For Immediate Release: September 26, 2007

Contacts:	Kerry Parke, kparke@hbs.edu, (617) 495-6931

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL CHRONICLES FOUNDING OF HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT

Historical Collection Exhibit Looks at Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Experiments

Airplane View of Hawthorne Works, ca. 1925 Western Electric Company photograph album

BOSTON - Harvard Business School has opened the first in a series of exhibits marking the School's upcoming centennial. Open to the public through January 17th, 2008, The Human Relations Movement: Harvard Business School and the Hawthorne Experiments, 1924-1933, examines the research of Australian-born psychologist and HBS Professor of Industrial Management Elton Mayo - a body of work that launched the field of human relations, establishing the importance and influence of work groups in affecting the behavior of individuals in the business environment.

Machine Switching Cable Forming Department, ca. 1925 Western Electric Company photograph album

Mayo and his Harvard Business School colleagues - including his protégé Fritz J. Roethlisberger - led the landmark study of worker behavior at Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T. Unprecedented in scale and scope, the nine-year study took place at the massive Hawthorne Works plant in Cicero, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The study helped shape Mayo's theory that proper supervision and informal social relationships among workers were key to productivity and job satisfaction.

Harvard Business School's role in the research, which became known as the Hawthorne Experiments, represented a milestone in the dawn of the human relations movement and a shift in the study of management from a scientific to a multi disciplinary approach.

Elton Mayo, ca. 1940-1947 HBS Archives Photograph Collection

"Not only did the Hawthorne Experiments change the study of management forever by introducing a humanist dynamic at a time when the field was dominated by mechanistic principles," said Mary Lee Kennedy, executive director of Harvard Business School's Knowledge and Library Services group, "but Professor Mayo's work also helped establish field-based empirical research as the primary research methodology at HBS."

The Hawthorne Experiments generated a mountain of documents - from hourly performance charts to interviews with thousands of employees - that are part of the Western Electric Collection donated to the School in 1977 by the Western Electric Company.

Fritz Roethlisberger, ca. 1960 HBS Archives Photograph Collection

The exhibit and accompanying Web site (http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne) feature a wide array of graphs, charts, interviews, correspondence, photographs, and publications from the HBS Historical Collections including the Western Electric Hawthorne Studies Collection and the papers of Mayo, Roethlisberger, and other HBS scholars.

"With their fundamental observation about the role of the social group in worker behavior, it is hard to overstate the impact of the Hawthorne Experiments," said David A. Thomas, the School's Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration. "In giving rise to the field of organizational behavior, they shaped and continue to influence how we conceive and study basic aspects of business, such as leadership, incentives, and the design of work motivation. Without these experiments, business school curricula and research would have evolved quite differently."

Front View of Relay Assembly Test Room, ca. 1930 Western Electric Hawthorne Studies Collection

The Knowledge and Library Services group will host gallery talks about the exhibit with guest curator and photo historian Melissa Banta in the North Lobby of Baker Library at 4 p.m. on October 18th, November 8th, and December 6th. These events are open to the public. For a map of the HBS campus, visit http://www.hbs.edu/about/visit.html.

As Harvard Business School prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1908, the Historical Collections' Centennial Series of exhibits is designed to focus key events in the history of the School. Drawing on the archival resources of the Collections as well as the knowledge and expertise of faculty and staff, these exhibits will explore the past to better understand the present and provide perspective on the School's next century.

Rear View of Relay Assembly Test Room, ca. 1930 Western Electric Hawthorne Studies Collection

A gift from the de Gaspé Beaubien Family Foundation supports the activities, projects, and programs of the HBS Historical Collections, which include all HBS archival materials and serve as one of the most extensive business history resources for scholars, researchers, students, and other interested audiences from around the world. It also comprises the Kress Collection of Business and Economics, widely recognized as one of the world's premier rare book collections; the Business Manuscript Collection, with approximately 1,400 sets of original business manuscripts from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries; and a collection of original company documents and reports dating from the early 1800s to the present.

About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.