John Deere's Company - Volume 1

Auteur

Wayne G. Broehl Jr., historian and faculty member of Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, is the author or co-author of eight books in the field of business history, management theory, and economic development. His special interest has been the corporation's role in society, and he has studied and written extensively on the role corporate management teams play in the American business scene.

His award-winning book The Molly Maguires chronicled the saga of an Irish secret society in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the 19th century, as early unions interacted in traumatic ways with large-scale rail and coal companies. Another book, International Basic Economy Corporation, was a management analysis of the Rockefeller development company in Latin America. It recorded the Rockefeller family's effort to demonstrate social responsibility under private enterprise programs in the less developed world.

Texte du rabat

The history of Deere & Company is several stories at once. It is the saga of an American folk hero remembered as the man "who gave to the world the steel plow." John Deere's Company - Volume 1 is the story of rural and small-town America from the time eastern farmers began moving into the Midwest in the early 1800s, through the American industrial revolution of the late 19th and up to the creation of the first John Deere tractors.

It is also the story of an uncommon family whose members for 145 years directed the destiny of one of America's oldest business firms-now the largest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the world-until the first nonfamily member, Robert Hanson, was named chief executive officer of Deere in 1982.

The story follows the company's role in the extraordinary growth of the American agricultural economy; its role in the discovery and application of major innovations in machinery and manufacturing methods; and, finally, its role in the sharing of that technology throughout the world.

Those roles were influenced by the Populist movement in the 19th century, by the early attempts of unions to organize the farm implement industry, and by the competitive tactics and strategies of industrial leaders whose companies battled each other for market share.

Wayne Broehl has taken these several historic threads and woven them into this lively and absorbing historical account. The updated and revised book has been divided into two volumes, this is Volume 1.