executive leadership

102: Executive Leadership — Sloan’s “My Years at General Motors”

June 13, 2023 Leonardo Melo Lins 0:04:52
Alfred Sloan was President, Chairman, and CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1956. His memoir “My Years at General Motors” tells his story about how he took a corporation consisting of several disparate and competing companies and shaped them into division that manufactured cars tailored to different segments of society. He constantly pursued and integrated new technologies into the automobiles themselves while also shaping the buying experience through the introductions of different styles, improved relations with dealings, and financial services that rivaled banks.

56: Cooperative Advantage – Charles Clinton Spaulding

July 16, 2019 Pedro Monteiro
In this episode, we acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Charles Clinton Spaulding, an important management thought leader who, like many African-Americans prior to the U.S. civil rights movement, has been sadly overlooked in the management canon. In 1927, with the U.S. in recession, Spaulding wrote a reflection of his experiences as a business leader in the Pittsburgh Courier, a widely-read newspaper, hoping to help fellow African-American business leaders overcome the economic downturn.

8: The Ends of Men – Chester Barnard

March 29, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

PARTS III & IV — THE ENDS OF MEN

Chester Barnard

Continuing with our discussion of Chester Barnard’s master work – The Functions of The Executive (1938) – we look at parts III & IV of the book. Here he is going into more depth (or less, depending on your point of view) on a number of organizational aspects and on the process of management.

Specifically, Barnard talks about the parts that make up an organization in Part III and, finally, the functions of the executive in Part IV. Constituents of the organization include authority, recruitment and retention of personnel, division of labour, and a theory of decision making; and the responsibilities of the executive centre on how to facilitate communication, formulate strategy and purpose, and select the most appropriate workforce.

For a broad introduction to the book, please refer to the Episode 7 page, and generally listen to that episode as we discuss much of what is necessary to understand Barnard’s terminology, philosophy and attitude towards organizations there. You will note that our conversation reflects the breath of Barnard’s legacy – he is building on Max Weber, F.W. Taylor, Henri Fayol and Elton Mayo among others, and inspiring theories such as organizational routines and systems theory.

This book is so important a classic that it took us two episodes (and seven total podcasts) to cover it. You won’t want to miss a single track!

You may also download the audio files here:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (Summary of E7 & E8)

Read with us:

Barnard, C.I. (1938). The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Part III: The Elements of Formal Organization

Part IV: The Functions of Organizations in Cooperative Systems

To Learn More:

Mahoney, J.T., and Godfrey, P. (2014). The Functions of The Executive at 75: An invitation to reconsider a timeless classic. Working Paper.

 

7: Phases of Cooperation – Chester Barnard

March 1, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

PARTS I & II — PHASES OF COOPERATION

Chester Barnard

Chester Irving Barnard (1886-1961) was an American business executive, public administrator, and the author of pioneering work in management theory and organizational studies. His magnum opus, The Functions of the Executive, sets out a theory of organization and of the functions of executives in organizations. This work is a real cornerstone of organizational theory and management and is, accordingly, studied in many business schools today. Much of Barnard’s insight came from his work at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (now AT&T) and the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, which he was a president of from 1927. During the Great Depression, he directed the New Jersey state relief system. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1939. He was president of the United Service Organizations (USO), 1942-1945. Upon his retirement, he served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1948 to 1952, and as chairman of the National Science Foundation from 1952 to 1954.

In The Functions of the Executive, Barnard presents a ‘theory of cooperation and organization’ and ‘a study of the functions and of the methods of operation of executives in formal organizations’. He argues that organisations are essentially formed of two contrasting elements: creativity and leadership. While creativity is the natural output of cooperation, it is the role of leaders in organizations to direct that creativity towards an organizational purpose/goal. Barnard was the first to insist that organizations, by their very nature, are cooperative systems and cannot fail to be so – cooperation is the essence of organizations. The survival of organizations depends on cooperation which is achieved through contracts between the individual and the formal.

One of the major appeals of Barnard’s work is how authentic he appears to be about his sense of the organization. Combining the objectivism of scientific management with an intuition about how people and groups of people work, Barnard proposes an aesthetic feeling of managing. This is distinctly different from mechanical idealism of his predecessors.

We are going to be discussing The Functions of the Executive in this episode and the next. For this episode we are reading Parts I and II of the book, where Barnard outlines his understanding of the individual, of why individuals would form organizations, and of the basic principles of the formal organization. For Episode 8, we are finishing the book with Parts III and IV. You will note that our conversation reflects the breath of Barnard’s legacy – he is building on Max Weber, F.W. Taylor, Henri Fayol and Elton Mayo among others, and inspiring theories such as organizational routines and systems theory.

Join us as we discuss this truly fascinating thinker over the next two episodes!

You may also download the audio files here:  Part 1 | Part 2 

Read with us:

Barnard, C.I. (1938). The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Part I: Preliminary Considerations Concerning Cooperative Systems

Part II: The Theory and Structure of Formal Organizations

To Learn More:

Isomura, K. (2023). Organization Theory. In Chester I. Barnard: Innovator of Organization Theory (pp. 123-138). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

Mahoney, J.T., and Godfrey, P. (2014). The Functions of The Executive at 75: An invitation to reconsider a timeless classic. Working Paper.