Alvin Ward Gouldner (1920–1980) was an American sociologist who made his early and lasting mark in the field of industrial sociology. A few years after graduating from City College of New York, where he received a bachelor of business administration degree in 1941, Gouldner began work on a master's degree in sociology at Columbia University. By this time, industrial sociology had become an established subfield within sociology, growing in large part out of the earlier Hawthorne experiments conducted between 1927 and 1932 and Elton Mayo's program of human relations management that developed shortly thereafter. With his business background and interest in applying theory to this newly burgeoning area of concern, Gouldner found a supportive and sympathetic mentor in Robert K. Merton, who had joined the ...