ABSTRACT
Many people have read about the Hawthorne experiments on illumination (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939; Snow, 1927). The investigators set out to understand the effects of lighting on the performance of workers assembling electrical products. They pre-selected a set of employees to participate in the tests and moved their work area to a specially prepared space, where they worked under a variety of lighting conditions. The results surprised everyone: regardless of the direction of the lighting change (even when lighting levels dropped), the work output of the employees increased. Even when the investigators gave the appearance of having changed the lighting, but had in fact simply taken out and replaced the same lamps, performance increased.
