The Nineteenth Annual Kingsley Laffer Memorial Lecture 2011
'Can the United States Build a Sustainable Employment Relations System?'
Presented by Thomas A. Kochan,
George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management
Professor of Engineering Systems
Co-director, Institute for Work and Employment Research
MIT Sloan School of Management
Date: 6.00 - 7.30pm Monday 28 March 2011
Location: Eastern Avenue Auditorium
Cost: Free of charge, all are welcome
Thomas A. Kochan is the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of both the MIT Workplace Center and of the Institute for Work and Employment Research. He came to MIT in 1980 as a Professor of Industrial Relations. From 1988 to 1991 he served as Head of the Behavioural and Policy Sciences Area in the Sloan School. Prof. Kochan came to MIT from Cornell University where he was on the faculty of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations from 1973 to 1980.
In 1973, he received his Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin. Since then he has served as a third-party mediator, fact finder, and arbitrator and as a consultant to a variety of government and private sector organizations and labor-management groups. He was a consultant for one year to the Secretary of Labor in the Department of Labor's Office of Policy Evaluation and Research.
He has done research on a variety of topics related to industrial relations and human resource management in the public and private sector. Some of his recent books include: Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families' Agenda for America; Management: Inventing and Delivering its Future; Working in America: A Blueprint for the Labor Market, Learning from Saturn; Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes, 3rd edition, 2004; An Introduction to Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations, 3rd ed. 2003; In 1988 his book, The Transformation of American Industrial Relations received the annual award from the Academy of Management for the best scholarly book on management.
Professor Kochan is a Past President of both the International Industrial Relations Association and the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA). In 2001 he was listed in Who's Who in America and in 2000 he was listed in Blackwell's Dictionary of Management Scholars. In 1999 he was awarded Doctor Honoris Cause from the University de San Martin de Porres de Lima. He received the Heneman Career Achievement Award from the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management in 1996. He was elected to the National Academy of Human Resources in 1997. He was named the Centennial Visiting Professor from The London School of Economics in 1995. From 1993 to 1995 he served as a member of the Clinton Administration's Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations.
About Kingsley Laffer
Kingsley Laffer was the founding father of industrial relations at the University of Sydney and a pioneer of teaching and research in Australian industrial relations. At the time of his retirement from the University of Sydney in 1976, he was Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Relations within the Faculty of Economics. Kingsley was the founding editor of the Journal of Industrial Relations for 18 years. He also helped establish the Industrial Relations Society of NSW, which later became a national organisation.
Born in Western Australia on 28 February 1911, Kingsley Laffer became an external student of Economics at the University of Western Australia while working in the country. He was the first external student to be awarded the Hackett Bursary. After graduating with first class honours, he taught briefly at the University of Melbourne and then joined the University of Sydney in 1944. He was a member of the academic staff at Sydney for more than three decades. After his retirement, Kingsley became the first Fellow of the Nepean College of Advanced Education (now part of the University of Western Sydney) where he helped develop academic programs in industrial relations.
The inaugural Kingsley Laffer Memorial Lecture was given in 1993 by the Hon Bob Hawke. Subsequent Laffer Lecturers have featured Mr Bert Evans (1994), Justice Deirdre O'Connor (1995), Ms Jennie George (1996), Hon Jeff Shaw (1997), Mr Justice Bill Fisher (1998), Ms Quentin Bryce (1999), Brian Pickett (2000), Sharan Burrow (2001), Justice Michael Kirby (2002), Prof. Russell Lansbury (2003), Heather Ridout (2004), Professor Ron McCallum (2005), Hon Kim Beazley (2006), Hon Julia Gillard MP (2007), Reverend Tim Costello (2008) and Professor Russell Lansbury (2009).