Quotes about management
page 7

“Two of my favourite current management writers are Americans – Clayton Christensen and Peter Senge. My all-time favourite gurus are Peter Drucker, who became a greatly admired friend, and W. Edwards Deming. The thing that set these people apart from many other business commentators is that they didn’t propose any all - encompassing theories, they simply told it like it is.
The fact is that life cannot be summarised as a simple set of rules; it’s far too complicated for that and it’s always changing. Unfortunately, all-encompassing panaceas do seem to be popular and certainly sell books, which is why I so value the objectivity of thought that each of these people brought to the debate.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Interview: Robert Heller (2006)

Life, People, Books, Business

“What is now called ‘knowledge organisation’ in this context has a long history. The simplest forms of a knowledge organisation system (KOS) are, after all, the contents list and the index of a textbook. The knowledge is in the text; the KOS is a supplementary tool that helps the reader to find his way around the text. But as such finding aids have become more complex, and taken on wider functions, they have acquired grander names, such as retrieval languages, taxonomies, categorisations, lexicons, thesauri, or ontologies. They are now seen as schemes that organize, manage, and retrieve information.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (2008) " On ‘knowledge organisation’ http://web.archive.org/web/20100125050134/http://www.lucis.me.uk/knowlorg.htm" published on lucis.me.uk, 2008.

Way, History, Knowledge, Help

“Why are Indo-Fijians supposed to be good at managing businesses but are not to be allowed to manage the biggest business of all, the government of the country? Why? Oh why?”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Business, Country

“When a manager asks for hard data, that's usually just his way of saying no.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Geek Noise (2004)

Way

“It's always seemed like a big mystery how nature, seemingly so effortlessly, manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex. Well, I think we found its secret. It's just sampling what's out there in the computational universe.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

"Computing a Theory of Everything" (2010)

Secret, Nature, Thinking, Universe

“All good work is done in defiance of management.”

Bob Woodward (1943) American journalist

CBS News' 20th-anniversary Watergate documentary (1994)

“Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Naked Manager (1972), p. 12

Way, Home, Business, Cooking

“A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

A manager develops people.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 344

People, Communication, Motivation

“One of the duties of old-age, is the management of time. The less that remains to us, the more valuable we ought to consider it.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: An Essay on Old Age, 1732, p. 121

Age, Time

“When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.

I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Hansard, House of Lords, 5th series, vol. 468, cols. 390-1.
Speech in the House of Lords, 14 November 1985.
1980s

Question, Nature, Housing

“Over 80 million people have participated in Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies. Pinewood is a case study of the design of a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby for one particular scout pack. The system helps manage the entire race from initial entry through final results. Many alternatives for race format, scoring, and judging are presented.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: Engineering Modeling and Design (1992), p. 83; As cited in: Eric David Smith (2006, p. 42).

People, Study, Help, Scouting

“Enterprise architecture (EA) promotes the belief that an enterprise, as a complex system, can be designed or improved in an orderly fashion achieving better overall results than ad-hoc organisation and design. EA is a co-operative effort of designers, analysts and managers and uses enterprise models in the process… enterprise models carry meaning. This resulted in requirements for the enterprise engineering process, which—if not met—can limit the viability of the process. The analysis of the same factors resulted in requirements for improved Enterprise Modelling Tools.”

Peter Bernus (1949) Hungarian-Australian computer scientist

Peter Bernus (2003) "Enterprise models for enterprise architecture and ISO9000: 2000." Annual Reviews in Control 27.2 : 211-220.

Fashion, Effort

“The prominent element in present-day industrial management to be: the mental attitude that consciously applies the transference of skill to all the activities of industry.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

(1921, p. 10); Diemer quotes the ASCM committee
Factory organization and administration, 1910

“The Communist-Fascists, who are managers of the press, remove unwanted editors and monopolize the printing base, as it is widely practiced today in Belarus.”

Vasil Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

“Ён Прыехаў, Сам Памёр, Усё Спакойна…” Апошнія Тыдні Васіля Быкава https://www.svaboda.org/amp/24853764.html // svaboda.org (in Belarusian)

“Hence we may recognize the subject of management cybernetics — which is seen as a rich provider of models for doing OR.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 239.

“If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Telegraph article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10052646/Quitting-the-EU-wont-solve-our-problems-says-Boris-Johnson.html (12 May 2013) Peking university, Beijing (14 October 2013) Joint speech to students http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/14/boris-johnson-charm-offensive-china 2010s, 2013

Problem

“Here's the essence of risk management: Risk no more than you can afford to lose, and also risk enough so that a win is meaningful. If there is no such amount, don't play.”

Ed Seykota (1946) American commodities trader

Source: Covel, Trend Following, page 59

“Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"The Forty Rules of Love" (2010) by Elif Şafak (The book is about Rumi, but the quote is the author's own words)
Misattributed

Love

“Fifteen years ago Follett expounded a philosophy of management that even to-day is a generation ahead of practice, and one can find therein a significant parallel with the pioneering work of Frederick W. Taylor. In his teaching, the adoption of a new philosophy of management—“the mental revolution” as he put it—was a fundamental part of his new technique; but, as knowledge of his methods spread, the practice of scientific management was allowed to develop and expand shorn from its underlying philosophy. Mary Follett was not concerned merely with the technique, the methods of management; her contacts with business and its leaders gave her ample chance of seeing the new technique emerge and grow. But with deeper insight she could see what too many business leaders missed, that the philosophy of management and its psychological foundations were still unheeded, perhaps even unknown. In this lies the greatness of her contribution. It is as modern and applicable to-day as it was when first she spoke; it will be as modern and applicable tomorrow.”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxvii

Business, Knowledge, Chance, Parting

“If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

World

“Managers who extensively plan the future get the timing wrong. Sometimes they arrive to market too early and so must wait for the demand to catch up. Sometimes they are too late and so must accelerate to rejoin the future.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 135

Time, Waiting, Future

“Choose your enemies carefully: you'll probably be known much better and far longer for who they were, than for anything else you ever managed to accomplish.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“The day Mr. Reeder arrived at the Public Prosecutors' Office was indeed a day of fate for Mr. Lambton Green, Branch manager of the London Scottish and Midland Bank.”

Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) British crime writer, journalist and playwright

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder (2000), opening words

Fate

“A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.”

Norman Maclean book Young Men and Fire

Young Men and Fire (1992)

Universe, Help

“It is not by these means [modern humanism and humanitarianism, idealism, etc. ] that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,… not through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of all kinds of many-voiced clamour and confusion and catastrophe…. Science has missed something essential; it has seen and scrutinised what has happened and in a way how it has happened, but it has shut its eyes to something that made this impossible possible, something it is there to express. There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyse, but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila…. Another danger may then arise [once materialism begins to give way]… not of a final denial of the Truth, but the repetition in old or new forms of a past mistake, on one side some revival of blind fanatical obscurantist sectarian religionism, on the other a stumbling into the pits and quagmires of the vitalistic occult and the pseudo-spiritual'mistakes that made the whole real strength of the materialistic attack on the past and its credos. But these are phantasms that meet us always on the border line or in the intervening country between the material darkness and the perfect Splendour. In spite of all, the victory of the supreme Light even in the darkened earth-consciousness stands as the one ultimate certitude….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Undated
India's Rebirth

Life, Truth, Religion, Way

“Good management are rarely overcompensated to an extent that makes any significant difference with respect to the stockholder's position. Poor management are always overcompensated, because they are worth less than nothing to the owners.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter XIV, Stockholders and Managements, p. 209

“Project management has long been discussed by corporate executives and academics as one of several workable possibilities for organizational forms of the future that could integrate complex efforts and reduce bureaucracy…. This approach does not really destroy the vertical, bureaucratic flow of work but simply requires that line organizations talk to the other horizontally so work will be accomplished more smoothly throughout the organization”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: Project management for executives (1982), p. 2

Effort, Future

“He was a young driver,
just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day's pasty fruits
for everyone in that coal-scarred city
where children play without despair
in backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
about thirty thousand pounds of bananas…”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Children, Despair

“Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren Bennis cited in: Cecil O. Kemp, Jr. (2000) Wisdom Honor & Hope: The Inner Path to True Greatness. p. 207
2000s

Leadership, For Team

“That's all window dressing. That's not fundamental. That's not getting at change and the transformation that must take place. Sure we have to solve problems. Certainly stamp out the fire. Stamp out the fire and get nowhere. Stamp out the fires puts us back to where we were in the first place. Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system. Anything goes wrong, do something about it, overreacting; acting without knowledge, the effect is to make things worse. With the best of intentions and best efforts, managing by results is, in effect, exactly the same, as Dr. Myron Tribus put it, while driving your automobile, keeping your eye on the rear view mirror, what would happen? And that's what management by results is, keeping your eye on results.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The Deming of America, Documentary broadcast on the PBS network (1991)

Knowledge, Problem, Effort, Change

“I think that that has to be related to the problems within our own country. I was reading in the papers today that there's a grave concern about what our role should be, how it should be handled, and how we should better manage our own domestic economy. And I think that this is becoming a serious issue. And it's gonna have to be addressed by any politicians who wish to be re-elected. They have to see that the issue of our economy and what influences it is better understood and more successfully addressed.”

David Rockefeller (1915–2017) American banker and philanthropist

When asked about the worsening condition of the American economy and currency in an interview with Benjamin Fulford (13 November 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3704527408635856046

Problem, Thinking, Reading, Country

“At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed vocations; but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves, subject only to the United States military authority, and the acts of Congress. By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro is free, and must be dealt with as such. He cannot be subjected to conscription, or forced military service, save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the young and able-bodied negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of the United States.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1865, Special Field Order No. 15 (January 1865)

War, People, Law, Freedom

“Never underestimate change. What seems simple at the top is magnified at lower echelons and is extremely disruptive. It is a festering crisis that needs attention from senior management or else loyalty, efficiency, and productivity will suffer.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 11

Suffering, Change, Loyalty

“The manager treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern is with technique, with effectiveness … The therapist also treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern also is with technique, with effectiveness … Neither manager nor therapist, in their roles as manager and therapist, do or are able to engage in moral debate. They … purport to restrict themselves to the realms in which rational agreement in possible—that is, … to the realm of fact, the realm of means, the realm of measurable effectiveness.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 30.

“A prominent manufacturer once said that although he could see some use for an organization chart for his factory, he had refused to chart the organization above the level of factory superintendent. His argument was that charts tend to make people overly conscious of being superiors or inferiors, tend to destroy team feeling, and give persons occupying a box on the chart too great a feeling of "ownership"? Another top executive once said that if an organization is left uncharted, it can be changed more easily and that the absence of a chart also encourages a competitive drive for higher executive positions on the part of the uncharted middle-management group.
These reasons for not charting organization structures are clearly unsound. Subordinate - superior relationships exist not because of charting but because of essential reporting relationships. As for a chart's creating a too comfortable feeling and causing a lack of drive on the part of those who have "arrived", these are matters of top leadership - of reorganizing whenever the enterprise environment demands, of developing a tradition of change, and of making subordinate managers continue to meet adequate and well-understood standards of performance.”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

Source: Principles of management, 1968, p. 379; About the advantages of organizational charts

People, Feeling, Change, Parting

““Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Fragments for an Anarchist Anthropology (2004), p. 9

People, Idea

“Back in the mid-1990s I was researching strategy in the global electronics industry. I interviewed 20 to 30 executives, CEOs, and division managers and asked fairly simple questions. Which company was the leader in their market? How did that company become the leader? What’s their own company’s strategy?
I saw an interesting pattern. Most executives easily explained how companies became market leaders: Some sort of window of opportunity opened, and the leader was the company that was the first to successfully jump through that window. Not exactly the first mover but the first to get it right.
But when I asked these same executives about their own strategies, I heard a lot about doorknob polishing. They were doing 360-degree feedback, forming alliances, outsourcing, cutting costs, and so on. None of them even mentioned taking a good position quickly when the industry changes.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

About strategy starts with identifying changes, and companies taking position (1)
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Question, Change

“If a top management team cannot clearly articulate the five or six fundamental industry trends that most threaten its firm's continued success, it is not in control of the firm's destiny.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Source: Competing for the Future, 1996, p. 73

Success

“Angus? I think he's kinda crazy. Since the first night I saw the band way back in Australia, I knew their manager, and I'd never seen the band before and never even heard of AC/DC. And the manager just said stand here, the band comes on in two minutes. So I stood there and this band comes on and there's this little guy, about that big, with a school uniform and a bag on his back going crazy and I laughed, and I must have laughed for half an hour. And I still laugh, and I think he's great.”

Bon Scott (1946–1980) Rock musician

When asked about Angus Young, lead guitarist of AC/DC. From Reims, December 1979.

School, Way, Guy, Thinking

“I agreed with the prevailing opinion in the Labour Party about nuclear weapons; I went on ban-the-bomb marches in the 1960s and I have not changed my mind about nuclear deterrence since. But I found it hard to accept the Labour Party’s policy that required the exclusion of nuclear-powered ships. Given that nuclear energy exists it is the intention behind its use that matters. The weapons are made to destroy and we have to learn to live without them. The rest may be useful if properly managed. The management is an environmental issue and the inevitable exclusion of nuclear-powered vessels was not an appropriate basis for our foreign policy.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Debunking the view of the left wing of the 1980s New Zealand Labour Party that the Lange Government's nuclear weapons ban should also extend to nuclear propulsion.
Source: David Lange, My Life (2005).

Learning, Change

“More directly related to the NPM is the impressive current literature criticizing it for its sometimes cavalier treatment of the rule of law, especially its free and easy slogans about eliminating red tape and letting managers manage”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

Source: Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002, p. ix

Law, Literature

“An institution is defined as collective action in control, liberation and expansion of individual action. Its forms are unorganized custom and organized going concerns. The individual action is participation in bargaining, managing and rationing”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: "Institutional Economics," 1931, p. 648

“The second model is the functionalist model of mind. The organism through acquired S-R responses or through operations on the environmental manages to stay alive and adjust itself to the environment. The Thorndykian and Skinnerian approaches to learning and the adaptive model of the psychoanalytical theory come under this heading.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 102

Learning

“The methods of logical procedure are very different in ancient and modem logic, but behind all difference is the construction of a universally valid order of thought, neutral with respect to material content. Long before technological man and technological nature emerged as the objects of rational control and calculation, the mind was made susceptible to abstract generalization. Terms which could be organized into a coherent logical system, free from contradiction or with manageable contradiction, were separated from those which could not. Distinction was made between the universal, calculable, “objective” and the particular, incalculable, subjective dimension of thought.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 137-138

Nature, Universe

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“Things could have been even worse. This week, we managed to avoid driving off a cliff. But we’re still on the road to nowhere.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Regarding the last-minute deal that ended the 2013 U.S. government shutdown just before the U.S. defaulted on its debt
[Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/opinion/krugman-the-damage-done.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&, The Damage Done, New York Times, October 18, 2013, October 18, 2013]
The New York Times Columns

“I wrote my first story when I was fifteen, and sent it—to Adventure, I believe. Three years later I managed to break into Weird Tales. Three years of writing without selling a blasted line. (I never have been able to sell to Adventure; guess my first attempt cooked me with them for ever!)”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. July 1933)
Letters

Cooking

“The literature on product development continues to grow. This research is varied and vibrant, yet large and fragmented. In this article we first organize the burgeoning product-development literature into three streams of research: product development as rational plan, communication web, and disciplined problem solving. Second, we synthesize research findings into a model of factors affecting the success of product development. This model highlights the distinction between process performance and product effectiveness and the importance of agents, including team members, project leaders, senior management, customers, and suppliers, whose behavior affects these outcomes. Third, we indicate potential paths for future research based on the concepts and links that are missing or not well defined in the model.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: "Product development" , 1995, p. 343; Abstract

Behavior, Communication, Literature, Problem

“She was trying to feel philosophical about dying, not managing it, trying not to be frightened, and not managing that, either.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 388)

Feeling

“…the miserable specimens who call themselves 'liberals' are really conservatives: they're desperately — even hysterically — defending a welfare-warfare kleptocracy that is now at least four generations old, against growing numbers of us (unlike Republicans, who seem to become more ignorant with every passing year) who have actually managed to learn something from history and are struggling to dismantle said kleptocracy.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"A Matter of Definition," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle582-20100808-02.html 8 August 2010.

History, Learning

“They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and an autobellhop is not responsive to bribes—hardly an improvement. But the assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; He listened to reason as long as it was crisp and rustled.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 12

Cats

“"Stakeholder Management" as a concept, refers to the necessity for an organization to manage the relationships with its specific stakeholder groups in an action-oriented way.”

R. Edward Freeman (1951) American academic

Source: A stakeholder approach to strategic management, 1984, p. 52

Way

“I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"Great Hackers" http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html, July 2004

“If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Daniel Goleman (1995) cited in: John O. Dozier (2010) The Weeping, the Window, the Way. p. 130

“Some of the biggest changes have been in the process of generating business strategies—what I call “strategy work.” Around 1980, the received wisdom was to decentralize into business units, which would each generate a strategic plan. These plans were then amalgamated up the hierarchy, in some portfolio way, for senior management. That approach has all but disappeared, and we’ve seen a dramatic recentralization of strategy work.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Response to the question: "You’ve been teaching about, researching, and consulting on business and corporate strategy for 35 years. What changes have you seen in that time?"
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Wisdom, Way, Business, Change

“The areas traditionally concerned with such systems are: publishing in all its ramification, librarianship, bibliography, documentation, record management, archives and the like. Systematic study of the activities in all these areas has lead to increased recognition of their common features. They are all concerned with information systems, and their study may include in the wider field of 'information science and technology' (as the Americans put it) or 'informatics”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

as Soviet writers would have it
Preface: second paragraph
Information Systems (1973)

Study, Science

“Most managers are so concerned with today, and with getting our own real and imagined problems settled, that we are incapable of planning corrective or positive actions more than a week or so ahead.”

Philip B. Crosby (1926–2001) Quality guru

Cited in: Joseph C. Fields. Total Quality for Schools: A Suggestion for American Education. 1993, p. 47
Quality Is Free, 1977

Imagination, Problem

“The magnitude of the business of this road, its numerous and important connections, and. the large number of employés engaged in operating it, have led many, whose opinions are entitled to respect, to the conclusion, that a proper regard to details, which enter so largely into the elements of success in the management of all railroads, cannot possibly be attained by any plan that contemplates its organization as a whole; and in proof of this position, the experience of shorter roads is referred to, the business operations of which have been conducted much more economically.
Theoretically, other things being equal, a long road should be operated for a less cost per mile than a short one. This position is so clearly evident and so generally admitted, that its truth may be assumed without offering any arguments in support of it; and, notwithstanding the reverse, so far as practical results are considered, has generally been the case, we must look to other causes than the mere difference in length of roads for a solution of the difficulty.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 33-34: First two paragraphs

Truth, Business, Support, Success

“Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), pp. 224-225

World, Understanding, Nature, Science

“Prayer is decisive element of victory. Wars are won by those who have managed to attract from elsewhere, from the skies, the mysterious forces of the invisible world and to secure their support. These mysterious forces are the souls of the dead, the souls of our ancestors, who once were, like us, linked to our clods, to our furrows, who died for the defense of this land and are still linked today to it by the memory of their lives and by us, their sons, their grandsons, their great grandsons. But, above the souls of the dead, there is God. Once these forces are attracted, they are of considerable power, they defend us, they give us courage, will, all the elements necessary to victory and which make us win. They bring in panic and terror among the enemies, paralyse their activity. In the last analysis, victories do not depend only on material preparation, on the material forces of the belligerents, but on their power to secure the support of spiritual forces. The fairness and the morality of actions and the fervent, insistent call for them in the form of rite and collective prayer attract such forces.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Religion

God, War, World, Soul

“"We do not encourage initiative," said the factory manager. "What you must do is to learn to work to the safety rules." It was my first day in my first job, as a plant chemist in an explosives factory, located in the English countryside, in July 1941. Happily, he was quite wrong. We were not making some old, tried and tested explosive like nitroglycerine or TNT. It was the first large -scale production of a brand-new chemical, code-named RDX-Research Department eXplosive-developed by a government military research department.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 3.

Learning

“It is one of the favorite pastimes of headquarters groups to decide from within their professional ivory tower what help the field organization needs and to design and develop programs for meeting these "needs." Then it becomes necessary to get field management to accept the help provided, and a different role is taken by the staff: that of persuading middle and lower management to utilize the programs.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 227 (in 2006 edition)

Help

“Organizational design often focuses on structural alternatives such as matrix, decentralization, and divisionalization. However, control variables (e. g., reward structures, task characteristics, and information systems) offer a more flexible approach. The purpose of this paper is to explore these control variables for organizational design. This is accomplished by integration and testing of two perspectives, organization theory and economics, notably agency theory. The resulting hypotheses link task characteristics, information systems, and business uncertainty to behavior vs. outcome based control strategy. These hypothesized linkages are examined empirically in a field study of the compensation practices for retail salespeople in 54 stores. The findings are that task programmability is strongly related to the choice of compensation package. The amount of behavioral measurement, the cost of measuring outcomes, and the uncertainty of the business also affect compensation. The findings have management implications for the design of compensation and reward packages, performance evaluation systems, and control systems, in general. Such systems should explicitly consider the task, the information system in place to measure performance, and the riskiness of the business. More programmed tasks require behavior based controls while less programmed tasks require more elaborate information systems or outcome based controls.”

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt American economist

Source: "Control: Organizational and economic approaches," 1985, p. 134; Article abstract

Behavior, Business, Study

“There's a little pond, in a small town in Poland, where they used to dump the ashes. The pond is still gray, even half a century later. I've heard it said that the holocaust had no survivors, that even those who managed to remain technically alive were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. I'd like to think that's not true. But if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

War, Soul, Thinking, Personality

“From the beginning, the forces of light and the forces of darkness have polarized the field of organizational analysis, and the struggle has been protracted and inconclusive. The forces of darkness have been represented by the mechanical school of organizational theory — those who treat the organization as a machine. This school characterizes organizations in terms o£ such things as:
:* centralized authority
:* clear lines of authority
:* specialization and expertise
:* marked division of labor
:* rules and regulations
:* clear separation of staff and line
The forces of light, which by mid-twentieth century came to be characterized as the human relations school, emphasizes people rather than machines, accommodations rather than machine-like precision, and draws its inspiration from biological systems rather than engineering systems. It has emphasized such things as:
:* delegation of authority
:* employee autonomy
:* trust and openness
:* concerns with the "whole person"
:* interpersonal dynamics
The forces of darkness formulated their position first, starting in the early part of this century. They have been characterized as the scientific management or classical management school…”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 3

People, School, Light, Parting

“People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

The New York Times, sect. 4, p. 13 (April 11, 1993).

Wisdom, People, Girl, Boy

“All large organizations have an internal power struggle over the goals and resources of the organization…. In the largest firms, there are two bases of control : formal ownership and authority. Those who own the firm control by virtue of ownership. Authority relations embedded in the organizational structure legitimate how managers can control organizations.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 10 ; As cited in: François L'Italien, BÉHÉMOTH CAPITAL. Contribution à une théorie dialectique de la financiarisation de la grande corporation. Université Laval, 2012. p. 147 (Many of the following quotes came from this source)

“Over the years, it has slowly dawned on me that the people who cause my painful experiences are ignorant and crude. They are the critics who have not read enough and the clients who do not know why they have come to us. I have been helped to realise this by noticing that the scholars whose work we most respect, the clients whose projects intrigue us, and the patrons whose friendship inspires us, have no problem understanding my role. They are the sophisticates. Partly through them I gain heart and realise that, over the last twenty years, I have managed to do my work and, despite some sliding, to achieve my own self-respect.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Pain, Friendship, People, Understanding

“Holists are distinguished from serialists in terms of the number of inferential statements they produce… It is possible to distinguish the serialist from the holist by a tendency, on the part of a serialist, to preserve the order of the programme presentation format which is absent in the holist. Presented with a holist programme the serialist is unable to preserve the complete order but he does manage to preserve sequentially arranged fragments.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 284 as cited in: Nigel Ford (2000) "Cognitive Styles and Virtual Environments" in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol 51, Is. 6, p. 547.

Parting

“It has become clear from the rumblings and soul-searching in the field of competitive strategy that a revolution is brewing. Managers and strategy researchers are discovering that existing models of strategy are nearly obsolete in the intensity of today's fast-paced competition. Some have called for a more dynamic approach, even questioning the sustainability of competitive advantage in this new environment. But so far, this revolution-waiting-to-happen has had no leader. Now it has.”

Richard D’Aveni (1953) American economist

Foreword
Hypercompetitive rivalries, 1994

Soul, Search, Question, Waiting

“I've made my best notes sitting outside cafes on busy streets, or in murky bars in foreign cities. I sorted out a big series of problems in the novel I'm just finishing while sitting drinking a long line of solitary beers in a bar in a small coastal town. The hangover was pretty brutal, but I'm not sure I'd have found the solutions any other way. Part of the job of being a writer is learning how your head works - when to push it, when to step back. This kind of self-management is actually far harder, I think, than learning how to write decent prose.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Way, Drink, Beer, Business

“The massive prison-building project that began in the 1980s created the means of concentrating and managing what the capitalist system had implicitly declared to be a human surplus. In the meantime, elected officials and the dominant media justified the new draconian sentencing practices, sending more and more people to prison in the frenzied drive to build more and more prisons by arguing that this was the only way to make our communities safe from murderers, rapists, and robbers”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

People, Way, Communication

“The military forces of a free country may be considered under three general descriptions — 1. The militia. 2. the navy — and 3. the regular troops — and the whole ought ever to be, and understood to be, in strict subordination to the civil authority; and that regular troops, and select corps, ought not to be kept up without evident necessity. Stipulations in the constitution to this effect, are perhaps, too general to be of much service, except merely to impress on the minds of the people and soldiery, that the military ought ever to be subject to the civil authority, &c. But particular attention, and many more definite stipulations, are highly necessary to render the military safe, and yet useful in a free government; and in a federal republic, where the people meet in distinct assemblies, many stipulations are necessary to keep a part from transgressing, which would be unnecessary checks against the whole met in one legislature, in one entire government. — A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and render regular troops in a great measure unnecessary. The powers to form and arm the militia, to appoint their officers, and to command their services, are very important; nor ought they in a confederated republic to be lodged, solely, in any one member of the government. First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. I am persuaded, I need not multiply words to convince you of the value and solidity of this principle, as it respects general liberty, and the duration of a free and mild government: having this principle well fixed by the constitution, then the federal head may prescribe a general uniform plan, on which the respective states shall form and train the militia, appoint their officers and solely manage them, except when called into the service of the union, and when called into that service, they may be commanded and governed by the union. This arrangement combines energy and safety in it; it places the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community, and not in the hands of men destitute of property, of principle, or of attachment to the society and government, who often form the select corps of peace or ordinary establishments: by it, the militia are the people, immediately under the management of the state governments, but on a uniform federal plan, and called into the service, command, and government of the union, when necessary for the common defence and general tranquility. But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. As a farther check, it may be proper to add, that the militia of any state shall not remain in the service of the union, beyond a given period, without the express consent of the state legislature.”

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) American statesman

Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 169 (1788)

Men, People, Family, Peace

“You managed not to get eaten then?”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Said to a British student in Papua New Guinea, as quoted in "Long line of princely gaffes" BBC News (1 March 2002)
2000s

“Another discipline began to intrude upon the confident work and increasingly elaborate models of the human relations theorists (largely social psychologists) and the uneasy toying with bureaucracy of the "structionalists" (largely sociologists). Both tended to study economic organizations. A few, like Philip Selznick, were noting conflict and differences in goals (perhaps because he was studying a public agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority), but most ignored conflict or treated it as a pathological manifestation of breakdowns in communication or the ego trips of unreconstructed managers.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 7

Confidence, Communication, Study

“I do not deny that most managers lack a good deal of information that they should have, but I do deny that this is the most important informational deficiency from which they suffer. It seems to me that they suffer more from an overabundance of irrelevant information.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 147.

Suffering

“I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them. My philosophy is to stay as close as possible to what's happening. If I can't solve something, how the hell can I expect my managers to?”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

from an interview for an article in The New York Times (1977), as cited in " Harold S. Geneen, 87, Dies; Nurtured AT&T http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/23/business/harold-s-geneen-87-dies-nurtured-itt.html?pagewanted=all" published 23 November 1997 in The New York Times.

People, Hell

“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Bennis (1989, p. 45), cited in: Terrence Mech, ‎Gerard B. McCabe (1998) Leadership and Academic Librarians. p. 56
1980s

Leadership

“We weren't managed from the word go, like U2 or Simple Minds, to get bigger and bigger and take over the planet.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Q magazine (1992)

“After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants, in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

First Iowa Coop. v. Power Comm'n., 328 U.S. 152, 187 (1946).
Judicial opinions

“In my view—and that of most contemporary economists, I believe—Schumpeter’s most original and most lastingly significant book was Theory of Economic Development, which appeared in 1911 (and was translated into English in 1934). It was at the University of Czernowitz, not far from the beginning of his career as an economist, that he worked out his conception of the entrepreneur, the maker of “new combinations,” as the driving force and characteristic figure of the fits-and-starts evolution of the capitalist economy. He was explicit that, while technological innovation was in the long run the most important function of the entrepreneur, organizational innovation in governance, finance, and management was comparable in significance.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

"Heavy Thinker" (2007)

Books, Universe, Appearance

“The ultimate of taxation-for-social-purposes is absolutism, not only because the growing fiscal power carries an equal increase in political power, but because the investment of revenue in the individual by the State gives it a pecuniary interest in him. If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash investment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation. The motor power lodged in the individual must be put to the best use so that the yield will further social ends, as foreseen by the management. Thus, the fiscal scheme which begins with distribution is forced by the logic of events into control of production. And the concept of natural rights is inconsistent with the social obligation of the individual. He lives for the State which nurtured him. He belongs to the State by right of purchase.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

“Taxation is Robbery,” Chicago: Human Events Associates (1947)

Health, Way, Nature

“Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, March 14, 2014, "Democrats are making income inequality worse" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-democrats-policies-make-income-inequality-worse/2014/03/14/97d5074e-aada-11e3-adbc-888c8010c799_story.html at washingtonpost.com 2010s

“With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular—not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.”

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist

Essays in The Public Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=dCBruUK-qdcC&q=+democratic+politicians#v=snippet&q=democratic%20politicians&f=false (1955)

Men, People, Democracy, Nature

“The first characteristic of interest is the fraction of the computational load which is associated with data management housekeeping. This fraction has been very nearly constant for about ten years, and accounts for 40% of the executed instructions in production runs.”

Gene Amdahl (1922–2015) American physicist

Source: Validity of the single processor approach... (1967), p. 483

“We are in the world and, before we know where we are, we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score years between birth and death. Moreover, each man's path leads up to the theatre on the one side and down from it on the other. The inexorable manager, Fate, requires that each should go through with his comedy or his drama, if he be judged worthy of a leading part, with his scene or his act in another man's piece, if he be fit only to play the walking gentleman, the dumb footman, or the mechanically trained supernumerary who does duty by turns as soldier, sailor, courtier, husbandman, conspirator or red-capped patriot. A few play well, many play badly, all must appear and the majority are feebly applauded and loudly hissed. He counts himself great who is received with such an uproar of clapping and shout of approval as may drown the voice of the discontented; he is called fortunate who, having missed his cue and broken down in his words, makes his exit in the triumphant train of the greater actor upon whom all eyes are turned; he is deemed happy who, having offended no man, is allowed to depart in peace upon his downward road.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1894)

Death, Fate, Happiness, World

“There are no Reconstruction reenactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word "reconstruction"--he qualified it with add-ons like "what is called reconstruction" or "a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)"--and preferred to speak of the "re-inauguration of the national authority" or the need to "reinaugurate loyal state governments." Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. Although we usually bookend the period with the Confederate surrender in 1865 and the withdrawal of federal occupation troops in 1877, people had been talking about "reconstruction" even before the shooting began in 1861, and the federal occupation troops who were withdrawn in 1877 were by that time little more than a corporal's guard. In some sense, Reconstruction ended when Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 1874; other parts of it spluttered on…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

War, People, Disappointment, History

“Maybe God is waiting for us to be silent long enough so he may begin painting a new picture in our imaginations, to begin transforming our image of a manageable deity into one that can truly inspire.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

God, Imagination, Waiting, Painting

“As in the beginning, so now, and it will be for ever after, we come of a race who are very bad managers in youth, though we improve as we get older. I have cut down the cost of my falconers to 1200 florins, and I hope soon to be out of debt.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William writing to his brother Louis, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 10

Youth, Hope

“The research needed for social practice can best be characterized as research for social management or social engineering. It is a type of action research, a comparative research of the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action. Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Action research and minority problems, 1946, p. 35.

Books

“The farther afield mergers were, the less likely antitrust authorities were to intervene. Growth through mergers required that finance-oriented managers choose their targets carefully. They sought profitable and growing industries where their capital would earn higher rates of return and avoided mergers where the threat of antitrust prosecution might exist.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 240

“I am terribly saddened to learn of the passing of Harry Dalton. He was one of the great general managers of our generation. I was fortunate to have him serve as general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers from 1978 through 1991.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Learning

“Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

The Irish Worker, 29 August, 1915. Reprinted in P. Beresford Ellis (ed.), James Connolly - Selected Writings, p. 248

“Many associate the word scientific with physics. But it means much more than that. Scientific management means a constant search for the facts, the true actualities, and their intelligent, unprejudiced analysis. Thus, and in no other way, policies and their administration are determined. I keep saying to the General Motors organization that we are prepared to spend any proper amount of money to get the facts. Only by increased knowledge can we progress, perhaps I had better say survive. That is really research, but few realize research can and should be just as effectively used in all functional branches of industry as in physics”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 140

Money, Way, Search, Intelligence

“It’s frightening what these Moonies can do to the family unit.. I get letters from parents all over the country telling me the same story.. The kids are swept along by his outfit and then taken away for a few days to a ‘workshop.’ By the time the parents see their kids again – if they can manage to see them – the kids are starry-eyed and ready to take on anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a form of hypnotism. There is something very unhealthy going on.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

United States Congressional Record, 94th Congress, United States House of Representatives, 2nd session, January 28, 1976, Congressional Record, Volume 122, Part 2.

Family, Parent, Time, Country

“Since I have been in England I have been asked several times why I am studying business management. I will try to tell you. Free to choose between different paths of study, I have chosen this for a number of reasons. First of all, it is among businessmen (not all, but a few) that I find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my thinking where it is most alive. I said last winter to a Professor of Philosophy: 'Do you realize that you philosophers have got to look to your laurels, that businessmen are doing some very valuable thinking and may get ahead of you?' And he acknowledged this, which I think was a very significant concession. Moreover, I find the thinking of businessmen to-day in line with the deepest and best thinking we have ever had. The last word in science—in biology—is the principle of unifying. The most profound philosophers have always given us unifying as the fundamental principle of life. And now business men are finding it is the way to run a successful business. Here the ideal and the practical have joined hands. That is why I am working at business management, because, while I care for the ideal, it is only because I want to help bring it into our everyday affairs.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xix-xx

Life, Men, Way, Business

“Economic theory makes a fundamental assumption that maximizing profits is the basic objective of every firm. But in recent years, profit maximization has been extensively qualified by theorists to refer to the long run; to refer to management’s rather than to owners’ income; to include non-financial income such as increased leisure for high-strung executives and more congenial relations between executive levels within the firm; and to make allowance for special considerations such as restraining competition, maintaining management control, warding off wage demands, and forestalling anti-trust suits. The concept has become so general and hazy that it seems to encompass most of men’s aims in life.
This trend reflects a growing realization by theorists that many firms, and particularly the big ones, do not operate on the principle of profit maximizing in terms of marginal costs and revenues…”

Joel Dean (1906–1979) American economics wrtier

Source: Managerial Economics, 1951, p. 28; Cited in: Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Life, Men

“Manifestly, in any organization men should move from the bottom up to the top. That develops loyalty, ambition and talent, because there is a chance for promotion. Never inject a man into the top if it can be avoided. In a big organization to have to do that, I think, is a reflection on management. Of course there are always exceptional cases. As the years have passed, developing, as they naturally have, emergencies at times, I have been gratified to find that we have, with very few exceptions, been able to find right within ourselves some individual capable of assuming a greater responsibility, and he has always been given the opportunity.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 137

Men, Nature, Thinking, Chance

“So the game plan is not merely to free the income of the wealthiest class to “offshore” itself into assets denominated in harder currencies abroad. It is to scrap the progressive tax system altogether. … How stable can a global situation be where the richest nation does not tax its population, but creates new public debt to hand out to its bankers? … The “solution” to the coming financial crisis in the United States may await the dollar’s plunge as an opportunity for a financial Tonkin Gulf resolution. Such a crisis would help catalyze the tax system’s radical change to a European-style “Steve Forbes” flat tax and VAT sales-excise tax…. More government giveaways will be made to the financial sector in a vain effort to keep bad debts afloat and banks “solvent.” As in Ireland and Latvia, public debt will replace private debt, leaving little remaining for Social Security or indeed for much social spending. … The bottom line is that after the prolonged tax giveaway exacerbates the federal budget deficit – along with the balance-of-payments deficit – we can expect the next Republican or Democratic administration to step in and “save” the country from economic emergency by scaling back Social Security while turning its funding over, Pinochet-style, to Wall Street money managers to loot as they did in Chile. And one can forget rebuilding America’s infrastructure. It is being sold off by debt-strapped cities and states to cover their budget shortfalls resulting from un-taxing real estate and from foreclosures. Welcome to debt peonage. This is worse than what was meant by a double-dip recession. It will be with us much longer.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Obama's Bushism http://michael-hudson.com/2010/12/obamas-bushism/ (December 8, 2010) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Money, Game, Effort, Change

“It doesn’t matter that the people of the UK voted for Brexit, and the people of the USA voted for Donald Trump — the anti-democrats of the left are incandescent with anger. Their programme of cultural destruction and managed decline of the West has fallen apart at the ballot box as the quiet, dignified conservative majority voted peacefully to take back control of their countries and reject mass immigration, radical Islam, and political correctness.”

David Kurten (1971) British politician

Left Rages Against Trump Tweets While Embracing Muslim MP Who Tweeted Grooming Victims Should ‘Shut Up for the Sake of Diversity’ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/12/06/left-rages-against-trump-tweets-embracing-politicians-grooming-victims-shut-up/ (December 6, 2017)

People, Anger, Country, Box

Quotes about management page 7

Quotes about management
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