Carroll L. Shartle
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I was born at Ruthven, Iowa, 26 June 1903. The homeopathic physician who
performed the home delivery charged ten dollars and my weight was nine pounds.
My mother was 33 and my father 41. I was the only child and had early exposure
to adult standards of behavior.
My mother as a child came to Iowa from Wisconsin via Kansas in a covered
wagon. She had been a school teacher beginning at age 17 after a brief normal
school training at Mason City. My father was a Hoosier. He had little formal
education and in addition to farming had an auction business. He was called
"Colonel" and his loud voice, it was said, could be heard over a mile
away. As a small child, he came with his parents from Indiana, changing trains
in Chicago, while the ruins were still smoking following the great fire.
The Shartles were Huguenots who had come from Bavaria via a stay in
Switzerland. They founded the town of Shartlesville, Pennsylvania, and fought in
the Revolution.
I enjoyed being an only child on a farm largely in terms of the fringe
benefits. I had my own horse from the time I was six years of age and a shotgun
at ten for hunting squirrels, rabbits, and ducks. I trapped muskrats and mink in
the winter and went fishing and swimming whenever I could in the warmer months.
I liked to tinker with machines and build things in the farm shop. I kept the
number of playmates to a minimum--one or two was plenty for any given time. I
was protective or my possessions and had limited interests in sharing with other
kids.
Farm life was an education one could not obtain elsewhere. One learned
first-hand the social and individual behavior of farm animals. To witness, for
example, the sex act performed by two Percheron draft horses was a sight for a
small boy to behold. One also had valuable direct experience with man-machine,
man-animal, and man-animal machine systems.
Though living on a farm was enjoyable, working under the hot sun in the
fields was not, and neither was doing chores morning and night, particularly in
the winter. I envied the town kids who had not cows to milk or a barn to clean
before and after school. I decided agriculture was not for me.
I was required to attend Methodist Sunday school and later church. I did
not like it and also resented being denied fishing or hunting on Sunday
afternoons. I envied Catholic kids who had no such restrictions. Later on I read
a book that described the various religions of the world quite objectively. The
miracles and myths were taken care of. It was a great relief to me.
In my high school class there were twenty graduates; only six of them
were boys. In those days many boys dropped out after the eighth grade to work on
the family farm. Three boys went to college and we all earned doctoral degrees.
I was admitted in 1922 to Electrical Engineering at Iowa State College
(now Iowa State University) at Ames. I enjoyed engineering, particularly in
math, physics, chemistry, and shop courses. However, in the E. E. orientation
course the description of probable
jobs was not appealing. Electrical Engineering looked like a desk job with a
slide rule day after day. There were very few electives, but I violated the
curriculum by taking too many of them, including psychology.
The elementary psychology course, using Woodworth's text and several
experiments performed by the students, was an eye opener. The course was taught
by Thomas Vance, who had received his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 1913. I
took more psychology, including personnel psychology taught by the Head of the
Department, John E. Evans, who had received his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1916. Evans
was not an inspiring teacher, but the content he presented impressed me greatly.
He had been a psychologist in the Army in World War I and brought many examples
from that era.
Another elective I took was in Vocational Training and in this course I
was exposed in detail to job analysis as a method for determining task content.
This made a lot of sense and I never lost my conviction that job analysis was a
basic technique, not only for training but for almost every other personnel
function including employee selection, accident prevention, salary
determination, personnel transfer, and job re-engineering.
I wanted to major in psychology at Iowa State but it was prohibited
because of an agreement with other state institutions--all of this has been
changed now. The Dean of Engineering scolded me for too many violations of the
engineering curriculum and, to make a long story short, I transferred to Iowa
State Teachers College (now University of Northern Iowa) and majored in
psychology. I received good training under E. O. Finkenbinder, who had taken his
Ph.D. under G. Stanley Hall at Clark - one of the great names in psychology,
first president of APA.
My initial experiment (using students) was attempting to measure the
effect of caffeine on mental performance. Caffeine and sugar pills were supplied
by the campus physician. The experiment was quite well controlled, but the
results were inconclusive.
I did my practice teaching in mathematics. No Iowa school was interested
in employing a psychology major at that time so I decided to make a pitch for
industry. My class in electrical engineering was already out a year. I wrote to
a member, a fraternity brother who had taken a job with the Milwaukee Electrical
Railway and Light Company. Much to my surprise, he replied that his company was
looking for a young psychologist to work under direction of Dr. Sadie M. Shellow.
He suggested I write her a nice letter of application. I did, and landed the
job.
My qualifications looked good on paper with a background in both
engineering and psychology and work experience as a farm laborer and for one
summer a millwright laborer in a packing house
(I had worked in Omaha one summer for Swift & Company).
Little did I know that I had secured the only position in industrial
psychology that was open anywhere in the country that spring. Morris Viteles had
originally set up the program at Milwaukee. It was one of the most outstanding
examples of successful industrial psychology that anyone knew about.
Mrs. Shellow (although she was not referred to as doctor) had her Ph.D.
from Columbia. She was an excellent teacher and supervisor.
My principal duty at first was selecting motormen and bus operators for
the company, using the Viteles motormen selection test plus a clinical type
interview and a practical written test. Later on I made validation studies of
tests for electrical troublemen, substation operators, trade apprentices, and
other.
When I first reported for work, the
Superintendent of Transportation told me that farmer boys made the best
motormen. I later checked the personnel records of 1500 cases and discovered
that more farm boys were discharged for accidents than any other occupational
group.
I prepared a job analysis and took the training course for street car
motormen. It did indeed provide a realistic feel for the job. In these days,
it cost $500 to train a motorman and if he failed to qualify, the money
was wasted. We obtained convincing evidence (using a control group) that
motormen failures were reduced by using the tests. In fact, 16% of those who
were hired without use of the tests were discharged because of serious
accidents, whereas less than one percent of the tested group were discharged.
After this was reported, the company became "over-sold" on selection
testing and it was occasionally necessary to show, after making a job analysis,
that adding tests would not reduce turnover but rather, improvement in working
conditions or bringing the wage rate up to community standards would be helpful.
I developed my own job analysis schedule. It was patterned after the
example in Bingham and Freyds' 1926 book, Procedures
in Employment Psychology. I would spend at least a week working on a given
job. In studying meter readers, for example, I learned by experience the main
trouble - the bottoms of my feet almost gave out. This resulted in the medical
department giving closer attention to foot examinations and seeing that shoes
fitted properly.
In 1927 I was fortunate in another way. The company sent Mrs. Shellow and
I to the APA annual meeting in December at the Ohio State University in
Columbus. This was the real eye opener. Walter V. Bingham described his work at
the Boston Elevated Railway in reducing accidents and reported on his recent
visit to England. H. L. Hollinworth was that year's APA president. His address
was on redintegration. I later took his course on this topic at Columbia.
On the fourth floor of Arps Hall there was an exhibit of apparatus. A man
with a black mustache showed me around. He turned out to be Harold Burtt, who
had written a recent book, Principles of
Employment Psychology. I was very favorably impressed and six years later I
completed my Ph.D. dissertation under his direction.
In the spring of 1928, Mrs. Shellow approached me about taking graduate
work at Columbia University summer school. If I was interested, the company
would give me time off and help with the expense by paying my way to Boston to
visit the Boston Elevated Railway. The company also had a policy of paying half
tuition and supplying books for staff who took job-related college work.
Naturally, I accepted and spent the next four summers at Columbia. I did my
masters thesis under Henry Garrett (later APA president) who wrote a widely used
text in psychological statistics.
For an M. A. thesis I submitted my validation study of electrical
troublemen, using a multiple regression analysis. Henry never informed me if he
finally approved the thesis, but one day, several months later, I did receive a
mimeographed letter from the registrar indicating that if I sent 29 cents in
stamps, my diploma would be forwarded. The results of this study were published
in Personnel Journal.
At Columbia I had the good fortune to take work with A. T. Poffenberger,
Clark. L. Hull, Gardner Murphy, and Knight Dunlap, all of whom became APA
presidents. Also, I had a course in social psychology with English Bagby that
had a life-long effect. I met my future wife, Doris Brown, who was finishing her
undergraduate work at Skidmore College. She became a social worker and later a
trustee of the college. I soon found that marrying a social worker had its
advantages, as the depression threatened the financial security of psychology
graduate students.
I took a course in psychopathology at the State Mental Institution at
Wards Island and visited the industrial psychiatric program at R. H. Macy &
Co., directed by V. N. Anderson, author of a pioneering text, Psychiatry in Industry.
These experiences broadened my point of view and suggested new concepts
and variables to include in future studies of workers and jobs.
Following the stock market crash of 1929, business declined in Milwaukee
and the company almost ceased hiring new employees. My work on selection was
greatly reduced so I worked on internal problems such as upgrading and
promotion, job training, and accident studies. We had an accident clinic, which
was quite successful. I also taught teaching methods course in business
psychology at Marquette University.
By late 1930 the depression was hitting harder. Lay-offs were frequent
and there was talk of reducing staff and cutting the hours worked per week. This
meant salary reduction.
It seemed like a good time to leave industry and get a Ph.D. So in June
1931, I left Milwaukee for New York to finish my masters degree. Doris and I
were married in September and both became graduate students at Ohio State.
Graduate work was very exciting. I took courses with Dockeray, Goddard,
Toops, Edgerton, Purtt, Renshaw, and Williams. I was lucky and passed all my
examinations, including French and German, the first time around. My grades were
all A's and I finished ahead of schedule.
Professor Burtt earlier had arranged for me to meet executives from Ohio
Bell and A. T. & T. Arrangements were made for a dissertation on
psychological factors in foremanship with Ohio Bell supplying the subjects.
There were two groups: (1) successful foremen and (2) non-foreman who had failed
in supervisory roles or who were not considered supervisory material.
I analyzed the jobs and developed an interview schedule for determining
personal and background variables that differentiated the two groups. Results
were published in Personnel Journal
and copies of the dissertation were made available to Ohio Bell and
A. T. & T. It was interesting in those days to
dial the A. T. and T. number in New York and receive a nickel back.
The first year at Ohio State I was an assistant to F. C. Dockeray in a
study of infant behavior. The second year I became a part-time instructor for
$2000, but in spring 1933 there was a salary cut to $1800, and it was announced
that for the coming year the salary would be $900.
No job openings appeared and I joined two teacher placement agencies.
Three openings appeared and I was fortunate to receive a one-year appointment as
instructor in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at Michigan State
College (now Michigan State University). There were over 70 applicants for the
position, which paid $1800 (less a 5% fee to the Albert Teachers Agency). It was
a two-man department - the
Chairman, a philosopher, and me. I taught general, experimental, child, applied,
industrial, and special problem courses. It was indeed a challenge. I learned a
great deal and received many complimentary text books. The college had excellent
stenographic services and did all the final typing of my dissertation.
Thirty-five years later I was asked to return to Michigan State and to make an
evaluation of the Department of Psychology. It was indeed a pleasure to observe
the excellent development and to note the indication of promise for the future.
Although my position at Michigan State had been renewed for a second
year, I saw no encouraging signs for tenure.
In fall 1934, I was approached about a position in the U. S. Department
of Labor. With the passage of the Wagner-Peyser Act in 1933, the U. S.
Employment Service had been strengthened. A new venture called the Occupational
Research Program was being established to systematically find out what the jobs
were in America. With millions unemployed, how could the situation be improved
without knowing jobs and their requirements in our economy? A Technical Advisory
Board was established. Members were nominated by the Social Science Research
Council of New York and National Research Council of the National Academy of
Science. Outstanding psychologists on the Board included L. J. O'Rourke, U. S.
Service Commission; Paul S. Achilles, Psychological Corporation; W. V. Brigham,
Stevens Institute of Technology; Clark L. Hull, Yale University; Donald G.
Paterson, University of Minnesota; A. T. Poffenberger, Columbia University; and
Morris S. Viteles, University of Pennsylvania. Ismar Baruch, head of
classification for U. S. Civil Service Commission, was nominated by Social
Science Research Council as was J. Walter Dietz, Western Electrical Company, who
was appointed Chairman of the Board.
William H. Stead, Associate Director, U. S. Employment Service, was
Director of the Program. He had been Associate Professor of Economics,
University of Minnesota, and Executive Secretary of the Minnesota Employment
Stabilization Research Institute at Minneapolis - St. Paul. Stead's minor for
his Ph. D. at Minnesota was psychology.
Marion Trabue, a psychologist on leave from the University of North
Carolina, was Technical Director the first year of the O. R. P. He had also been
associated with the Minnesota Employment Stabilization Research Institute.
Beatrice Dvorak had also worked with the Institute, and came to Washington in
1934 in charge of administering tests at the D. C. Employment Center. Her
dissertation under Paterson was on occupational ability patterns.
Harold Edgerton, on leave from Ohio State, had come to head the
Statistical Unit of ORP. I had had a valuable seminar with him on Fisher's
Statistical Methods. When Harold's leave was up, we tried to replace him with
Robert Wherry but there was a shift in budget at that time and the Statistical
Unit later became a part of the Worker Analysis Unit under Beatrice Dvorak.
Incidentally, the Director of the United States Employment Service was W.
Frank Persons, formerly Assistant to the President, Milwaukee Electric Railway
and Light Company. He had been Chairman of the Committee that operated our
Accident Clinic.
I officially joined ORP in June 1935 as Chief Industrial Psychologist--at
least that is what I thought. When I was sworn in I was amazed to find my
official title was Technical Assistant at Large. I was then told that Frances
Perkins, Secretary of Labor, had had trouble of some kind with a psychologist
when she was Industrial Commissioner for the State of New York. It was thought
good strategy to delete the word psychology from the program. I then became
Chief of the Worker Analysis Unit. (No one in the entire ORP was ever referred
to as "doctor.")
Years later when Miss Perkins was U. S. Civil Service Commissioner and I
was on the Advisory Committee on Personnel in the Social Service of the
Commission, she indicated, "of course we don't employ psychologists in the
Federal government." She was astonished when someone reminded her that she
had had many psychologists on her payroll in the Department of Labor. I was
embarrassed, for Miss Perkins had recently autographed for me, with warm
greeting, her new book, The Roosevelt I
Knew.
ORP was supported by funds from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fund and
later by the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation through the
American Youth Commission. It was
necessary to have the approval of FDR for this arrangement, which fortunately he
promptly gave. Frederic A. Delano, uncle of the President, was named trustee of
the foundation funds for ORP and became a member of the Technical Board. This
tie with the White House was a blessing. I met Mrs. Roosevelt later on at some
function or other. To my surprise she knew who I was and all about the program,
and was much pleased with our progress.
We had no problem with security clearances but the U. S. Employment
Service at that time was not under the Civil Service System. We had an
agreement, however, that all ORP appointments were to be made on a strict merit
basis. Once someone forgot to type "Occupational Research Program" on
the appointment form. It went into political clearance and was rejected because
the applicant's father was a leading Republican. The form was later re-submitted
with the proper identification and was immediately approved by the Secretary.
The foundation funds were of course temporary. As they ran out, we
managed to enlarge the government budget to take care of most of the foundation
personnel who wished to remain with the program.
When ORP was first established, the Technical Board, thank goodness,
specified that all occupational information should be collected by the use of
job analysis, and that any tests developed must be validated before being placed
into use in the Employment Service. Field Research Centers were developed and
WPA relief funds were obtained to cover the bulk of the lower paid workers. Job
analysts with engineering degrees could be found for $2000 per year and up, and
psychologists with Ph.D's came at the same price.
Two of the first psychologists I hired were Viteles' graduate students;
Jay L. Otis, who later wen to Western Reserve University and became president of
Division 14. The other was Luigi Petrullo, who eventually became head of the
psychology program at Office of Naval Research. Roger Bellows also came early
and headed the Worker Analysis Unit at the Baltimore Field Center. Clark Hull of
Yale recommended on of his students, Frank Fletcher, who headed the program at
our Boston Center and later sent on to be director of the Counseling Center at
Ohio State. Homer Bishop, a professor at Wittenberg College, became the first
head of the research program at Atlanta. Richard Leukart came from Ohio State
and among other posts headed our Chicago Center. He and Jay Otis, in later
years, wrote a book on job evaluation, which is now a classic.
It was planned that ORP would prepare a five-foot shelf of job
descriptions but soon it looked to be more of a ten-foot shelf. Furthermore,
books of occupational descriptions were poorly utilized. They made good
decorations for book cases in public employment offices. In one office we found
them used by a secretary as something to sit on to better reach her typewriter.
The job analysis schedule we developed included a "worker
characteristic form" with which a job analyst rated A, B, C, or D the
amount of each of 50 characteristics required by a worker to perform his job
satisfactorily.
These data were utilized in grouping occupation according to similarities
called "Job Equivalents." I had difficulty explaining this concept to
the House of Subcommittee of Appropriations and in doing so I used the term
"families of jobs." This they understood and from then on it was a
"job family" program.
We had two approaches for determining human characteristics required for
success in a given occupation. One was the ratings by analysts and the other was
measuring these characteristics by testing workers in the occupation. Ratings
were more subjective but in the testing method on measured the workers who
happened to be in the occupation at the time. Many of these might be much more
satisfied and satisfactory in some other pursuit. Results of the rating and
testing methods were later compared and it was found that there was sufficient
over-lap so the methods complemented each other.
Our various field centers early began to help local employment offices
prepare their own job information for aiding in interviewing, counseling, and
placement. On the national level a shift was made to cover all occupation by
developing a comprehensive Dictionary of
Occupational Titles.
In the aptitude testing area we brought Beatrice Dvorak into the program
from the D. C. Employment Center and placed her in charge of both test
development and test utilization. We exercised great care in insisting on
training interviewers and other personnel before they could utilize tests. We
began with stenographic and typing tests and if these were utilized properly,
training was made available in the use of oral trade tests and aptitude test
batteries.
My background in industry led me to insist on validation of aptitude
tests in terms of differentiating between more proficient and less proficient
workers, rather than using general norms to differentiate among occupations. We
ran up specific aptitude test batteries using multiple regression equations. We
had access to the IBM equipment of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was
helpful and of course we bought many calculators.
Specific aptitude test batteries began to proliferate in number, and
factor analyses were made to reduce the number of different tests--this led
later to the general aptitude test battery (GATB). L. L. Thurstone offered us
his tests which had been described in his APA presidential address, 1933,
entitles The Vectors of Mind. This was
the best presidential address in APA history according to my standards. APA that
year met at the University of Chicago and, of course, every one visited the
World's Fair.
Frances Perkins was not the only federal official skeptical of
psychology. The dominant social science discipline in the government was (and
still is) economics. The Bureau of the Budget statistical committee--psychology
not represented--had to approve or disapprove all questionnaires used in surveys
and research. Our tests were threatened. I argued they were not questionnaires
but scientific measuring devices. We won that battle, but later on, and even
today, tests are often threatened by judges who know nothing about psychological
measurement theory or methodology.
In 1939, Roosevelt, with the help of a high level committee, reorganized
the Federal government. Many budgets were dramatically cut. ORP became the
Occupational Analysis Section, with me in charge. William Stead, who had been my
boss, went to Washington University, St. Louis, as Dean of the School of
Business and Public Administration. The Employment Service was moved from the
Department of Labor to the Social Security Board and combined with the Bureau of
Unemployment Compensation. I spent a good deal of time helping our people find
other jobs. Many more were transferred to the State Employment Services and
continued their work, particularly in training people in job information. We
retained several of our research centers. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles was in the government printing
office and came our in the summer of 1940 with 18,000 definitions and 30,000
titles. We had to help train 10,000 people to use it, and later thousands more
were trained by the Army, Navy, Air Corps, and Marines.
Also in 1940 Occupational
Counseling Techniques was published, covering the Worker Analysis Program.
Chapter authors included Stead, Shartle, Osborne, Cooper, Otis, Dvorak, Endler,
Kolbe, Bellows, and Ward. This book had a good sale, and later received many
citations because Appendix V had a clear description of the Wherry-Doolittle
Test Selection Method.
After World War II had broken out in Europe, we were given extra money to
develop trade tests and study jobs in defense industries and in the U. S. Army.
The Army had no trained staff. A Major Hershey and a Major Dahlquist came to
invite me to help initiate the Army program, in which we made 10,000 analyses.
Hershey and Dalquist became generals; and General Hershey for many years was
Director of Selective Service. He had formerly been a ROTC Professor at Ohio
State. His Deputy was Colonel Dargusch (who also became general) and who was for
many years a trustee of Ohio State University.
We hired back as many of our staff as were available and began a
recruiting program which brought in 50 additional psychologists and at least
that many more who had college training in personnel or related work.
The testing and research program under Beatrice Dvorak was greatly
expanded. It was my idea to get fast learners into training for defense
productions as soon as possible. The U. S. Office of Education made grants to
states for training in occupation approved by the U. S. Employment Service.
Those scoring highest on test batteries were referred directly to industry or to
vocational schools.
A committee of APA under Edgar Doll urged me to prepare a list of defense
occupations that could be successfully performed by the mentally deficient. I
did not want to do this. Imagine persons in the country finding their occupation
on such a U. S. government list! Pearl Harbor came alone and saved the day - the
project was promptly cancelled.
Our job information orientation paid off well during the war. First of
all, there was the matter of work simplification - sorting our job elements that
could make one job into two or more less skilled jobs. I estimated in a speech
at APA that twenty million workers would change jobs. It drew headlines all over
this country and implied that psychologists were going to do this all on their
own. It was a bit embarrassing.
As the war progressed, Roosevelt created the War Manpower Commission and
moved the Employment Service into it. But our Occupational Analysis Section had
become larger than most Divisions so we moved to a new Bureau of Manpower
Utilization in the WMC.
We became the Division of Occupational Analysis and Manning Tables. The
term "manning tables" came originally from the U. S. Army. Our
occupational analysts in studying a plant always found the number of workers in
each job classification. This gave the manpower picture for a given industrial
operation and indicated how many workers and what skills were required to
produce a product or service. In a tight market, labor had to be rationed in
terms of need and likewise who best could be spared from draft to military
service. Industry followed our prescribed procedures and developed manning
tables for 3000 large establishments to help facilitate the orderly transfer and
utilization of the work force.
We also developed a list of essential occupations classified according to
DOT. As manpower became tighter, we developed a briefer list called critical
occupations. There were essential occupations in which there was a national
shortage and a training time of two years or more. If one were employed in the
critical occupation, he was nearly always deferred from military service.
In the Federal government, we had the problem of when to identify for
occupational deferment. The President, being Commander-In-Chief, went along with
the critical occupation arrangement and elected-officials were exempt by law.
There were thousands of U. S. governmental positions not on the critical list
where the need for deferment seemed to exist. These requests required the
permission of the President of the U. S. Naturally, he could not take time for
this task, so a committee was appointed to do it for him. It was called the
President's Committee on Occupational Deferments. There were two of us: the
Chairman, who was a politician (who knew most of the cabinet members), and me,
the technician, a pre-Pearl Harbor father unwanted by the draft.
Requests came to us directly from the Departments. If
we turned down a Cabinet Member's recommendation, he or she could appeal
to the President, in which case our committee of two went to the White House and
argued the case with the Cabinet Member or representative before Judge Samuel
Rosenman, the President's Legal Counsel (who also drafted many of Roosevelt's
speeches). Rosenman then took the cases to the President with a recommendation.
I think we won every dispute, although in one of the hearings with Jesse Jones,
head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, I yielded on a few cases where
additional information was supplied. It was fun to go the White House with DOT
under my arm. No ID card or pass was required.
The U. S. Post Office was another critical problem. The Postmaster
General told us to use our best judgement. All he wanted was that the mail get
through. I had 30,000 cases for action in my back office. I spent several
afternoons at the D. C. Post Office interviewing workers and estimating
complexity of jobs, particularly the training time, and whether or not women
could be utilized. We were unsuccessful at that time in getting the P. O. to
utilize women as city delivery persons. To this day women are not frequently
found.
Nelson A. Rockefeller, 35-year-old head of the Latin American Affairs
Agency of the State Department with a young staff, came in with his requests for
deferment and demanded immediate action. It was an eyeball to eyeball
confrontation. When we said we'd need time to review the career, he beat his
fist on the table and said he'd go directly to the President. I said, "Go
ahead," knowing the President was leaving for Warm Springs that Friday
evening and Rockefeller was heading for an extended trip to Latin America the
following Tuesday.
In another instance, we received a request for the deferment of 50 or so
laboratory assistants in the Southwestern U. S. They were working on a new kind
of bomb that was going to blow the hell out of everything. That request was
granted; and it was the first I knew of the Atomic Bomb - which was several
months before Harry Truman found out about it.
The Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of CIA, was also an
interesting case. I had to know what each person was doing before I would act. I
developed a point system to rate essentiality, job complexity, and other job
characteristics relative to the war emergency. The Washington News got hold of
it and it made the front page which
resulted in a lot of flack. We had to appear before the House Committee on
Military Affairs every 30 days. They always seemed to think we were not strict
enough. On the other hand the Washington Post thought we were too strict and in
an editorial advocated that our Committee should be fired. Also, at a Cabinet
meeting, two Secretaries asked the President to discharge us, but FDR gave us
firm support.
At the request of the War Department, in April 1940, the National
Research Council approved a committee on the Classification of Military
Personnel. Under the chairmanship of Walter V. Bingham, L. J. O'Rourke, Marion
Richardson, and I were on it from the government along with L. L. Thurstone,
University of Chicago, Henry Garrett, Columbia, and Carl Brigham of Princeton.
This became quite an active committee. We met with General George Marshall,
Chief of Staff, two or three times, with other top Army officials. Later, a
sub-committee was appointed call the Technical Personnel, of which I was
chairman. This linkage made me a key technical person between the Civilian
manpower program and the Army programs.
Our job analysis procedures manual was adapted for use in the Armed
Forces and likewise by many civilian plants. We tried to keep up with new jobs
that were being created. Supplements to DOT were issued regularly.
In June 1935, when I first went to Washington, the 1934 APA directory
showed only two psychologists working for the U. S. government in the district.
L. J. O'Rourke, Director of Personnel Research, Civil Service Commission, and
Joseph Rossman, a patent examiner with the U. Su. Patent Office. By 1945, there
were nearly 200 psychologists listed.
In 1940, it was said that ORP was the world's largest Department of
Psychology. We hired so many occupational analysts that the Civil Service
Commission established a new classification just for us and held a nationally
announced examination. After a year or so we ran a validation study. As I
recall, the biserial correlation (pass-fail on exam) was +.30 for those who
worked in Washington, mostly on data processing, but zero for those who were
sent to the field where the duties were more varied. Marion Richardson, a
well-know psychologist who was with the Civil Service Commission at that time,
thought the results were not bad. We chided him, of course, since such low
validation were below our standards for the test batteries we had approved for
use by the U. S. Employment Service.
Our program was not the only one that expanded. The Social Security Board
under Henry Aronson set up a distinguished merit testing program for the states.
Dorothy Adkins and Frederic Kuder, colleagues of Thurstone at the University of
Chicago, came in. Thurstone once told me that Dorothy Adkins was the brightest
woman he ever worked with. That was indeed a compliment.
Our own occupational analysis program expanded so rapidly that the number
of personnel and program complications were almost beyond the comprehension of
most of our superiors. Hence, I participated in hearings at the Bureau of the
Budget and before the House Sub-committee on Appropriations. There were tough
sessions but I had good luck. My background in dramatics was helpful in
testifying. Congress never cut my program, although I usually had to divide up
our increases with other units in the agency that did receive severe cuts.
I discovered early in appearing before congregational committees that
what was in the record did not necessarily agree with what was said informally.
I remember an influential, economy-minded Congressman who blasted me in the
formal hearing for wasting people's money, but at intermission warmly shook my
hand and said I was doing a wonderful job. His formal remarks were released to
the press in his home state. It was an election year.
Another development during the war was the National Poster of Scientific
and Specialized Personnel. Their organization was separate from the U. S.
Employment Service but was incorporated into the War Manpower Commission.
Leonard Carmichael, President of Tufts University and distinguished
psychologist, became the director. The roster had and occupational
classification system for highly specialized placement services, much too
detailed to be brought into the structure of DOT. Leonard and I had lunch
together several times at the old Cosmos Club to explore the common elements
between the two systems. I advised the Bureau of the Budget to keep on funding
the Roster Classification.
On the other hand, the Selective Service System attempted a new
occupational classification arrangement whereby a draftee would classify
himself. I strongly opposed the do-it-yourself method, fortunately it was
dropped shortly.
To assist in the expansion of psychology in the government, an office of
Psychological Personnel was established in 1941 at the National Academy of
Sciences building on Constitution Avenue. Steuart Henderson Britt of George
Washington University was the first director. This office continued through the
war and helped to set a pattern whereby APA moved its headquarters from
Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois, to the old AAAS building at 1515
Massachusetts Avenue with Dael Wolfle as the first Execute Secretary.
Although many APA members opposed moving the office to Washington, I
strongly urged it. I could see an increasing role for government in the affairs
of science and its funding. My model was the American Chemical Society with
its impressive building on 16th street. Little did I expect APA to
develop into the bureaucracy it is today.
Later, when I was Treasurer of APA, we had accumulated a sufficient
surplus to buy, remodel, and equip a building of our own at 1333 16th
Street. We had so much room that we rented space to the American Personnel and
Guidance Association. Also, on Sunday's, the church across the street used our
main floor for a Sunday school class (taught by Chief Justice Warren).
As early as 1936 the growth in applied psychology had asserted itself
organizationally. APA was too narrow and rigid. A now independent association
was formed called American Association of Applied Psychologists, with three
sections: Clinical, Consulting, Educational, and Industrial and Business. Dues
were $3.00. The first program was at the University of Minnesota in 1937. I read
a paper on our trade testing developments. The next year it was at Columbus,
Ohio, and I presented a paper on our aptitude testing research. In 1939, AAAP
met in Washington, D. C. I was chairman of the session on psychology in the
public service. It was great to be free from the stuffiness of APA. Later
(1946), of course, AAAP merged into a new APA taking along its division
structure, which has since proliferated beyond any expectation.
Further developments in psychology came in 1946 with the establishment of
the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology, whereby diplomat
status could be granted in Industrial Psychology, Clinical Psychology,
Counseling Psychology, and other specialists.
Marion Bills and I were the first board members from the Industrial area.
In fact, my involvement in APA became a bit too much. I remember at the
Penn State meeting in 1950. I was the APA Treasurer, member of the Board of
Directors, the Publication Board, and the Council; also President of Division
14, Chairman of a committee to find a new executive secretary, and member of the
Board of Examiners of ABEPP. Later on, an article by Francis A. Young appeared
in the Washington State Psychological Association News Letter indicating that
Anne Anastasi and I had each served eleven years on the APA Board of Directors
and gave us the titles of Queen Anne and King Carroll. Anne, who was a classmate
of mine at Columbia, beat this record when she became President-elect of APA in
1971.
Upon invitation from Mitchell Dreese and Thelma Hunt, I introduced a
course at George Washington University in Occupational Analysis Methods. Six
years later I wrote a text, Occupational
Information, based on this course. It went through a number of printings and
two revisions during a thirty-year period.
In order to collate job analysis data on a nationwide basis, we had to
insist on uniformity of procedure. In general, the psychologists in the program
were involved in the development, processing, and utilization of job families,
and trade and aptitude tests.
Some showed strong interest in job analysis as a
scientific and useful personnel research tool. Edward Edleman, who had worked
with Poffenberger at Columbia, did some work on methodology. Ernest Primoff
showed the greatest interest in job analysis as a method particularly in
validation of measures for the job elements approach. He has since continued
this excellent work with the U. S. Civil Service Commission.
Vernon Banta of our St. Paul research center developed a modification of
the job analysis schedule to emphasize physical requirements. It became known as
physical demands analysis, by which one could estimate the physical demands
required for various positions and jobs. The U. S. Civil Service Commission
later adapted the approach for use in placement. The form was called Health
Qualification Placement Record.
When I reentered the federal services in 1953 during the Korean War, I
took a peek at what was checked on the form for my position as research
director. Only one item, "near vision correctable at 13 to 16 inches,"
was checked as full capacity required. The examining physician had a staff
assistant give me the eye examination twice to be sure I had the capacity. The
requirement came out of the position analysis, indicating that I had many
reports to read.
In 1944, the ORP had celebrated its tenth anniversary. The National
Vocational Guidance Association devoted an entire issue in its journal to our
work under the title, "Ten Years of Occupational Research."
With World War II drawing to a close, I proposed to my supervisors and to
"powers that be" in the Bureau of the Budget that we should follow the
U. S. Public Health Service model and create an Institute of Occupational
Research as a part of the eventual Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
I made no progress, however. The U.
S. Employment Service did not want an Institute and the Executive Director of
the Social Security Administration at that time, blew cold the term Institute.
He visualized the title as representing some kind of cheap gym outfit.
In our occupational analysis program we had trained hundreds of persons
in job analysis and testing in this War Manpower Organization. Administers
received a briefer course in occupational analysis. One of the brightest was one
Hubert Humphrey, Deputy Manpower Director of Twin City area. Another was a former Texas school teacher named Lyndon B.
Johnson. He was a Naval Officer assigned by Roosevelt to our Los Angeles
manpower area.
Years later, both Humphrey and Johnson were very helpful when they were
in the Senate. The last time I appeared before Senator Humphrey, he was on the
Senate Appropriations Committee. He was indeed well-informed on social science
research programs and talked about the importance of the work almost as much as
I did. Shortly after, on a TV debate with a representative of the National
Association of Manufacturers, he stated that he had reviewed the budget with a
fine-toothed comb and could not find a place to cut a penny.
However, many unfortunate things happened to excellent programs at budget
time. For example, the Bureau of Budget made a study of how well research and
development money was being utilized. I had already made informal contacts with
the Bureau and know all about the study. I learned that O'Rourke, with one of
the best personnel research programs in the government, was perceived as not
getting his results into the operations of the Civil Service Commission. I
tipped off O'Rourke. He appreciated the information but seemed undisturbed. It
was not long, however, before his unit was abolished he was assigned to the
examining staff of the commission.
With the end of the was in sight we began to think about conversion to
peacetime activities, and I became restless with bureaucratic life. I had had
nine different homes in fine and one-half years. I longed to be in the
comparative quiet of academia full-time.
In our studies in occupational analysis in nearly 30,000 establishments
we had never made analysis above the supervisory level. I wanted very much to
spend several years studying people, job, and organizations beginning at the
top. I made a few contacts and found a sympathetic interest in such a venture.
It was obvious to me that such studies could be done better in a university
setting than in government. Ohio State, among other institutions, was
interested. Since I knew something of the organization and faculty at Ohio
State, I returned there to become a professor of psychology with campus-wide
duties as a research stimulator and administrator.
We established the Personnel Research Board, which was an interesting
experiment in organizational behavior. At Ohio State at that time, Psychology
was in the College of Education; Anthropology, Sociology, and Economics were in
Commerce and Administration; Political Science in Arts and Sciences; and, of
course, Industrial Engineering in Engineering. At first, the Academic
Vice-President was Chairman and I was Executive Secretary. Later, I was
appointed Chairman.
The Board, with representation from these colleges and the President's
Office and the Graduate School, developed interdisciplinary programs in research
and instruction and also strengthened the various departments involved. The
dominant project was one I proposed, entitled "Leadership in a
Democracy." The PRB ran on a formal basis unitil 1963 when the university
was reorganized and Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, and Political Science
were placed in a new College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The Behavioral
Science Laboratory established by the Board became part of the dean's office of
this new college.
The Ohio State leadership studies featuring "Leadership in a
Democracy" developed into a large research program. Studies were conducted
in business, educational, and governmental occupations -particularly the
military. John Darley, then still on duty in the Navy, arranged our first grant
from the Office of Naval Research. Aid was also received from the Rockefeller
and Ford Foundations, and from a number of business firms and from the U. S. Air
Force. Soon it was a million-dollar venture, involving faculty members Ralph
Stogdill, Harold Burtt, John Hemphill, Robert Wherry, Pauline Pepinsky, Andrew
Halpin, Donald T. Campbell, Harold Pepinsky, Melvin Seaman (Sociology), Alvin
Coons (Economics), and many others on and off campus as advisors and
consultants. Numerous research papers and monographs were published. The
leadership studies led to many theses and dissertations, including those of many
prominent I.O. psychologists: Bernard Bass, Edwin Fleishman, Edwin Harris, C. G.
Browne, Carl Rush, Mark Silber, Ralph Canter, Lorraine Eyde, William Jaynes,
Ruben Shevitz, Robert Steltz, Gary Brunback, Robert Hilton, Jon Bentz, John
Rizzo, and William Henler.
To help us get research going in private industry, I personally initiated
exploratory studies with Nationwide Insurance. I roughed out executive work
patterns and later lured colleagues and students to take over with their
expertise in theory and methodology. They developed scales for describing leader
and organizational behavior, which have had wide use and are currently
available.
In 1956, I wrote a book based on our leadership studies entitled Executive
Performance and Leadership, which was published in the U. S. and the United
Kingdom. There was also a Spanish translation published for use in Latin
America. The most complete overall coverage of the studies was included in Handbook of Leadership, an excellent work by Ralph N. S,
published in 1974.
After pursuing the leadership studies for several years, I became
interested in "why" leaders do what they do. I hypothesized it was
their basic values that were important, and I initiated a series of studies in
this area. My own research was concerned with organizational values as revealed
by a projective approach wherein an individual described the ideal organization.
Value dimensions were established by factor analysis for military, industrial,
and educational organizations. Eugene Haas (Sociology) and consultants from
several other disciplines cooperated on this project. Haas took over
responsibility when I went on leave to return again to Washington in 1961.
Referring back to my career in government, I had the privilege to begin
serving in 1946 on the newly created Human Resources Committee of the Joint
Research and Development Board of the Armed Services. We planned the long-range
program for the yet to be Department of Defense. I remember Vannevar Bush,
Chairman of the Board, telling us that our area was a bit on the "lunatic
fringe" but he thought it important nevertheless. Donald Marquis,
University of Michigan, was Chairman, and Samuel Stouffer, Harvard, William
Menninger, Menninger Clinic, and I made up the Committee, which had several
specialized panels. Lyle Lanier, later at the University of Illinois, became
Executed Secretary. Each of the Armed Services was represented on the Committee
and also the panels. I served on the Committee until 1953.
The Joint Research and Development Board after the establishment of the
Department of Defense (1947) became in effect the Office, Director of Defense
Research and Engineering, Office Secretary of Defense. The Human Resources
Committee later became the Division of Psychology and Social Sciences.
In 1952-53 during the Korean War, I had taken leave from Ohio State to
become Director of Research, Human Resources Research Institute of the U. S. Air
Force. (For three years I had been active on its Advisory Committee.) Program
included an officer personnel, officer education, manpower, human relations,
psychological warfare, and strategic intelligence. We dispersed several million
dollars in grants and contracts, the largest one a grant to the Harvard Business
Research Center for a working model of Soviet society. Ohio State had a project
on studies of intelligence officers and another related to leadership and
organizational change in Yugoslavia. I have had an opportunity to evaluate the
HRRI programs in retrospect, and I think the Harvard project had the most
far-reaching impact of any social science grants during that period.
Nine years later, for most of the Kennedy Administration, I returned once
more to Washington as Chief, Psychology and Social Sciences Division, Office
Secretary of Defense and U. S. Member of the Human Factors Advisory Group,
Science Committee NATO, Paris. Harold Brown, a distinguished physical scientist,
was then Director of the Office of Defense and Engineering. He was sympathetic
to behavioral and social science research. Later he became Secretary of Defense
in the Carter administration.
There had been many cutbacks during the Eisenhower Administration. It was
necessary to try to catch up. The budget I had to defend in personnel research
and development alone was, as I recall, over $12 million plus $7 million in
human performance R & D. This was indeed a contrast to 1940 when we had to
bail out the Army by having our occupational analysts from the Old Employment
Service do the research and development work on human resources.
I left the Pentagon a couple of months after the assassination. I felt
sure that Kennedy was going to resolve the Vietnam situation without a ground
war. I had worked full-time in the Pentagon during the Cuban missile crisis and
from the inputs I had about East Asia, it seemed to be that Kennedy was too
smart to permit an all-out involvement.
Working for the Pentagon was a delight in many ways. I had no staff
except a part-time secretary and two contracts: one with the Institute for
Defense Analysis in which I utilized the talents of Orlansky, his consultants
and staff: the other, a Smithsonian Institution Contract under the leadership of
Charles Bray, with a corps of high level talent for research planning. My
counterparts in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and NATO were all competent and
cooperative.
In Department of Defense I felt free to communicate with anyone in the
world with whom I felt I had legitimate business. Also, I could communicate
informally with anyone in the Department of Defense by telephone to obtain
information form my use. Professional affairs were treated as official business,
such as my dealings with APA, whereas in the old Department of Labor days one
felt it necessary to use his personal stamps for postage on APA business.
Incidentally, after World War II, the Employment Service, had gotten very
limited support for research. In my new job, I promoted getting some funds
transferred across the Potomac to help in the revisions of DOT and the further
development of the general aptitude test battery. However, it took the poverty
programs in the Johnson Administration to really stimulate the civilian sector
and give the Employment Service a boost.
When I returned to the OSU Campus in 1964, I became Associate Dean and
Director, Research Division, College of Commerce and Administration as well as
Chairman of the Personnel Research Board. I had a part-time appointment in
psychology and taught in the Industrial Organizational area.
At this time I was interested in models for predicting administrative
decisions. We used one of the models to attempt to predict whether or not the
Isrealis would initiate a war in Spring of 1967. Only one participant in the
seminar hit it right. He was a doctoral candidate in social psychology and
reserve officer on leave from the Isreaeli Armed Forces. I am sure he had
information the rest of us did not share in our models!
In another case we attempted to predict a decision President Johnson
would make in regard to selective service policy. This turned out to be correct,
at least as far as I was concerned, but I had been a consultant on the decision,
largely by telephone, and I had input not available to the others (although I
shared the information with them.)
In June 1963, after finishing off a couple of publications on
organizational values, I became Emeritus Professor in Psychology in the College
of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Emeritus Professor in Research in the
College of Administrative Science.
Since then, in addition to travel and recreation, I have been involved as
a consultant, both formal and informal. I also like to review the present status
and outcome of the many research projects in which I took part; and last, but
not least, to learn of the many significant accomplishments of former students
and younger colleagues.
From 1971 to 1973, I was technical consultant for research evaluation,
Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1972, I was invited by the
Yugoslav government to participate in their manpower research symposium. I was
the only American, and I presented a paper covering occupational research in the
Department of Labor over a 37-year period. This program has progressed
exceedingly well.
As a matter of ideology and policy I have long believed in retirement,
and I think one should plan it as part of his occupational career. There are not
enough paying jobs in our program for full employment at all ages. Youngsters
should be kept as long as possible in schools and colleges--outside the labor
forces. Likewise, retirement is a matter of opportunity and right in a
democratic society. Better qualified younger persons with families are waiting
in line for advancement. From a mere selfish point of view, I felt I had
contributed many dollars to three retirement systems and to private investments,
and I, as an only child from an Iowa farm, wanted to personally enjoy the fruits
of the savings. That is what I am doing now!
SELECTED
PUBLICATIONS
Publications
A Selection Test for Electrical
Troublemen. Personnel Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1932, pp.177-183.
Clinical Approach to Foremanship.
Personnel Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1934, pp. 135-137.
Dictionary of Occupational
Titles, Parts I, II, III (presented under my general direction.) U. S.
Government Printing Office, 1939. Also supplements.
Occupational Counseling
Techniques - Their Development and Application. William H. Stead, Carroll
L. Shartle, and Associates. American Book Company, 1940.
Oral Trade Questions (covering
300 occupations, prepared under my general supervision). U. S. Government
Printing Office, 1940.
Occupational Analysis Activities
in the War Manpower Commission. Psychological Bulletin, November 1943.
Occupational and Vocational
Counseling of Military and Civilian Personnel During the Period of Post-War
demobilization and the Years Immediately Therafter. Psychological
Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 10, 1944, pp. 697-705
Ten Years of Occupational
Research. Occupations, Vol. 22, No. 7, 1944, pp. 397-446. (With others.)
Job Analysis for Retail Stores.
???, Maynard, and Shartle. Research Monograph, Ohio State University,
1946.
Developments in Occupational
Classification. Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vo. 10, No. 2, 1946, pp.
81-84.
Occupations in Psychology. The
American Psychologist, Vol. 1, No. 12, 1946, pp. 55-584.
Vocational Counseling and
Placement in the Community in Relation to Labor Nobility, Tenure, and Other
Factors. New York: Social Science Research Council. Committee on Labor Market
Research, Pamphlet No. 5, January, 1948, p. 18.
Leadership and Executive
Performance. Personnel, Vol. 25, No. 5, 1949, pp. 370-380.
Job Analysis and Job
Classification and Evaluation. In D. H. Fryer & E. R. Henry (Eds.), Handbook
of Applied Psychology. Vol. 1, New York: Rhinehart, 195X, pp. 135-142, 160-162.
Industrial Psychology, In Annual
Review of Psychology, Vol. 1, 1950, pp. 151-72, Stanford, California:
Annual Review, Inc.
Job Analysis and Job Evaluation.
Personnel Handbook, edited by John F. Mee, New York: Ronald Press Company, 1951,
pp. 125-134.
Studies in Naval Leadership, Part
I. Groups, Leadership and Men: Research in Human Relations, edited by H.
Guetzkow, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Carnegie Press, 1951.
Occupational Information.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1946. Revisions, 1952, and 1959.
Methods in the Study of
Administrative Leadership. Monograph No. 80, Columbus: The Ohio State
University, 1955. (With Ralph M. Stogdill.)
Executive Performance and
Leadership. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1956; London: Staples Press,
1957. Also as Direccion y ??? Mexico City: Heruero Hermanos, 1960.
A Theoretical Framework for the
Study of Behavior in Organizations. In A. W. Halpin (Ed.). Administrative Theory
in Education. Chicago: University of Chicago, Midwest Administration Center,
1958, pp. 73-88.
Blueprinting the Next Ten Years
of Industrial Psychology. (A Symposium) Personnel Psychology, Vol. 12, 1959, pp.
40-45.
Leadership and
Organizational Behavior. In L. Petrullo and P. M. Bass (Eds.), Leadership and
Interpersonal Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961,
pp.310-325.
The Occupational Research
Program: An Example of Research Utilization. In Case Studies in Bringing
Behavioral Science Into Use, 1961, Stanford University Studies in Utilization of
Behavioral Science, Vol. 1, pp. 5X-72.
Occupational Analysis, Worker
Characteristic, and Occupational Classification Systems. In Henry ??? (Ed.), Man
In a World of Work. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1964, pp. 235-310.
An Approach to Dimensions of
Value (with Gary. Brunback and John R. Rizzo). Journal of Psychology, Vol.
57, 1964, pp. 101-111.
An Interaction Model for
Administrative Decisions. Praksenlogia, Mr. 39/40, 1971, pp. 311-316. (Warsaw)
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