The main reason living standards have improved so much in the 20th century is that businesses have become so much more productive. And it is managers who have helped drive that evolution. The great ones do more than just run things efficiently; they develop and put into practice ideas that transcend their company, their industry, even their national borders. Their ideas survive to become vocabulary in the halls of management and often in society at large.
Alfred Sloan literally wrote the book on managing large organizations--My Years with General Motors. No large company is untouched by his concept of decentralized management....