NASHVILLE, Tenn. – One of the nation’s leading authorities on human
resources, industrial relations and compensation, Thomas A. Mahoney,
died on July 26 after a lengthy illness. Mahoney, 76, was the
Frances Currey Hampton Professor of Organization Studies, Emeritus, at
Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, where he
had taught since 1982.
Mahoney was given emeritus status in 1995, but returned as an
adjunct faculty member at the Owen School where he continued to teach
MBA students until 2001.
Mahoney had a long and distinguished career as an academic in
organizational studies. His work examined how organizational
effectiveness can be enhanced through employment performance, how human
resource management programs can be operated in a fair manner enhancing
both employer and employee outcomes, and how advanced analytic
techniques can be applied to human resources planning, forecasting and
strategy development. The development of compensation and reward theory
is one of his primary legacies.
He was a prolific author and researcher. He published eight books
and monographs and more than 70 articles and book chapters. His 1979
book of readings on Compensation and Reward Perspectives provides a
conceptual and theoretical foundation for a generation of scholars in
compensation.
Mahoney was the editor of the Academy of Management Journal and
served on the editorial boards of the Human Resources Planning Journal
and the Human Resources Management Review. He was a consulting editor
to the Journal of Management, and he reviewed manuscripts for a number
of other academic journals.
Considered one of the nation’s top two experts in organization
theory and behavior, Mahoney was recruited by Dean Sam Richmond to the
Owen School from the University of Minnesota, where he had earned his
master’s and doctorate degrees in economics and had taught for 26
years. According to a 1987 article from the Nashville Banner, Richmond
credited Mahoney with developing the school’s academic program in human
resources and hiring other prominent faculty to teach at Vanderbilt.
Hans Stoll, the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker Professor of Finance
and director of the Financial Markets Research Center at the Owen
School, said Mahoney’s arrival at the school helped to "put it on the
map in the field of human resources. He was a leader in his field, and
Owen certainly benefited from the recognition he had when he came here.
He was a dependable and thoughtful colleague, gentle but determined."
Mark Cohen, senior associate dean and Justin Potter Professor of
American Competitive Business, agrees that Mahoney’s importance to the
school was in "starting the school’s human resources discipline and
making it a place where companies now come to recruit good human
resources MBAs. But even more than that, he was a mentor. He loved
being a professor and a colleague to other faculty. He was the person
you could go to when you needed advice; I have never met someone so
willing to take the time to sit down to talk with you."
Over the course of his career, he visited at other universities at
home and abroad including the universities of Stellenbosch and
Witwatersrand in South Africa, the University of British Columbia and
the University of Wisconsin.
He devoted a lifetime of work to the creation of fair and productive
workplaces. His consulting work in labor relations, at U.S. and South
African companies, coincided with dramatically evolving situations in
America and other parts of the world. He advised South African
businesses on issues of labor relations at a time when the country was
facing shortages of talent but was still segregated under the system of
apartheid. Mahoney helped draft affirmative action plans to enable
companies to hire and train more black workers, though the law did not
allow for it. In this country, he advised companies at a time when more
women and minorities were entering management ranks in fields
traditionally dominated by white men. He predicted companies would have
to address challenges from training, childcare, flexible time and
comparable pay to sexual harassment and racism on the job.
Mahoney was a former chair of the Human Resources Division of the
Academy of Management and a fellow of the Academy of Management. In
1993, the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management
recognized his lifetime of scholarship with the 1993 Herbert Heneman
Jr. Award for Career Achievement. He was the 1994 recipient of
Vanderbilt’s Alexander Heard Distinguished Professor Award, which
recognizes the "distinctive contributions to the understanding of
contemporary social problems."
He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Ursula; two brothers, James
Mahoney of Tucson, Ariz., and Don Mahoney of Argus, Ind.; two sons,
Charles Mahoney of Storrs, Conn., and John Mahoney of Brooklyn, N.Y.;
and one grandson, Adrian.
A memorial service to be held at Benton Chapel on campus is planned
for the fall. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations
be made in his memory to Wabash College, where Mahoney earned his
bachelor’s degree.
Media contact: Susanne Hicks, (615) 322-NEWS
Susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu