Elton Mayo

Elton Mayo (1880 to 1949) was an Australian-born psychologist, industrial researcher and organizational theorist. Trained in philosophy and psychology at the University of Adelaide, he lectured at the University of Queensland, where he pioneered the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shock among soldiers returning from the First World War, and in 1922 he sailed to the United States. From 1926 to 1947 he was professor of industrial research at Harvard Business School. His association with the Hawthorne studies helped lay the foundation of the human relations movement, which stressed that an informal organization exists alongside the formal one in an industrial workplace, and his 1933 book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization set out his ideas on group relations. Writers credit him with contributions to business management, industrial sociology and social psychology.