Mayo And Marx's Concept Of Alienation In The Hawthorne Studies
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3-2 Written Question: Mayo
Sureily Francisco
Rutgers University
3-2 Written Question: Mayo In the Hawthorne studies, Mayo described the workers’ sense of void that occurred because of diminished workplace social relations. For him, continuous job and technological changes harmed organizational social dynamics that resulted in the individual void. Mayo’s statement on the sense of void can be compared to Marx’s concept of alienation because they are similar in their criticisms of the nature and effects of alienation on the workers' physical and mental states as well as their social conditions; nevertheless, they diverge on alienation’s causes and resolutions.
Mayo and Marx share similarities on the nature of the void. Marx asserted that objective alienation occurs as a product of the capitalist commodity production in which exchange relations divide production from consumption until the product develops a life of its own, separate from the labor producer. In other words, after capitalism has commodified labor into a factor of production, alienation happens (Ollman, 2018). Consequently, workers become…show more content… Mayo (1971) would agree with Marx that alienation can lead to physical, mental, and social consequences (Ollman, 2018). The physical consequences are over-fatigue and illnesses, while the mental effects are loss of creativity and anxiety. Mayo stressed that the void produces feelings of certainty and security, indicating impacts on worker morale and output. Both Mayo and Marx also noted that alienation can harm social relations as capitalistic scientific methods separate workers from each other, dividing them as individuals instead of uniting them as collective laborers (Ollman, 2018). Mayo and Marx worried over the widespread harmful effects of alienation on the workers’ general welfare, including their social