Yale Labor and Management Center

[nb 1] Its stated mission was to engage in "the study of the basic principles of human relationships involved in industrial relations and analysis of the forces operating in the labor market.

[4] The new center was created as part of the Yale Institute of Human Relations[9] and was housed with it in a wing of the Sterling Hall of Medicine on Cedar Street in New Haven.

[3] A policy committee made up of three each Yale, labor, and management representatives was set up to oversee the research projects the center would undertake and ensure neutrality of approach.

[8] Bakke stressed that the center not take ivory tower approaches and instead it held clinical working sessions between labor and management representatives on campus and established research "listening posts" in places such as Detroit and Charlotte.

"[11] In a 1949 journal article recap of the center's first several years in operation, Bakke said that their decision to emphasize basic research in finding a systematic explanation of behavior in labor-management relations had been affirmed by their experiences.

[4] By 1952, the center's work was divided into three areas of interest, each with its own research director: analyzing human relations in an organizational context, using extensive interview data from the Southern New England Telephone Company, led by Bakke and Argyris, with a number of assistants; forming a treatise on wage theory, led by Professor Lloyd G. Reynolds with Robert M. MacDonald assisting, based on data found both locally and in Europe; and an exploration of social responsibility in labor-management relations together with a study on the composition of bargaining units, led by Chamberlain and with assistance from Jane Metzger Schilling.