MGMT 8003M Week 11 Literature Brief Example

Weaker Than Its Fame, Important for Another Reason: A Literature Brief Setting the Original Western Electric Account Beside Two Reanalyses and Arguing What the Hawthorne Effect Can Still Be Cited For

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Walden University

MGMT 8003M: Gateway to Doctoral Management Studies

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Month Day, Year

Weaker Than Its Fame, Important for Another Reason: A Literature Brief Setting the Original Western Electric Account Beside Two Reanalyses and Arguing What the Hawthorne Effect Can Still Be Cited For

The Argued Line

The Hawthorne effect as commonly cited, the claim that being observed raises workers' productivity, is weaker than its reputation; the Western Electric studies remain important for turning management's attention to the social life of work groups, not for demonstrating that observation itself improves output.

The Original Account

Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939) reported the research conducted at Western Electric's Hawthorne Works near Chicago from the mid-1920s into the 1930s. In the illumination experiments, output in test groups rose whether lighting was increased or decreased, and in a separate test room five women assembling telephone relays worked through changing schedules of rest breaks and hours while their output mostly climbed. The researchers concluded that changes in output could not be explained by the physical conditions alone and turned to the attitudes, relationships and informal organization of the workers, documented further in the bank wiring observation room, where a group restricted its own output by informal norms.

The First Reanalysis

Jones (1992) reanalyzed the relay assembly test room data using statistical methods to test whether output rose in response to the experimental changes and observation, as the popular account holds. He found little evidence for a Hawthorne effect in the data: once other factors were accounted for, the output changes did not show the pattern the effect predicts. His analysis concerns one part of the studies, but it is the part most often cited.

The Second Reanalysis

Levitt and List (2011) located the original data from the illumination experiments, long thought lost, and analyzed them. They found that the popular description of the experiments was not supported by the data, which showed weaker and more complicated patterns than the dramatic story of output rising with every change; there was some evidence that output responded when experimental changes were made, but it was modest and open to other explanations.

What Survives

The two reanalyses address the claim that observation raises output. Neither addresses the studies' other legacy. The bank wiring room observations and the interviews documented informal group norms, such as limits on how much a worker should produce, and showed that workers' behavior responded to their social relationships as well as to pay and conditions. That legacy helped launch the human relations movement and remains well supported by later research on group norms.

Implications for Citing the Effect

A management scholar should not cite the Hawthorne effect as established evidence that observation improves productivity. If the point is that observation can change behavior in research, it is better to cite modern studies designed to test that. If the point is the importance of social relations at work, the Hawthorne studies can be cited as a historical source for that idea.

Why the Effect Became Famous

The Hawthorne effect spread partly because it is a good story: a surprising result, a memorable setting and an implication flattering to managers, that attention itself can raise output. Textbooks repeated it, and each repetition made it seem more settled. The reanalyses show how much a famous finding can rest on a few small groups and on descriptions written decades before modern statistical methods. They do not show that observation never affects behavior; research on reactivity in measurement continues. They show that the Western Electric studies are weak evidence for it.

What This Brief Taught About Reading

The brief required reading the original account rather than the textbook version. The original is more cautious and more interesting than its legend: Roethlisberger and Dickson devoted far more attention to informal social organization than to the effect that now bears the plant's name.

A Suggested Citation Practice

When a well-known finding is cited, cite the strongest evidence for it, not its most famous source.

Limits

The brief relies on two reanalyses of particular experiments; the full research program was larger and varied.

How a Doctoral Writer Should Use the Case

For a student writing a literature review, the Hawthorne case is a model of how to treat a classic. Report what the original authors actually wrote, then report what later analysts found when they returned to the data, and only then decide what the source can support. The same habit applies to other famous findings in management, from the claims about expatriate failure rates to popular figures about change programs, which often travel through textbooks without their evidence. A reader who checks the trail once learns to check it every time.

References

Jones, S. R. G. (1992). Was there a Hawthorne effect? American Journal of Sociology, 98(3), 451-468. https://doi.org/10.1086/230046

Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2011). Was there really a Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant? An analysis of the original illumination experiments. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(1), 224-238. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.3.1.224

Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Harvard University Press.