Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors [Paperback]

David Farber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0226238059 | ISBN-13: 978-0226238050

Alfred P. Sloan Jr. became the president of General Motors in 1923 and stepped down as its CEO in 1946. During this time, he led GM past the Ford Motor Company and on to international business triumph by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and GM helped to produce. Bill Gates has said that Sloan's 1964 management tome, My Years with General Motors, "is probably the best book to read if you want to read only one book about business." And if you want to read only one book about Sloan, that book should be historian David Farber's Sloan Rules.

Here, for the first time, is a study of both the difficult man and the pathbreaking executive. Sloan Rules reveals the GM genius as not only a driven manager of men, machines, money, and markets but also a passionate and not always wise participant in the great events of his day. Sloan, for example, reviled Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; he firmly believed that politicians, government bureaucrats, and union leaders knew next to nothing about the workings of the new consumer economy, and he did his best to stop them from intervening in the private enterprise system. He was instrumental in transforming GM from the country's largest producer of cars into the mainstay of America's "Arsenal of Democracy" during World War II; after the war, he bet GM's future on renewed American prosperity and helped lead the country into a period of economic abundance. Through his business genius, his sometimes myopic social vision, and his vast fortune, Sloan was an architect of the corporate-dominated global society we live in today.

David Farber's story of America's first corporate genius is biography of the highest order, a portrait of an extraordinarily compelling and skillful man who shaped his era and ours.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan was the ultimate organization man: he rose to the top of the auto industry after pioneers like Henry Ford built it, and then he transformed it with innovative management practices that today are studied and copied by business executives everywhere. In Sloan Rules, University of New Mexico historian David Farber describes how Sloan led his company to "economic greatness" between the 1920s and '40s, particularly by developing "a loose economic model in which highly rationalized corporate productivity combined with relentless marketing creates a mass consumer society that, in turn, produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people." Surprisingly little is known about Sloan's personal life--he was an intensely private man--but in this biography Farber provides a good overview of what made Sloan such an outstanding businessman. He also recounts Sloan's contentious relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "To Sloan, the New Deal was a raw deal." (At one point, the chairman even described the New Dealers as "ancient Asiatic despots.") Farber clearly wishes his subject had concerned himself more with social justice, but he also points out that Sloan's energy and creativity made it possible for a subsequent GM chairman to say, with some if not complete credibility, that what's good for GM is good for America. --John J. Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Early in the auto industry's history, Alfred P. Sloan trounced the monolith that was Henry Ford, turning the ambitious but messily sprawling empire of General Motors into a smoothly humming money-making machine. His 1964 book on management, My Years with General Motors, is a business classic, and his methods placed GM at the top of the automobile world, yet he remains unknown. Farber, a University of New Mexico history professor, admits that studying this invisible man Sloan left behind no private papers or correspondence of any kind, and GM destroyed all of his corporate papers was a quixotic task, but one worth attempting, because beneath Sloan's icy, patrician demeanor beat the heart of a pure businessman who was so committed to the pursuit of his profession that he took almost no pleasure in it. Although he proved a master at realigning GM's divisions in the 1920s after the chaotic rule of the company's previous leader, William Durant, it wasn't the cars Sloan really loved, it was the numbers: "The manufacture of correct assessments, not physical products, is what most gratified Alfred Sloan." Farber's efforts to bring Sloan to life ultimately fail, however, and there are times when Farber's tale seems more about the trials and tribulations of General Motors than any one man, who in some passages seems to pop up only as an afterthought. This outcome would no doubt have made Sloan happy, leaving him forever safe and hidden, a true ghost in the machine. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 299 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (February 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226238059
• ISBN-13: 978-0226238050
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,006,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering a Man of Mystery, April 18, 2003

By 

Rev. C Bryant (Newton, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Hardcover)

The frustrating thing for biographers writing about Alfred P. Sloan is the paucity of information about what made the man tick. Sloan was meticulously careful not to leave material which would provide insight into his personal life, his thoughts, or his motivations. Instead, Sloan was careful to manage information in such a way that his persona as the supremely rational corporate leader was maintained. David Farber understands that people are more complex, and he offers tantalizing hints into Sloan's motivations. Farber focuses on two important chapters in Sloan's career--his crucial role in the stabilizing of General Motors, the creation of the quixotic Billy Durant, and the impact of the New Deal on corporate America, specifically GM. As for the first, Farber details Sloan's career development after his graduation from MIT and after his father secured a position for him with Hyatt Roller Bearing Company. Hyatt's relationship with GM led Sloan to that company at a crucial point, when the DuPont family had secured their investment by forcing out Billy Durant. Sloan seemed the opposite of Durant, making decisions in a supremely rational way and focusing on the bottom line. Symbolic of this is Sloan's decision to place each car in the GM line to appeal to particular income levels. So is his development of a master plan for GM, which ultimately led the corporation to unprecedented profitability, even during the Depression.

It was the Depression and the New Deal that brought Sloan's attitude into fairly direct conflict with the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and labor leader John L. Lewis. Farber is clearly disappointed in the almost total lack of social consciousness exhibited by Sloan. Sloan could never understand why anyone would have a problem with the ways GM treated its production workers.

Farber has written a spare yet remarkably helpful book that is about both a man and a period in American history. Even though so little information exists about Sloan the man, Farber makes it evident that the tragedy of Sloan's life was that he never understood his own limitations. Like many rich people (he once shouted to Frances Perkins, "I am Alfred P. Sloan! I am worth seventy million dollars!"), Sloan believed himself entitled to have his way. He simply did not believe that he could be wrong. Not in anything. General Motors is still recovering from Sloan's hubris. Decades of shoddy products (Farber gives GM products more credit than I, a former owner of three Buicks each of which was worse than the last), foolish responses to criticism, failed attempts at reorganization, and similar episodes in the post-Sloan years have led GM to the point at which the new president, Bob Lutz, is more like Billy Durant. Historical irony prevails.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into the mind of a great strategist., March 18, 2005

By 

Jose Ernesto Passos (São Paulo, SP Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Hardcover)

Mr. Faber has done a great job of puting together Alfred Sloan story, in a way that Mr. Sloan, himself, would accept as a balanced biography (although I think he wouldn't like to be so exposed in public!!!)

Many concepts that today are taken for granted as part of the tools available to the professional manager, were actually part of the ideas used by Mr. Sloan to guide GM into leadership of the Automobile Market. Mr. Faber has done a superb job of presenting these concepts in the context of history and the people with whom Mr.Sloan built GM. The story is so good that may inspire today's managers into action.

Faber does a very interesting analysis trying to understand the mind of Mr. Sloan, specially in his relations with the Roosevelt Administration during the New Deal and Second World War. Today it would be more difficult for people in general to accept some of the positions Mr. Sloan had taken in this period.

One point to be remembered is that today the record of successful mergers is dismal. Mr Sloan major contribution was taking General Motors,in the early 1920s, an amalgam of deals put together by Durant, which were in a state of disarray and puting together a rational and effective organization. To do this Mr. Sloan was brilliant by using concepts like market segmentation, descentralization, corporate control, productivity/efficiency control...he was a true strategist. Due to the lack of records, it would be impossible for the author to describe the details of the implementation of this great task done by Mr Sloan.

Great read, essential reading for anyone that wants to understand the ways of Big Business...