E. Wight Bakke papers

E. Wight Bakke, management theorist and professor, Yale University Labor and Management Center.

E. Wight Bakke was born in Onawa, Iowa, to Harriet Frances (Wight) and Oscar Christian Bakke, a shoe merchant in Onawa. Bakke attended Northwestern University where he received a BA in Philosophy in 1926. He continued in the Yale Divinity School from 1926 to 1929 and during that time was also a pastor of the Park Methodist Episcopal Church. His graduate study in social sciences was also conducted at Yale University, and from 1931-1932 he was the Sterling Fellow at Yale, receiving his Ph.D. in 1932. In 1964 he received an honorary LL. D. from Northwestern University.

Bakke taught sociology at Yale from 1932-1934, and was an assistant professor of economics from 1934-1938. He served the Institute of Human Relations as Director of Unemployment Studies from 1934-1939, and was promoted to Professor of Economics in 1938 and appointed the Sterling Professor of Economics in 1940. Bakke was the Director of Graduate Studies in Economics at Yale from 1940-1950. From 1944 until the late 1950's he directed Yale's Labor and Management Center. The Center was devised with a nine-member policy committee made up of three representatives of Yale, three from labor, and three from management to develop a balanced approach and avoid an "ivory tower" view of labor relations.

Bakke was often called upon to advise governmental commissions and scholarly organizations on labor and management issues. He was Fulbright professor in Denmark in 1953, the principal consulting social economist for the Social Security Board from 1936-1939, and a consultant to the Department of Labor, Navy Department. He directed the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was the Chairman of the Appeals Committee of the National War Labor Board. He was a member of several Presidential Emergency Boards and the National Manpower Policy Task Force.