In 1922, with the support of Rockefeller Foundation, Elton Mayo moved to the United States and taught at Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania. In the meantime, Elton Mayo once explained the behavior of industrial workers from a psychological point of view, thinking that there are multiple influencing factors, and no single factor can play a decisive role, which became the theoretical basis for his later classification of organizations as social systems. In 1923, Elton Mayo conducted an experimental study on the influence of workshop working conditions on workers' turnover rate and productivity in a textile factory near Philadelphia. In 1926, he entered the School of Business Administration of Harvard University, specializing in industrial research, and worked at Harvard University until his retirement.

Although Elton Mayo has engaged in different occupations, it is his contribution to Hawthorne's experiments that makes him famous all over the world. In the winter of 1927, Mayo was invited to participate in the Hawthorne experiment, which started in 1924 but encountered difficulties in the middle. From 1927 to 1936, two-stage experimental research lasted for nine years intermittently. On the basis of Hawthorne's experiments, Elton Mayo published two famous books, Human Issues of Industrial Civilization and Social Issues of Industrial Civilization, in 1933 and 1945 respectively. Hawthorne's experiment reveals that individuals in industrial production have social attributes, and productivity is closely related not only to material conditions, but also to workers' psychology, attitude and motivation, interpersonal relationships in groups and the relationship between leaders and led collectives. Hawthorne's experiment and Elton Mayo's analysis of Hawthorne's experimental results had a great and long-lasting influence on the development of western management theory, which made western management thoughts enter the stage of behavioral science management theory after experiencing the early management theory and classical management theory (including Taylor's scientific management theory, Fa Yueer's general management theory and Weber's bureaucratic organization theory).