A conference entitled "Negotiations and Change: From the Workplace to Society" will be presented in honor of Sloan School Professor Emeritus Robert A. McKersie on October 30-31 at the Wong Auditorium. Professor McKersie is co-author of The Behavioral Theory of Labor Relations, a book that established the foundation for the study of negotiations.
The conference will address change and negotiations in the workplace, the expanding domain of labor-management relations, and negotiations and institution building on a range of societal issues. There will be three session topics: The changing nature of work and workplace relations, transformation of labor-management relations, and negotiating institutional changes in society.
"Bob McKersie is a pioneer in the study and teaching of negotiations. His 1965 book laid the intellectual foundation for most of the innovation we practice today in negotiations. His creative spirit will show through in the conference, since every speaker was either a student or co-author of his over the years," said Thomas B. Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management and a coordinator of the conference.
Key speakers and panelists will include President Charles M. Vest, Professor Janice Klein of Sloan, Professor of Management John Paul MacDuffie of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, former Assistant Secretary of Labor Arnold Weber, and Malcolm Lovell, president of the National Policy Association.
The McKersie Festschrift Conference is sponsored by the Sloan School of Management, the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research and the Harvard Program on Negotiation.
Conference sessions are open to the public. For additional information or a conference agenda, contact Susan Cass at scwright@mit.edu.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 28, 1998.
