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From Business To Government—A Review Article
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Abstract
In many instances the recruitment of outstanding business executives for [federal] posts is both unfair to the individual and of no advantage to the executive branch.
On the whole … there is no class of people better equipped for public service than the businessmen.
- Type
- Review Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1959
References
1 Two opinions quoted in McDonald, John, “The Businessman in Government,” Fortune, Vol. L, No. 1 (July, 1954), pp. 69, 158.Google Scholar
2 New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958. Pp. xii + 325.$7.50.
3 In this sense Professor Tawney's book might more meaningfully have carried the title of Business and Government.
4 For this phenomenon and references to its literary manifestations as of the autumn of 1958, see The Executive, a guide to reading for top management, vol. 2, No. 6 (Nov.,1958), pp. 17–20.
5 Of course, the need for such formal education has been recognized from earliest times–witness Plato's scheme in The Republic for comprehensive and cloistered training for an elite to be dedicated to the state.
6 President Lowell of Harvard University.
7 Harvard Business School Club of Washington, D.C., Businessmen in Government, An Appraisal of Experience (Washington, 1958).Google Scholar
8 McDonald, loc. cit., p. 70. The comparable data for 1952 under President Truman were 36 (21 per cent) out of 168.
9 England's tasks in public administration–equal to if not greater than America's–have been fulfilled with much less recourse to private business. Instead the English career Civil Service has been developed to a much greater extent, while Cabinet Ministers (in the prevailing Parliamentary system of government) are most often elected professional politicians.
10 It would be possible to argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, since governments could envisage no practical or philosophical limitations on their powers to control and direct the economy, the role of the government was theoretically as ubiquitous as it could be. But in reality its activities were sharply circumscribed.
11 Businessmen in Government, An Appraisal of Experience, pp. 19, 34.
12 Ibid., pp. 12, 33.
13 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
14 Ibid., pp. 9, 16, 20.
15 McDonald, loc. cit., p. 70.
16 For 1954: McDonald, loc. cit., p. 70. The proportion was 67 per cent as against the Post Office's 82 per cent. For “big businessmen,” see Businessmen in Government, An Appraisal of Experience, p.16.
17 “The Role of the Administrator in the Federal Government,” Public Administration Review, Vol. XIV, No. 2 (Spring, 1954), pp. 112–113.
18 Businessmen in Government, An Appraisal of Experience, p. 14, quoting Clarence B.Randall, sometime Chairman of the Board, Inland Steel Company.
19 Ibid., pp. 11–13, 23, 33–34; McDonald, loc. cit., pp. 71, 156.
20 John Corson, quoted in McDonald, loc. cit., p. 69. Mr. Corson was Washington member of the firm of management consultants, McKinsey & Co., which prepared a report for the new administration in 1952 to be used as a guide for restafimg the executive branch.
21 Quoted in McDonald, loc. cit., p. 156.
22 Anonymous commentator with experience of recruiting businessmen for government work, quoted in McDonald, loc. cit., p. 158.
23 McDonald, loc cit., p. 156.
24 See Corson, John C., Executives for the Federal Service (New York, 1952), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar
25 See the History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey): Hidy, Ralph W. and Hidy, Muriel E., Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York, 1955), pp. 55–71, 323–337Google Scholar; Gibb, George S. and Knowlton, Evelyn H., The Resurgent Years, 1911–1927 (New York, 1956), pp. 25–31, 606 ff., 617ff.Google Scholar Gibb and Knowlton, pp. 30–31: Faced with problems that seemed to require the ultimate in dynamic direction and centralized authority, the board of directors was actually neither dynamic nor autocratic. Long before 1911 Standard Oil management had worked out its highly effective committee system of administration, the essence of which was the more or less free give-and-take of men in the company of peers…. The boardroom continued after 1911 to be a meeting place for the exchange of ideas, not the fountainhead of arbitrary orders…. discussion remained the foundation stone of management….