Scott, W. Richard
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this oral history, W. Richard Scott, Stanford Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, discusses his early years in Kansas, graduate education at the University of Chicago, his academic career in the Stanford Department of Sociology, and his pioneering work in the field of organizational studies. Scott describes his childhood and teenage years in Parsons, Kansas. He cites the stability provided by his father’s work at the post office during the Great Depression, his mother’s influence, and childhood bouts with asthma as formative factors in his life. He discusses his extracurricular interests during high school, his two years of junior college in Parsons, and his early interest in becoming a minister. Scott describes entering Kansas University as a junior, discovering his love of sociology, and earning his PhD at the University of Chicago, where he worked with Otis Dudley Duncan, Peter Blau, and Everett Hughes Cherrington. Scott recalls his path to joining the Stanford Department of Sociology in 1959 shortly after Fred Terman had recruited Sanford Dornbusch as a promising junior faculty member to chair and “restart” the department, which had been granted additional billets to fill. He describes the highly collaborative nature of the department, as five newly-hired, young sociologists crafted the curriculum, designed a new graduate training program, and worked together on an NSF grant. By the end of the 1960s, Scott recalls, it felt like things were really happening academically at Stanford. Turning to his research on organizations, Scott recounts seeking out faculty from across the university who were studying different aspects of organizations. They formed a community, secured critical funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, and proceeded to develop an exciting new field of organizational studies. Organizational studies flourished at Stanford for twenty years and three of the most important theories in the field were developed here during that period. Describing the trajectory of his research, Scott explains that he has worked on widely divergent topics over his career: authority and control systems in multiple settings, the effectiveness and quality of care in hospitals, organizational structures in K-12 education, changing health care delivery systems, global infrastructure construction projects, and the San Francisco Bay Area system of higher education. He also mentions serving on government grant peer review panels for many years, an experience which he found intellectually rewarding. Scott, who won the H&S Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1987, stresses the importance of teaching and extolls the virtues of the doctoral oral examination. He relates the thinking that went into the writing of his three core textbooks on organization studies and the influence the books have had. He comments on four of his most meaningful professional awards and reflects on some of the Stanford leaders he knew and admired: Dick Lyman, Al Hastorf, Ray Bacchetti, and Ken Cuthbertson. As an observer of Stanford as a bureaucracy for over fifty years, Scott notes a recent movement away from the collegial structure in which departments serve as the primary units, setting a disciplinary-centered agenda. Scott closes the interview by commenting on the benefits of living on the Stanford campus since 1962 and his active involvement with Avenidas Village, a system that supports seniors who want to stay in their own homes as they age.
Description
Type of resource | mixed material |
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Date created | June 27, 2016 - July 7, 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
Author | Scott, W. Richard | |
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Contributing author | Schofield, Susan W. | |
Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Subjects
Subject | Stanford Historical Society |
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Subject | oral histories |
Subject | interviews |
Subject | higher education |
Subject | professors |
Subject | Avenidas Village |
Subject | Palo Alto |
Subject | CA |
Subject | Dornbusch |
Subject | Sanford M. “Sandy” |
Subject | 1926-2016 |
Subject | Scandinavian Consortium on Organizations (SCANCOR) |
Subject | Scott |
Subject | William Richard “Dick” |
Subject | 1932- |
Subject | sociology > organizational studies |
Subject | Stanford University > Department of Sociology |
Subject | Stanford University > Organizations Conference at Asilomar |
Subject | Stanford University > School of Medicine > Russell Sage Program > 1960s |
Subject | Stanford University > Stanford Center for Organizational Research (SCOR) |
Subject | universities and colleges > faculty |
Bibliographic information
Related item |
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Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/dd179mm5658 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
Scott, W. Richard (2016).
Oral History. Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Interviews (SC0932).
Department of Special Collections & University Archives, Stanford University Libraries,
Stanford, Calif. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/dd179mm5658
Collection
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program interviews, 1999-2022
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