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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."
Andrea Gabor is the author of The
Man Who Discovered Quality and Einstein's Wife.
She has been a senior editor at U.S. News & World
Report and a staff editor in corporate strategy and technology
at Business Week. Gabor has taught at Columbia University's
Graduate School of Journalism and is currently a professor
at Baruch College/CUNY. She lives in New York City with
her husband and two daughters.
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