Hawthorne Studies: Organizational Behavior

• Hawthorne Studies (1924-1932) have been viewed as the most influential research in the history of organizational research
• The research is associated with Elton Mayo, a Harvard Business School professor, and the research team he joined at Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois in 1928
• The Hawthorne Studies lead to the human relations approach in organizational behavior, challenging scientific management principles

Context of the Hawthorne Studies

• The context in which these psychological and sociological investigations were conducted is not as well known
• Western Electric is treated as an anonymous actor in accounts of the Hawthorne studies
• Scholars have paid little attention to various social and political factors that shaped the host enterprise and its workforce

Research Focus

• Seeks to understand and explain what kind of enterprise Western Electric was during the Hawthorne Studies
• Corporate context will be analyzed through industrial reputation and business philosophy
• A firm's cultural context will be analyzed through its social organization and communal experience

Rethinking Hawthorne Contextually

• Investigators did not undertake a systematic study of the company's social organization
• The Hawthorne Studies represent 'closed-system' analysis, focusing on a handful of social science investigations
• The research tells us little about the culture or climate within which the organization operated
• Many Hawthorne research studies treat the host organization as a commonplace location for industrial research
• Results are generalized and the empirical results are considered extraordinary, despite the experimental site being ordinary

Historical Analysis

• Concerned not so much with revisiting various phases of Hawthorne investigations as with defining the character of Western Electric as a corporate actor and employer
• The company's reputation for scientific and technological innovation is considered alongside its paternalism, anti-unionism, and cultural legacy

Aim of Article

• Wishes to define the setting, relating to a body of literature that has sought to identify contextual factors influencing the Studies, particularly Elton Mayo's Harvard-based research group
• Deconstructs and critiques an habitual revelatory narrative in organization and management theory textbooks, where Western Electric is portrayed as bureaucratically ignorant only to be enlightened by Harvard behavioral scientists
• The third phase sees findings from these accounts discussed as part of a contextually informed approach to realizing and interpreting qualitative historical research in management and organization studies

Anti-Revelatory Approach

• Questions how revelatory the various Hawthorne investigations' findings were
• Focuses on broader methodological issues from the Hawthorne researchers' personal communications Researchers were aware that human factors could influence production and attempted to minimize this effect before studies began
• Gillesie also states that the seemingly logical and unambiguous narrative of scientific discovery was actually constructed in the face of disagreements between researchers over interpretation and meaning

Networks Analysis at Harvard

• Aims to deconstruct and prove social networks and right-wing politics influenced the kinds of evidence claimed for by the Harvard Group.
• Documents the influence of Mayo's political ideology on the early development of the Human Relations School (HRS) at Harvard Business School (HBS)
• The HRS and HBS achieved success through alignment of the HRS and the HBS agendas in relationship to national, corporate, and research agendas, and convincing business leaders that its agenda would solve their worries

Contextually Informed Research

• Analytical trajectory differs from Gillespie, O'Connor, and Bruce and Nyland
• Investigation concerns Western Electric's reputation and culture
• Emphasizes developing a concept of 'prior context', which helps clarify the meaning of the events
• Intention is not to specify direct causal links but to qualitatively describe the culture, atmosphere, and environment in which certain organizational factors emerged
• The objective is to provide a broader sociological perspective on the company than in the normative closed-system treatment

Developing Contextual Accounts

• First case: assesses the early Western Electric Company's industrial reputation and corporate philosophy, using secondary sources and primary sources
• Second case: focuses on the Hawthorne employees' communal experience and the symbolic impact of a tragic event on the workforce and local community, using primary and secondary sources

Methodological Approaches

• First case adopts 'historical deconstruction'
• Second case adopts 'ethnographic history'
• The first case focuses predominantly on the macro-level context of the firm, and notably issues of socio-economic and political environment
• The second case adopts a predominantly micro-level perspective and focuses on communal and symbolic factors influencing Western Electric, notably the impact of a major tragedy on its management and workforce

Case A

• Western Electric Company was woven deeply into the fabric of American industrial history
• In 1881, Western Electric officially joined the Bell 'System' when Alexander Graham Bell purchased controlling interest in the Western Electric Company of Chicago
• Bell sought a single manufacturer with the capability for handling mass demand and found it in Western Electric
• Western Electric became the exclusive manufacturer of telephones in the USA for the American Bell Telephone Company

Hawthorne and Welfare

• Hawthorne plant opened in 1907, developed a reputation as champion of ‘welfare capitalism', businesses providing welfare-like services to employees
• Hawthorne became virtually a city, containing a hospital, power plant, fire brigade, evening school (Hawthorne University), gymnasium, running track, baseball team, greenhouse, brass band, magazine, and annual pageant
• 25,000 people were employed at the expanding Hawthorne Works in 1917, with large percentage being Czech, Hungarian or Polish origin

The Progressive Era

• Era presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson characterized by social activism
• The Progressive Movement emphasized the welfare of the individual
• AT&T announced Bell System ‘Benefit and Insurance Plan' in 1913
• By the early 1920s, Western Electric's Hawthorne Works was an archetypal ‘modern manor' (Jacoby, 1997).
• Western Electric was one of the major distributors of electrical equipment in America, with a catalogue approaching 1300 pages

Symbolism the Bells

• AT&T restructured, to found Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc, in 1925
• Bell Labs, as it became known, would be owned 50:50 by Western Electric and AT&T
• During its formative history, the Western Electric Company had achieved significant corporate profile, developing a reputation for technological innovation and mass manufacturing capability
• In addition, it was a signally paternalistic enterprise and facilitator enabling an image that it was a 'progressive' employer

Case B: The Eastland Disaster

• On July 1915, the SS Eastland disaster on the Chicago River which resulted in the Hawthorne Works Employees' Annual Picnic was never recorded previously.
• The La Follette Seamen's Act (1915) mandated ‘lifeboats for all' in the case of Great Lakes passenger ships, additional lifeboats and rafts were fitted, despite safety instability
• Hawthorne Works employees and their families boarded the Eastland on July 25, 1915
• 841 passengers (mainly women and children) and four crew members perished, the death toll including 22 whole families
• In the days following the tragedy, Western Electric made little effort to operate the Hawthorne plant and En masse, Western Electric's senior management team attended a special memorial service in Chicago

Aftermath of Eastland

• Alexander Graham Bell visited but attention faded from national scope
• The Western Electric tragedy served to bring sociological profile to an organization that already possessed a significant industrial reputation
• The event galvanized social and organizational relations to cultural and symbolic forces within the enterprise

Corporate Philosophy and Reputation

• Western Electric had a high public profile and recognized with technological advances
• Hawthorne Club was a significant high-end employer
• Western Electric used to be an avowedly anti-union which made corporations welfare based practices an obligation

Early 1900's Research Shift

• 1922 report from Psychologist Robert Yerkes suggests shift in personnel research for Bell companies from machinery to the worker
• Benix states many managers for Hawthorne had anticipated motives of worker
• Gilson draws attention to Hawthorne's failure to mention labour unions, and internal spies by Managment to identify activists not mentioned in interviews as staff couldn't criticize company.
• Founder Enos Barton's approach to capitalism as a way to give Capitalism a human face.

Employee relations

• “By 1920’s, Western Electric management mindful to meeting workers needs in practice
• Team wasn't as transformable as much as swimming against tide
• Western Electric created Human relation style philosophies, emphasizing its strategic paternal and welfare capitalism.