The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business--Their Lives, Times, and Ideas [Hardcover]

Andrea Gabor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2000

In The Capitalist Philosophers, critically acclaimed writer Andrea Gabor tells the epic story of American business through the lives, times, and ideas of the great thinkers who defined the art and science of business. It is a book full of colorful stories and brilliant insights into why the business world is the way it is today.

People in business are constantly besieged by supposedly revolutionary ideas. Any company that went on a crash diet in response to the trendy precepts of Reengineering the Corporation felt the enormous impact still exercised by one of the first capitalist philosophers, Frederick Taylor. By going back to the source, Gabor helps businesspeople make smart, informed decisions about the future.
Featured in The Capitalist Philosophers are:Frederick Taylor: "Production went to his head and filled his sleepless nerves like liquor or women on a Saturday night."
Mary Parker Follett, who understood that "only so far as business leaders . . . can identify themselves with the underlying social impulses of their time can they hope to plan and build great organizations."
Chester Barnard, the philosopher king, who believed that management's job is to get things done by persuasion.
Fritz Roethlisberger and Elton Mayo, the creative misfits who "invented" human relations and put Harvard Business School on the map.
Robert McNamara, the "Whiz Kid," whose pioneering work in control and quantitative methods at Ford and the Department of Defense have had such a great influence on American management.
Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor, the pathfinders of humanistic management.
W. Edwards Deming, "the man who discovered quality" and the prophet of the learning organization.
Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate, pioneer in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, renegade economist and management pathbreaker, whose ideas on decision making have been vastly influential.
Alfred Chandler, who laid the basis for the way we think about corporate strategy, and Alfred Sloan, whose My Years at General Motors is the most important business book ever published.
Peter Drucker, who "gives you thoughts that are large."
As Andrea Gabor notes in her Introduction, "Contrary to common wisdom, it is possible for individuals to have a major impact on history. Just as FDR and Margaret Sanger changed the way we think about, respectively, politics and sexuality, so the capitalist philosophers have changed the way we look at the dominant institution in our society--the corporation."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Perhaps nothing has shaped the American century more than the emergence of management as a discipline in the corporate workplace. In The Capitalist Philosophers, Andrea Gabor explores this phenomenon by profiling the personalities and ideas of the most influential management thinkers of the 20th century. Among those that Gabor writes about are Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense and pioneering bean counter at Ford Motor; Peter F. Drucker, the "big idea man" and guru to giants such as General Electric; W. Edwards Deming, the late star of the "quality movement"; and Mary Parker Follett, an early advocate of collaborative management.

One of the many threads that hold together Gabor's profiles is the issue of "two seemingly irreconcilable visions of management--the scientific and humanistic." She writes that humanists see the corporation "as a pivotal institution of democracy with complex responsibilities to a host of constituencies, including its employees, its customers, and the community. The other, much more utilitarian, view recognizes one corporate constituent--the shareholder--and a single purpose--profit making." The Capitalist Philosophers is for anyone seeking a sweeping, well-written history of American business. It's also a rich look at the philosophical underpinnings of newer management approaches that are rolling through the workplace today, such as re-engineering and Six Sigma. --Dan Ring

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this sweeping account of management theory in the 20th century is how various business leaders and thinkers--the people Gabor (The Man Who Discovered Quality) calls "capitalist philosophers"--wrestle with the two components of economic success: creating efficient systems, and finding and motivating the people to operate those systems. While Frederick Winslow Taylor, Robert S. McNamara and W. Edwards Deming are revered for their belief in processes, people such as Abraham Maslow, and Fritz Roethlisberger and Elton Mayo, the two men Gabor credits for creating much of the Harvard Business School's reputation, balance their influence. Gabor, who has worked at U.S. News & World Report and Business Week, does a solid job of giving both sides their due and traces many of today's business ideas to these management pioneers. Equally important, she devotes substantial space to people such as Chester Barnard, the president of the old New Jersey Bell Telephone, and Mary Parker Follett, a civic activist, who are frequently forgotten when it comes to compiling lists of people who shaped the way we think about--and do--business today. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business (April 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812928202
• ISBN-13: 978-0812928204
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,807,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tracing the development of modern management thought, September 20, 2003

By 

Jay (Worcester, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business -- Their Lives, Times, and Ideas (Paperback)

In this book, business journalist Andrea Gabor traces the contributions of several key management thinkers and practitioners, and how their efforts shaped both the modern American corporation and popular notions of it. By chronicling well known (such as F.W. Taylor and Robert McNamara) and less known (such as Mary Parker Follett and Fritz Roethlisberger) figures, Gabor succeeds in illustrating how their ideas built on one another and in many cases anticipated by decades the challenges managers would -- and continue -- to face.

The result of Gabor's efforts is not solely a survey of prominent people, but rather a nuanced discussion of the development of what proved to be some of the 20th century's most influential thoughts on management, irrespective of the originator's fame. This approach has several benefits. First, it accurately maps the development of fundamental theories of the corporation's role in society without bowing to the cults of personality around certain writers. Next, it demonstrates how ideas may be attributable not just to one genius, but to several individuals who may articulate similar thoughts in response to changes in society and work life.

For readers looking to understand the development of management theory, this book is an excellent place to start. For all readers, Gabor makes this an entertaining book by describing in detail the personal qualities of these figures, and how their backgrounds and work experiences shaped the perspectives they brought to bear on the early problems of management.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Philosophers of Capitalism, December 20, 2002

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Jonathan (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business--Their Lives, Times, and Ideas (Hardcover)

The capitalilst philolospher is a great novel. It goes in depth in to how profound capitalist made their mark, and also their faults. So as a reader you get to see what they did, and what they could have done to better. It gives a great foundation on how capitalism came to be, and how it has developed in the last centuries.

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant discussion of thirteen "geniuses of modern business", February 24, 2009

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business--Their Lives, Times, and Ideas (Hardcover)

Only recently did I become aware of this book (published in 2000) in which Andrea Gabor focuses on Frederick Winslow Taylor, Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard, Fritz Roethlisberger and Elton Mayo, Robert McNamara, Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor, W. Edwards Deming, Herbert A. Simon, Alfred Du Pont Chandler and Alfred Sloan, and Peter F. Drucker. And frankly, until reading this book, I knew little (if anything) about Follett, Mayo, Simon, and Chandler and thus was especially eager to understand why Gabor included them with the others.

Also of special interest to me is how skillfully Gabor uses several themes that lend cohesion to the provision of her narrative. For example, she notes "the seemingly irreconcilable visions of management - the scientific and humanistic - that have battled fort hegemony both in the corporate workplace and in American society itself." Gabor traces the development of both the scientific and humanistic traditions from the beginning of the 20th century and follows the battle of ideologies up to the present, 2000. A related theme involves various responses to this question: "What is the purpose of the business organization in American society?" Is it a "pivotal institution of democracy" with complex responsibilities to a host of constituencies (e.g. employees, customers, and the community) or is there "one primary corporate constituent - the shareholder - and a single purpose - profit making"?

Here in Dallas, we have a Farmers Market at which several vendors offer free slices of fresh fruit as samples. Following their example, I now provide a representative selection of brief excerpts from Gabor's book to suggest the "flavor" of her analysis and writing style.

"Taylor's greatest contribution was in recognizing that scientific method was the key to the success of industrialization, especially in running the new enterprises that were of a scale and scope heretofore unimaginable - factories so large they used small railroads to transport men around them, factories peopled by thousands of workers operating enormous, power-driven machines." (Page 5)

"Although Barnard did not refer specifically to the notion of corporate culture, he recognized that the values of an organization reside in the informal organization. He saw that formal organizations generate `customs, mores, folklore, institutions, social norms, and ideals' - in short culture. They are also a key to communication, which Barnard identified as one of the most important functions of the executive." (Page 79)

Abraham Maslow coined the term `Eupsychia' [introduced in his book Eupsychian Management and later reissued as Maslow on Management] to define a `culture that would be generated by 1,000 self-actualizing people on a sheltered island' and help answer the questions that defined his core preoccupation: `how good a society does human nature permit?' In the words of Warren Bennis, Maslow approached his material `like a swashbuckling Candide, that is with a powerful innocence that is both threatening and receptive to widely held beliefs.'" (Page 182)

Note: "eupsychia" was Maslow's term for the ideal society or organization.

The importance of Deming's philosophy to the information age "was its radical break with many accepted tenets of management: its insistence on constant change and flexibility, its implicit faith in the ability of individuals and the informal organization to generate new ideas, its opposition to hierarchy and its trappings, and its assumption that the greatest competitive advantage could accrue to companies that help employees achieve their full potential." (Page 211)

"No revolutionary, Drucker is an apostle of great corporations. His great strength is his ability to absorb vast amounts of information, to see patterns in what would appear as a jumble of chaotic events, trends, and economic indicators, and to anticipate - and articulate - each new zeitgeist. His life is also a testament to the American Dream, the ability of an enterprising immigrant both to succeed in his adopted country and to reinvent t himself." (Page 293)

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Art Kleiner's The Age of Heretics (Second Edition), Joan Magretta's What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, Edgar H. Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership, Stuart Crainer's The Management Century, and two books by Chris Argyris, Integrating the Individual and the Organization and Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change.