Centralized Control…Conclusion

They have learned from long experience in their own business to recognize the constructive benefits of ownership management. The incentive thus supplied is a vital force operating in the interest of all stockholders, since stockholders at large inevitably enjoy a proportionate benefit of whatever is beneficial to the managing group.

[This 1927 article closes with a transcript of a conversation that could have occurred last week!] Dr. C. R. Mann (American Council on Education): You are all aware of the present tendency to centralize all sorts of activities in Washington. That is now probably the most dangerous tendency in the country. It means more legislation leading to more government in business.

Mr. W. W. Kincaid: Does this [Finance/Executive] committee system afford the General Motors a good opportunity for what we call educational work? ... Wherever we try to get control the manager along the line says, "That's red tape," in other words, this thing we call policy.

Mr. Brown: The work of these committees is largely educational. Starting out with the absolute policy that they shall not speculate on raw material. Then there is the understood limits of stock required with an automatic means of the division knowing what adjustment must be had as to the stocks in the field, in the plant, and so on.

Mr. Sweetser: In other words, the entire organization is constantly taking training from and under control of the research departments.

[And with several more comments of little meaning today, the article closes.]

By now, anyone who's visited more than a few pages on the Rock Eel site has seen the tagline in the upper right: Treasure People and Exploit Tools. One of the corrolaries to that belief is that we do not insult our reader's intelligence by presuming to rewrite history.

In this web adaptation of the 1927 classic "Centralized Control with Decentralized Responsibilities," Donaldson Brown, then Chief Financial Officer of General Motors, follows the then common—and stylistically correct—practice of using only male pronouns. We trust that our female readers understand the world has moved forward since 1927, and that they are fully capable of replacing he, him or man, with she, her or woman, in such contexts as serve the situation, e.g., reading aloud to, or discussing with a group of high school girls where your objective is to encourage female engineering & science college candidates. In all other contexts, the inelegant constructs currently employed to appease the politically correct faction merely distract from the message at hand.

Learn how to make each day a training event, Sign-up for coaching and library access  More Food for Thought from the Kitchens of the Rock Eel Café