Almost 60 years ago, the Bell Telephone Company launched a program to address rising concerns about the education of its managers. W.D. Gillen, president of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, felt that many of these managers would eventually rise to positions in which they’d need a broader point-of-view…
To that end, Gillen established the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives, a 10-month immersion program that amounted to a complete liberal arts education. The program required more reading than the average graduate student had to complete in a similar time frame. They also visited museums and art galleries, attended orchestral concerts, and listened to guest lecturers. The program’s capstone came in eight three-hour seminars devoted to Ulysses.
Sadly, the program didn’t last past 1960. Multiple assessments found the executives to be more confident and intellectually engaged, but also less interested in putting the company’s performance ahead of their family and community commitments.
October 20th, 2011 at 10:59AM
Hmmm….would a theoretical physicist or mathematician exposed to a similar humanities program become similarly less interested in putting their research ahead of their “family and community commitments?”
October 20th, 2011 at 5:02PM
An interesting case because the Bell System was known for not hiring college graduates. It did a lot of in-house education and training, and many if not most executives, even at the top, had “risen from the ranks.” Some other large companies, such as those in the chemical industry, had the reverse experience. Pre-war they had hired a lot of chemistry majors (liberal arts grads) from Ivy League (etc.) universities; post-war these people were becoming physicians and professors. The chemical engineering guys, mostly from big public universities, who replaced them were just as good at chemistry – but by the ’60s it became apparent that they weren’t as well educated for senior executive roles. At that point, the lawyers began to take over.