Chapter 15Leadership
One of the earliest industrial-organizational (I/O) field studies on leadership occurred at Western Electric in the 1920s and 30s. In a study initially designed to explore the effect of lighting on employee productivity, researchers inadvertently discovered the Hawthorne effect. This refers to the phenomenon where individuals modify their behavior simply in response to being observed or studied. Lighting and other environmental conditions were less important than the awareness of being observed had on the employees’ levels of output. This revelation highlighted the importance of considering social and psychological factors in understanding human behavior in organizational settings. It also gave leaders a choice: they ...
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