Elton Mayo

Elton Mayo
Born	(1880-12-26)26 December 1880 Adelaide, Australia
Died	7 September 1949(1949-09-07) Guildford, Surrey, UK
Occupation	Psychologist, industrial researcher, organizational theorist
Spouse(s)	Dorothea McConnel (married 18 April 1913) children: Patricia and Gael

George Elton Mayo (1880–1949) was an Australian born psychologist,^[1][2][3] industrial researcher, and organizational theorist.^[4][5] Mayo was formally trained at the University of Adelaide, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts Degree graduating with First Class Honours, majoring in philosophy and psychology,^[4] and was later awarded an honorary Master of Arts Degree from the University of Queensland (UQ).

While in Queensland Mayo served on the University’s war committee and pioneered research into the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock. As a psychologist Mayo often helped soldiers returning from World War I recover from the stresses of war and with a Brisbane physician, pioneered the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock..^[4] He was a lecturer in psychology and mental philosophy at the UQ between 1911 and 1922, when he sailed to the United States.^[4] In 1926 he was appointed to the Harvard Business School (HBS) as a professor of industrial research.^[4]

In Philadelphia he conducted research at a textile plant in order to develop a method to reduce the very high rate of turnover in the plant.^[6] In 1926 he was appointed to the Harvard Business School (HBS) as a professor of industrial research.^[4] Mayo's association with the Hawthorne studies as well as his research and work in Australia led to his enjoying a public acclaim granted to few social scientists of his day.

Mayo has been credited with making significant contributions to a number of disciplines, including business management, industrial sociology, philosophy, and social psychology. His field research in industry had a significant impact on industrial and organizational psychology.^[7] According to Trahair, Mayo "is known for having established the scientific study of what today is called organizational behavior when he gave close attention to the human, social, and political problems of industrial civilization." (p. 15).^[7]

Mayo's work helped to lay the foundation for the human relations movement.^[4] He emphasized that alongside the formal organization of an industrial workplace there exists an informal organizational structure as well.^[4] Mayo recognized the "inadequacies of existing scientific management approaches" to industrial organizations, and underlined the importance of relationships among people who work for such organizations.^[5] His ideas on group relations were advanced in his 1933 book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization, which was based partly on his Hawthorne research.^[8]

Early life and education

Mayo was the eldest son of George Gibbes Mayo, a draftsman and later a civil engineer, and his wife Henrietta Mary, née Donaldson. He attended several schools in Australia (Queen's School, Collegiate School of St Peter, and University of Adelaide) and after 1901 attended medical school in Edinburgh and London, neither of which he completed. In 1903 he went to West Africa, and upon returning to London, began writing articles for magazines and teaching English at the Working Men's College. He returned to Adelaide in 1905 to a partnership in the printing firm of J. H. Sherring & Co., but in 1907 he went back to the university to study philosophy and psychology under Sir William Mitchell. He won the Roby Fletcher prize in psychology and graduated with honours (B.A., 1910; M.A., 1926^[9]) and was named the David Murray research scholar. In 1911 he became foundation lecturer in mental and moral philosophy at the new University of Queensland and in 1919–23 held the first chair of philosophy there. He moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, but spent the second half of his career at Harvard Business School (1926–1947), where he was professor of industrial research.

Two influences on his career from his time at the University of Queensland were Mayo's friendship with the social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his work with shell-shock cases returning from the First World War. Malinowski first met Mayo on his way to and from the Trobriand Islands; they became close friends and were regularly in touch until Malinowski's death in 1942. The work with shell-shock soldiers provided a focus for Mayo's interests in clinical psychology and developed his skills in psychotherapy. In this he was strongly influenced by the work on hysteria and obsession of the French psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, who became a critic of Sigmund Freud. For the rest of his working life, Mayo was an active psychotherapist and this practical experience was an important influence on his theoretical and methodological work in America.

Research

One of Mayo's (1924) earliest research efforts involved workers at a Philadelphia textile mill.^[10] The mill had been experiencing a high rate of turnover. Mayo believed that the repetitive work in the spinning department gave rise to mental abnormalities in the workers. He found that the introduction of rest periods helped reduce turnover. The research helped make Mayo more widely known in the U.S.^[4]

Mayo helped to lay the foundation for the Human Relations Movement, and was known for his industrial research including the Hawthorne Studies and his book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (1933).^[11] The research he conducted under the rubric of the Hawthorne Studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, underlining the importance of groups in affecting the behaviour of individuals at work. Fritz J. Roethlisberger, Mayo's graduate assistant, and William J. Dickson, head of the Department of Employee Relations at Western Electric, conducted the bulk of the practical research, with Mayo rarely visiting the Hawthorne plant in Cicero, Illinois.^[4] Mayo's team carried out a number of "experiments" to look at ways of improving productivity. The research involved manipulating length of rest and lunch periods and piecework payment plans.^[12] Mayo concluded that productivity partly depended on the informal social patterns of interaction in the work group; Parsons, however, showed that the Hawthorne studies, which were not really experiments, were too confounded to enable researchers to draw firm conclusions.^[12] The qualitative aspects of the research suggested that norms of co-operation among workers were related to productivity. Mayo, in communicating to business leaders, advanced the idea that managers who understand the nature of informal ties among workers can make decisions for management's benefit.^[4]

Mayo concluded that people's work performance is dependent on both social relationships and job content. He suggested a tension between workers' "logic of sentiment" and managers' "logic of cost and efficiency" which could lead to conflict within organizations.

Elton Mayo laid the ground rules for interviewing, the principles of which have been subsequently repeated in numerous ‘how to’ books on leadership, coaching and mentoring over the last half century.

Was Mayo a psychologist or a medical doctor?

Although the Encyclopedia Britannica and other encyclopedias, published texts and journal articles state that Mayo was a psychologist,^[13] some authors have indicated that he was not and that Mayo was also a medical doctor. Miner ^[5] wrote: "An effective speaker and proficient in cultivating influential friends and mentors, he nevertheless had little by way of academic credentials and practically no training in the conduct of scientific research. Trahair informs the reader that there were times Mayo let himself be cast as a medical doctor, without correcting the mistake during his career in the United States. Cullen, who also wrote a biography of Mayo as part of his unpublished thesis, does not mention that Mayo was a psychologist although Cullen noted that Mayo let interlocutors call him "Dr. Mayo" without correcting the mistake.^[4] In this case Cullen was referring to Mayo being called a medical doctor, not a psychologist. Mayo's biographer Trahair wrote, "Mayo was not a psychologist, sociologist, or anthropologist, although sometimes he was cast as such" (p. 357).^[7]

However in relation to Mayo's career as a psychologist in Australia, Trahair also wrote that "after the great war Mayo's reputation grew as a successful academic, clinical psychologist and public speaker" (p. 89). Of course having a reputation as a clinical psychologist does not necessarily make one a clinical psychologist (the public often thinks of psychotherapists, regardless of training, as clinical psychologists or even psychiatrists).^[14] However in Mayo's case, Trahair makes it quite clear that Mayo was certainly a psychologist during his career in Australia, adding further support through numerous sections and quotations below taken from Mayo's only official biography to date.

In fact, Trahair goes on to provide significant detail as to Mayo's career as a psychologist in Australia, Trahair wrote that Mayo "sought work as a clinician and industrial psychologist" (p.143) and on page 153 Trahair wrote "Here he took the position of psychologist and set himself the task of showing how in human nature all that Christ stood for in human nature." On page 175 Trahair, Mayo's biographer stated: "as a psychologist Mayo was more attentive to irrational ideas and superstitions about work." On page 17 Trahair, Mayo's biographer wrote: "Mayo made a niche for his work, resigned his position and quickly established himself as a leading psychologist." Of particular note was Trahair's description of Mayo's work, Mayo was regarded as a psychologist and Mayo's own reasoning as to why a university in Australia did not select him due to him being a psychologist. On page 131 Trahair wrote about Mayo's comments: "he scoffed that they did not have the moral courage to appoint a psychologist."

Criticisms

Mayo's contributions to management theory were criticised by intellectual Daniel Bell. Writing in 1947, Bell criticised Mayo and other social scientists for "adjusting men to machines," rather than enlarging human capacity or human freedom.^[15] Many, including Reinhard Bendix and Lloyd H. Fisher, criticized Mayo for generalizing his results of the Hawthorne studies. The two state that Mayo's research concerned small, isolated groups, and it was not clear that the conditions and supervision he achieved could have been replicated in large groups and factory settings.^[16] His theories are also based upon the assumption that humans, by nature, want to cooperate and form groups, and he never allows for the possibility of José Ortega y Gasset's idea of "the stranger", built upon the proposition that humans, by nature, are suspicious of others.^[17] More recently, in 2003, James Hoopes criticised Mayo for "substituting therapy for democracy."^[18]

Publications

• George Elton Mayo: Psychology of Pierre Janet, London: Greenwood Press, 1972.
• George Elton Mayo: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Routledge, reprint edition 2003
• George Elton Mayo: Critical Evaluations in Business and Management, Ed. John Cunningham Wood, Michael C. Wood, 2004
• George Elton Mayo: The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Routledge, 2007

References

Sources

• J. H. Smith, The Three Faces of Elton Mayo, New Society (December 1980)
• Nikolas Rose. Governing the Soul the Shaping of the Private Self: the shaping of the private self. 2nd ed. London: Free Assoc. Books, 1999.

Further reading

• Daniel Bell, "Adjusting Men to Machines: Social Scientists Explore the World of the Factory," Commentary 3 (1947): 79–88.
• Kyle Bruce, "Henry S. Dennison, Elton Mayo, and Human Relations historiography" in: Management & Organizational History, 2006, 1: 177–199
• Gael Elton Mayo, The Mad Mosaic: A Life Story Quartet, London 1984
• Richard C. S. Trahair, Elton Mayo: The Humanist Temper, Transaction Publishers, U.S. 2005
• James Hoopes, "The Therapist: Elton Mayo" in "False Prophets: The Gurus who created modern management...", 2003, pp. 129–159.
• David O'Donald Cullen. A new way of statecraft: The career of Elton Mayo and the development of the social sciences in America, 1920–1940. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses; 1992; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text.

Archives

• Catalogue of the Mayo papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.
• The Human Relations Movement: Harvard Business School and the Hawthorne Experiments, 1924–1933, at Harvard Business School, Baker Library Historical Collections

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 51759663 LCCN: n50007343 ISNI: 0000 0001 0900 6626 GND: 118874284 SUDOC: 032192649 BNF: cb12327083k (data) NDL: 00524295