Sloan, Alfred P.

Sloan, Alfred P. (1875–1966), businessman, philanthropist.Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan entered business as president of his father's Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, which in 1916 became part of the General Motors Corporation (GM). Appointed a GM vice president in 1919, he instituted a management plan involving sophisticated market forecasting and inventory control throughout the unwieldy GM empire. Widely copied by other corporations, his model was adopted in Europe and Japan after World War II. Business historians view Sloan as the primary architect of the modern corporate structure. Under his leadership as president (1923–1937) and chief executive officer (1923–1946), GM became the world's largest corporation and surpassed Ford as America's leading automaker. What came to be called “Sloanism” entailed centralized financial planning and investment strategies integrated with decentralized production units. Under Sloan, GM produced a car “for every purse and purpose,” from Chevrolet to Cadillac. GM's efficiencies of production and shrewd marketing of annual model changes became the standard for mass producers of consumer goods and services.

During the New Deal Era, Sloan articulated business opposition to unionization and resistance to government intervention in social and economic affairs. Only reluctantly did he recognize the United Auto Workers (UAW) after the 1937 sit‐down strikes. In 1950, GM and the UAW signed the “Treaty of Detroit,” a labor agreement that enshrined the principle that autoworkers should share in the industry's prosperity but left in place Sloan's principal legacy: management control over production and pricing.

As a philanthropist, Sloan, with his wife Irene, gave away $300 million, including millions to MIT. With his friend Charles F. Kettering (1876–1958), a GM vice president, he endowed the Sloan‐Kettering Foundation for the Study of Cancer in 1945. By the end of the century, the Memorial Sloan‐Kettering Cancer Center in New York City was a world leader in cancer research, treatment, and education.
See also Automotive Industry; Business; Ford, Henry; Labor Movements; Laissez‐faire; Mass Marketing; Mass Production; Medicine: Since 1945; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations; Reuther, Walter; Sit‐down Strike, Flint; Technology.

Bibliography

Alfred P. Sloan , My Years with General Motors, ed. Catherine Stevens and John McDonald, 1964.
Alfred D. Chandler , The Visible Hand, 1977.

Douglas M. Reynolds