Turn up the lights, and the workers work harder. Turn them down again, and they work harder still. The “Hawthorne Effect” is named after Western Electric's titanic Hawthorne Works in Cicero near Chicago, where a series of productivity trials was carried out between 1924 and 1932. Led by Elton Mayo, a professor at Harvard Business School, they are among the most famous experiments in social science. Not every social scientist is impressed.
提高照明强度,工人们会更加努力地工作。再次调低照明强度,工人们就更卖力工作了。“霍桑效应”(Hawthorne Effect)得名于芝加哥附近西塞罗市西方电气公司(Western Electric)的巨型“霍桑工厂”。1924至1932年间,在这里开展了一系列生产效率实验。实验由哈佛商学院(HBS)教授埃尔顿•梅奥(Elton Mayo)带头,是社会科学领域最著名的实验之一。但不是每个社会科学家都对它们印象深刻。