Write a short note on Hawthorne Studies?

Answer 1

The process involves carrying out a skills analysis of the existing workforce, carrying out manpower forecasting, and taking action to ensure that supply meets demand. This may include the development of training and retraining strategies

The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they know they are being studied,[1][2] not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.

The term was coined in 1950 by Henry A. Landsberger when analysing older experiments from 1924-1932 at the Hawthorne Works (a Western Electric factory outside Chicago). Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to see if its workers would become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made and slumped when the study was concluded. It was suggested that the productivity gain occurred due to the impact of the motivational effect on the workers as a result of the interest being shown in them. Although illumination research of workplace lighting formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect, other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods. Thus the term is used to identify any type of short-lived increase in productivity.

The second phase of the study, the Bank Wiring Room, was designed to study the social effects.

Bank Wiring Room

They called in some anthropologists from Harvard (Mayo, Warner) to help design a study. Basically they put some workers in a special room, and placed an observer full time in the room to record everything that happened. The kind of work done was assembling telephone switching equipment. The process was broken down into three tasks: wiring, soldering and inspection.