Alfred P. Sloan

He finished MIT in 1895, at 20, with a degree in electrical engineering and no obvious use for it. Four years later his father and another investor bought a small firm that made roller bearings, and by Sloan's account he talked his father into $5,000 for control of it and the right to run it himself. Hyatt Roller Bearing sold to Oldsmobile first, then to most of the industry — at one point more than half its output went to Ford. Around 1903 the Cadillac man Henry Leland called Sloan in and told him his tolerances were inconsistent. Sloan said afterward that the dressing-down gave him a real conception of what mass production meant. He married Irene Jackson in 1898. They had no children.

Hyatt went into United Motors in 1916, United Motors into General Motors, and Sloan became a GM vice president, then president in 1923 and chairman in 1937. What he built there was an org chart. GM's divisions ran themselves and answered to a small central staff that judged them on return on investment, a measure Donaldson Brown brought over from du Pont. Above that he laid a price ladder: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, each aimed at a different income and none at each other, so a buyer could move up without leaving the company. He added the annual model change, which made last year's car look old, and in 1919 the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, which let people borrow to buy one. By the early 1930s GM had passed Ford and held the lead for 70 years.

GM reported spending $839,764 on labor detective services between 1934 and 1936, a figure the La Follette Committee pulled out of the company after its labor-relations director tried to destroy the records. Workers occupied the Fisher Body plants at Flint on December 30, 1936 and stayed 44 days. GM signed a one-page agreement recognizing the United Auto Workers. Abroad, GM's German subsidiary Opel built Ju 88 bombers, trucks, land mines and torpedo detonators for the Reich. Sloan told a worried shareholder in 1939 that how the Nazi government ran Germany was not the business of General Motors management, that GM had to conduct itself as a German organization, and that it had no right to shut the plant.

He set up the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1934, and it has outlasted the argument about him. It funded the first university executive-education program, at MIT in 1931, then the school MIT renamed for him in 1952, and in 1945 it put $4 million into the cancer institute that carries his name alongside Charles Kettering's. At the end of 2023 the foundation held about $2.38 billion. Sloan retired as chairman on April 2, 1956 and died in New York on February 17, 1966. His memoir sat finished for nearly a decade while GM lawyers worried it would be used against the company in an antitrust case. It came out in 1964. The corporation he designed went bankrupt in 2009.

Alfred P. Sloan's life against the full span of the corpus.

• General Motors Acceptance Corporation company
  The car loan, so buyers did not have to save first 1919
• The GM multidivisional structure invention
  Self-running divisions under a central staff judging return on investment 1923
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation company
  Still funding science, technology and economic research 1934
• Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research company
  Founded with Charles F. Kettering on a $4 million Sloan Foundation gift 1945
• MIT Sloan School of Management company
  Opened as the School of Industrial Management to train the ideal manager 1952
• My Years with General Motors book
  Held back nearly a decade by GM lawyers fearing antitrust use 1964

• 1895 aged ~20 Graduates from MIT in electrical engineering at 20
• 1899 aged ~24 Takes over Hyatt Roller Bearing after his father buys control Oldsmobile was the first automotive customer. Ford eventually took over half the output.
• 1916 aged ~41 Hyatt merges into United Motors, which becomes part of General Motors
• 1919 aged ~44 Creates the General Motors Acceptance Corporation It let buyers borrow rather than save, and undercut Ford's price advantage.
• 1923 aged ~48 Becomes president of General Motors
• February 11, 1937 aged 61 GM recognizes the UAW after the 44-day Flint sit-down strike The agreement ran to a single page.
• 1939 aged ~64 Defends GM's German production to shareholders as sound business
• April 2, 1956 aged 80 Retires as chairman of General Motors
• February 17, 1966 aged 90 Dies in New York City at 90

• Henry Ford 1863–1947
  Industrialist who revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line and made automobiles affordable. overtook
• Walter Reuther 1907–1970
  United Auto Workers leader who helped build organized labor into a major economic and political force. opposed
• John L. Lewis 1880–1969
  Union leader who built the United Mine Workers and helped found the CIO, expanding industrial unionism and collective bargaining. opposed
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. funded the opposition to his New Deal
• Frederick Winslow Taylor 1856–1915
  Mechanical engineer who pioneered scientific management, reshaping industrial efficiency worldwide. built on
• Jack Welch 1935–2020
  Former CEO of General Electric who reshaped corporate management and became a business icon. inherited the system