I just found a link to a great historic collection at the HBS Baker library: They have created an online exhibition on Hawthorne’s experiments with pictures, historical information, essays, papers and links.
Together with Roethlisberger back in the 1920s Hawthorne conducted a study on work behavior at Western Electric.
I like the way they have motivated why they thought that interviews were the way to go:
I think interviewing is a good idea. It helps some people get a lot of things off their chest.
The “Hawthorne effect” generally refers to the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being observed.
