ABSTRACT
In February 1923 George Elton Mayo resigned, and feared that by doing so his character would be so blackened in Brisbane that stories would cross the Pacific and hold up his attempts to become established. Mayo argued that in industry the irrationalities and their consequences should be studied to determine the degree that social and industrial organization had contributed to them. Industrial research, personal contacts, public addresses, lectures and informal talks, clinical cases, and publications would contribute to Mayo’s remarkably quick, sure and authoritative rise to prominence in American academic life. Mayo was employed briefly by the Philadelphia Textile Employers’ Association to study crime among workers, and the effect of Italian and Polish communities on American workers. Mayo began to apply the new medical psychology to factory work. Several companies asked Mayo to reduce labor turnover, and in both he struck difficult personality problems among managers.
