At the start of the 20th century, companies were increasingly using scientific approaches to improve worker productivity. What were the best techniques for work on an assembly line? Could better ...

In the 1920s researchers descended on the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois. Their mission was to look at how environmental conditions such as lighting levels made workers ...

The Hawthorne effect was originally defined in an industrial setting: The Hawthorne Works Plant was studied by researchers at Harvard University who were trying to determine the relationship between ...

Claudia Hammond presents a series looking at the development of the science of psychology during the 20th century. In the 1920s, at the enormous Western Electric Hawthorne Factory in Cicero outside ...