With many others, we at the OEOC mourn William Foote Whyte, who died July 16 in Ithaca, N.Y. Dr. Whyte was an early supporter of the Center and a great friend of employee ownership the world over. He wrote the foreword for BUYOUT!, a collection and analysis of case studies of Ohio buyout committee experiences.

Professor emeritus of sociology at Cornell University, where he had been employed since 1948, Dr. Whyte was one of the first faculty members hired at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The author of numerous publications, most with an emphasis on social action, Dr. Whyte was no ivory tower academician.

He was known for his sense of obligation to make learning useful to society. "He never accepted the notion that social science should be a purely academic profession," said his Cornell colleague Davydd Greenwood. His first and most famous book, Street Corner Society, was based on more than a year of participant observation of gang members in the North End Slums of Boston. While reporting on their lives and their society, he also guided them to demonstrate for a greater investment in the neighborhood by the city government.

He is best known to the employee ownership community for his Making Mondragon, co-authored with his wife, Kathleen King Whyte. Making Mondragon was the first extensive scholarly report in English on the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque country of Spain. First issued in 1988, revised in 1991, Making Mondragon is now in its fourth printing. Whyte began his study of Mondragon in the mid-eighties at the age of 69, after he had taken emeritus status at Cornell.

Characteristically, his study of Mondragón focused on how the organization made its strategic decisions, identifying its unique organizational structure and the practices that lay behind its success.

A graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Chicago, he wrote 20 influential books and numerous articles. Over half of his books dealt with work, work organizations and economic development