Mayo's reputation as a management guru rests on the Hawthorne Experiments which he conducted from 1927 to 1932 at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago). The factory employed mainly women workers who assembled telephone cabling equipment. The aim of the study was to establish the impact of different conditions of work on employee productivity. Initially, Mayo examined the affect of changes in the factory environment such as lighting and humidity. He then went on to study the effect of changes in employment arrangements such as breaks, hours, and managerial leadership. Not only were the Hawthorne experiments the first large-scale studies of working people's conditions ever made; they also produced a range of remarkable results that changed the face of people management.

The Astonishing Results of the Relay Assembly Room Experiments

Although Elton Mayo and his team conducted the Hawthorne Experiments over a number of years, it is his work with 6 women workers in the relay assembly room that made his name. Throughout the series of experiments, one of Mayo's team sat with the girls as they worked, noting everything they did, keeping them up-to-date with the experiment, asking for clarification, and listening to their views. The experiment began