John D. Rockefeller and the Modern Corporation
John Davison Rockefeller, the head of Standard Oil, a multibillion-dollar enterprise, established an integrated system of production and distribution. His most lasting contribution lay in the systems of professional management that integrated many aspects of his business. Rockefeller’s extraordinary drive and legendary attention to detail led his company to early success. An understanding of the history of the Standard Oil Company is essential to the understanding of the rise of the large corporation in the American economy. By 1913 Rockefeller amassed a fortune of $900 million and owned nearly all of the nation’s oil industry.
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 on a small farm in upstate New York. In 1853, his father, William A. Rockefeller, an occasional farmer, small-time entrepreneur, moved from upstate New York to Cleveland with his deeply pious wife and five children. Rockefeller upon completing secondary school and a few business courses at Folsom’s Commercial College, found work as a $4-a-week bookkeeper for a Cleveland merchant.
Rockefeller was among the first to set up refineries in Cleveland in the mid-1860s, when the end of the Civil War signalled a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Unable to control the price of vital raw materials, Rockefeller decided that the best way to boost his profits was to raise production, so he borrowed money to open a second refinery, the Standard Works. Surveying the refining business in 1870, the 31-year-old Rockefeller began to think about expanding further. Despite the oil industry’s chaos, Rockefeller had a clear vision of where it was going, and the key role his company could play in it. Following his instincts, he and his associates set out to combine all of Cleveland’s refineries into a single firm in order to gain still greater leverage over railroads and crude oil producers. Capitalized at $1 million, Standard Oil eventually grew into a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
When Standard Oil was established, Rockefeller approached weaker competitors with a simple proposition: join us or face the ravages of heightened competition. By 1870, when he formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, Rockefeller owned all of the refineries in his home base.
By the end of 1872, Standard had boosted its capacity six-fold and was refining 10,000 barrels a day. With 80 percent of Cleveland’s refining industry under its roof, the company already stood as the nation’s largest refining complex.
Standard Oil Company embodied the principle of a twentieth century factory — it facilitated a continuous flow of raw materials through various links in a production chain until it emerged as a finished consumer product.
In the 1890s, Rockefeller, though only in his fifties, essentially removed himself from the daily affairs of the Standard Oil Company. He devoted much of the rest of his life to charity. He endowed the University of Chicago in 1892, and set up a foundation that dispensed millions to educational and health efforts around the world. Rockefeller died in 1937 at the age of 97. He provided the basis for one of America’s greatest philanthropic foundations and serving the needs and desires of others, he improved to a great extent the quality of life for millions of people.
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2.8 Henry Ford and the “Universal Car”
Ford’s “universal car” was the industrial success story of its age. Model T Ford cars pervaded American culture. The central role that the Model T had come to play in America’s cultural, social and economic life elevated Henry Ford into a folk hero.
Henry Ford invented neither the automobile nor the assembly line, but recast each to dominate a new era. Indeed, no other individual in this century so completely transformed the nation’s way of life. He transformed the automobile itself from a luxury to a necessity.
“I’m going to democratize the automobile, I will build a motorcar for the great multitude,” Henry Ford had said in 1909. “When I’m through, everybody will be able to afford one, and about everybody will have one.” Such a notion was revolutionary. Ford set out to make the car a commodity.
Henry Ford was born in 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan, on the farm operated by his father, an Irishman, and his mother, who was from Dutch stock.
Ford devoted himself to making a working automobile. On weekends and most nights, he could be found in a shed in the back of the family home, building his car. So great was his obsession that the neighbors called him Crazy Henry. In 1903, he formed the Ford Motor Company in association with Alexander Malcomson and about a dozen other investors.
Brilliant and eccentric, he relied more on instinct than business plans. With a few colleagues, he devoted two years to the design and planning of the Model T.
The car that finally emerged from Ford’s secret design section at the factory was simple, sturdy, and versatile. That little car excited the public imagination and changed America forever. The car went to the first customers on October 1, 1908. In its first year, over ten thousand were sold, a new record for an automobile model. Between 1914 and 1916, the company’s profits doubled from $30 million to $60 million.
On June 4, 1924, the ten millionth Model T Ford left the Highland Park factory, which would remain the main facility for T production.
On May 26, 1927, the fifteen millionth Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line at Ford’s factory in Highland Park, Michigan.
In 1929, Ford, General Motors and the newly formed Chrysler Corporation — known then and now as the Big Three — accounted for 80 percent of the market.
Henry Ford died on April 7, 1947, at the age of eighty- three. Henry Ford created a world in which cars are for everyone. Model T Ford cars jammed the streets of the great eastern cities and roamed newly laid roads in southern California. They represented an opportunity for change in practically everything. They also became a crucial factor in recasting America’s growing economy. Henry Ford had created a car for the multitudes and that car had created the basis of the car culture embraced by every subsequent generation.
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Mary Kay Ash
Mary Kay Ash is one of the most successful and popular women of her time.
She is a woman who built the first female corporate culture and who became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in cosmetic business.
In 1963, when she was forty-five and when most American women did not hold full-time jobs, Mary Kay launched a direct-sales cosmetics company run by women. From modest origins in a Dallas storefront, Mary Kay Cosmetics grew into a vertically integrated corporation with annual sales of over $950 million. In 1976 it became the first company chaired by a woman to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Mary Kay was born in 1918 in Hot Wells, Texas. At seventeen she married Ben Rogers, a local musician and radio personality. The young couple had three children within seven years. Mary Kay found a job with a direct-sales company because it was a good-paying job with flexible hours. When her husband divorced her in 1945 she had to raise her children as a single mother.
In 1963, she decided to form her own direct-sales cosmetics company. Mary Kay built a new corporate culture based on the education, participation, and authority of women.
In 1966, she decided to rebuild her personal life. She married Mel Ash, a businessman whom she had met on a blind date.
In 1972, with several thousand employees and $18 million in sales Mary Kay Cosmetics was one of the nation’s largest private employers of women.
Her success is based upon sound business practices combined with tenacity and original thinking — about the market place, about corporate structure, and about women themselves.
In 1994, the company celebrated another record-breaking year, one in which sales totaled $850 million. Her company’s structure inspired hundreds of thousands of saleswomen to become small- business operators. She encouraged their self-esteem and confidence through constant positive reinforcement and material rewards. In one of her books Mary Kay wrote “I believe in the personal touch, because it makes every human feel appreciated.”
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Walt Disney
Walt Disney is considered to be the king of animated cartoons, the greatest dreamer of all times, a world-famous producer, the creator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and Cinderella. He was always a man of dreams, fantasy and imagination.
Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago. At the age of sixteen he volunteered as a driver with the American Red Cross. After the war he returned home to Chicago and settled in Kansas City where he found a job with a company producing cartoon advertisements.
In 1923, Walt Disney left Kansas City for Hollywood, a place where he had heard young film-makers could find financial backing for their projects. Disney boarded a train with $40 in his pocket. When a fellow traveler asked about his intentions, he said, “I am going to direct great Hollywood motion pictures.”
In 1928, Walt Disney produced a mouse character Mickey Mouse which was an overnight success and changed animation forever. As Mickey’s creator Disney became a celebrity.
In 1934, Disney decided to do something that nobody in Hollywood had ever done. He decided to make a full-length animated film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. In 1937, the first release of the film brought $8.5 million. In 1939, the production received a special Academy Award. In 1938, he received honorary degrees from both Harvard and Yale.
In 1952, he came up with an idea to build an amusement park, that would be entertaining for adults as well as for children.
Disney located the park 25 miles south of Los Angeles, California. The total cost was estimated at $5 million.
The amusement park was an instant success. Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland fascinated both children and adults. Walt Disney’s magic kingdom Disneyland offered a unique fantasy adventure. People from all over the world including monarchs, presidents, prime ministers and many other very important persons flocked to Disneyland by the millions.
Walt Disney died in 1966 at the age of sixty-five. Today these parks bring nearly $1 billion to the United States each year. More and more innovations are installed each year because, as Walt Disney himself said “the park will never be completed — not as long as there is imagination left in the world!”
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Библиографический список
1 English for Practical Management. Zsuzsanna Ardo, Mocква, издательство «Дело», 1992.
2 Macmillan Guide to Economics. Lilia Raitskaya, Stuart Cochrane. Oxford University Press, 2007.
3 Business English. Г.Г.Агапова, Н.Ю.Агапова. Дрофа, Москва. 2009.
4 Английский язык для студентов-заочников. Л.В.Хведченя, О.И.Васючкова, Т.В.Елисеева. Минск, Высшая школа, 1998.
5 Я хочу и буду знать английский. Т.И.Арбекова, И.Н.Власова, Г.А.Макарова. Москва, 2005.
6 English for Economists. Ж.Г.Аванесян. Омега-Л. Москва, 2008
Рецензия
на сборник текстов на английском языке для внеаудиторного чтения со студентами специальностей (бухгалтерский учет, анализ и аудит; экономика и управление на предприятии (в аграрном производстве), составленный старшим преподавателем кафедры иностранных языков РА.Исмагзамовой
Рецензируемый сборник состоит из 32 текстов экономического содержания. Весь материал разделен на две части: тексты общего экономического содержания и тексты о людях, создавших успешный бизнес. Тексты взяты из аутентичных источников и адаптированы преподавателем для чтения со студентами второго курса очного обучения экономического факультета. Содержание текстов представляет интерес для студентов в плане их будущей профессиональной деятельности.
Целью сборника является развитие навыков и умений чтения и перевода, а также расширение лексического запаса студентов в области профессиональной терминологии. Сборник текстов предназначен для самостоятельной работы студентов
Норма внеаудиторного чтения для второго курса составляет 15-20 тысяч печатных символов. Данный сборник текстов содержит 56,4 тысяч печатных символов, следовательно, у студентов есть большой выбор текстов для чтения.
К.фил.н., ст. преподаватель Г.С. Тукаева