BARNARD, CHESTER IRVING

born Nov. 7, 1886, Malden, Mass., U.S. died June 7, 1961, New York City American business executive, public administrator, and sociological theorist who specialized in the nature of corporate organization. Although he was not himself an academician, his first book, Functions of the Executive (1938), was widely influential in the teaching of sociology and business theory. An employee of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1909, Barnard became president of an AT&T subsidiary, the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, in 1927. During the Great Depression, he directed the New Jersey state relief system. He later worked with the United Service Organizations (USO), of which he was president from 1942 to 1945. When he retired from business, he served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation (194852) and chairman of the National Science Foundation (195254). In his theoretical writing, Barnard stressed the cooperative nature of a business organization. In many of his paperssome of which were published in Organization and Management (1948)he elaborated his observation that executives' ability to deal with practical matters tends to diminish when the same problems are presented in theoretical terms.