Business Accomplishments of ANDREW CARNEGIE

This research paper discusses the business accomplishments and labor relations of Andrew Carnegie and compares them with a later day industrialist Lee Iacocca (1924- ).

The Industrial Innovations of Carnegie and Iacocca

Carnegie's business career was characterized by his uncanny ability to absorb from others concepts of modern management and apply them to every industry in which he was involved. In the process, he built not only an immense personal fortune but created highly efficient enterprises, including the world's largest and most competitive steel company, the Carnegie Steel Works, which he sold to the combine which organized U.S. Steel for a princely sum. Carnegie arrived in America in 1848, the eldest son of penniless Scottish immigrants. Starting from the bottom at age 11, he worked his way up, first in the telegraph business and then at the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). Because of its rapid growth, the size and sprawl of its operations and its capital intensity, PRR was one of the first companies to install modern business techniques and management systems which Carnegie absorbed, perfected and used to organize and operate the companies he later founded in the oil, bridge construction, pullman car and steel industries. According to Livesay, "he thus played a crucial role in formulating the systems of industrial management that controlled and coordinated the spectacular economic growth of the late nineteenth century America" (Livesay

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nefitted from the diminished prejudice against Catholics in large corporations; however, before Henry Ford II fired Iacocca in 1978 he reportedly said: "I don't want that Italian interloper to take over" (Iacocca 111). A self-made man like Carnegie, he also believed that "if you keep your nose to the grindstone and work at it, . . . you can become as great as you want to be" (341). He later applied these skills to the resuscitation of Chrysler where he was CEO and became the industry's leading Japan-basher. Labor Relations What Carnegie preached and what he practiced in the area of labor relations were inconsistent by modern standards but not necessarily by those of the times. He understood the plight of the worker having begun as one himself. However, to Carnegie, labor was essentially an element of cost to be kept as low as possible. His capable production manager at Carnegie Steel, Captain Bill Jones persuaded Carnegie to modulate his penny-pinching practices on wages. Jones argued that the men would produce more efficiently if they were not accorded "haughty and disdainful treatment" (Livesay 133). After Jones was killed in a blast furnace explosion in 1889, Carnegie relied on the advice of Henry Frick whose weaknes

Category: Business - B