Managerial Progress in the Sixties—Some Summary Reactions

Abstract

The Sixties saw notable progress. NASA’s decentralized approach landed man on the moon. Multinational firms spread widely from numerous nations. The United States economy functioned at substantially a trillion dollar annual level. Yet, regional, racial, and religious conflicts persisted, even to spreading violence currently on campus and streets. Political leadership was overtaxed; inflation varied only in degree in old and “new” countries. Noneconomic institutions—universities, unions, hospitals, even churches—grew to use large human and material resources, but too often with ineffective managerial guidance. Notable progress, or lag, is indicated in five fields: general gains, and drags, in the Sixties; managerial advances in business and government; manager education; information for managing; managerial concepts for the future. In conclusion, the lag of classic authority to produce needed new orders of organized teamwork becomes startingly visible—but does so just as the supply of trained brains, and the availability of needed new kinds of information, take on dimensions already competent to keep order ahead of chaos while still keeping man free.