Alfred Sloan

‘Scientific management means a constant search for the facts, the true actualities, and their intelligent, unprejudiced analysis. Only by increased knowledge can we progress, perhaps I had better say survive.’ Alfred Sloan was a long-time president and chairman of General Motors. Under Sloan GM became famous for managing diverse operations through financial statistics such as return on investment. He is credited with establishing annual styling changes, from which came the concept of planned obsolescence. He also established a pricing structure in which from lowest to highest priced cars the buyer could identify which rung of the ladder of success they occupied. The different cars, be it a Chevrolet or Cadillac did not compete with each other in production, and buyers could be kept in the GM “family” as their buying power and preferences changed as they aged. He also sponsored the world’s first university-based executive education programme—the Sloan Fellowship — in 1931 at MIT. A Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with the charge of educating the “ideal manager”.