American Dream and New Management in Alfred P. Sloans Adventures of a White-Collar Man

Abstract

This paper analyzes Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.s Adventures of a White-Collar Man published in 1941. It attempts to find the reason that he wrote the book then. Sloan explicitly insists that the prosperous American society was possible thanks to the adventurers in engineering and business. This paper interprets that he intended to remind the readers that the American Dream were still valid and alive. More importantly, this paper points out that more significant aspects of this book is that it shows the rise of new era in business management. Due to the complexity and the size of the companies, Sloan found totally new and effective principles and successfully applied them to General Motors. The new management that he used became a standard ever since. Therefore Sloan can be seen as a demarcation of a new era in American history.