"It was not, however, a matter of interest to me only with respect to my divisions, since as a member of the Executive Committee, I was a kind of general executive and so had begun to think from the corporate viewpoint. The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed — plus or minus — by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment. This was one of the difficulties with the expansion program of that time. It was natural for the divisions to compete for investment funds, but it was irrational for the general officers of the corporation not to know where to place the money to best advantage. In the absence of objectivity it was not surprising that there was a lack of real agreement among the general officers. Furthermore, some of them had no broad outlook, and used their membership on the Executive Committee mainly to advance the interests of their respective divisions."
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Businesspeople from the United StatesMechanical engineersPhilanthropists from the United StatesPeople from New HavenBusiness theorists from the United States
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Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr. (May 23, 1875 – February 17, 1966) was an American business executive in the . He was a long-time President, chairman and CEO of .
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