After nearly two years of observation, investigators claimed an increase in output of approximately 30% and confidently identified the one factor of substantial importance in accounting for this change as the provision of humane, caring supervision. Within the first twelve months of worker behavior observation, the researchers were “unexpectedly” and suddenly seized by the impelling insight that social satisfaction arising out of human relations in the workplace accounted for the largest part of work behavior (Carey 1967). The study at its outset intended to examine the effects on work output obtained from redesigning the work task, reducing boredom and fatigue with rest pauses or shorter work hours, revising the incentive pay system, and providing pleasant supervision to a selected group of female assembly employees. Hawthorne plant management was, naturally enough, deeply interested in ways to increase worker productivity. Hawthorne was the Chicago branch of AT&T’s Western Electric network of communications electronics manufacturing operations (Gillespie, 1993). Law and society thereby assured that an unhappy worker can be as unproductive as he or she chooses to be. If bosses wanted to continue to be tough, organized labor could be equally tough. This study gives a unique opportunity since this study investigates the Hawthorne effects in the Asian context for the first time.In the early 1930s at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant, esteemed scientists from a world-class university hinted that research on real workers performing real production tasks in a world-class business was on the threshold of confirming the truth of that message. For the supervisor-assessed performance, participation and physical conditions are the significant predictors. Findings suggest that physical conditions have no or weak impacts on self-assessed and client-evaluated work performance while human relations show positive effects. However, current discussion on the public-private distinction leads to an important research question: can lessons from the Hawthorne study apply to public organizations? The purpose of this study is to validate and expand the original Hawthorne studies and Jung and Lee (forthcoming) conducted in the public organizations by analyzing a large sample of Indonesian public officials.
Although the Hawthorne experiments were conducted in the private sector, scholars of public administration believe that the implication from the experiment can be applied to the public sector as well. The major implication is that employees’ relationship with supervisors as well as their peers, and their participation in decision-making process determine productivity. Since Hawthorne study deconstructed Taylor’s time and motion studies, scholars of organization studies have shifted their attentions to human relations in the workplaces. Hawthorne studies, human relations, participation, work environment, work requirement, subjective work performance, public-private distinction Abstract
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