This is the official account of the experiments carried out at the Hawthorne Works of the Eastern Electric Company in Chicago. These were divided into test room studies, interviewing studies and observational studies. The test room studies were experiments into what variables in a workplace environment might affect worker fatigue. The findings of these tests led to extensive interviewing on the attitudes of the workers. The final phase of the Hawthorne experiment focused on social factors, using techniques of cultural anthropology to observe small working groups. The results of these experiments profoundly influenced the Human Relations movement.

This monograph reviews the existing literature in operations management on worker productivity and outlines interesting and promising areas of future research. It looks at the individual worker as the atomic unit of analysis in order to examine the drivers that impact worker output.