Weighing the Evidence: The Hawthorne Effect

The deplorable working conditions in factories across the United States came to national attention in the early 1900s. By the 1920s, corporations were interested in the link between workers’ productivity and their working conditions. A series of experiments were conducted from 1924 to 1932 at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, a large factory outside of Chicago that produced electromagnetic relays for telephone switchboard assemblies. Productivity …