UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #686
SCHWAB, DONALD P.

SCHWAB, Donald P. (1938- )
Emeritus Professor of Management and Human Resources
At UW: 1967-

Interviewed: 2004	
Interviewer: W. Lee Hansen
Length: 1 hour

Abstract: In his 2004 interview with W. Lee Hansen, Donald P. Schwab discusses his intellectual interests, his tenure at UW-Madison, and the courses he taught during his career. Much of the interview focuses on the Schwab’s role at Industrial Relations Resource Institute and the institution’s demise in the early 2000s.

Keywords: Educational background; Campus unrest; Teaching; Relationship between IRRI and Business School; Decline and fall of the IRRI; Directors of the IRRI; Research funds; Tenure-granting authority. 

Interview Session (August 25, 2004): Tape 1

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:35	Donald Schwab discusses his educational background. He came to UW in 1967; he goes on to recollect some aspects of campus unrest in the late 1960s.

00:03:03	DS describes his teaching responsibilities and his introduction to the Industrial Relations Research Institute (IRRI).

00:05:28	He began teaching courses on research methods for the IRRI circa 1970.

00:09:03	DS lists his committee service for the IRRI.

00:10:54	The Business School had always relied on human resources courses offered by the IRRI.

00:13:23	The demise of the IRRI, according to DS, occurred because of the decline of the labor movement. As a result, fewer students were interested in research, the government was less inclined to fund research on labor issues, and the nature of research that is being done occurs outside the framework of industrial relations. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of the IRRI proved to be a weakness when there was no longer a core of committed faculty.

00:18:04	He thinks that the College of Letters & Science made a rational decision in closing the IRRI, because there was no core of L&S faculty who were interested in maintaining the Institute.

00:21:50	DS assembled the proposal to bring the IRRI within the Business School, but who would pay who for the transfer proved to be a stumbling block.

00:26:02	He mentions that the La Follette Institute was split on whether to take over the IRRI.

00:27:02	DS thinks that the directors of the IRRI after Gerald Somers failed to do "institution-building" to bring in research funding.

00:30:12	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:20	Donald Schwab and Lee Hansen continue to discuss the dearth of research funds available to the Industrial Relations Research Institute (IRRI).

00:31:00	DS thinks that he inadvertently undermined the IRRI by setting up a doctoral program in management while he was chair of that department in the late 1980s.

00:32:54	He thinks that tenure-granting authority would not have been a panacea for the IRRI; he personally opposed the departmentalization of the IRRI because it would have disrupted the interdisciplinary facet of the Institute.

00:38:31	DS and Lee Hansen discuss former IRRI students.

00:43:16	End of side. End of tape. End of interview.

END