Brief Summary
The article “Rethink the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context. Human Relations” attempted to provide an insight about the Hawthorne study conducted to provide an investigation of organisational history for a company named as “Western Electric”. The article primary objective was to understand organisational behavior within range of social, political and historical factors and to address question around identifying the kind of enterprise was Western Electric (Hassad, 2012).
The study was conducted at Western Electric's factory at Hawthorne during the period of late 1920s and early 1930s. There were primary study conducted around the two case studies, and was conducted by Elton Mayo, a Harvard professor of industrial research along with fellow researchers. The two cases were related to neglecting the corporate and cultural context respectively and were reviewed in this article while the first one evolve around welfare capitalism and the another one was about Eastland disaster and to understand the impact of both cases from perspective of social organisation and communal experiences. The article also evaluates the viewpoint of other scholars and historical sources to determine the credentials of the findings (Hassad, 2012).

What is the Problem?
There were primarily two problems were tried to addressed through this article. The first one is related to the neglected corporate context where the Western Electric’s industrial reputation and corporate philosophy was duly addressed and further evaluated linking its sources with the problem. The problem is accordingly stated and defined through set of research from both primary and secondary source of data and various others facts and evidences collected during research team visit to the Hawthorne Works Museum. The first case also exemplify about the Western Electric related to its advancement as industrial and corporate profile on basis of macro theme. Company’s philosophy of welfare capitalism was evaluated with the price of running such programs and its long-term impact and evolution (Hassad, 2012).
The second problem was related to neglecting cultural context, which focused specifically after the tragic Eastland disaster and its relevant impact on the workforce and local community. It is about the awareness about social and cultural factors, which got impacted by the key human tragedy. It focused specific on micro issues related to cultural experience and identity. The management approach towards reducing the impact of catastrophe and impact on its potential reputation was further duly evaluated (Hassad, 2012).
Both the problems have been appropriately addressed through macro and micro sociological principle and evolved around the essence of organisational relationship during emergence of any social crisis. Both key contextual factors reflected and evaluated the impact of these elements on the Hawthorne workforce.
How the Problem been examined?
The first Problem has been appropriately examined through using evidence from primary sources like advertisements, manuals, catalogues, photographs which were primarily collected during visit to the Hawthorne Works Museum during 2010. There were also additional sources taken from Baker Library, Harvard business school.
While, the second problem was examined by using range of both primary and secondary sources and was collected from the Hawthorne Works Museum. The evidences included were the internal company documents (memos, letters and notices etc.). The other set of material includes academic studies which were published in maritime economics, various set of research done by the Chicago local history societies, taking various sources from internet and documents from the Baker Library Collections.
The other aspect of evaluating problem was through various scholars’ articles and viewpoint of the Harvard based research group. The evaluation of the ethnographic history through board minutes, annual reports and so on. The problem was properly evaluated through a systematic approach while documentation of each phase.
The problem was further analysed and discussed through picking up relevant examples and through process of conducting employee interviews done at mass scale to understand various impact generating factors.

References
Hassad, J.S. (2012). Rethink the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context. Human Relations,
65(11),1431-1461, doi: 10.1177/0018726712452168

Sonnenfeld. J. (1985). Shedding light on the hawthorne studies. Journal of Occupational Behavior, 6(2), 116.