The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos

✍ Scribed by Ken Hopper, Will Hopper

• Publisher: I. B. Tauris
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 351
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Financial Times Top Ten Business Book of 2007!

 

The Puritan Gift traces the origins and the characteristics of American managerial culture which, in the course of three centuries, would turn a group of small colonies into the greatest economic and political power on earth. It was the Protestant ethic whose characteristics--thrift, a respect for enquiry, individualism tempered by a need to cooperate, success as a measure of divine approval--helped to create the conditions which led to America's managerial and corporate success. Thus, the authors contend, the drive, energy and acceptance of innovation, competition, growth and social mobility, all have their origins in the discipline and ethos of America's first wave of European immigrants: the Puritans. And, the authors warn, as Americans distance themselves from core values which produced their nineteenth and twentieth century business and economic successes, they endanger the basis for their prosperity and security.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 15
Prologue......Page 16
Part I: Origins......Page 18
1 The Puritan Origins of American Managerial Culture......Page 20
2 The Great Migration of the 1630s......Page 32
3 'Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way'......Page 45
4 The Profound Influence of French Technology......Page 54
Part II: Rise......Page 64
5 Colonel Roswell Lee Designs the Prototype......Page 66
6 Dan McCallum Creates the Multidivisional Corporation......Page 83
7 Frederick W. Taylor Reorganizes the Factory Floor......Page 91
8 Pierre du Pont Invents the Modern Manufacturing Company......Page 99
Part III: Triumph......Page 108
9 The Golden Age of American Management (1920-1970)......Page 110
10 Three Wise Men from the West Go to Japan......Page 125
Part IV: Collapse - The Cult of the (So-called) Expert......Page 142
11 Origins and Nature of the Cult......Page 144
12 Impact of the Cult on the Great Engine Companies......Page 159
13 The Business Schools as Temples of the Cult......Page 182
14 Impact of the Cult on Society......Page 207
15 The Years that the Locust Ate (1971-1995)......Page 237
16 Dr. Deming Rides to the Rescue - and Fails (1980-1993)......Page 249
17 The Third (or Sino-Japanese) Industrial Revolution......Page 261
Part V: Revival......Page 270
18 False Dawn (1996-2000)......Page 272
19 The First Light of the True Dawn (2001-2006)......Page 280
Appendix:Twenty-Five Principles Underlying Good Practice from the Golden Age of Management (1920-1970)......Page 296
Notes......Page 307
Bibliography......Page 336
Index of Names......Page 342
Subject Index......Page 348