The eldest son of a large family, Mayo initially followed family tradition and studied medicine. After two years at Adelaide University he moved overseas, continuing his studies at Edinburgh University and St. George's Hospital, London. However, Mayo did not enjoy medicine and abandoned university in 1903. He then worked as a labourer in West Africa for a few months before returning to London where he lectured at a workmen's college and wrote for magazines. Mayo returned to Adelaide in 1905 where he took up a partnership in the printing firm JH Sherring & Co.

In 1907, encouraged by William Mitchell, professor of English language and literature and mental and moral philosophy, Mayo returned to Adelaide University. He studied psychology and philosophy with Mitchell. He won the Roby Fletcher prize in psychology, graduated with honours and was named the Murray Research Scholar in 1910. The following year Mayo was appointed as mental and moral philosophy lecturer at the University of Queensland. From 1919 to 1923 he was the university's first chair of philosophy.

During the First World War Mayo collaborated with physician Dr TH Mathewson on pioneering work regarding the psychoanalytic treatment of shell-shocked soldiers. In 1919 Mayo's first book, Democracy and freedom: an essay in social logic, was published. He began to develop theories about the psychology of the worker in industrialised societies.

In 1922 Mayo was awarded a Rockefeller grant and moved to the US. There he became a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and studied the high turnover of workers at a textile mill. Mayo took up a position at the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University in 1926. The following year he became involved in experiments regarding worker efficiency at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant in Chicago. When Mayo joined the team he began to investigate the idea that an individual's attitude to work was related to the social environment of the workplace, an aspect of work which had not been explored before. Mayo's Hawthorne experiments were groundbreaking in modern social research. Mayo went on to publish several works based on the ideas he had formulated during the Hawthorne experiments including The human problems of an industrial civilization (1933) and The social problems of an industrial civilization (1945). Mayo retired from Harvard in 1947 and lived for the rest of his life in England.

A building at the University of South Australia's City West campus is named after him. The Australian Psychological Society's College of Organisational Psychologists awards the Elton Mayo awards for contribution to Industrial/Organisational psychology practice, research and teaching biennially.

1910: Appointed David Murray Research Scholar

1911: Employed as mental and moral philosophy lecturer at the University of Queensland

1919-1923: University of Queensland's first chair of philosophy

1919: Democracy and freedom: an essay in social logic published

1926: Appointed associate professor at Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University

1929: Made professor of industrial research at Harvard

1933: The human problems of an industrial civilization published

1945: The social problems of an industrial civilization published

Mayo, Elton. The social problems of an industrial civilization, Boston: Harvard University, 1945

Mayo family. Papers of the Mayo family, PRG 127

Nash, Edward. Fame in death for S. A. scientist, The advertiser, 5 November 1980, p. 4

'Prophet finds a home', The advertiser, 5 November 1980, p. 4

Trahair, Richard C. S. The humanist temper : the life and work of Elton Mayo, New Brunswick, (U.S.A.): Transaction Books, 1984

Urwick, L. (Lyndall). The life and work of Elton Mayo, [London: Urwick, Orr, 1960]

'Wanted to humanise industry', The advertiser, 20 September 1949, p. 2, col. h