SNA All-Star: F.J. Roethlisberger

Born in 1898, Fritz Jules Roethlisberger, a social scientist and management theorist, studied engineering at MIT and philosophy at Harvard, before joining the faculty at Harvard Business School.

Roethlisberger is known as one of the founders of the "human relations movement." He was involved in the well-known Hawthorne Studies series, which examined employee relations and insight into behavior, including the relationship between productivity, morale, and and physical conditions, at Western Electric Company plan in Illinois. Roethlisberger published the study findings in the book "Management and the Worker."

This SNA All-Star's work contributed to the human relations movement, which studied the behavior of people in groups, especially in professional settings. Along with his colleague Elton Mayo, Roethlisberger's work served as a foundation for the fields of human resource and industrial management. F.J. Roethlisberger went on to teach industrial research and human relations at Harvard Business School until he died in 1974.