Baum, Bernard H. 1926–2008

(Bernard Helmut Baum)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 18, 1926, in Giessen, Germany; died of a heart attack, June 6, 2008, in Chicago, IL. Sociologist, educator, administrator, and author. Baum spent more than forty years as a professor of health policy and management, first at Roosevelt University in Chicago from 1955 to 1966, then at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the University of Illinois at the Medical Center. He also directed the School of Public Health at the Medical Center, beginning in 1977. Baum did not confine himself to an academic career, however. After service in the U.S. Army in World War II, he maintained his reserve status for many years, rising to the rank of colonel. At the same time, he was an activist for peace, especially during the years of the Vietnam conflict. Baum worked for the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Chicago in the early 1950s; he worked as the director of organizational analysis for Chicago-area insurance companies in the early 1960s. In the community, he served as a board member of the Selfhelp Home for the Ages in Chicago, and as a teacher of religion classes for local Jewish congregations. Baum wrote business books in the 1960s, including Decentralization of Authority in a Bureaucracy (1961) and Basics for Business (1968). He was the coeditor of Dimensions in Organization Behavior: Influence, Authority, and Power (1975), and in 2005, he published the edited collection As If People Mattered: Dignity in Organizations.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, June 10, 2008, sec. 2, p. 5.