National Industrial Conference Board

National Industrial Conference Board (since 1970, the Conference Board), founded in 1916, an association of business firms that sponsors research on a variety of business topics, notably labor and personnel issues.Until the 1930s, the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) was largely an extension of the personality and interests of its principal founder and executive secretary, Magnus W. Alexander (1870–1932). Alexander sought to enhance the image of American manufacturing firms by encouraging them to embrace voluntary labor reforms and modest state regulation. Yet he was also instrumental in shifting the focus of the NICB from advocacy to research.

Alexander's interests derived from his experiences at the General Electric Corporation, where he was an engineer and, after 1905, employment manager. Recognizing the desirability of improving working conditions, he helped organize the National Safety Council and the National Association of Corporation Schools. He gathered personnel experts from different firms in “conference boards” devoted to such issues as safety and sanitation, medical services in industry, and apprenticeship systems. Convinced that business was the victim of unfair trade union and media criticism, he mobilized employers to defend themselves. He coordinated a series of informal conferences in the Catskills that led to the formation of the NICB.

During World War I, the NICB played an important role in the formation of wartime labor‐policy boards, including the National War Labor Board. Wartime prosperity and labor turmoil also enabled Alexander to create individual corporate memberships, expand the staff, and redefine the NICB as a nonpartisan business research organization.

After World War II, the NICB became more international and expansive, emphasizing economic and financial issues as well as personnel topics. As the Conference Board, it remained an important source of information on business activity at the end of the twentieth century.
See also Business; Business Roundtable; Industrial Diseases and Hazards; Industrial Relations; Labor Movements; National Association of Manufacturers; National Civic Federation.

Bibliography

H.M. Gitelman , Management's Crisis of Confidence and the Origin of the National Industrial Conference Board, 1914–1916, Business History Review 58 (1984): 153–157.
Joseph L. Naar , The Conference Board: An Historical Celebration of the Conference Board's Seventy‐fifth Anniversary, 1991.

Daniel Nelson