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The Social Sciences Essay

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The Hawthorne Studies is one of the most well-known series of experiments of the social sciences in industrial history. The objective of the experiments were to establish how an individual is influenced not only by their own abilities, but by their working environment and the people they work with, both fellow workers and supervisors. To gain a better understanding of what the Hawthorne studies were, why they were conducted, and how they have impacted management practices, one must first understand the history behind the key contributors of this study and the location where the studies took place, the Western Electric Company. However, the studies did receive criticism, some of which was considered fairly harsh, such as from Alex Carey The Hawthorne studies were conducted by Harvard’s Business School Industrial Research Group, George Elton Mayo, and Fritz J. Roethlisberger. These two men were major contributors to what we know as the Hawthorne Effect, and their contributions to this experiment has set forth unprecedented changes in the way organizations run.
Fritz Roethlisberger was born in NYC in 1898 and earned a BA in engineering from Columbia University, BS in engineering administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a MA in philosophy from Harvard University. Roethlisberger started work on his PhD in philosophy at Harvard University but never finished. His studies were put on hold after meeting Harvard professor George Elton Mayo. Roethlisberger

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