Ordway Tead

Ordway Tead (10 September 1891 - 1973) was an American organizational theorist, adjunct professor of industrial relations and chair of the New York Board of Higher Education.

Tead was born in Sommerville, Massachusetts and attended Amherst College from where he graduated in 1912

After graduation Tead worked for Valentine, Tead & Gregg. In 1915 he married Clara Murohy, long term president of Briarcliff College. However in 1917 he accepted a position in the Bureau of Industrial Research in New York City. Following the U.S.A.'s entry into the First World War he ran the War Department's employment management course at Columbia University.

Tead continued to teach there from 1920 to 1950 and was adjunct professor of industrial relations until 1956. From 1938 to 1953 he was chair of the New York Board of Higher Education, where in 1941 he was involved in sacking any faculty staff who belonged to a Communist, Fascist or Nazi organization.

He was actively involved in book publishing both at McGraw Hill and Harper & Row and wrote 21 books himself.

Books, a selection:

• Tead, Ordway. Instincts in industry, a study of working-class psychology. 1918
• Tead, Ordway, and Henry Clayton Metcalf. Personnel administration: its principles and practice. No. 18. McGraw-Hill Book Company, inc., 1920.
• Tead, Ordway. The art of leadership. (1935).
• Tead, Ordway. The art of administration. (1951).
• Tead, Ordway. Human nature and management. Arno Press, 1977.

Articles, a selection:

• "Trade Unions and Efficiency," American Journal of Sociology, Vol.22, No.1. (July 1916), p. 30-37.
• "The War's Effects on English Trade Unions," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol.26, No.2, (Feb. 1918), p. 125-135.
• "The British Reconstruction Programs," Political Science Quarterly, Vol.33, No.1. (Mar. 1918), p. 56-76.*
• "The Problem of Graduate Training in Personnel Administration," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol.29, No.5. (May 1921), p. 353-367
• Autobiographical essay in Finkelstein, L. (ed.) Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies, Institute for Religious and Social Science, 1953, pp. 15-30