Claim: Wight Bakke of the Yale Labor and Management Center , stressed that the center not take ivory tower approaches when dealing with problems in the field such as, why does he change from one kind of behavior to another?
Evidence: As founding director of the Yale Labor and Management Center, Bakke's aim was to establish a scientific approach towards establishing and testing hypotheses about human actions in industrial relations and thereby establish an explanatory theory of behavior that could eventually help find ways to reduce the amount of labor-management conflict. Bakke stressed that the center not take ivory tower approaches and instead it held clinical working sessions between labor and management representatives on campus and established research "listening posts" in places such as Detroit and Charlotte. Bakke's aim with the center was to establish a scientific approach towards establishing and testing hypotheses about human actions in industrial relations and thus establish an explanatory theory of behavior, with the eventual goal of finding ways to reduce the amount of labor-management conflict. He said, "I am convinced that the lack of theory of human behavior is our most serious handicap in the development of policy in labor relations. Management, union leaders and workers all must have a working knowledge, validated by experience, of such questions as: (1) why does the other person behave as he does?