Ernest Dale: Biography Of This Business Administration Expert
The name Ernest Dale may not mean much to many people, but he is truly considered one of the most revolutionary authors of administration and management of the 20th century, having written several books in which he discussed these two important areas.
In his works you can find aspects related to the structure of companies, theoretical and practical concepts of them and how companies should be structured to get the most out of each of their parts. In addition to this, he was a consultant for companies such as IBM, helping to improve their organizational structure by applying the same concepts that he had proposed.
Below we will see a little about his life and, especially, about his vision of companies, through this Ernest Dale biography in summary.
Ernest Dale was born in Hamburg, Germany, on February 4, 1917 We know very little about his childhood. What we can know about his youth is that, despite being born in Germany, he decided to pursue his university studies at the prestigious Yale University, in the United States. From a young age he showed a deep interest in the world economy and the economic fluctuations that occurred throughout his life.
This interest is not surprising, since In his childhood and adolescence he lived through the most economically turbulent periods of his century He was born right at the end of the First World War, he lived during the Crash of ’29, he witnessed the Second World War, the rise and fall of Germany, its dissolution into two states with different economic regimes and how the whole world was divided into the bloc. capitalist and the communist bloc. Of course, he witnessed how economic dynamics changed dizzyingly.
However, his professional interest was much more focused on how companies and their management could be administered. In fact, after graduating in 1950 he began teaching business administration at Columbia University, in addition to teaching some courses in Pennsylvania.
During his years as a teacher He expressed his ideas on paper, writing two important books “The Great Organizers” (1960) and “Management: Theory and Practice” (1965) which have been used as fundamental tools in Administration and Management courses in many universities.
But in addition to being a professor, Ernest Dale had the opportunity to work fully in the business field. After completing his studies at Yale, he worked as a consultant in well-known companies, including DuPont Corporation, IBM and Unilever. He also served on the boards of other companies, including Olivetti, Upjohn and Renault. He is considered the father of the empirical theory of administration and one of its most relevant exponents.
Regarding his personal life we can only say that he was married once and had a son. It is also worth noting that he had contacts with Martin Luther King, with whom he met in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1968. He worked in text development and as a consultant until his death on August 16, 1996 in Manhattan, New York aged 79 due to a brain aneurysm.
Contributions to management sciences
As we mentioned, Ernest Dale has been an important exponent in the world of management and administration. In fact, He is considered the father of the empirical theory of administration He affirmed that management policies and the quality of leadership were the foundations for good individual performance of all workers who make up an organization.
Dale had an advanced knowledge of how companies worked and how they should be structured in order to get the most out of them. If the capacity of each employee was made the most of, the company could end up being very functional and successful, an idea that he expressed in several of his works. Among these works we can highlight the following:
Planning and development of the organizational structure of a company (1952)
This book, along with “Management: Theory and Practice,” is considered one of Dale’s most important. In it Ernest Dale praises the application of systematic methods in the business models that had been used in the middle of the 20th century
He considered that it was necessary for a good business plan to be subordinated to meticulously developed plans, which had to be sent in an organized manner to employees so that they were clear about what had to be done, and to avoid confusion that, of course, They would significantly reduce production or even bankrupt the organization.
In this book Dale combined concepts from his systematic thinking with their practical application in a company. He sought a balance between theory and real practice when organizing a company and making it functional, paying special attention to the human aspect. Likewise, it should be said that This book was especially focused on manufacturing companies (assembly line) although it also deals with topics that can be extrapolated to companies that offer services or are in charge of sales.
As a limitation, this book does not fully break down the company’s methods of activities. Nor does it establish which policies should be applied within the organization or the development of procedures and controls necessary for personnel management. It’s not that he didn’t take them into account, it’s just that Dale considered these topics to be so extensive that an in-depth explanation would be necessary, even writing a book for each one.
Administration: theory and practice (1960)
This other book by Ernest Dale deals with the most human part of an organization, which is undoubtedly all of its workers. He assured that An organization cannot be governed simply by the rationality of its methods , since behind these methods there are still human beings who manage them and they are not cold machines that can be wound up indefinitely; It should be taken into account that making mistakes because of fatigue. The principles of human nature cannot be ignored.
In this text he broke down the company into administrative units. He maintained that Every business, regardless of size, can be broken down into smaller units Each of these units should be seen as if it were its own company and should have a manager, who controls the basic functions of the unit and knows and manages its personnel. Each unit knows what is going well and what is not, and can have the resources to solve it without the need for other levels of the organization.
This type of administration, with controls in each of the units, helps the highest authorities of the company to realize how well each unit works so that, in case a problem arises that can only be solved at the level organizational level, the appropriate changes are decided and applied to return the activity to its correct channel.
Likewise, delegating certain responsibilities to the managers of each unit should improve human performance, since these managers would have direct contact with the workers, they would know their strengths and weaknesses and they would also know first-hand what problems may have arisen in each unit, having an more personalized vision of how to solve the problem.
