Hawthorne Studies/Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne Studies thread through schools of management and associated research programs from before the Great Depression into the decade of the 1960s. Influential nearly 100 years later, they can be viewed from several perspectives. The studies themselves were a series of collaborative investigations at the Western Electric factory (manufacturer of AT&T equipment). Researchers from the National Research Council first studied changes in lighting (1924-1927), encountered anomalies because production appeared to increase when lighting decreased to very low levels, and shifted toward recognition of social influences (1928-1932) and personnel counseling. Research and practice to this day considers management-labor interactions suggested by these studies.