Deck 13: The Hawthorne Studies

Question 1

The original study at Hawthorne by researchers from MIT investigated the relation between productivity and group isolates.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

The relay-assembly studies found that output increased regardless of the supervisory style of the observer-experimenter.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Elton Mayo believed that workers' problems could not be explained by any one factor but in what he called "the psychology of the total situation."

Answer 3

True

Question 4

According to the Hawthorne researchers, the technical aspect of needs for efficiency and economic return should be addressed separately from the human aspect of an organization.

Question 5

The human-relations advocates felt that in the past there had been too much stress placed on a manager's technical skills.

Question 6

According to the Hawthorne researchers, improvements in efficiency and morale were felt to be due to improved social or human conditions rather than improved physical working conditions.

Question 7

The opportunity to "let off steam"
made the Western Electric Workers feel better about their situation even though it had not changed.

Question 8

Mayo concluded that managerial authority should be based on technical skills or expertise rather than cooperation and social skills.

Question 9

Mayo sought the same goals as Taylor; that is, collaboration and cooperation.

Question 10

In Mayo's view, workers had been unable to find satisfactory outlets for expressing personal problems and dissatisfactions in their life, and this led to "pessimistic reveries."

Question 11

Mayo used the idea of anomie to demonstrate the need for workers to form groups and develop norms.

Question 12

The human relations leadership role was to be one of openness, concern, and willingness to listen to how people felt.

Question 13

The manifest level of communication involves the psychological form of a complaint.

Question 14

The outcome of the interviewing program at Hawthorne was supervisory training in the need to listen and understand the personal problems of workers.

Question 15

The bank wiring room study at Western Electric concerned informal group behavior.

Question 16

Despite earlier research into group pressures, the researchers at Hawthorne were surprised to find that social groups could exert strong control.

Question 17

In interpreting the early relay assembly group experiments at the Hawthorne plant, Clair Turner felt that the increased productivity was due to:

A) the cohesive small group of workers
B) increased earnings
C) the style of supervision
D) all of the above
E) only and above

Question 18

Researchers at Western Electric found that cliques performed these functions for workers:

A) protected them from internal indiscretions of members such as rate busting and chiseling.
B) protected them from outside interference of management officials
C) protected them from job layoffs when the Depression began
D) all of the above
E) only A and B

Question 19

From the Hawthorne researchers' viewpoint, worker preoccupation with personal concerns inhibited their performance, a conclusion that Mayo had called_______ in his early research.

A) manifest complaints
B) latent complaints
C) cathartic crises
D) pessimistic reveries
E) none of the above

Question 20

The Hawthorne researchers concluded there were two levels of complaints:

A) important and unimportant
B) latent and psychological
C) personal and formal
D) pessimistic and optimistic
E) manifest and latent

Question 21

Concerning the "bank wiring room" studies, the Hawthorne researchers concluded that:

A) restriction of output was deliberate
B) output was set by the group, regardless of management's expectations
C) workers smoothed out production reports
D) the group had methods to enforce discipline
E) all of the above

Question 22

Involved a rather firm blow upon the upper arm of the object of disfavor and was used to enforce all violations of group norms.

A) busting
B) chiseling
C) binging
D) bogeying
E) none of the above

Question 23

According to Mayo, the human problem of industry was that managers thought that the answers to industrial problems resided in_______ when in fact the answers were in_______ .

A) social inefficiency; technical knowledge
B) economic efficiency; engineering
C) technical efficiency; social and human factors
D) human inefficiency; economic efficiency
E) none of the above

Question 24

Mayo concluded that authority should be based on_______.

A) technical skills
B) expertise
C) autocratic skills
D) social skills
E) none of the above

Question 25

Identify three findings from the Hawthorne studies that you could use as a manager. Explain the importance of each to contemporary management practice.

Question 26

Do today's employees restrict output? If so, how would you try to manage this behavior?

Question 27

What can managers learn from the results of the interviewing program initiated by Elton Mayo?
Chapter 14
The Search for
Organizational Integration