By Katie Johnston
Forbes - 1/16/2013
While studying the history of business practices, HBS researcher
Caitlin Rosenthal made a startling discovery: Many of the techniques
pioneered by slave owners in the 1800s are widely used in business
management today. Rosenthal discusses her findings in this story by
Katie Johnston, which first appeared on the HBS Working Knowledge website.
Caitlin C. Rosenthal didn’t intend to write a book about
slavery. She set out to tackle something much more mundane: the history
of business practices. But when she started researching account books
from the mid-1800s, a period of major economic development during the
rise of industrialization in the United States, Rosenthal stumbled
across an unexpected source of innovation.
Rosenthal, a Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in business history at Harvard
Business School, found that southern plantation owners kept complex and
meticulous records, measuring the productivity of their slaves and
carefully monitoring their profits—often using even more sophisticated
methods than manufacturers in the North. Several of the slave owners’
practices, such as incentivizing workers (in this case, to get them to
pick more cotton) and depreciating their worth through the years, are
widely used in business management today.
To read more....
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