Harwood research refers to research in organizational psychology that took place at Harwood Manufacturing, a Virginia-based textiles manufacturer, over the course of four decades in the early to mid-Twentieth Century.
History
Harwood Manufacturing is a family textile company which became the site for a number of experiments in the behavioral sciences and workplace innovation, beginning in the late 1930s and extending over the next four decades. Shortly after Harwood Manufacturing had moved its operations from New England to Virginia the newly opened factory started to experience difficulties with recruiting skilled workers. As a result of the moving the company had to train 300 inexperienced people from the Virginia mountains- to meet the high production standards of the industrialized areas of the North America.
Despite the fact that inexperienced trainees (who were mainly woman) were eager to work, on the job their pace was slow, their output was too low and the turnover was enormously high. After twelve weeks of training, the new employees produced only half as much as apprentices who were doing similar task in Northern US factories. Constant changes in methods and jobs, which were considered necessary in order to beat a highly intense competition, were frequently resulting in low productivity, aggressive behavior towards management, a drop in output and absenteeism. In 1939 Kurt Lewin was invited by Alfred Marrow, the managing director of the factory, to discuss significant problems of labor with the staff of the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation. The Harwood study is considered the first experiment of group decision making and self-management in industry and the first example of applied organizational psychology. The Harwood Experiment was part of Lewin's continuing exploration of participatory action research.
The Harwood studies can be divided into three time frames: the Lewin years, 1939 to 1947; the post-Lewin years, 1947 to 1962; and the Weldon years (after Harwood took over the Weldon Manufacturing Corporation), 1962 onward. By the opinion of Alfred Marrow, the owner of the factory and the later biographer of Kurt Lewin, the key experiments that were done on the factory were concerning group behavior, self-management, leadership training, changing stereotypes and overcoming resistance to change.
Harwood experiments
Introduction
The very first problem Kurt Lewin was trying to solve was employee turnover. The factory saw the core problem in employees’ lack of experience, however Kurt Lewin argued that the constant pressure and the way workers were treated could be a more important reason for people quitting their jobs. Lewin came up with several possible solutions to such a problem. The main idea was to draw supervisors’ attention to the way they treat their subordinates — to exclude the pressure and instead to find a way to make them believe that all the standards and goals are achievable. Also he highlighted that it is essential to deal with workers as members of small groups rather than as individuals. These changes began to bring about improvements in terms of employee retention, but there were still many other issues the plant needed to deal with. Lewin suggested that the company should employ its own full-time psychologist and start its own program of research.
Throughout the period of 1939–1962 years several psychologists were assisting Lewin or, after his death, conducting their own experiments. The first psychologist who was employed by the factory was Alex Bavelas. When he returned to his studies, he was replaced by John R. P. French Jr. who was later joined by Lester Coch. The study began with Bavelas who was asked to plan and carry out a series of group experiments on human factors in factory management within the domain of action research in industry.
Group decision
The first experiment aimed to analyze the effect of giving workers a chance to take part in setting their own goals and control their output. Bavelas selected a group of the productive factory workers with whom he met several times a week. Those meetings were informal 30-minute gatherings where each group member was encouraged to discuss the difficulties he or she might encounter if the group wanted to increase its daily production. All together they were discussing each operator’s working method and analyzing advantages and disadvantages of such approach. In so doing, it became clear that workers often use different methods while doing the same task. They also identified changes that the company’s management would need to make to improve productivity. Management agreed to help carry through the changes that were recommended.