Management: An Ancient Art

• Share

MANAGEMENT An Ancient Art Twenty centuries separate Julius Caesar and Robert S. McNamara, yet the two resemble each other in important respects. Caesar took over Rome by returning to the city at the head of an army that helped him consolidate power; McNamara became Defense Secretary at the head of a much smaller army of civilian experts from the RAND Corp., who helped him to fend off admirals and generals. Similarly, the original Henry Ford resembles Napoleon Bonaparte because both became so surrounded by yes men that they were unaware of structural problems. Howard Hughes is not unlike Charles I of England in the sense that each was the victim of inevitable change from personal rule to group rule. Charles lost his head. Hughes sold his TWA stock for $546.5 million.

Such similarities are the gist of a provocative book by English Author Antony Jay called Management and Machiavelli (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; $4.95). Jay, a Cambridge-educated amateur historian, has an unabashed enthusiasm for Machiavelli. As a former television writer and editor for the British Broadcasting Corp. who has become an independent television consultant in London, he is fascinated by management. "The history of General Motors over the past 50 years," he says, "is far more important than the history of Switzerland or Holland." Mixing Machiavelli and management, Jay discovers some interesting and instructive corollaries between states and corporations.

The Prince." The author considers management "a very ancient art." The true predecessors of today's executives are "the kings and princes and prime ministers and generals, the barons and cardinals and courtiers who have been trying to cope with the same problems for the past two or three hundred years."

Jay sensed this concept accidentally. "I had just been reading Machiavelli's The Prince," he recalls, "on the day when a friend of mine in management began talking to me about takeovers. He complained that there is no book which explains to industrialists how to go about fitting a new acquisition into the corporate empire."

In The Prince, Machiavelli had already solved the problem, although the Italian was discussing conquered territories: "Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot."

Jay easily translated Machiavelli into modern corporatese: "Senior men in taken-over firms should either be warmly welcomed and encouraged, or sacked: because if they are sacked they are powerless, whereas if they are simply downgraded they will remain united and resentful and determined to get their own back." Admits Jay:

"Killing them is going a little far for the corporation."