Originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, AT&T was at various times the world's largest telephone company, the world's largest cable television operator, and a regulated monopoly. At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, it employed one million people.
It developed from the Bell Telephone Company, formed by Alexander Graham Bell, and its Hawthorne Works factory just outside Chicago – under the banner of its subsidiary Western Electric – at one time employed 46,000 workers. Barnard, Deming and Juran were all on the AT&T payroll at various times.
The research conducted by Mayo under the Hawthorne Studies of the 1930s showed the importance of groups in affecting the behaviour of individuals at work.