Founders, Executives and Management Thinkers

Chester Barnard

Management Theorist

Citation Formats

General Reference

Business Atlas. "Chester Barnard." Accessed September 7, 2026. https://dev-business.interactiveatlas.org/business-figures/chester-barnard.

APA Style

Business Atlas. (n.d.). Chester Barnard. Retrieved September 7, 2026, from https://dev-business.interactiveatlas.org/business-figures/chester-barnard

BibTeX

@misc{businessatlas-chester-barnard,
  author = {Business Atlas},
  title = {Chester Barnard},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-business.interactiveatlas.org/business-figures/chester-barnard},
  note = {Accessed September 7, 2026}
}

Chester Irving Barnard was an American business executive, public administrator, and management theorist, born 7 November 1886 in Malden, Massachusetts, and died 7 June 1961 in New York City. He joined AT&T in 1909 and became president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company in 1927, later directing New Jersey's state relief effort during the Great Depression, serving as president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1948 to 1952, and chairing the National Science Foundation from 1952 to 1954. His 1938 book The Functions of the Executive set out a theory of organizational structure and executive roles, describing organizations as systems of cooperation of human activity, and it became a standard text in university management and organizational sociology courses.

Facts

Birth Date

1886-11-07 1

Birth Year

1886 1

Death Date

1961-06-07 1

Death Year

1961 1

Nationality

American 1

Defining Contribution

Wrote The Functions of the Executive (1938), a landmark work setting out a theory of organizations as systems of cooperation and defining the functions of executives within them, widely assigned in management theory and organizational sociology courses. 1

Notable Work

The Functions of the Executive 1

Cross-Tradition Connections