The Hawthorne Studies: A Radical Criticism

These observations suggest that individual work might decrease after the prize and that collaboration might be substituted in its place as a means of coping with diminishing time for work. Using the percent of singleauthored papers to gauge the extent of individual work, we find that, for the laureates as a whole, it remains much the same (38 vs. 40 percent). Increases are confined to men who received the prize after they were fifty and are not significantly greater than would be expected simply as a result of aging. In summary, the Nobel prize-with its psychological and social consequences for the men who receive it-is associated with a variety of changes in work patterns. In the period directly after the prize, the productivity of laureates declines more than the productivity of rank-and-file scientists of the same age, but the social demands of the prize are more disruptive for the laureates who experienced comparatively large increments in standing than for those who were already members of the scientific elite. Changes in collaborative relationships also follow the award; prize-winning collaborations terminate sooner, on the average, when only one co-worker has been given the award than when the award is shared by several men. Laureates find new collaborators-as a group, they are not more apt to turn to individual work after the prize. These changes, neither anticipated nor intended by the Nobel Foundation, testify to the multiplicity of consequences of the most prestigious of all awards in science.