In 1916 Hyatt merged with other companies into United Motors Company, which soon became part of General Motors Corporation (GM). Sloan became vice-president of GM, operating vice-president when Pierre S. Du Pont and John J. Raskob wrested control of GM from William C. Durant in 1920, and succeeded Pierre S. du Pont as president in 1923. Sloan became chairman of the board in 1937, continued as CEO until 1946 and retired from the chairmanship in 1956.
At GM, Sloan established annual styling changes and a differentiated pricing structure for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac so they would not compete with each other. In 1919, he created GMAC, a financing arm that helped propel GM to market leadership by the early 1930s, a position GM retained for over 70 years. Under Sloan, GM became the largest industrial enterprise in the world.
In 1934, Sloan established the philanthropic Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which started the world’s first university-based executive education program, the Sloan Fellows, in 1931 at MIT. MIT opened a School of Industrial Management in 1952 to educate the “ideal manager”, the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. In the 1940s, Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, established the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City, now a leading biomedical research institution which became part of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 1960.
Click on the cover for details about the eBook:
