B 1960-1980 – The Industrial Economy
The 60s and the 70s marked the last years of the great American factory. Companies were getting larger and more bureaucratic, while machines were gradually replacing tasks. Companies in this period competed on the size of their physical assets. Both workers and managers, not knowing that they would soon be marginalized, were unprepared to transform their value, and were largely ignored.
In the 1970′s, the U.S. was still an industrial economy “in which the measure of companies was not its people but its properties. Although unemployment was low in 1970, the situation changed by the end of this period.
The most surprising result of our Fortune Magazine research from this period was the fact that there was a complete dearth of articles concerning good and bad bosses. We found only one article that even came close to discussing this topic. Therefore, one can conclude that in practice, both firms and individuals were not as concerned with the traits of good manager during this period. This is consistent with the industrial nature of the economy and its focus on physical rather than human capital.
The one article identified appeared in 1978 and expressed a “heretical view” of management science and proposed that “a corporation’s zeal for managerial perfection frequently threaten[ed] it with excessive and paralyzing professionalization.” It further stated that management scientists’ scholasticism was increasingly replacing common sense in the corporation, thereby complicating organizational structures.” It concluded that the key to management was simplicity.
