Hawthorne Effect and Micro Management

The Hawthorne effect refers to people’s tendency to work harder and perform better when they are part of a study or an experiment. Individuals tend to change their behavior due to the attention they are receiving from researchers, especially in the context of a work environment, and so they tend to increase their productivity. The original thesis, based on experiments conducted in the 1920s and 30s, was that this effect was due to workers being observed and monitored, and of course, when business got their hands on this nugget, completely out of context I might add, they used it to justify micro-management. As an aside and totally unrelated, micromanagement is the worst kind of management, if you are managing a team, don’t micromanage them, it’s a hideous management style. Anyway, subsequent research indicated that there may be other factors at play, such as the novelty effect. Meaning that the novelty of having experimenters around can lead to an initial increase in productivity which then later gradually peters off again. Another contributing factor could be the sense of expectation on the part of the researchers influencing the subjects to alter their behavior in order to help confirm the experimenter’s hypothesis. Various different studies have shown, though, that the Hawthorne effect wears off after a time, even if the experiment and attention from observers still continues. The observation loses its novelty factor and so you get a return to equilibrium so to speak. This of course means that researchers who strive for scientific findings, go to great lengths totry and minimize the impact the Hawthorne Effect might have upon their research. But even still, the true impact of the Hawthorne effect remains somewhat of a mystery that continues to baffle psychologists. It’s called the Hawthorne effect because it was discovered during a research project at the Hawthorne Western Electric plant outside Chicago