2012年8月28日 星期二

藍血十傑The Whiz Kids : the founding fathers of American business-and the legacy they left us



2012.1.8 商業小說

藍血十傑─美國業國父

藍血十傑─美國業國父 The Whiz Kids : the founding fathers of American business-and the legacy they left us  Publisher: Doubleday Business; 1st edition (August 1, 1993)

藍血十傑
藍血(Blue Blood),系出名門,擁有貴族般的血統。
藍血十傑,是天才中的天才,在二次大戰為美國建立全世界最強大的空軍,戰後更開創全球企業管理制度先河,寫下管理史上最傳奇的一頁。人稱藍血十傑為美國企業的國父。
十 傑之中,桑頓Tex Thornton,是天生的領袖人物,創立李騰工業集團Litton Industries;麥納瑪拉 Robert McNamara ,有人類電腦之稱,日後成為國防部長、世界銀行總裁;利斯 Jack Reith,拯救法國福特,後來晉陞總裁;摩爾,行銷天才,創業後富甲一方;藍迪 J. Edward Lundy,為美國工業界訓練出數的新藍血;米勒Arjay Miller ,成為史丹福大學商學院院長;米爾斯萊特,先後主宰福特汽車;安德森,率先脫 離福特,成為貝金斯企業總裁;包士華,不屑留任福特,就此遁隱。

 Hitch

 智能上Enthoven  是Lundy 和Miller之複製品





「十傑」革命性的管理方式,就是把問題和答案,以數字和圖表表示出來。他們 信賴數字,數字是唯一的道德指針,是每一項決策的關鍵,是每一項決策的關鍵,但是這種方法卻使企業失去平衡。「十傑」把福特公司及美國工業帶進現代世界, 也把世界帶向一個不可掙脫的陷阱。「十傑」到頭來發現,他們終於用自己的方法改造了世界,只不過不是他們所預期的樣子。



From Publishers Weekly

Christened the Whiz Kids by the press, 10 young Army Air Force statistical experts in 1945 were hired as a unit by Henry Ford II to impose order on the company he had just taken over from his senile grandfather. Byrne, a Business Week writer and author of The Headhunters , admits that the Kids' formula for increasing profits through monitoring the numbers saved costs, but only, he claims, at the expense of quality and innovation--thinking that ultimately led to the loss of America's automotive hegemony. The group's charismatic leader, Tex Thornton, later created--and lost--super-conglomerate Litton Industries; Jack Reith masterminded the wildly over-designed 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, which flopped, and the doomed Edsel before committing suicide; Robert McNamara became Ford's president and then JFK and LBJ's Secretary of Defense. Others of the group ascended to top Ford jobs or drifted into disgruntled retirement. The book is that publishing rarity, a page-turner about business and finance people, but a more discriminating approach might have given the Whiz Kids' story greater cohesion.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

An unsparing post-mortem on a group of organization men who played an influential, if not always constructive, role in the postwar history of US business and government. There were ten so-called ``Whiz Kids''--youngish veterans of the Army Air Force's Statistical Control Command who in 1946 sold Henry Ford II on hiring them as a unit to revivify his troubled empire. While Business Week writer Byrne (coauthor of Odyssey, 1987, John Sculley's autobiography) tracks all parties to the original package deal, he focuses on those who flew highest or fell by the wayside--including Charles (Tex) Thornton (founder of Litton Industries, corporate America's first major conglomerate) and Robert McNamara (who left the Ford Motor presidency to become secretary of defense and a subsequently remorseful architect of US policy in Vietnam). Covered as well are Arjay Miller (an admired dean of Stanford's B-school and, like McNamara, an ex-president of Ford) and Jack Reith (a shooting star who flamed out early, dying by his own hand at 47). With the postwar era's best and brightest now gone to varying rewards, Byrne offers a harsh appraisal of their legacy. In particular, he takes the Whiz Kids and their disciples to task for putting near-blind faith in the decisive power of numbers and arrogantly imposing severe financial constraints on enterprises whose bottom-line results could almost certainly have been improved by allowing fallible human beings to exercise their intuition and creativity. An impressive and instructive look at a generation that apparently cast a long dark shadow on the domestic landscape. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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