Selekman, Benjamin Morris
SELEKMAN, BENJAMIN MORRIS
SELEKMAN, BENJAMIN MORRIS (1893–1962), U.S. labor relations expert. Born in Bethlehem, Pa., Selekman worked in the field of Jewish social work and labor relations. He was executive director of the Associated Jewish Philanthropies of Boston from 1929 to 1945, and was professor of labor relations at the Harvard University School of Business Administration from 1945 to 1962. Though impressed by the degree of goodwill shown by many employers in improving industrial relations and in particular by the efforts of John D. Rockefeller after the bitter Colorado Fuel and Iron Company's Ludlow, Colorado, strike, Selekman regarded social conflict in labor relations as virtually unavoidable. They were part of the process of economic development and the emergence of democratic social stability. Selekman's work leaned heavily upon the relevance of psychoanalytical insight. His numerous writings include Labor Relations and Human Relations (1947), Power and Morality in a Business Society (1956), and A Moral Philosophy for Management (1959).
bibliography:
New York Times (April 8, 1962), obituary.
[Mark Perlman]