Page 118 - Built Expressions - Online Construction Magazine - November 2014 Issue

Managing The Mindset Even a casual scan of the occupations” totals only 16 million global steel production and Carnegie traditional media uncovers people—of which 1.5 million are ran the largest and most effcient steel further examples of this classifed as “chief executives.” But company in the world. ferocious progress, including let’s put that into perspective: Chief Carnegie faced a challenge, robots that can run, executives now outnumber the entire however. His empire had scaled beyond his personal capacity to manage it. U.S. workforce of farmers, fshermen, developed for the military, and foresters by about 50%. U.S. fnancier John Pierpont (J.P.) and a computer program Morgan offered a solution: a transfer that inferred Newton’s Lessons of the Gilded Age of power from owner– entrepreneurs second law of motion from In the Gilded Age, there really were to professionally managed, publicly traded companies. In 1901, Morgan no professional managers running the movement of a double businesses. Instead, entrepreneurs merged Carnegie’s steel empire with pendulum—a device that with no formal education in other players to form the United States creates a chaotic pattern to management used their intuition to Steel Corporation. Now the world’s the human eye. build business empires based upon richest man, the 66-year-old Carnegie turned his attention full-time to creative ideas. Consider the case of Andrew Carnegie. Born to a working- philanthropy. He advocated for, and employment category for the 142.5 class Scottish family, Carnegie demonstrated by example, “the gospel million people classifed by the 2012 frst worked in a Pittsburgh cotton of wealth,” arguing that the rich had a census. Accounting for more than factory—12 hours a day, six days a moral obligation to use their wealth for 30% of employment a century ago, week, at age 13—before becoming a the good of society. Over the course of the “farming, fshing, and forestry telegraph messenger boy at age 15 and his lifetime, Carnegie ultimately gave occupations” category now accounts eventually a telegraph operator at age away US$350 million, part of which for less than 1% of employment and is 18. From there, he advanced through went to fund more than 2,800 public subsumed under the broader category the railroad industry and began libraries. of “natural resources, construction, accumulating wealth through savvy Noticing that a growing number and maintenance occupations,” which investing. He turned his attention of his graduates were entering the in aggregate accounts for only 9% of to the steel industry in 1864 and world of commerce, the president of employment. eventually built a business empire Dartmouth College, William Jewett In fairness, the large management by adopting the vastly more effcient Tucker, approached Dartmouth category includes professionals and Bessemer steel-making process and alumnus Edward Tuck with the idea those working in fnancial operations. vertical integration. By the end of of creating the frst graduate school in The subcategory of “managerial the 19th century, the U.S. dominated commerce. Tuck, a successful banker, donated several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of railroad stock in 1900 to found the Amos Tuck School in honor of his father. In 1908, Harvard bp.blogspot.com invented the master of business administration degree and created the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration with a faculty of 15, attracting 80 students. Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientifc management, played a role at both Tuck and Harvard in their early years. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Taylor decided to forgo a planned path from Phillips Exeter Academy to Harvard in 1874 and instead started his career as a manufacturing laborer. He advanced through a series of positions while pursuing a degree in mechanical PG 118 Built Expressions Vol: 3 Issue: 11 November 2014