Writing the Ghost Writer Back In: Alfred Sloan, Alfred Chandler, John McDonald and the Intellectual Origins of Corporate Strategy

McKenna, Christopher (2006) Writing the Ghost Writer Back In: Alfred Sloan, Alfred Chandler, John McDonald and the Intellectual Origins of Corporate Strategy. Management & Organizational History, 1 (2). pp. 107-126.

Abstract

Theorists often presume that popular writers are the translators and not the underlying source of new management ideas. John McDonald, in contrast, was a business journalist whose early interest in game theory was an important catalyst in the development of corporate strategy as an academic discipline. Unfortunately, few scholars remember McDonald's influential role as the ghost-writer for Alfred Sloan's memoir, My Years with General Motors, or McDonald's prescient decision to hire the young business historian, Alfred Chandler, to serve as their research assistant. Not only should management histo rians not judge a book by its cover but neither should they presume that the author actually wrote the book.

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