The competition between Henry Ford, who became the best known manufacturer of anything anywhere, and Alfred Sloan, who built General Motors (GM) into the world's largest industrial corporation, in the 1920s and 1930s remains one of the epic stories in the history of business, and a near‐perfect example of the superiority of decentralized decision making. Well before Henry Ford, Sloan saw that the industry was becoming a trade‐in business. He responded by diversifying GM's product line, starting with Chevrolet, which was designed to compete with Ford's Model T. Significantly, by the mid‐1920s, GM's cars and trucks equaled and sometimes surpassed Ford's in styling, basic engineering, and production qualities. Henry Ford stuck to his simpler approach: building a better version of one car in one color (black) and continually cutting costs. While successful in the early years, this strategy wilted in the relentlessly changing market of the 1920s and 1930s.
Modern Management in the 1920s
GM Defeats Ford
American Business Since 1920 ; 15-28
2018-01-15
14 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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