Celebration Honoring 50th Anniversary of “A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations” co-chaired by MIT Professor Kochan and LER Professor Cutcher-Gershenfeld

In 1965 the Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations was published by Richard Walton, emeritus, Harvard Business School, and Robert McKersie, emeritus, MIT Sloan School. Honoring its 50th anniversary, the Labor and Employment Relations Association, hosted a panel as part of the winter meetings of the Allied Social Sciences Association in Boston on Sunday, January 5, 2015.

Co-chaired by Professor Thomas Kochan, MIT Sloan School, and Professor Joel Cutcher-Gersehnfeld, Illinois LER, the panel included commentary on the book’s impact by Max Bazerman, Harvard Business School; Hannah Riley Bowles, Harvard Kennedy School; David Lipsky, Cornell ILR School; Mary Rowe, MIT Sloan School; and Jim Sebenius, Harvard Business School. Co-authors Richard Walton and Robert McKersie presented concluding comments.

As Tom Kochan noted in his opening remarks, this book is the most important theoretical contribution in labor negotiations of the last 50 years and the most important theoretical contribution labor relations has made to the social sciences.  The book is foundational for teaching negotiations in business, law, and other professions.  Based on bibliographic analysis developed in partnership with Illinois reference librarian Mary Kathleen Kern and graduate assistant Ximin Mi, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld documented 3,074 scholarly citations to the book, making it the fourth most cited book on negotiations (behind Raiffa’s Art and Science of Negotiations, Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes, and Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict).  The historic pattern of citations to the theory is illustrated below: