We have lost Mayer Zald

In August of 2012 the world of organization studies lost Mayer Zald.  His own work on resource mobilization, social movements, and organizations would have made him a great figure, but his ceaseless joy in fostering and sharpening the work of colleagues and students was, if anything, an even greater impact. 

I wrote an appreciation of Mayer that I'll quote below.  It appeared originally, along with many other heartfelt expressions, at http://asociologist.com/2012/08/07/mayer-zald-rip/ . Although Mayer's main scholarly contributions were not about routine, he was enormously helpful to me and to many of us who work on that and related questions. It feels very right to acknowledge here the support of this wonderful man.

Mayer was a great friend to a vast network of friends, a supporter when serious research needed help, and a seemingly inexhaustible source of ideas about what one might productively read. I have a trove of “thought of you when I read this” notes from him and his sense of my interests, though they were not exactly his, was nonetheless pitch-perfect. So many others say the same.

When younger scholars or budding research communities needed a boost, Mayer was always to be counted on to help channel resources and to stand up for the quality of new ideas. He was a founder of the ICOS community of organizational researchers at Michigan, an interdisciplinary network that has sustained itself for decades. It’s little known that he got the original funding for it by making that a condition for his staying at Michigan when he had a generous outside offer, putting the local research community on a par with his own resources.

And what a friend ! What a hearty smile whenever he encountered one of his far-flung army of students and colleagues. (Perhaps they were thousands. I watched him at conferences and realized it was just the same around the world as it was at Michigan.) There were always questions about one’s family. Detailed memories for that and for what were your most recent research ventures. And then questions and suggestions about how it could move forward.

He survived many health problems in his later years, which forced him to give up his beloved tennis, but somehow they never stopped him from showing up a good talk by an interesting colleague and asking the wisest question when the ripe moment came. I remember him joking before an ICOS session about wearing the heart monitor they’d strapped on him when releasing him from the hospital.

We were so lucky to have his friendship and scholarship right up until the end of his long, generative, and splendidly humane life.