In Memoriam William C. Frederick

Early SASE President William C. Frederick has passed away at the age of 92. Born in 1925, Frederick received his PhD in economics from the University of Texas and taught at the University of Kansas City before becoming a professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh, 1963-mid-1990s. He also served for a time as the Dean of the graduate school of business. Frederick’s areas of scholarly interest included corporate social performance, business ethics, and managerial values.  Much of his work was devoted to multidisciplinary approaches employing economics, anthropology, socio-economics, moral development, philosophy, complexity science, and the natural sciences of evolutionary biology, physics, cognitive neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. Reflecting these interests are his 1995 book Values, Nature, and Culture in the American Corporation; his 2006 book Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility; and the widely used textbook, Business and Society. Frederick in addition to having chaired the Social Issues in Management division of the Academy of Management and served as president of SASE and the Society for Business Ethics, he is credited with helping found the business and society field of management studies in the United States.

To learn more about William C. Frederick and his work, visit his website, which he maintained until his death.