Elton Mayo: biography of this organizational psychologist

Elton Mayo (1880-1949) was a leading Australian researcher in industrial, work, and organizational psychology. He was especially known for Hawthorne's research, as well as for other important contributions to the social and industrial realm of business.

In this article we will a brief review of his life through a biography of Elton Mayo in summary format.

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Elton Mayo: who was he?

Elton Mayo (full name George Elton Mayo) (1880-1949) he was an industrial psychologist, as well as a sociologist and social theorist. He was born in Adelaide (Australia) on December 26, 1880, and died in Guilford (United Kingdom), on September 7, 1949, at the age of 68.

Elton Mayo left a great legacy through his important contributions to the field of organizational psychology and the field of human relations. His contributions were widely recognized within the industrial sociology of the United States, during the first half of the 20th century.

Featured contributions

As an initial introduction, and as we have already mentioned, Elton Mayo's theoretical contributions focused on the field of work and organizational psychology. He was very interested in studying how the physical conditions of work could influence production and performance. of the workers, in addition to the psychological effects they produced.

One of his outstanding conclusions was the fact that, if workers do not feel respected and listened to by their superiors, their cooperation and collaboration in projects diminishes. This, logically, affects the objectives, which are hardly met.

On the other hand, Elton Mayo dedicated himself to investigating the most human part of companies and workers, and therefore he investigated different American factories. His goal was to understand how human relationships influenced the productivity of workers and, by extension, companies.

As a result of all this knowledge from his research, Mayo developed a series of theories that made reference to this type of relationship in companies.

In relation to the latter, Elton Mayo highlighted the importance of meeting the emotional needs of workers, in order to increase not only their mental well-being, but also their productivity in the workplace. business. One of Mayo's central ideas was that satisfactory working relationships were a greater source of motivation than financial incentives (the salary) at the time of work.

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Biography: the life of Elton Mayo

As for the origins of him, Elton Mayo was born on December 26, 1880, into a wealthy Australian family and reputable. His parents were Henrietta Mary Mayo (1852-1930) and George Gibbes Mayo (1845-1921), who was a civil engineer.

He had six brothers, and he was the second of them. Two of his brothers also stood out at that time for their profession; Helen Mayo (1878-1967), Doctor of Medicine, and Herbert Mayo (1885-1972), Justice of the Supreme Court.

Mayo's grandparents were George Mayo (1807-1894), another prestigious doctor like his sister, and William Light (1786-1839), who was a colonel in the British Army.

Personal life

Regarding his personal life, Elton Mayo married Dorothea McConell, an Arts student who traveled frequently to Europe, and with whom he had two daughters: Patricia and Ruth. Their wedding took place on April 18, 1913 in Brisbane (Australia).

Trajectory

As for Elton Mayo's life trajectory, we can divide it into two main blocks: his studies and his professional trajectory.

Studies

Elton Mayo studied Philosophy at the University of Adelaide (Australia). Later, started working as a professor at the University of Queensland (Australia).

Career path

Years later, in 1923, Mayo moved to the University of Pennsylvania (United States) to do research in different companies in the textile sector, where He began to study the sociology of organizations, as well as to investigate the importance of the work environment in companies.

Three years later, in 1926, the beginning of the most important investigation of May would arrive. It was when he started working at Harvard Business School. This investigation, which began in 1927, was called the "Hawthorne investigation," and lasted five years. Later in this article, we will talk about this research.

After all this, and after the end of World War II, Elton Mayo moved to England, where at that time his daughters and his wife lived. In England, May was helping British industry in its post-war recovery. He remained there until his death, on September 7, 1949.

In between these years, it should be noted that Elton Mayo was helping the soldiers of the First World War, offering them psychotherapeutic treatment. As we can see, Mayo was very interested in studying the relationship between society and individual problems.

Hawthorne Research

Elton Mayo's best-known investigation began in 1927. It consisted of a pioneering socio-economic experiment in the field of industrial research. The name of this investigation comes from the Hawthorne electric company where it was carried out.

But what did this experiment consist of? The company's workers were subjected to a series of modifications in their working conditions: hours, breaks, wages, lighting conditions and degrees of supervision. The goal of these changes was to observe and determine which conditions were the most favorable for increasing worker productivity.

The initial hypothesis was the following: economic incentives (such as salary) would increase the efficiency of employees (that is, their productivity). But this hypothesis was not confirmed, and the results of the research were surprising: what increased productivity was the “extra” attention paid to workers.

The results of Hawthorne's research were published years later, in 1939, by the research partners of the project: F.J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, in the book entitled Management and the Worker.

Some relevant research conclusions

Beyond the mentioned results, multiple conclusions were obtained through the aforementioned experiment. Some of them were the following:

On the one hand, production depends on several variables: the physical or physiological capacity of the worker (how the classical theory of organizations establishes), social norms and expectations.

On the other hand, in relation to the behavior of the workers, it relied on the group; namely, the workers did not act in isolation, but in relation to the group. In addition, workers who had a production much higher or lower than expected, lost the respect, and even the affection, of their other colleagues.

Finally, another of the salient conclusions of the Hawthorne experiment was that the workers, when they feel valued, motivated and satisfied with their work and have positive informal relationships with other colleagues, they are more productive.

Bibliographic references:

• Bendix, R. & Fisher, L.H. (2017). The Perspectives of Elton Mayo. The Anthropology of Organizations.
• Bourke, H. (1086). May, George Elton (1880-1949). Australian Dictionary of Biography, 10 (MUP).
• Harvard Business School. (2007). The Human Relations Movement: Harvard Business School and the Hawthorne Experiments, 1924-1933. Baker Library Historical Collections.