ABSTRACT
The character and contributions of Elton Mayo are reconstructed from the impressions he left with the people who were closest to him at work and in family life. Mayo was always in good health and anxious to stay that way. His great fear was appendicitis. Difficulties in the Mayos’ marriage were obvious, but the ways in which they were managed were hidden. Alone in Cambridge, Mayo gave his colleagues the impression that he was a man of the world or, as Lawrence J. Henderson put it, “a man of affairs.” His associates in the Business School deemed Mayo an influential adviser to both Henderson and Wallace Brett Donham. In the Business School Mayo’s formal position was professor and head of the Department of Industrial Research. Research was the leading task in Mayo’s department. In the field he applied the principle of functional penetration by level.
