Abstract
Харизматическая корпорация: финансы, администрирование и управление производством при Генри Форде
Highlights
For Fortune’s readers such a company may have been hard to imagine, but it did exist: the magazine was speaking of the Ford Motor Company
Business historians have for the most part agreed with Fortune’s 1947 piece: by the 1920s, the company that had pioneered the mass production of automobiles was losing its grip
As a result of this decision, business historians have said, the company clung to “an antiquated administrative system totally unequal to the demands of a modern era” under the “personal control of one eccentric individual.”[2]. Under Henry Ford, the company lacked “any systematic organizational structure.”[3]. It suffered “organizational degeneration.”[4]. It was mired in “chaos.”[5] In passing these verdicts, historians keep the comparison with General Motors close at hand: the implication is that Ford could have avoided its difficulties if it had not waited until after World War II to refashion its management, GM style.[6]
Summary
After the 1919 buyout, the Ford Motor Company reinvested most of its earnings, sustained operations that the founder favored even when they were unprofitable, and made decisions on capital outlays not on the criteria of investment returns, but on whether the expenditure furthered research, improved production, or propagated the producerist cause This was possible for two reasons: first, as a privately held company, Ford could afford to eschew the type of strict financial oversight and budgetary planning generally required by outside shareholders; second, thanks to the Model T windfall and the early success of the Model A, the company had at its disposal ample funds that it did not come close to exhausting, even during the depressed 1930s. Constructed in state-of-the-art modernist architecture and taking advantage of water power, these factories were experiments in decentralized industrial activity
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
