Elton Mayo

George Elton Mayo (26 December 1880 – 7 September 1949) was an Australian-born psychologist, industrial researcher, and organizational theorist. Mayo was formally trained at the University of Adelaide, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts Degree graduating with First Class Honours, majoring in philosophy and psychology, and was later awarded an honorary Master of Arts Degree from the University of Queensland (UQ).

While in Queensland, Mayo served on the University's war committee and pioneered research into the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock. As a psychologist Mayo often helped soldiers returning from World War I recover from the stresses of war and with a Brisbane physician, pioneered the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock and conducted psycho-pathological tests. He was a lecturer in psychology and mental philosophy at the UQ between 1911 and 1922, when he sailed to the United States. In 1926 he was appointed to the Harvard Business School (HBS) as a professor of industrial research.

In Philadelphia he conducted research at a textile plant in order to develop a method to reduce the very high rate of turnover in the plant. Mayo's association with the Hawthorne studies as well as his research and work in Australia led to his enjoying a public acclaim granted to few social scientists of his day.

Mayo has been credited with making significant contributions to a number of disciplines, including business management, industrial sociology, philosophy, and social psychology. His field research in industry had a significant impact on industrial and organizational psychology. According to Trahair, Mayo "is known for having established the scientific study of what today is called organizational behavior when he gave close attention to the human, social, and political problems of industrial civilization." (p. 15).

Mayo's work helped to lay the foundation for the human relations movement. He emphasized that alongside the formal organization of an industrial workplace there exists an informal organizational structure as well. Mayo recognized the "inadequacies of existing scientific management approaches" to industrial organizations, and underlined the importance of relationships among people who work for such organizations. His ideas on group relations were advanced in his 1933 book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization, which was based partly on his Hawthorne research.

Mayo was the eldest son of George Gibbes Mayo, a draftsman and later a civil engineer, and his wife, Henrietta Mary Mayo (née Donaldson). His grandfather George Mayo (1807–1894) was a well-known South Australian medical practitioner. Elton attended several schools in Australia (Queen's School, St Peter's College, and the University of Adelaide) and after 1901 attended medical school of University of Edinburgh and in London, neither of which he completed. In 1903 he went to West Africa, and upon returning to London, began writing articles for magazines and teaching English at the Working Men's College. He returned to Adelaide in 1905 to a partnership in the printing firm of J. H. Sherring & Co., but in 1907 he went back to the university to study philosophy and psychology under William Mitchell. He won the Roby Fletcher prize in psychology and graduated with honours (B.A., 1910; M.A., 1926) and was named the David Murray research scholar in scientific studies. In 1911 he became foundation lecturer in mental and moral philosophy at the new University of Queensland and in 1919–23 held the first chair of philosophy there. He moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, but spent the second half of his career at Harvard Business School (1926–1947), where he was professor of industrial research.

Two influences on his career from his time at the University of Queensland were Mayo's friendship with the social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his work with shell-shock cases returning from the First World War. Malinowski first met Mayo on his way to and from the Trobriand Islands; they became close friends and were regularly in touch until Malinowski's death in 1942. The work with shell-shock soldiers provided a focus for Mayo's interests in clinical psychology and developed his skills in psychotherapy. In this he was strongly influenced by the work on hysteria and obsession of the French psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, who became a critic of Sigmund Freud. For the rest of his working life, Mayo was an active psychotherapist and this practical experience was an important influence on his theoretical and methodological work in America.^{[citation needed]}

One of Mayo's (1924) earliest research efforts involved workers at a Philadelphia textile mill. The mill had been experiencing a high rate of turnover. Mayo believed that the repetitive work in the spinning department gave rise to mental abnormalities in the workers. He found that the introduction of rest periods helped reduce turnover. The research helped make Mayo more widely known in the U.S.