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At 09:21 AM 7/11/00 +0200, rebecca rachmany wrote:
>
>...I've heard of cases where factory output
>was increased just by hiring a guy to walk around with a stopwatch, standing
>next to workstations and looking at the watch (probably just an urban
>legend, but there is wisdom in the parable). ...
No, not urban legend; the stuff that basic management courses are
made of. This is the "Hawthorne Effect", so called because the study
was performed in Western Electric's Hawthorne IL plant in the late
1920s/early 1930s. The conclusion was that humans have a tendency to
improve their performance when they know it is being studied. A web
search on "Hawthorne effect" yields lots of interesting pages.
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BTW - several years ago there was another Susan Gallagher on this list
and people used to confuse us all the time. I lost track of her after
she moved to the mid-west. If anyone knows of her whereabouts, please
email me. I've just had a phonecall from someone looking for her.
Thanks!
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