PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY 



in their great manufacturing plant at Hawthorne, a suburb 

 of Chicago, are in point. The story is told in the Personnel 

 Journal for February, 1930, by G. A. Pennock, M. L. 

 Putnam, and Elton Mayo. These studies were initiated 

 nearly four years ago, when a small group of women 

 relay assemblers were separated from the other employees 

 in this department, and a series of observations and 

 experiments was begun for the purpose of accurately 

 determining individual variations in output and the 

 relationship of these ups and downs to conditions of 

 work — particularly to such factors as method of pay- 

 ment, length of working day and working week, nutrition, 

 sleep, length and distribution of rest periods, and the like. 



The procedure required that conditions be maintained 

 as nearly constant as possible for a period of weeks, 

 followed by the introduction of a single change, such as 

 provision for a light lunch at the time of the mid-morning 

 rest pause. After a while another change was introduced, 

 such as shortening or lengthening the working day. All 

 this time, each worker's output was automatically recorded 

 minute by minute. There was no pressure to speed up, no 

 driving by the supervisor. But the workers were encouraged 

 to tell how they felt, to comment on what they liked and 

 disliked about the situation, and also to mention anything 

 that happened outside of working hours which might be 

 useful in accounting for their fluctuations in working 

 efficiency. 



The outcome has been astonishing. Workers' earnings 

 and satisfactions improved far beyond expectation, and in 

 some degree quite independently of the changes made in 

 physical working conditions. While information of real 

 value regarding optimal number, length, and distribution 

 of rest periods, mid-morning lunches, and similar variables 

 was secured, the management attaches far greater impor- 

 tance to what this experiment has revealed regarding the 



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