Editing Alfred P. Sloan (section)

===Overly rational and profit-driven orientation===
According to O'Toole (1995),<ref name="OToole1995p174">{{Harvnb|O'Toole|1995|p=174}}.</ref> Sloan built a very objective organization, one that paid significant attention to "policies, systems, and structures and not enough to people, principles, and values. Sloan, the quintessential engineer, had worked out all the intricacies and contingencies of a foolproof system." But this system left out employees and society.<ref name="Drucker1946">{{Harvnb|Drucker|1946}}.</ref> One consequence of this management philosophy was a culture that resisted change. Proof that the system did not remain foolproof forever was seen in GM's problems of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

In fact, Sloan's memoir and management treatise, ''My Years With General Motors'',<ref name="Sloan1964" /> foresaw some of these problems. Sloan implied that only vigilant, intelligent management could meet them successfully. He predicted that ''remaining'' at the top of its industry and the economy would prove a bigger challenge for GM than getting there, and he was right. But he also seemed confident that GM's management style under his leadership, if continued and adapted, could meet these challenges. He said, "There have been and always will be many opportunities to fail in the automobile industry. The circumstances of the ever-changing market and ever-changing product are capable of breaking any business organization if that organization is unprepared for change—indeed, in my opinion, if it has not provided procedures for anticipating change. In General Motors these procedures are provided by the central management, which is in a position to appraise the broad long-term trends of the market.&nbsp;... As the industry has grown and evolved, we have adhered to this policy and have demonstrated an ability to meet competition and the shifts of customer demand."<ref name="Sloan1964p438">{{Harvnb|Sloan|1964|p=438}}.</ref>

As these words of Sloan (1964) show in juxtaposition with the words of [[Peter F. Drucker]] (1946), Sloan (and his fellow GM executives) never agreed with the lessons Drucker drew from his study of GM management during the war. But unlike many GM executives, Sloan did not put Drucker on his blacklist for writing the 1946 book; Drucker, in his new introduction to the 1990 republishing of Sloan's memoir, said, "When his associates attacked me in a meeting called to discuss the book, Sloan immediately rose to my defense. 'I fully agree with you,' he said to his colleagues. 'Mr. Drucker is dead wrong. But he did precisely what he told us he would do when we asked him in. And he is as entitled to his opinions, wrong though they are, as you or I.{{'"}}<ref name="Drucker_1990_new_foreword">Sloan 1990 [1964], foreword, pp. v–vi.</ref> Drucker related that for 20 years after that meeting, Sloan and Drucker had a good relationship, in which Sloan invited Drucker to lunch once or twice a year to discuss Sloan's philanthropic plans and the memoir Sloan was working on (what became ''My Years''). Drucker said, "He asked for my opinions and carefully listened—and he never once took my advice."<ref name="Drucker_1990_new_foreword"/> History seems to have vindicated Drucker in his belief that Sloan's faith in rationality alone—and in the ability of other white-collar managers to be as astute as he was—was over-ardent. 40 years later, the management and board of directors that ran the original General Motors Corporation into the ground by 2009 were ''not'' "in a position to appraise the broad long-term trends of the market"—or were in that position, but not doing the job successfully therein.<ref name="Chao_2009-02-02">{{Citation |last=Chao |first=Larry |date=2009-02-02 |title=Hi! managers: How 'culture' crippled General Motors |journal=The Nation |url=http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/02/02/business/business_30094757.php |postscript=. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091024034218/http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/02/02/business/business_30094757.php |archive-date=2009-10-24 }}</ref>

O'Toole described Sloan's style as follows:<ref name="OToole1995p176">{{Harvnb|O'Toole|1995|p=176}}.</ref> "[W]hereas [[Frederick Winslow Taylor|Taylor]] occasionally backs off to justify his ardor for efficiency in human terms, not once does Sloan make reference to any other values. Freedom, equality, humanism, stability, community, tradition, religion, patriotism, family, love, virtue, nature—all are ignored. In the one personal element in the book, he makes passing reference to his wife: he abandons her on the first day of a European vacation to return to business in [[Detroit]]. His language is as calculating as that of the engineer-of-old working with calipers and slide rule, as cold as the steel he caused to be bent to form cars: economizing, utility, facts, objectivity, systems, rationality, maximizing—that is the stuff of his vocabulary."<ref name="OToole1995p176"/>