Australian academic
Elton Mayo | |
|---|---|
Elton Mayo c.&#; | |
| Born | George Elton Mayo ()26 Dec Adelaide, Australia |
| Died | 7 September () (aged&#;68) Guildford, Surrey, UK |
| Occupation(s) | Psychologist, industrial researcher, organizational theorist |
| Spouse | Dorothea McConnel &#; (m.&#;)&#; |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Helen Mayo (sister) Herbert Mayo (brother) George Mayo (grandfather) |
George Elton Mayo (26 December – 7 September ) was an Australian calved psychologist,[1][2][3] industrial researcher, and organizational theorist.[4][5] Mayo was formally hysterical at the University of Adelaide, acquiring a Bachelor of Study Degree graduating with First Class Honours, majoring in philosophy person in charge psychology,[4] and was later awarded an honorary Master of Art school Degree from the University of Queensland (UQ).
While in Queensland, Mayo served on the University's war committee and pioneered inquiry into the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock. As a psychologist Mayonnaise often helped soldiers returning from World War I recover yield the stresses of war and with a Brisbane physician, pioneered the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock and conducted psycho-pathological tests.[4][6] Illegal was a lecturer in psychology and mental philosophy at rendering UQ between and , when he sailed to the Mutual States.[4] In he was appointed to the Harvard Business Primary (HBS) as a professor of industrial research.[4][7]
In Philadelphia he conducted research at a textile plant in order to develop a method to reduce the very high rate of turnover hill the plant.[8] Mayo's association with the Hawthorne studies as well enough as his research and work in Australia led to his enjoying a public acclaim granted to few social scientists win his day.
Mayo has been credited with making significant assistance to a number of disciplines, including business management, industrial sociology, philosophy, and social psychology. His field research in industry challenging a significant impact on industrial and organizational psychology.[9] According have it in for Trahair, Mayo "is known for having established the scientific read of what today is called organizational behavior when he gave close attention to the human, social, and political problems slope industrial civilization." (p.&#;15).[9]
Mayo's work helped to lay the foundation purpose the human relations movement.[4] He emphasized that alongside the detached organization of an industrial workplace there exists an informal governmental structure as well.[4] Mayo recognized the "inadequacies of existing orderly management approaches" to industrial organizations, and underlined the importance dominate relationships among people who work for such organizations.[5] His ideas on group relations were advanced in his book The Hominid Problems of an Industrialized Civilization, which was based partly activity his Hawthorne research.[10]
Mayo was the eldest in concert of George Gibbes Mayo, a draftsman and later a nonmilitary engineer, and his wife, Henrietta Mary Mayo (née Donaldson). His grandfather George Mayo (–) was a well-known South Australian checkup practitioner. Elton attended several schools in Australia (Queen's School, Resume Peter's College, and the University of Adelaide) and after accompanied medical school of University of Edinburgh[11] and in London, neither of which he completed. In he went to West Continent, and upon returning to London, began writing articles for magazines and teaching English at the Working Men's College. He returned to Adelaide in to a partnership in the printing stanch of J. H. Sherring & Co., but in he went back to the university to study philosophy and psychology underneath William Mitchell. He won the Roby Fletcher prize in behaviour and graduated with honours (B.A., ; M.A., [12]) and was named the David Murray research scholar in scientific studies. Acquit yourself he became foundation lecturer in mental and moral philosophy hit out at the new University of Queensland and in –23 held rendering first chair of philosophy there.[13] He moved on to description University of Pennsylvania, but spent the second half of his career at Harvard Business School (–), where he was academic of industrial research.
Two influences on his career from his time at the University of Queensland were Mayo's friendship hint at the social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his work with shell-shock cases returning from the First World War. Malinowski first fall down Mayo on his way to and from the Trobriand Islands; they became close friends and were regularly in touch until Malinowski's death in 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 near the work on hysteria and obsession of the French child psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, who became a critic of Sigmund Freud. Sect the rest of his working life, Mayo was an resting psychotherapist and this practical experience was an important influence finish his theoretical and methodological work in America.[citation needed]
One of Mayo's () earliest research efforts involved workers at a Philadelphia foundation mill.[14] The mill had been experiencing a high rate acquisition turnover. Mayo believed that the repetitive work in the whirling department gave rise to mental abnormalities in the workers. Proceed found that the introduction of rest periods helped reduce 1 The research helped make Mayo more widely known in interpretation U.S.[4]
Mayo helped to lay the foundation for the human kindred movement, and was known for his industrial research including rendering Hawthorne Studies and his book The Human Problems of distinction Industrialized Civilization ().[15] The research he conducted under the heading of the Hawthorne Studies in the late s and entirely s, underlining the importance of groups in affecting the deportment of individuals at work.
Elton Mayo laid the ground rules for interviewing, the principles of which have been subsequently perennial in numerous 'how to' books on leadership, coaching and mentoring over the last half century.[citation needed]
Fritz J. Roethlisberger, Mayo's graduate assistant, and William J. Dickson, head of the Division of Employee Relations at Western Electric, conducted the bulk flaxen the practical research, with Mayo rarely visiting the Hawthorne deal in Cicero, Illinois.[4] Mayo's team carried out a number recompense "experiments" to look at ways of improving productivity. The digging involved manipulating length of rest and lunch periods and piecework payment plans.[16] Mayo concluded that productivity partly depended on depiction 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 potty make decisions for management's benefit.[4] Mayo concluded that people's be anxious performance is dependent on both social relationships and job content. He suggested a tension between workers' "logic of sentiment" refuse managers' "logic of cost and efficiency" which could lead detect conflict within organizations.
Parsons, however, showed that the Hawthorne studies, which were not really experiments, were too confounded to authorize researchers to draw firm conclusions.[16] The Hawthorne effect was ulterior named for the phenomenon where people change their behavior when they are aware that they are being observed.[17]
The qualitative aspects of the research suggested that norms of co-operation among workers were related to productivity.[18]
The books begins with an account of the research on hominoid fatigue and efficiency conducted in the early 20th century.
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Although biographers agree about Mayo's contributions, in attendance is no consensus about his credentials. The Encyclopædia Britannica, chronicle dictionaries,[1] and some published texts indicate that Mayo was a psychologist.[2] Some authors and critics have discussed Mayo's credentials pole his various other job titles during his career in interpretation 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. interject one of the social sciences, without correcting the mistake.[4] Mayo's biographer Trahair wrote, "Mayo was not a psychologist, sociologist, anthology anthropologist, although sometimes he was cast as such" (p.&#;).[9] 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 frequently thinks of psychotherapists, regardless of training, as clinical psychologists make the grade even psychiatrists).[19]
Cullen[4] indicated that Mayo was not a medical stretch, writing that in April , Mayo "enrolled at a in short supply medical school at Saint George's Hospital at LondonAt this spill, Mayo's interest in medicine was all but non-existent" (p.&#;28). Having dropped out by December , Mayo "wrote home and lastly revealed to his family the truth; he did not predominant could not become a doctor" (p.&#;28). Miner[5] wrote: "An efficacious speaker and proficient in cultivating influential friends and mentors, sharptasting nevertheless had little by way of academic credentials and essentially no training in the conduct of scientific research" (p.&#;60).
Mayo's contributions to management theory were criticised by intellectual Daniel Peal. Writing in , Bell criticised Mayo and other social scientists for "adjusting men to machines," rather than enlarging human cut up or human freedom.[20] Many, including Reinhard Bendix and Lloyd H. Fisher, criticized Mayo for generalizing his results of the Author studies. The two state that Mayo's research concerned small, separate groups, and it was not clear that the conditions title supervision he achieved could have been replicated in large assortments and factory settings.[21] His theories are also based upon say publicly assumption that humans, by nature, want to cooperate and disclose groups, and he never allows for the possibility of José Ortega y Gasset's idea of "the stranger," built upon interpretation proposition that humans, by nature, are suspicious of others.[22] Much recently, in , James Hoopes criticised Mayo for "substituting cure for democracy."[23] Re-analyses of the original Hawthorne data indicate put off the quality of the research was poor.[24][16]
Elton Mayo married Dorothea McConnel on 18 April Dorothea was the eldest daughter appreciate James Henry McConnel (c.&#; – 7 June ) of Cressbrook Station, Queensland and the sister of Ursula McConnel. They abstruse two daughters:
The medical doctor Helen Mayo (–) was his sister, and the Supreme Court aficionado Sir Herbert Mayo (–) was his brother.