A review of current biographies and business histories - Bibliography

Business Horizons, Jan-Feb, 1992 by George S. Odiorne

Ever since Lee Iacocca wrote his best-selling autobiography, publishers have been releasing business and professional books that strip the veils from corporate oligarchs, or publishing unvarnished corporate histories that lay bare the weaknesses and foibles of management. No doubt managers who read love to scan these true (or not so true) tales of how GM, Chrysler, Ford, IBM, Du Pont, and dozens of other companies have muddled through. A number of reasons for this rash of new nonfiction fables can be listed. Revenge ranks high for many.

Graduate schools of business now offer highly popular elective courses in business history that are much more interesting than the majority of eye-glazing business school courses. The Journal of Business History, published at Harvard, produces only scholarly articles that are mostly research-based. Because business history was one of my areas of teaching for a number of years, I read most of the new books concentrated in this area. Therefore, I want to provide here a classification of those books, from which readers can characterize forthcoming volumes and decide which ones are for them.

As management becomes more professional, reading business history and related biographies can provide an interesting and useful self-development program for the thoughtful manager. These books can be classified into seven major types:

* The kiss-and-tell book by disgruntled exemployees;

* War stories: "How I won the commercial wars";

* The company secrets of the XYZ company;

* The fawning fable--nothing but good news;

* The thick description of a single company;

* The muckrakers--exposing the fools and rascals;

* The genuine business history, by real historians.

Let's look at each of these types and provide some examples published in recent years.

The Kiss-and-tell Book

Nancy Reagan, Don Regan, and any number of former government insiders have unveiled skeletons around the office of the President of the United States. But there are many kiss-and-tell books on the corporate level as well. Lee Iacocca's autobiography (Bantam, 1984) has some elements of this, especially as exhibited by his unflattering description of his former boss, Henry Ford 11. Others are written by former insiders, usually officers who were forced out of the company and who get even by revealing all the seamy sides of their former employers' character, behavior, ancestry, and anatomy. They make no bones about being objective.

Fire and Ice, by Andrew Tobias, ex-PR Director at Revlon (William Morrow, 1976), draws an unvarnished picture of the company under Charles Revson, one of the "most powerful, ruthless, self-made men in American business history."

Thomas McCann, like Tobias, is a former PR director who worked many years for United Fruit before writing An American Company. The Tragedy of United Fruit (Brown Publishers, 1976). McCann recounts the ruthless rise, unsavory methods, and peculiar collapse under the ill-fated Eli Black."

More recently, the decline and fall of Steve jobs at Apple Computer is detailed by its president, John Sculley, in his book Odyssey (Harper and Row, 1987), with a considerable autobiography of Sculley included.

One recent kiss-and-tell book targets a legend. Delta Airlines. Debunking the Myth (Peach-tree, 1988) is by Sidney Davis, who for 13 years served as vice president and assistant general counsel for the airline giant. In this "tell-all" account, Davis is particularly critical in his views of Delta's strategy in response to deregulation, as well as its inept marketing strategy.

The outstanding quality of these books is that they are highly readable. Not coincidentally, a lot of them read like fiction, and all are slanted toward criticism of the hapless organizations many of us have believed to be well run.

War Stories: How I Won the War

lacocca's book has to rank at the top of this category, but many others follow close behind. Victor Kiam, who started as a sales trainee for Lever Brothers, liked the Remington razor so much he bought the company, and subsequently wrote his story in Going For It. How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur (Morrow, 1986). It is enthusiastically replete with enjoyable anecdotes and avuncular advice, and is entirely readable.

Akio Morita falls into this war story class with his gripping tale Made in Japan, the story of Sony (E.P. Dutton, 1986). Morita tells the story of how this one japanese company pioneered in capturing the American market for Walkman and other electronic products.

Still another unique war story, written by Al Neuarth, former CEO and founder of USA Today, tells of the rise of Gannet newspapers in Confessions of an S.O.B. (Doubleday, 1989). "Cream and S.O.B.s rise to the top," he tells us. Yet Neuarth's concept of a national newspaper has shaken the industry to its roots, and despite his healthy ego, his charisma and talent manage to shine through. The text is not a true confession as much as it is a description of entrepreneurship and creativity that combines niceness and toughness.