RCA Donates $2 Million to B-School, MIT

RCA announced a $2 million grant yesterday for the establishment of a joint program in the management of technology at the Business School and MIT's Sloan School of Management.

The money, which will be used to create a professorial chair at each of the two schools, will be paid over the next ten years.

Richard S. Rosenbloom '54, director of the Doctoral Program at the Business School, and Donald G. Marquis, director of the Sloan School's Research Program on Management of Science and Technology, will occupy the newly created chairs.

Robert W. Sarnoff '39, chairman of RCA said in announcing the grant that the money will be used to determine how men manage the awesome tools they have fashioned.

"Has technology now attained such mass and momentum that humans no longer can control it?" Sarnoff asked. "Has management become so bureaucratized and impersonal that it no longer works?" These are among the questions the program would attempt to answer, he said.

Rosenbloom, the holder of the chair at the Business School, said at a news conference yesterday that social and political pressures in recent years had forced company managements to change their approach in dealing with technology. "Now the social context is important in making a decision rather than just the financial factors," he said.

The two chairs will be named in honor of David Sarnoff, who served as manager and then chairman of the board of RCA from its founding in 1919 until 1969.