George Elton Mayo (26 December 1880 – 7 September 1949) was an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

born psychologist, industrial researcher, and

organizational theorist Organizational theory refers to the set of interrelated concepts that involve the sociological study of the structures and operations of formal social organizations. Organizational theory also attempts to explain how interrelated units of organiz ...

.Cullen, David O'Donald. ''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.Miner, J.B. (2006). ''Organizational behavior, Vol. 3: Historical origins, theoretical foundations, and the future''. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe. Mayo was formally trained at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...

, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts Degree graduating with First Class Honours, majoring in philosophy and psychology, and was later awarded an honorary Master of Arts Degree from the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

(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 PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

treatment of

shell-shock Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a reac ...

and conducted psycho-pathological tests. He was a lecturer in psychology and mental philosophy at the UQ between 1911 and 1922, when he sailed to the United States. In 1926 he was appointed to the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

(HBS) as a professor of industrial research. 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. Mayo's association with the

Hawthorne studies The Hawthorne effect is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorne Western Electric ...

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 Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of managemen ...

industrial sociology Industrial sociology, until recently a crucial research area within the field of sociology of work, examines "the direction and implications of trends in technological change, globalization, labour markets, work organization, managerial practi ...

, philosophy, and

social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...

. His field research in industry had a significant impact on

industrial and organizational psychology Industrial and organizational psychology (I-O psychology), an applied discipline within psychology, is the science of human behavior in the workplace. Depending on the country or region of the world, I-O psychology is also known as occupational ...

.Trahair, R. C. S. (1984). ''Elton Mayo: The humanist temper''. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction 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). Mayo's work helped to lay the foundation for the human relations movement. He emphasized that alongside the formal organization of an industrial workplace there exists an informal organizational structure as well. 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. 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.

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 Mayo (née Donaldson). His grandfather

George Mayo George Mayo (8 January 1807 – 16 December 1894) was a medical practitioner in the colony of South Australia. Dr. Mayo was born in England the fourth son of Rev. Joseph Mayo, M.A., of Ozleworth Church, Gloucestershire. He studied medicine at ...

(1807–1894) was a well-known South Australian medical practitioner. Elton attended several schools in Australia ( Queen's School, St Peter's College, and the

) and after 1901 attended medical school of

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

and in 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 Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

under

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. He won the Roby Fletcher prize in psychology and graduated with honours (B.A., 1910; M.A., 1926) and was named the David Murray research scholar in

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

studies. In 1911 he became foundation lecturer in mental and moral philosophy at the new

and in 1919–23 held the first chair of philosophy there. He moved on to the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, but spent the second half of his career at

(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 Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...

and developed his skills in psychotherapy. In this he was strongly influenced by the work on hysteria and obsession of the French

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

, Pierre Janet, who became a critic of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

. For the rest of his working life, Mayo was an active

psychotherapist Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...

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. 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. Mayo helped to lay the foundation for the human relations movement, and was known for his industrial research including the

Hawthorne Studies The Hawthorne effect is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorne Western Electric ...

and his book ''The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization'' (1933). 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. 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.

Hawthorne studies

Fritz J. Roethlisberger Fritz Jules Roethlisberger (October 29, 1898- May 17, 1974) was a social scientist, management theorist at the Harvard Business School. Mayo's team carried out a number of "experiments" to look at ways of improving

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

. The research involved manipulating length of rest and lunch periods and piecework payment plans.Parsons, H.M. (1974). What happened at Hawthorne? ''Science, 183''(4128), 922–932. doi: 10.1126/science.183.4128.922 Mayo concluded that productivity partly depended on the informal social patterns of interaction in the work group. 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. 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. Parsons, however, showed that the Hawthorne studies, which were not really experiments, were too confounded to enable researchers to draw firm conclusions. The qualitative aspects of the research suggested that norms of co-operation among workers were related to productivity.

''The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization''

The books begins with an account of the research on human fatigue and efficiency conducted in the early 20th century.

Mayo's credentials

Although biographers agree about Mayo's contributions, there is no consensus about his credentials. The ''

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'',

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

dictionaries, and some published texts indicate that Mayo was a psychologist. Some authors and critics have discussed Mayo's credentials and his various other job titles during his career in the United States. Cullen does not mention that Mayo was a psychologist although Cullen noted that Mayo let interlocutors call him "Dr. Mayo," letting himself be cast as a Ph.D. in one of the social sciences, without correcting the mistake. Mayo's biographer Trahair wrote, "Mayo was not a psychologist, sociologist, or anthropologist, although sometimes he was cast as such" (p. 357). 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). Cullen indicated that Mayo was not a medical doctor, writing that in April 1903, Mayo "enrolled at a small medical school at Saint George's Hospital at London....At this point, Mayo's interest in medicine was all but non-existent" (p. 28). Having dropped out by December 1903, Mayo "wrote home and finally revealed to his family the truth; he did not and could not become a doctor" (p. 28). Miner 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" (p. 60).

Criticisms

Mayo's contributions to management theory were criticised by intellectual

Daniel Bell Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor at Harvard University, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He has been described as "one of the leading A ...

. Writing in 1947, Bell criticised Mayo and other social scientists for "adjusting men to machines," rather than enlarging human capacity or human freedom. Many, including

Reinhard Bendix Reinhard Bendix (February 25, 1916 – February 28, 1991) was a German-American sociologist. Life and career Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1916, he briefly belonged to Neu Beginnen and Hashomer Hatzair, groups that resisted the Nazis. In 1938 ...

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. 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 José Ortega y Gasset (; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

's idea of "the stranger," built upon the proposition that humans, by nature, are suspicious of others. More recently, in 2003, James Hoopes criticised Mayo for "substituting therapy for democracy." Re-analyses of the original Hawthorne data indicate that the quality of the research was poor.Levitt, S.D., & List, J.A. (2011). Was there really a Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant? An analysis of the original illumination experiments. ''American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3'', 224–238. doi:10.1257/app.3.1.224

Family

Elton Mayo married Dorothea McConnel on 18 April 1913. Dorothea was the eldest daughter of James Henry McConnel (c. 1850 – 7 June 1914) of Cressbrook Station, Queensland and the sister of

Ursula McConnel Ursula Hope McConnel (1888–1957) was a Queensland anthropologist and ethnographer best remembered for her work with, and the records she made of, the Wik Mungkan people of Cape York Peninsula. First trained at University College London, t ...

. They had two daughters: *Patricia Elton Mayo married Dunstan Curtis. She was a sociologist, author of ''The Making of a Criminal'' (1970) and ''Roots of Identity'' *Gael Elton Mayo, better known as Ruth Elton Mayo (1923–1992), British artist and novelist. The medical doctor

Helen Mayo Helen Mary Mayo, (1 October 1878 – 13 November 1967) was an Australian medical doctor and medical educator, born and raised in Adelaide. In 1896, she enrolled at the University of Adelaide, where she studied medicine. After graduating, May ...

(1878–1967) was his sister, and the Supreme Court judge Sir Herbert Mayo (1885–1972) was his brother.

Publications

*George Elton Mayo: ''Psychology of Pierre Janet'', London: Greenwood Press, 1972; Routledge, reprint edition 2013. *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 John Cunningham Wood (born 1952) is an Australian economist, author, and the Chief Executive Officer of the University Division at Navitas, known as series editor of the "Critical Assessment of Leading Economists" series of Taylor & Francis. Biog ...

, 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.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayo, Elton Australian business theorists Australian emigrants to the United States Alumni of the University of Edinburgh University of Edinburgh Medical School alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty Harvard Business School faculty 1880 births 1949 deaths Public administration scholars University of Queensland faculty People from Adelaide