Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (born May 23, 1875, New Haven, Conn., U.S.—died Feb. 17, 1966, New York City) was an American corporate executive and philanthropist who headed General Motors (GM) as president and chairman for more than a quarter of a century.

The son of a coffee and tea importer, he was brought up in Brooklyn, N.Y. After earning a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1895, he joined the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Harrison, N.J., a firm in which his father had an interest. As president of Hyatt from the age of 26, he built up the business as a supplier of roller bearings to the growing American automobile industry. Hyatt was later acquired by General Motors, and Sloan became a GM vice president and member of the executive committee in 1918. Sloan was named a vice president of GM in 1920, and when Pierre S. Du Pont and John J. Raskob wrested control of GM from William C. Durant in 1920, Sloan became the company’s operating vice president. He became president and chief executive officer of GM in 1923.

Sloan was an administrative genius, and he transformed GM from a loose cluster of business units into an archetype of the modern business enterprise, giving it an organizational structure that was emulated by many other corporations through much of the 20th century. He reorganized the company into five different automobile divisions, with each producing cars in a different price range. He decentralized production, giving each operating division the freedom of initiative to compete for more business, while he centralized administration, creating a strong central office that had large financial and advisory staffs in order to devise and coordinate overall company policies. Under Sloan, GM surpassed the Ford Motor Company in American automobile sales in the late 1920s and eventually became the largest business corporation in the world. GM came to dominate the market, accounting for more than half of American auto sales.

Sloan relinquished the presidency and became chairman of the board of GM in 1937 after he refused to negotiate with the United Automobile Workers when they staged sit-down strikes in GM plants. He ceased to be chief executive officer in 1946, and he retired from the chairmanship in 1956, though remaining as honorary chairman. He outlined his management policy in My Years with General Motors (1964) and also wrote (with Boyden Sparkes) Adventures of a White-Collar Man (1941).

In the late 1930s, Sloan endowed the foundation named for him. He supported various philanthropies, including the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, a centre for advanced engineering study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a school of management there.