Ordway Tead (1891 - 1973)

The purpose of this brief guide is to introduce you to the work of Ordway Tead. Although Tead was well respected and had a considerable following, his ideas have not been comprehensively researched by contemporary students of management theory and leadership. After some searching, one finds only the brief essay on Tead that appears in Walter Mingo's Handbook of International Management (BUS HD62.4.T47), p.274 and Arthur Bedeian’s “Ordway Tead” In L. F. Urwick and W. B. Wolf (Eds.), The Golden Book of Management, rev. ed. New York: AMACOM, 1984. Pp. 389-392. You are encouraged to explore Tead's ideas directly by going to the books and articles found in the Western Libraries that are listed below.

For biographical information see the obituary from the New York Times that is provided below. Additional material is also found in the 1942 volume of Current Biography which is available in the DBW Reference Collection (CT100.C8). The "Foreward" to Administration: Its Purpose and Performance (BUS stack HD31.T37) is also useful.

More articles about Tead may be found by consulting some of the printed indexes that pre-date the arrival of electronic resources. For a list and description of some of the business indexes click here. Some earlier articles by and about Tead are also found by using JSTOR which is described in more detail below.

Books by Tead in the Western Libraries
(presented in reverse chronological order)

Instincts in Industry,
BUS HD 4904.T4 1969
DBW HD 4904.T4 1918

Administration: Its Purpose and Performance
BUS HD 31.T37 1968
BUS HD 31.T37
BUS HD 31.T37 c.2

The Art of Administration
DBW HD 31.T253a 1951
BUS HD 31.T38
BUS HD 31.T38 c.3

The Art of Leadership
RDL HM 141.T4 1935
DBW HM 141.T4 1935 c.2
BUS HM 141.T4 1935 c.3

Human Nature and Management; The Applications of Psychology to Executive Leadership
RDL HF 5549.T38 1933

Personnel Administration; Its Principles and Practice
RDL HF 5549.T4 1933
DBW HF 5549.T4 1933 c.2
DBW HF 5549.T4

The Climate of Learning; A Constructive Attack on Complacency in Higher Education
DBW LB 2325.T38
DBW LB 2325.T38 c.2
DBW LB 2325.T38 c.3
DBW LB 2325.T38 c.4

Instincts in Industry: A Study of Working-class Psychology
DBW HD 4904.T4

Labor Relations Under the Recovery Act
DBW HD 5650.T4

The Peoples' Part in Peace: AN Inquiry into the Basis for a Sound Internationalism
DBW HC 56.T3

Selected Articles by Tead in the Western Libraries

The four articles listed below can be obtained in the Western Libraries in two ways. First, the journals containing the articles are all available in the D.B.Weldon Library and the call numbers for the journals are provided. Secondly, the articles are also found on JSTOR, the use of which is restricted to faculty and students of UWO and other registered institutions. Note that additional references to Tead are easily found by searching JSTOR.

"The Problem of Graduate Training in Personnel Administration," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol.29, No.5. (May 1921), p.353-367.
DBW HB1.J7

"The British Reconstruction Programs," Political Science Quarterly, Vol.33, No.1. (Mar. 1918), p. 56-76
DBW HB1.P8

"The War's Effects on English Trade Unions," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol.26, No.2, (Feb. 1918), p.125-135.
DBW HB1.J7

"Trade Unions and Efficiency," American Journal of Sociology, Vol.22, No.1. (July 1916), p.30-37.
DBW HM1.A7


Obituary for Tead from the New York Times
(transcribed from the microfilm copy held in the
D.B. Weldon Library - AN2.N5
November 17, 1973)

"Dr. Ordway Tead, Educator, 82, Dies- Ex-Head of City Colleges Was Author, Lecturer"

Dr. Ordway Tead who served for 15 years as chairman of the Board of Higher Education here, died Thursday evening at Norwalk Hospital, Conn. of a heart attack. An educator, editor, publishing executive and prolific author, Dr. Tead was 82 years old and lived in Westport.
He presided over New York Board of Higher Education, the governing board at that time of four municipal colleges, from 1938 to 1953. It was a time of rapid growth for the colleges, but also a time of much rancor and controversy over the boards policy in the nineteen forties and fifties to discharge 'faculty members of the Communist party.
Dr. Tead had a reputation as a civil libertarian. He was an advocate of equal rights for women. In 1940 he and a majority of the board sought to fight the annulment of Bertrand Russell's appointment as a professor of philosophy at City College. The British mathematician, philosopher and author had roused strong opposition here with his then highly unorthodox ideas concerning sexual freedom.
Controversial Vote
Yet, thus was the political climate of the time that Dr. Tead and a board majority voted the next year, in 1941, to discharge any faculty member belonging to a Communist, Fascist or Nazi organization.
Front-page headlines reported the hearings held on the political suitability of college teachers and their dismissals by Dr. Tead and his board. Fellow professors at the city colleges denounced one another for alleged Communist activities, and Dr. Tead himself came under suspicion at one time when John R. Davies, a candidate for the Republican mayoral nomination in 1941, charged him with having organized Marxist clubs decades earlier when he was a Phi Beta Kappa student at Amherst.
The accusation, however, was not taken seriously. Dr. Tead continued to be re-elected for a total of fifteen annual terms as president of the board. He ultimately retired as a board member in 1964.
Dr. Tead was born in Sommerville, Mass., on Sept. 10, 1891, and attended Latin high school there before being admitted to Amherst College.
During his long career he received numerous honorary doctorates and was a member of such organizations as the National Commission for UNESCO on higher education. He also served as president of Phi Beta Kappa.
Experience in Industry
Three years after his graduation from Amherst in 1912, he became a member of the industrial consultants' firm of Valentine, Tead & Gregg. In 1917, he joined the Bureau of Industrial Research in New York. During World War I, he was for a time in charge of the War Department's emergency employment management course at Columbia University.
He lectured at Columbia University on personnel administration from 1920 to 1950 and served as adjunct professor of industrial relations until 1956.
Dr. Tead was the author of 21 books on economics, history and education, and the director of business publications for the McGraw Hill Book Company from 1920 to 1925. From then until he retired in 1962 as a vice president, he was editor of social and economic books at Harper & Bros., now Harper & Row.
Dr. Tead loved books and read lots of them. A rapid talker who applied himself in a voracious appetite for work, he once said that his motto was the same as that of the Knox Hat Company: "Moveo et Proficio-I move and I get things done."
In the nineteen forties, Dr. Tead advocated equal rights for women and some home-making training for young men. He predicted that the working wife would become more than a phenomenon, that women would gain "vocational competence" as part of their education and that such a shift would "help us into another century where in addition to calling her vote her own, the women of tomorrow can call her soul her own."
Dr. Tead's acquaintance with working wives began at home, with the former Clara A. Murohy whom he had married in 1915 and who was for 18 years president of Briarcliff College. He was a member of the college's board.
In addition to his widow, Dr. Tead is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Diana Michaelis, of Cambridge, Mass., and two grandsons.

Sumber : www.lib.uwo.ca/programs/generalbusiness/TEAD.html