After the independence of the United States, set off a century-long westward movement, a large number of immigrants for different reasons to migrate to the west, from 1820 to 1914, more than 35 million foreign immigrants settled in the United States, it developed the present western United States, eliminated many Indian civilizations, expanded the domestic market, and laid the foundation for the victory of the Civil War. After the westward expansion movement, the United States Government threw off the heavy burdens and responsibilities it should bear, and was able to expropriate millions of square kilometers of land and countless natural resources of Indian and other ethnic minority tribes without compensation, so that the United States could develop its economy without any burden.
At that time, the Second Bank of the United States continued to expand credit, increase currency input, promote economic prosperity, and played an active role in the westward expansion movement of the United States. By 1832, the Second Bank had 22 branches across the country, with total assets of $800 billion, accounting for a market share of up to 20% at one time, and was the largest company in the United States at that time, and its bank notes were widely circulated in the United States and other countries in the world.
However, it is hard to imagine that such a large company has only 3 people in management. One is the president of the bank, and the other two are assistants to the president. Chandler, a well-known American expert on corporate history, described it this way: "In that era, this financial institution with huge power had to process huge transaction amounts every day, but it was not large enough to create so-called management levels. All this large transaction volume comes from the railway company.
At this time, the US government paid special attention to the construction of transportation facilities such as railways, roads and water transportation, and introduced a policy of more benefits from repairing more railways, which triggered a frenzy of infrastructure construction throughout the country. Carnegie, the famous steel king, entered the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1852, and in 1865 co-founded the Carnegie Coleman United Steel Plant, and with the infrastructure frenzy in the United States, Carnegie quickly became a steel giant.
By 1889, the 10 largest railroad companies had net worth of more than $100 million, of which the Pennsylvania Railroad (pennsylvania Railroad) had more than $200 million in assets, the largest company in the world at the time—few industrial enterprises at the time had assets worth more than $10 million.
How big is the Pennsylvania Railroad? At its peak, its road network was 10,000 miles (16,000 km), and historically penn railroad investments combined a total of 800 railroad companies, large and small. Penn Railroad was also the world's largest public company at the time, and it also held the longest record for continuous dividend distribution (more than 100 years). The company's boss was considered more powerful than the President of the United States for many years because of its rapid development, and the Pennsylvania Railroad was founded less than 10 years ago, and its annual budget soon reached 20% of the federal government, and later surpassed the federal government at one point.
Alexander Cassatt, then president of the Penn Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railway Station, which cost more than three billion US dollars (equivalent to its current value) at that time
By 1891, when the number of operatives had reached 110,000, the entire U.S. army numbered only 39,000. Because the transportation routes of railway companies are all over the place, it is very difficult to operate, so it is necessary to establish complex management levels, and such an organizational structure has also become the source of the organizational structure of enterprises in the future. This further gave birth to the birth of management.
In 1943, Drucker, who was later revered as the father of management, left Bennington for New York to teach at the Institute of Business at New York University and to do his favorite consulting job: as a management consultant for General Electric. At that time, he was invited by the company's vice chairman Brown to conduct a special study on the policy and organizational structure of General Electric for the reference of the company's executives. Drucker later spent a year and a half visiting every part of GM's business units, as well as most of the company's manufacturing facilities in eastern Mississippi, delving into the company's internal operations and writing The Concept of the Company— the book that established Drucker's historical place in "organizational theory." In the book, Drucker questions GM's management model and company values. After the work was published, it was immediately met with a comprehensive boycott by General Motors. For more than two decades, the company refused to comment on or even read the work. However, time allowed Drucker to become the winner in the end.
In writing "The Concept of the Company," Drucker asked General Motors executives if they knew the so-called local authorities. Many supervisors repeatedly mention the person "Harry Hope". Mr. Hope, an insurance consultant, built a library (which later became the hub of the GE School of Management). So Drucker set out to visit. Every library room in the library is large and contains thousands of books. But when he saw these books, he was disappointed. Mr. Hope asked him if he was looking for a management book, and Drucker admitted. He told Drucker: "There are only 6 books here that talk about management. The rest are all about insurance, sales, advertising, and manufacturing. ”
Drucker read the 6 books further, but found that 3 of them were not management books at all. The so-called management theory in it is just a patchwork of expertise in different fields such as engineering, accounting, sales, psychology, labor relations, and military etiquette. Drucker himself recalls that what was claimed to be a work of management at the time was like "a book on human anatomy, discussing only one joint in the human body (such as an elbow) without mentioning the arm, let alone the entire skeleton."
That is, at that time "almost non-existent" any professional management books.
After the publication of the book "The Concept of the Company", Drucker's consulting interests gradually expanded to include large companies such as Sears and General Electric. Wherever he went, However, Drucker found that in the field of management, basically no one had done any research, let alone established systematic knowledge, and management at that time was "the field in which human beings know the least about the basic system of the society in which they live." Even those who are within the organization know very little about management. "They often don't know what they're in charge of or what they're supposed to do; they don't know how to manage it or why; they don't know how to tell the difference between good management and bad management."
Drucker was determined to write a management book, "hoping that what I would write would, on the one hand, let the managers of my client company know the 'everything' they should know in their positions; on the other hand, train them to be able to take on the responsibilities of senior management in the future..."
After five years, in 1954 Drucker's book "The Practice of Management" was officially released. This book ushered in a new era in the history of the development of management, and it is widely recognized that "the book put forward an epoch-making concept - management by objectives, and since then it has pioneered management as a discipline." Around November 6, 1954, Drucker "invented" "management." Chinese management scholars believe that "most of the popular management ideas and practices in modern times can be found in this book. A cursory list can include: target management, participation management, knowledge employee management, customer-oriented marketing, performance appraisal, career management, divisional decentralized management, corporate culture, self-management team, etc. ”。
In The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker discusses the nature of management—the ultimate test of management is the performance of the firm. Drucker believes: "Management is a practice, the essence of which lies not in 'knowing', but in 'doing', and its verification is not in logic, but in results." "Therefore, management is essentially a practice, not a science and a profession.
The book focuses on the three functions of management, namely managing the enterprise, managing managers, managing employees, and working. Drucker advised managers to manage more managers and not to turn themselves into overseers, so that their managers would become ordinary small employees. In the book, he mentions Carnegie, a former Penn Railroad employee, king of Steel: "The management creed that managers should keep in mind is engraved on Andrew Carnegie's tombstone: Here is buried a man." He knows how to make the people who do things for him better than he is. “