1900-1960. Enke, Stuttgart 1989.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birgit Althans: The gossip in the organizational theory In: dies .: The gossip, women and speaking at work. Campus 2000, p. 366.
  2. ^ Peter Preisendörfer: Organizational Sociology . Basics, theories, problems. VS Verlag 2008: p. 119 f.
  3. ^ B. Rice: The Hawthorne defect: Persistence of a flawed theory. In: Psychology Today. Volume 16, Number 2, 1982, pp. 70-74.
  4. ↑ Peter Preisendörfer: Organizational Psychology: Basics, Theories and Problems. VS Verlag 2008, p. 119 ff.
  5. ↑ Alex Carey: The Hawthorne Studies: A Radical Criticism. In: American Sociological Review , Vol. 32 No. 3, 1967: pp. 403-16.
  6. ^ Richard H. Franke, James D. Kaul: The Hawthorne Experiments: First Statistical Interpretation. In: American Sociological Review, Vol. 43 no. 5, 1978: pp. 623-43.
  7. ^ Joan Acker, Donald van Houten: Differential Recruitment and Control: The Sex Structuring of Organizations In: Administrative Science Quarterly , 1974: pp. 152-64.
  8. ^ H. McIlvaine Parsons: What happened at Hawthorne? In: Science , Vol. 183 1974: pp. 922-32.
  9. ↑ Heinz Schuler: Textbook of Organizational Psychology , Verlag Hans Huber, 3rd edition 2004: p. 41.
  10. ↑ Ryan Olson, Jessica Verley, Lindsey Santos, Coresta Salas: What we teach students about the Hawthorne studies: A review of content within a sample of introductory IO and OB textbooks . In: The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist . tape 41 , no. 3 , 2004, p. 23-39 . PDF 253 kB ( Memento of the original dated November 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.siop.org
  11. ↑ Mecca Chiesa, Sandy Hobbs: Making sense of social research: How useful is the Hawthorne Effect? In: European Journal of Social Psychology . tape 38 , no. 1 , 2008, p. 67-74 , doi : 10.1002 / ejsp.401 . PDF 102 kB
  12. ↑ Eberhard Ulich: Industrial Psychology. 5th edition, Schäffer Poeschel 2001, p. 43.
  13. ^ Georg Schreyögg: Organization: Basics of modern organizational design. 4th edition, Gabler 2003, p. 45.