Principles of Operations Research—9. The Hawthorne Effect

This is the ninth of a set of articles on principles of operations research. As the reader will note, these are somewhat different from similarly titled subjects in the usual textbooks.

Everybody knows about the Hawthorne Effect. Some 40 years ago some experiments were carried out at the Hawthorne plant (near Chicago) of the Western Electric Co. to determine the effect of the environment on productivity. Each change in rest period, lighting levels, and so forth was associated with an increase in productivity. Finally, they changed everything back to the way it had been in the first place and productivity increased by still a further increment. The workers reacted not to the variables which were supposed to be the subject of the experiment, but to the experiment itself.