EDWARD C. BURSK: HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW EDITOR 1907-1990
Edward
Collins Bursk, born in Lancaster, PA in 1907, graduated from
Amherst College (AB 1928) and Harvard (MA 1929) intending to
spend a lifetime teaching Latin and Greek. His first teaching
position was at Dartmouth College (1931-1933), but the Depression
caused him to return to Lancaster to take over as President
and General Manager of J. H. Bursk & Company, a family firm
which distributed sugar. He returned to teaching in 1941 at
Franklin & Marshall College and moved to Harvard Business School
in 1942 as an instructor. He was promoted to assistant professor
(1943) and associate professor (1946) and became full professor
in 1954.
ECB joined the
HBR staff in 1943 as Managing Editor and took the position as
Editor in 1947 and retained the position until 1971. In addition,
he edited and co-edited a number of books including Getting
Things Done in Business (1953); The World of Business;
How to Increase Executive Effectiveness (1954); Human Relations
for Management (1957); The Management Team (1955);
Business and Religion (1959). In 1964 he appeared as moderator
in an eight-part television series jointly sponsored by Harvard
and WGBH entitled "Marketing in the News." ECB was a highly active
consultant, speaker, and board member during his career at HBS.
Married and the father of three sons (Edward, Jr., John and Christopher),
ECB lived in Cohasset, MA and became professor emeritus in 1978.
-Courtesy of
Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration
AN
"OUR BUSINESS" NEWSLETTER STORY
The
Baker Business Library, Harvard Business School
Edward C. Bursk, Editor of
the Harvard Business Review, tells an interesting story about
life insurance salesmanship.
Shortly after
Mr. Bursk had authored an article on "low pressure selling," the
Vice President in charge of sales for a leading life insurance
company asked him to listen to, and criticize, a sales presentation
developed by the company. The idea was to have one of the company's
better salesmen call upon Mr. Bursk—not knowing that he was
anything other than a normal prospect.
Mr. Bursk protested
that he would not be able to react as a normal prospect since
he had just purchased a new policy he could not afford, and therefore
was not conceivably in the market for more insurance. After considerable
persuasion, he finally agreed to submit himself to the interview,
and to analyze it for "low pressure" effectiveness.
Mr. Bursk reports
that the salesman's approach followed the tried and tested formula
of "let us analyze your insurance in terms of estate planning.
If you need any further or different coverage, of course, we'll
be glad to provide it; but if you don't, we'll still be glad to
have done this for you."
Here
are Mr. Bursk's own words used to describe the interview: "I
was called on, I listened, and I ended up by doubling the amount
of insurance I was carrying!"
OBITUARY
When Edward Bursk died in 1990,
a memorial service was held at the First Parish Unitarian Church
in Cohasset, Massachusetts, where he was long active and earlier
served as moderator. The following words were published in The
Boston Globe:
Edward
Collins Bursk, editor of Harvard Business Review from 1946
to 1972 and professor emeritus of marketing at the Harvard Business
School, died Monday at his home in Cohasset. He was 82.
The monthly publication broadened
its coverage during Mr. Bursk's tenure and increased its circulation
from 2,000 to 150,000. He retired in 1989 after 47 years as
a professor at the school.
Covers
of the Harvard Business Review, where Bursk was editor
A member of the Council of Economic
Advisers during the Kennedy administration, Mr. Bursk was an
advocate of international competitive cooperation. In 1958,
he founded the International Marketing Institute of Boston,
which trains foreign businessmen, and became its educational
director.
Mr. Bursk wrote "Text and Cases
in Marketing; a Scientific Approach" (1968) and "Modern Marketing
Strategy" (1972). He was a coeditor of the four-volume "World
of Business" (1964), a collection of writings dating to biblical
times.
Born in Lancaster,
Pa., he graduated from Mercersburg (Pa.) Academy in 1924 and Amherst
College in 1928. He received a master's degree in Greek and Latin
at Harvard University in 1929.
After teaching these languages
at Dartmouth College, in 1933 he became president and general
manager of J. H. Bursk & Son of Lancaster, a wholesale distributor
of sugar.
Mr. Bursk was honored in 1966
by the American Marketing Association. After retiring from the
business review, he published the monthly Advanced Management
Newsletter.
During
the 1960s he served as chairman of Browne & Nichols School of
Cambridge and as moderator of the "Marketing on the Move" series
on WGBH-TV (Channel 2).
Mr. Bursk was
a member of the Cohasset Golf Club and the Badminton & Tennis
Club of Boston.
He and his wife
have three sons, Edward C., John H., and Christopher.
HAS
BUSINESS DEVELOPED A CONSCIENCE?
In 1959 Edward Bursk
edited a book, Business and Religion, which was a
collection of articles that originally based on articles
which originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review.
These articles were written by such authors as Reinhold
Niebuhr, theologian; Raphael Demos, philosopher; Kenneth
Boulding, economist; O. A. Ohmann, Standard Oil Company;
and Abram Collier, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company.
In the introduction
to this book, EB respectfully poses a series of questions:
Have businessmen
become more thoughtful in ethical matters because business
itself has changed, or have businessmen become more sensitive
and in the process changed business?
Why will businessmen
sometimes observe the spirit of an unwritten contract quicker
than the word of a written contract?
Have businessmen,
perhaps aided by the fact that today they are more managers
than owners and therefore have more stake in stability than
in immediate profits, simply adopted the long-run view in
which moral dealings pay off?
Is there a dividing
line between a code of good conduct and a credo of religion—and
why do businessmen like to find practical reasons for doing
unselfish acts?
Why do businessmen
value the dignity of man as something more than a deluxe
combination of chemicals and electricity, whether oneself
or others?
Edward
Collins Bursk, born in Lancaster, PA in 1907, graduated from
Amherst College (AB 1928) and Harvard (MA 1929) intending to
spend a lifetime teaching Latin and Greek. His first teaching
position was at Dartmouth College (1931-1933), but the Depression
caused him to return to Lancaster to take over as President
and General Manager of J. H. Bursk & Company, a family firm
which distributed sugar. He returned to teaching in 1941 at
Franklin & Marshall College and moved to Harvard Business School
in 1942 as an instructor. He was promoted to assistant professor
(1943) and associate professor (1946) and became full professor
in 1954. 
