New Frontiers for Professional Managers (Part 1)

What follows is the 1956 book New Frontiers for Professional Managers by Ralph Cordiner of GE Corporation. I will break the book up into chapters which will be included in following posts.  What has interested me so far in this book is its emphasis on the integration between the corporation and the society in which it operates. Although the figures in the book are very out of date, the concepts and practices are as applicable now as when written.

New Frontiers for Professional Managers

By: Ralph J Cordiner

PREFACE

Our modern society is characterized by large organizations. Their effective and democratic management is of vital concern to all of us. Particularly in the field of business, the importance of achieving the efficient voluntary association of men and women in large and rapidly growing corporations gives a new and perhaps unexpected significance to the subject of the management of large organizations.

Aware of this significance, the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research, Inc., founded and supported by the partners of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company, made an initial grant to the Graduate School of Business to organize and sponsor a continuing series of distinguished lectures by men of conspicuous accomplishment in the management of large organizations. The reflections and thoughts of men of action, often too busy to organize and place on paper the rich usefulness of their experience, will thus be made available to present and future students of management.

In inaugurating the McKinsey Foundation Lecture Series at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, we were fortunate to be able to present one of the most thoughtful and effective of our contemporary business executives, who gave us a close-up picture of his approach to the problems of managing a large organization. This kind of authoritative interpretation of modern management methods is close to the heart of a real understanding of the American business system.

Mr. Ralph J. Cordiner, President of the General Electric Company, as the first McKinsey lecturer, afforded our students, our faculty, and our distinguished guests from the business community an intimate interpretation of his and his associates' managerial philosophy. His prompt grasp of the real spirit of the lectures can perhaps be best described in his own words:

"As I understand it, one of the purposes of the lectures is to coax us businessmen out of our offices and into the arena of public thought where our managerial philosophies can be put to the test of examination by men trained in other disciplines. At the same time, it is hoped that in describing our personal experiences in managing today's corporations we will help bridge the disturbing gap between academic theory and the living realities of the new American economy."

"Within our own country, the lag between theory and practice is reflected in wasteful frictions and antagonisms between government, business, unions, education and other institutions. Because of the national obsession with concepts that are no longer relevant—concepts of Old World capitalism and Old World socialism—each of these groups finds much of its own work frustrated or attacked on the basis of wholly obsolete assumptions as to the nature of economic life in the United States today.

"This situation is increasingly recognized by educators, businessmen, and other informed people. It will require the efforts of all to bring an adequate resolution. If the McKinsey Lectures can help in this process of reducing the gap between economic theory and practice, they can make an important contribution to our national life."

These lectures provide one of the ways in which the Graduate School of Business expects to respond to this opportunity to achieve a perceptive and accurate interpretation of the American business system.

The initial lectures were presented to a group of prominent businessmen and scholars on the Columbia campus and are now made available to a wider audience through the publication of this volume. The lectures are reproduced here substantially as they were given, in three parts, during late April and early May, 1956. With the editorial assistance of Professor James W. Kuhn of the Graduate School of Business and Mr. Robert L. Fegley of the General Electric Company, some additional material has been added from the tape recording of Mr. Cordiner's responses to questions and problems raised in the after-dinner discussions which followed each lecture.

Courtney C. Brown

Dean
Graduate School of Business
Columbia University
June, 1956
NEW FRONTIERS
FOR PROFESSIONAL
MANAGERS