Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr. (May 23, 1875 – February 17, 1966), long-time president and chairman of General Motors, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He studied electrical engineering and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1892.

He became president of a machine shop making ball bearings in 1899. In 1916 his company merged with United Motors Corporation which eventually became part of General Motors … [ Read more ]

Subjects: History, Management, Uncategorized

Ed Schein, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is one of the great names of management as well as one of its most original researchers. He worked with Douglas McGregor, Warren Bennis and Chris Argyris and taught Charles Handy and is generally credited with inventing the term corporate culture.

Career anchors are the things which keep people in organizations. An individual who … [ Read more ]

Subject: Organizational Behavior

Edward de Bono (born 1933) is a psychologist and physician. De Bono writes prolifically on subjects of lateral thinking, a concept he pioneered and now holds training seminars in. Both lateral thinking and vertical thinking are concerned with effectiveness. Whenever a solution is found by lateral thinking one can always, with hindsight, see how it could have been arrived at by vertical thinking. But looking … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Improvement, Productivity/Work Tips

3 Types of Need or Motivation
Over the years behavioral scientists have observed that some people have an intense need to achieve; others, perhaps the majority, do not seem to be as concerned about achievement. This phenomenon has fascinated David C. McClelland. For over twenty years he and his associates at Harvard University studied this urge to achieve.

McClelland’s research led him to believe that the need … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior, People

Asch reported, in 1965, a study on the power of group pressure.

He gathered a series of groups of seven or eight subjects together for a purported experiment on visual acuity under varying conditions. In fact, only one individual was a genuine subject. The others were confederates of Asch. The experiment involved showing a series of sets of three straight lines to the group, adding a … [ Read more ]

Subject: Organizational Behavior

One of the key figures in the Human Relations Movement, which reached its peak in the 60’s and 70’s, Argyris argues for the recognition that organisational goals and personal goals of the employees are (usually) in conflict.

In the formal organisation, he says that employees are expected to be passive and subordinate, to accept little control over their work, to have a short term outlook, … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, People