Elton Mayo was the first person born in Australia to make a real impact on world thinking about management. Elton was born on December 26, 1880, in Adelaide, Australia. His father was George Gibbes Mayo, who was educated at Adelaide and subsequently qualified as an engineer at the University of Glasgow. His mother, Henrietta Mary Donaldson, was born in Lindisfarna, in the North of England. Elton was the second of seven children.

Since the beginning of this century, democratic sentiment has tended to thrust the study of heredity into the background. But the proposition that all persons are born free and equal surely means equal in the right to opportunity. To maintain that it means equal in intelligence or in inclination towards and ability for certain feelings and callings, is to allow a …