SOCIOL 2V06 Study Guide - Cash Register, Hawthorne Effect, Piece Work

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCIOL 2V06
• Professor: Tu Budros

Document Summary

Found that if you turned the lighting up, productivity went up also. Light was made brighter and brighter, productivity kept increasing. Turn the lights down, productivity still went up. Turned the lights down again, but productivity just kept increasing. Productivity only decreased when lights were so low that the workers just couldn"t see what they were doing. Came to the finding that workers have social and psychological needs. Workers are human beings, they like being around other people. Typically there is not much interaction with the workers in this case, but when hawthorne came in and experimenters were paying attention to them and interacting with them, that is what ultimately increased productivity. Managers in this department had no idea how much workers can produce in a given day. He found out that they were only producing half as much as they could in a day. They were also being paid through piece work.