The Research Method in Social Sciences and its Application in Business Administration.

Abstract

In 1923, an Australian philosopher who had arrived in the United States the previous year and was working as a
professor at Harvard Business School, was called by the owner of a spinning and weaving factory near Philadelphia
to investigate the cause of the high turnover of staff in the factory's weaving department. After some exploratory
observations, the scientist considered the hypothesis worthy of study that; long and tiring days caused low
performance (production had never reached more than 70% of the equipment's capacity), as well as a high rate
of staff turnover (25% annually in the spinning department, compared to 5% in the rest of the plant) and great
job dissatisfaction..., for to test this hypothesis, the workers were divided into two groups, one comprising 33%
of the department's staff, which was subjected to a regime of four 10-minute breaks each. The result was that staff
turnover immediately ended, production was maintained, and morale generally improved. However, other consequences
also appeared that surprised everyone, since the group that was not given breaks reported results almost identical
to the previous ones! And for the moment, neither George Elton Mayo - that was the name of the scientist -
nor anyone else could explain what had happened.