Key Insights
- A pioneering scholar: Robert B. McKersie, who passed away in July 2026 at age 96, was a foundational figure in modern negotiation and industrial relations.
- Landmark contributions: His book A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, co-authored in 1965, introduced core negotiation concepts that are still taught universally today.
- A commitment to justice: Beyond academia, McKersie cared deeply about social justice, as reflected in his participation in the civil rights movement in 1960s Chicago.
- Relationships first: Known for his warmth and caring demeanor, McKersie prioritized genuine connections with colleagues and always put family first.
Table of Contents
Early Activism
Key Negotiation Concepts
An Influential Framework
A Role Model to Many
An Integrative Life Well Lived
Robert B. McKersie, one of the most influential scholars of negotiation, passed away on July 11, 2026, at age 96. A professor at MIT and an affiliate faculty member at the Program on Negotiation, McKersie was widely respected for his landmark contributions to the field.
An expert on industrial and labor relations, McKersie coauthored the groundbreaking 1965 book A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations with his friend and colleague Richard Walton. Sixty years later, the book’s key concepts are taught in negotiation classes around the world.
McKersie was widely admired not only for his professional contributions, but also for his dedication to his family, his lasting friendships with colleagues, and his keen commitment to social justice.
“Bob always had a twinkle in his eye, lifting new ideas up in creative ways,” says Brandeis University Professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, McKersie’s friend and coauthor. “At the same time, he would square his shoulders to face injustice and social challenges in civil rights, employment relations, and other matters.”
Early Activism
After serving in the Korean War, McKersie earned master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard Business School. While on the faculty at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in the 1960s, he participated in the civil rights movement.
McKersie wrote about this time in his 2013 memoir, A Decisive Decade: An Insider’s View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement During the 1960s. In the book, he described campaigns to end school segregation and negotiations with companies to provide more jobs for Black Chicagoans. He wrote the book to “tell the story about some unsung heroes” of the era, including Timuel Black Jr. and W. Alvin Pitcher, he said in an interview.
Key Negotiation Concepts
In 1965, McKersie and Walton published A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. It was sparked by an encounter McKersie had with United Automobile Workers (UAW) representative Seymour Kahan. Fascinated by labor negotiations, McKersie asked Kahan whether he could sit in on internal union deliberations. While Kahan said the meetings were private, he agreed to let McKersie debrief him after each discussion.
From accounts of the UAW talks and other real-world bargaining situations, McKersie and Walton extracted four main “sub-processes” of negotiation:
- Distributive bargaining refers to the competitive side of negotiation in which parties attempt to divide up limited resources. Examples include arguing over the size of a raise for union workers or haggling at a car dealership over price. In distributive bargaining, or value claiming, one side’s gain is the other side’s loss.
- Integrative bargaining describes the process of problem-solving in negotiation to create mutually beneficial outcomes. In labor talks, this might mean trading a smaller wage increase for better health benefits. At the dealership, it could mean agreeing to the dealer’s financing terms in exchange for free maintenance. In integrative bargaining, or value creation, negotiators try to create value by identifying shared interests and making trades on issues where they have dissimilar interests.
- Attitudinal structuring involves the relational and intangible aspects of negotiation, such as whether negotiators trust each other and want to work together in the future. Through small talk, patience, acts of generosity, and other collegial behaviors, negotiators try to establish a lasting working relationship while meeting their goals. Attitudinal structuring is a precursor to the more recent concept of subjective value in negotiation.
- Intraorganizational bargaining highlights the fact that negotiators typically must reach an agreement not just with the parties across the table but also with their own team. These internal negotiations can help you achieve consensus and ensure that your own constituents (such as a union’s workers or a car dealership’s head manager) accept the final deal.
An Influential Framework
More than 60 years after the publication of A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, Walton and McKersie’s ideas pervade negotiation theory and instruction. Though the terms have shifted (for example, to claiming value, creating value, relationship-building, and internal negotiations), the ideas remain foundational and invaluable.
“The genius of the book is that, though derived from a very careful study of labor relations, it is applicable to every interaction between two or more people that have different points of view,” Mary Rowe, adjunct professor of negotiation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told Sloan’s Thinking Forward newsletter. “That’s just about everybody, all the time.”
A Role Model to Many
In the 1970s, McKersie served as dean of the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University. He joined the Sloan faculty in 1980, where he was a highly respected professor and prolific scholar for decades. He also co-taught a popular seminar on labor negotiations with Cutcher-Gershenfeld and mediator Nancy Peace at the Program on Negotiation for many years.
“Even in his nineties, Professor McKersie regularly attended faculty meetings and research seminars at MIT, carefully read colleagues’ manuscripts, and discussed emerging ideas with longtime friends and young scholars alike,” according to his obituary.
“In McKersie we find a unique blend of intellectual brilliance, visionary leadership, and moral authority,” MIT Professor Tom Kochan and Cornell Professor David Lipsky wrote in a 2003 essay honoring McKersie’s career. “He has been a role model for countless colleagues, scholars and students . . . and he has had a transforming effect on every institution with which he has been affiliated.”
An Integrative Life Well Lived
“In a word, he was the master at being both integrative and distributive,” said Cutcher-Gershenfeld of McKersie. “No surprise, since he pioneered our understanding of these and other aspects of behavioral theory in negotiations. His spirit lives on in all of us as we facilitate, theorize, and advocate.”
Above all, McKersie will be remembered as a kind and generous man who “never lost sight of what mattered most,” as described in his obituary. When meeting with colleagues, he always took time to ask them about their partners, children, and grandchildren: “Family—his own and everyone else’s—always came first.”
McKersie was preceded in death by Nancy Crosier McKersie, his wife of 66 years. He is survived by his four children, eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
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