E. Wight Bakke

[5] In 1931 he studied unemployment in the United Kingdom during the early phase of the Great Depression, living on the dole in a working-class area of Greenwich, London.

[11] He emphasized the distaste the unemployed often had in applying for government relief, as illustrated by quotes like "I'd rather be dead and buried" and, when another was ultimately compelled to do so, "I would hide my face in the ground and pound the earth.

"[11] The 2004 Encyclopedia of the Great Depression states that Bakke's New Haven study stands "as a powerful statement of the importance of stable, adequately-paying work opportunities for individual well-being, as well as broader social well-being" and that even given his other contributions to sociology, economics, and industrial relations, "Bakke's study of Depression-era unemployment remains his most influential and far-reaching work.

"[12] Alice O'Connor, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in 2010 that, "Seventy years later, the study's analysis still resonates".

"[15] Bakke's earlier work as a sociologist before being an economist constituted a varied background that led him to construct an interdisciplinary approach that was beneficial for the field of industrial relations.

[16] Much of Bakke's later career was taken up with the study of organizational theory, looking to find a theoretical approach to analysis that would explain not only behavior in businesses but also the same in other entities such as churches or schools.

[3] As such, Bakke was regarding among a group of other eminent organizational theorists active in the 1950s, including Chris Argyris, James G. March, Rensis Likert, Jacob Marschak, Anatol Rapoport, and William Foote Whyte.

[18] This is credited by Georgia State University professor and industrial relations scholar Bruce E. Kaufman as being the first use of the term "human resources" in its modern form, although Bakke used in a more pervasive sense to refer to all working relationships within an organization and not just those handled by a personnel department.

[2] In 1953 he received a Fulbright professorship to teach at Copenhagen Business School, where he also set up a pilot study in human relations research in a Danish factory.

[20] His last book, about student activism in the 1960s, was written in collaboration with his wife Mary, who was an accomplished academic herself and had taught and served as a dean at Quinnipiac College.