"Business and Society"

In its third year, the "Business and Society" course at Tuck School has adopted a novel, perhaps unique, approach by having a series of guest lecturers from the top management of one of the country's outstanding corporations, the Socony Mobil Oil Company. Albert Nickerson, president of the company, was the final speaker in the group of eight Socony executives who served to bring the theory and abstract questions of the course down to earth with the concrete situation of a particular company.

Almost every week during the past semester the Socony Mobil Oil Company provided a guest lecturer to discuss a specific case situation on the topic of the week. These sessions, scheduled between the first and third class meetings of the week, had the further value of giving the course a continuity it did not have before.

Other Socony speakers, in addition to Mr. Nickerson, were George Holton, chairman of the board, retired; Thomas Phelps, assistant to the chairman of the board and director of public relations; R.R. Jackson, chairman of the coordination committee; John Calvert, regional director for West Africa; Herbert Willetts, vice president and director; Dr. T.E. Allen, associate medical director; and Dallas Lamont, vice president, director, and executive in charge of research.

Two other guest lecturers during the semester were Prof. George S. Gibb of Harvard, editor of BusinessHistory Review, who spoke on the history of the Standard Oil Company; and Prof. James Luther Adams of Harvard Divinity School, who discussed moral and ethical values for the business man.

The "Business and Society" course, taught by Prof. Wayne G. Broehl Jr., was instituted three years ago after a survey of Tuck School's management curriculum. It aims to give more attention to the external, social responsibilities of the business man, to examine the role of the corporation in community and national life, and to help the student develop a personal philosophy and scale of values for his business life.