Sublime

Sloan turned GM into more than just a model for the car industry. His reorganization of the company ensured that day-to-day decisions were devolved to the managers of each division, but financial oversight was centralized, with each division reporting its results, and being allocated resources, in a standardized way. Just as Henry Ford had defined

It was a case of competition among the divisions for available capital and of different preferences at the top.

Mr. Sloan's genius, as far as I could see, was in a complex of corporate arrangements and activities; his skill was in the internal strategies of the automobile industry and in the market: He could hold that industry, so to speak, in the palm of his hand.

I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being.

Attention thereupon was given not to the question of how to divide scarce investment funds but how to raise more money.

He is remembered today with a complex mixture of admiration for his accomplishments, appreciation for his philanthropic legacy, as well as condemnation for his disregard for the safety of his workers and his cold, plutocratic detachment which invariably put profits before people.

policy which we defined simply as “a car for every purse and purpose”.

I should mention one other very important decision reached in 1940. We decided that General Motors should seek to perform the most complicated and difficult production assignments.