Hawthorne Studies

In the early century, human beings were considered to be a little more than attached to machines since the Industrial Revolution (Fountain, 2006, pg 45). The importances of the human relations were not considered a factor to contribute to an organisation growth. In 1924, Hawthorne Studies was first initiated by the Western Electrical Company and National Academy of Science to study on the "relation of quality and quantity of illumination to efficiency in industry" which is known as Illumination studies.(Roethlisberger & Dickson, 2003, pg 14). From 1927-1933, a series of experiments were conducted once again at Western Electric Work and analyzed by Professor George Elton Mayo who is famous for Hawthorne Effects after the failure for the first studies. These experiments initially wanted to find out the environmental variables and then move to psychological aspects on the workers productivity in the organization. Still, Hawthorne studies may not seem as perfect as it is. Other philosophers have argued and criticized Hawthorne studies. In this review, the major criticisms of Hawthorne studies will be discussed and also if it will be applicable to apply it in the Asian society.

The Ideology Critics
Through the entire study of Hawthorne, Mayo wanted to provide a friendly supervision approach and to allow the relation between workers and supervisors to come closer. Mayo justifications are to manipulate workers based on management's ends. In order to secure the workers' cooperative towards the supervisors, the authority of the supervisor must be based on the social skills in order to increase the productivity. But, this method has been strongly criticized by Daniel Bell. In his writing of ‘cow sociologists’, he argued on Mayo's experiments for "psychologizing the workers while ignoring the institutional and power of relationships of industry, and for seeing industrial relations as a problem of communication and leadership rather than accommodation of conflicting of