VALIDATING AND EXPANDING THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES: EVIDENCE FROM INDONESIAN PUBLIC EMPLOYEES
ABSTRACT: Since Hawthorne
study deconstructed Taylor’s time and motion studies, scholars of organization
studies have shifted their attentions to human relations in the workplaces. The
major implication is that employees’ relationship with supervisors as well as their
peers, and their participation in decision-making process determine
productivity. Although the Hawthorne experiments were conducted in the private
sector, scholars of public administration believe that the implication from the
experiment can be applied to the public sector as well. However, current
discussion on the public-private distinction leads to an important research
question: can lessons from the Hawthorne study apply to public organizations?
The purpose of this study is to validate and expand the original Hawthorne
studies and Jung and Lee (forthcoming) conducted in the public organizations by
analyzing a large sample of Indonesian public officials. Findings suggest that
physical conditions have no or weak impacts on self-assessed and client-evaluated
work performance while human relations show positive effects. For the
supervisor-assessed performance, participation and physical conditions are the
significant predictors. This study gives a unique opportunity since this study
investigates the Hawthorne effects in the Asian context for the first time.
KEYWORDS: hawthorne studies,
human relations, participation, work environment, work requirement, subjective
work performance, public-private distinction
Penulis: I Gede Agus Ariutama
Kode Jurnal: jpmanajemendd151559
