George Elton Mayo (26 December 1880 – 7 September 1949) was an Australian born psychologist,[1][2][3] industrial researcher, and organizational theorist.

[8] Mayo's association with the Hawthorne studies as well as his research and work in Australia led to his enjoying a public acclaim granted to few social scientists of his day.

Mayo has been credited with making significant contributions to a number of disciplines, including business management, industrial sociology, philosophy, and social psychology.

[9] According to Trahair, Mayo "is known for having established the scientific study of what today is called organizational behavior when he gave close attention to the human, social, and political problems of industrial civilization."

[5] His ideas on group relations were advanced in his 1933 book The Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization, which was based partly on his Hawthorne research.

In 1903 he went to West Africa, and upon returning to London, began writing articles for magazines and teaching English at the Working Men's College.

He returned to Adelaide in 1905 to a partnership in the printing firm of J. H. Sherring & Co., but in 1907 he went back to the university to study philosophy and psychology under William Mitchell.

He won the Roby Fletcher prize in psychology and graduated with honours (B.A., 1910; M.A., 1926[12]) and was named the David Murray research scholar in scientific studies.

Two influences on his career from his time at the University of Queensland were Mayo's friendship with the social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his work with shell-shock cases returning from the First World War.

[15] The research he conducted under the rubric of the Hawthorne Studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, underlining the importance of groups in affecting the behaviour of individuals at work.

Elton Mayo laid the ground rules for interviewing, the principles of which have been subsequently repeated in numerous 'how to' books on leadership, coaching and mentoring over the last half century.

[9] Trahair also wrote that "after the great war Mayo's reputation grew as a successful academic, clinical psychologist and public speaker" (p. 89).

Miner[5] wrote: "An effective speaker and proficient in cultivating influential friends and mentors, he nevertheless had little by way of academic credentials and practically no training in the conduct of scientific research" (p. 60).