1954

Obituary for Ida R. Hoos

By KATIE HAFNER, New York Times, May 5, 2007

Ida R. Hoos, a prominent critic of assessing technology solely on the basis of mathematical models that failed to take account of societal factors, died on April 24 in Boston. She was 94 and lived in Brookline, Mass.

The cause was complications of a lingering case of pneumonia, said Judith Hoos Fox, her daughter.

I can claim few, if any significant contributions to academic sociology. After my dissertation on 'Employee Rights and the Employment Relationship' was published by the U.C. Institute of Industrial Relations and a subsequent book on the sociological process of Professionalization was published by Prentice-Hall, and after some futher graduate level course work in management, my career turned toward applied research and development and then into administration.

I have one thing left to do-----. Up to now, in a career that went back and forth between academia and executive experience I have written articles or chapters based on my research or experience in such divergent organizations as Ford Aircraft, IBM, Kaiser Cement, HSA, New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., the priests of the New York Archdiocese, Sanus (an entrepreneurial start-up of an HMO, and NYLCare, its large corporate successor).