Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

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.

Comments:

Masood -- I haven't read My Years With General Motors; however, I saw the reference to Oliver Williamson. I'm not familar with his works so I followed up with some background. I see he was a student of Ronald Coase and Herbert Simon. Have you read "Models of My Life" by Simon? It was published in 1991, but my hardback copy still occupies a prominent place on my book shelf. I understand he was a difficult person to be around, but his book reads like a genius at work. Ralph

Posted by Ralph Hannon on January 30, 2005 at 08:07 AM PST #

GM logo in the Open space. Interesting Visual Spacial. rtg

Posted by GerwingR on January 30, 2005 at 03:33 PM PST #

Ralph--You're right. In his book The Mechanisms of Governance, Williamson has a chapter about his own intellectual history, in which he pays tribute to the influences of Simon and Coase, among others, on his work. It's good to know that you, also, have found Simon's work (say, Models of My Life) rewarding. My only exposure to him is through his writings on artificial intelligence and the critiques of it by Dreyfus and others.

Posted by M. Mortazavi on January 31, 2005 at 12:59 AM PST #

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