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Management and Innovations: The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, A Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Harold F. Williamson
Harold F. Williamson
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

For several reasons the aspect of management decisions that has interested most business historians has involved the innovating function. For one, the main responsibility for introducing innovations in a capitalist society, without which the economy would tend to stagnate, is undertaken by the business executives. Secondly, the fortunes of individual companies are closely related to the capacity of the managements to undertake and cany through changes. While it is true that a passive policy may be sufficient to establish a new firm or to maintain a going concern, the rewards in the form of prestige, income, size or position in the market, and the like, are more likely to go to those organizations whose managements take an active role, who pioneer changes or are quick to see the applications to their own organization of innovations developed outside.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1951 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1951

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References

Editor's Note: This paper was read at a joint meeting of the Business Historical Society, Inc., and the American Historical Association, held in Chicago on December 28, 1950.

1 It should be noted that, except for the name, the present Kidder, Peabody and Company has no connection with the company which was operating during the 1920's.

2 More specifically the management expected to capitalize on Winchester's pioneer work in the field of metallurgical analysis, its experience in the application of the principle of interchangeable parts manufacture, and the results of the production control system, popularized by Frederick W. Taylor, which Otterson had introduced during the war.

3 These included fishing rods, fishing reels, fishing lines, and bait, roller skates, ice skates, flashlights, batteries, butcher knives, kitchen cutlery, pocket cutlery, carving sets, scissors, razors, axes, hammers, hatchets, chisels, screw drivers, wrenches, pliers, auger bits, planes, saws, files, and shears.

4 For example, the New York store was located at the corner of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue; in New Haven near the corner of Church and Chapel Streets; in Boston the three stores were on Tremont, Winter, and Summer Streets respectively, in the heart of the downtown shopping district.

5 Thus when a suggestion was made to discontinue the stores, Liggett raised strenuous objections, and Otterson decided to continue their operations.

6 Actually, the addition of manufacturing output proved somewhat disappointing. The Simmons demand for its own branded merchandise was below expectations and was sold at low profit margins. Winchester hardly needed any more knife-making capacity, while paint production turned out to be extremely trying.

7 Dobb, Maurice H., Capitalist Enterprise and Social Progress (London, 1925), p. 33.Google Scholar