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Q J Med 2004; 97: 439-449
QJM vol. 97 no. 7 © Association of Physicians 2004; all rights reserved.

Commentary

The Hawthorne studies—a fable for our times?

E.A.M. Gale

From the Medical School Unit, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, UK

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

‘The consumer of knowledge can never know what a dicky thing knowledge is until he has tried to produce it’. F.J. Roethlisberger, investigator at Hawthorne


   Introduction
 
There is a familiar anecdote that relates, with variations, that experiments with improved factory lighting increased the productivity of workers. The outcome seemed clear until someone turned the lighting down to below baseline, whereupon output increased still further. The moral of this tale, referred to as the Hawthorne effect, is that people change their behaviour when they think you are watching it. The story relates to the first of many experiments performed at the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago from November 1924 onwards. The original aim was to test claims that brighter lighting increased productivity, but uncontrolled studies proved uninterpretable. The workers were therefore divided into matched control and test groups and, to the surprise of the investigators, productivity rose equally . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Men and machines
 

   Hawthorne
 

   The Hawthorne wars
 

   A fable for our times?
 

Address correspondence to Professor E.A.M. Gale, Diabetes and Metabolism, Medical School Unit, Southmead Hospital, Bristol BS10 5NB. e-mail: edwin.gale@bristol.ac.uk


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