The distinguished contributors to this book pay tribute to Douglass Vincent Brown's long and fruitful tenure at M.I.T. as the first Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Management. The papers collected here were presented at a symposium in honor of his retirement in 1969. The authors are both colleagues and former students of Professor Brown; they have all taught in the institute's Industrial Relations Section, and five received their doctoral degrees from M.I.T.
In the first four chapters, Charles A. Myers, George P. Shutz, David P. Taylor and Michael J. Piore, and George Strauss deal with aspects of manpower policy. The chapters by Solomon B. Levine and J, W, Miller, Jr., evaluate collective bargaining as a national policy—one dealing with postwar Japan and the other with the American experience. In a concluding chapter, John G. Turnball traces the evolution of the field of labor studies over the last three decades.
When Douglass Brown came to M.I.T. in 1938, collective bargaining had an uncertain future, and for the next thirty years labor relations policy issues has influenced the deliberations of the Committee for Economic Development, the Industrial Relations Research Association, and the National Academy of Arbitrators, as well as the councils of government. However, as the editor notes, “it has been in the classroom that the focus of his intellectual and moral power has been most brilliant. Skeptical of the popular view on any matter and disdainful of prepackaged ideas, he has pressed upon his students the intractable facts and hard choices that the real world presents. This he has done with such grace and humor that all who have passed his way know that softness of spirit need not be sacrificed for toughness of mind.”
