The behavioral school of management thought developed, in part, because of perceived weaknesses in the assumptions of the classical school. The classical school emphasized efficiency, process, and principles. Some felt that this emphasis disregarded important aspects of organizational life, particularly as it related to human behaviour. Thus, the behavioral school focused on trying to understand the factors that affect human behaviour at work.
Behavioral School of Thought promotes the idea of cooperation and coordination amongst the employees. This is also used in providing assistance and opportunities in the personal development of the workers. By doing this the workers see themselves as a goodwill agent in the organization.
Mayo understood that workers feel more secured when there is a good communication and a enormous sense of acceptance in the organization and so the Behavioral School of Thought called their worker as a social man with good group satisfaction.
Elton Mayo:
Even though Follet was the pioneer of the behavioural approach to management, it is Elton Mayo who is recognized as the father of the human-relations approach. Mayo and his associates conducted a study at the Western Electric’s Hawthorne Plant between 1927 and 1932 to evaluate the attitudes and psychological reactions of workers in on-the-job situations.
Contributor to behavioral theories
- Mary Parker Follet (1868-1933) – Group influences
- Elton Mayo (1880-1949) – Effect of human motivation on productivity and output
- Abraham Maslow (1808-1970) – Relates human motivation to hierarchy of needs
- Douglas McGregor (1906-1964) – Emphasizes on human characteristics theory X and theory Y and the corresponding style of leadership
- Chris Argyris (1964) – Human and organizational development – Model I and Model II
Their experiments were carried out in the following four phases:
- Illumination experiments
- Relay assembly test room experiments
- Interview phase
- Bank wiring observation room experiment
1.Illumination Experiments:
These experiments took place, initially between 1924 and 1927, in the Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric Company, involving the company’s industrial engineers. The experiments involved manipulation of illumination for one group of workers (test group) and comparing their performance and productivity with another group for whom illumination was not manipulated (control group).
In the first spell of the experiments, the performance and productivity of the test group (for whom the illumination was manipulated) improved. However, this did not last long. In fact, the control group’s performance also improved in between, even though there was no change in the light conditions of this group.
With such contradicting results, researchers concluded that the intensity of illumination was not related to the productivity of workers.
2.Relay Assembly Test Room Experiments:
This set of experiments was conducted under the guidance of Elton Mayo between 1927 and 1933. At this stage, researchers were concerned about other working conditions like working hours, working conditions, refreshments, temperatures, etc. To start with, the researchers selected six women employees of the relay assembly test room.
Their job was to assemble a relay (a small device) using thirty-five spare parts. Selected women employees (samples) were put in a separate room and briefed about the experiments. In the test room, the variables like increased wages and rest period, shortened workday and workweek, etc. were altered.
In addition to this, the sample workers were also given the freedom to leave their workstations without permission and were also given special attention. Productivity increased over the study period. Such results led the researchers to believe that better treatment of subordinates made them more productive.
They highlighted the significance of social relations. Finally, researchers were convinced that workers would perform better if the management looked after their welfare and supervisors paid special attention to them. This syndrome was later labelled as the Hawthorne effect.
3.Interview Phase:
In this phase of the experiments, about 21,000 people were interviewed over three years between 1928 and 1930. The purpose of the interview was to explore in depth the attitudes of the workers.
On the basis of the results of these interviews, the following conclusions were drawn:
A complaint may not necessarily be an objective recital of facts. It also reflects personal disturbance, which may arise from some deep-rooted cause.
All objects, persons, and events carry some social meaning. They relate to the employees’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Workers’ personal situation is die result of a configuration of their relationships, involving sentiments, desires, and interests. Such relational variables influence die workers’ own past and present interpersonal relations and result in their personal situations.
Workers assign meaning to their status in the organization and attach much importance to events and objects and specific features of their environment, such as hours of work, wages, etc.
Workers derive satisfaction or dissatisfaction from the social status of their organization. It means they also look for social rewards, in the form of an increase in their personal status, borne out of their association with an organization of repute.
Workers’ social demands are influenced by their social experiences within their groups, both inside and outside the workplace.
4.Bank Wiring Observation Room Experiment:
This part of the Hawthorne experiments was conducted to test some of the ideas that had cropped up during the interview phase. It was conducted between 1931 and 1932. In this experiment there were fourteen participants (samples), including wiremen, solder men, and inspectors.
In this phase of the experiment, there was no change in the physical working conditions. Payments to sample workers were based on an incentive pay plan, which related their pay to their outputs. Sample workers had the opportunity to earn more by increasing their outputs. However, die researchers observed that output was constant at a certain level.
Analysis of the results showed that the group encourages neither too much nor too little work. On their own, they enforce ‘a fair day’s work’. Group norms, therefore, are more important to workers than money is. The study thus provided some insights into die workers’ informal social relations within their groups.
