Robert B. McKersie

Faculty

Robert B. McKersie

Get in Touch

Title

About

Academic Groups

Academic Area

Centers & Initiatives

Robert McKersie is Professor Emeritus of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

McKersie is an expert source on industrial and labor relations with a focus on bargaining. He researches strategies being pursued by different industries to bring about more effective organizational changes. McKersie is the author of A Decisive Decade: An Insider’s View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement (SIU Press, 2013), where his participation as a white activist for black rights presented a firsthand account of the debates, boycotts, marches, and negotiations that impacted race relations in Chicago and the United States during the 1960s. He is also the coauthor of A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (ILR Press,1991), Strategic Negotiations (Harvard Business School Press,1995), The Transformation of American Industrial Relations (Basic Books,1986), and Pay, Productivity, and Collective Bargaining (Macmillan,1983). 

McKersie holds an SB in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA and a DBA from Harvard University. 

Honors

Bob McKersie cited for “landmark contribution to industrial relations”

Robert B. McKersie is the recipient of the 2008 Cushing/Gavin Award from the Boston Labor Guild

Publications

"Applying Negotiation Theory to the Interrogation of Detainees."

McKersie, Robert B. Negotiation Journal Vol. 39, No. 3 (2023): 279-296.

A Field in Flux: Sixty Years of Industrial Relations.

McKersie, Robert B. Cornell, NY: Cornell Publishing, 2019.

"Giving Workers a Stake in Economic Change."

Werner Sengenberger and Robert McKersie.

Healing Together: The Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership.

Kochan, Thomas A., Adrienne Eaton, Robert McKersie and Paul Adler. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

"Bargaining Theory Meets Interest Based Negotiations: A Case Study."

McKersie, Robert, Theresa Sharpe, Thomas A. Kochan, Adrienne Eaton, George Strauss and Marty Morgenstern. Industrial Relations Vol. 47, No. 1 (2008): 66-96.

Load More

Recent Insights

Ideas Made to Matter

How Phyllis Wallace tackled workplace discrimination

Phyllis Wallace took part in a landmark 1970s AT&T discrimination case and researched the working lives of young Black women.

Read Article
Ideas Made to Matter

Revisiting a classic negotiation framework

Insights into attitudinal restructuring and intra-organizational negotiations still hold the key to positive outcomes.

Read Article