What did the Hawthorn Studies reveal about human behaviour in the work place?
akannan Teacher Middle School eNotes Editor Surprisingly, the Hawthorn studies reflected very little about mechanistic changes to the workplace and worker productivity. The pervading thought at the time of the studies, emerging in the wake of Industrialization, was that workers were mechanistic, similar to the machinery that enveloped them. As with a machine, the belief was that technical refinements can be made to increase productivity. For example, adding more lights was seen as a way to generate greater work output from workers. However, the Hawthorn studies revealed that human behavior and human productivity is far more complex an issue. The studies demonstrated that workers are not automatically going to positively respond to technical refinements. Rather, a more open and understanding approach would be needed to understand how to generate greater productivity from workers. Hawthorn’s studies reflected the idea that the psychological dimension to the worker must be understood in o
