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(Masood Mortazavi)


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20050129 Saturday January 29, 2005

[ Economics ] American Corporate Genius

I have started reading Alfred Sloan's My Years With General Motors.

It reads almost with the ease of a novel. I ran into the book as a reference mentioned in the works of Oliver Williamson. Only after I had received the book in the mail, I noticed a quote from Bill Gates on the cover: "I think Alfred Sloan's My Years With General Motors is probably the best book to read if you want to read only one book about business."

This is not to be taken lightly. In fact, the book, put together by Solan in his late 80s, deserves the qualities Gates attributes to it by implication. (To some, it may be odd that on the cover of the paperback edition of the book, we also find a glimpse of a beautiful Detroit mural painting by Diego Rivera.)

Sloan gives details of his work as a corporate executive in action, addressing broad corporate issues such as coordination vs. decentralization, incentives and financial controls. He provides valuable insight as he describes the problems, failures and successes of executive decisions that gave rise to a great American experiment and one of the largest corporations in the world, and the business world owes him a great deal for his genuine attempt to convey his experience to the readers. Each of his chapters read as a business case study and can be analyzed as such, with very clear applications today.

2005-01-29 21:45:28.0 -- Comments [3] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

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© Masood Mortazavi
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