Product Description

In Collaboration with Samuel Crowther

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2305345 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

About the Author
American entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist HENRY FORD (1863-1947) was born in Michigan and trained as a machinist and engineer before founding, in 1903, the Ford Motor Company.

Customer Reviews

The Classics of Management
Henry Ford is the classical writer on management. He stands on a same line with Sun Tzu, Niccolò Machiavelli, Robert Owen, Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol.

This is the foundation of all the management literature, and every modern manager should be aware with the works of the authors above mentioned.

In the book "My Life and Work", Henry Ford presents his view on different things: management philosophy, social life, human abilities and capabilities, the role of the bankers in the production, good debt and bad debt, the labor and the speculation, the roots of poverty and the ways to solve it, the role of the government, and other important topics.

You will also find an autobiography in this book, but there is a lot of things that Henry Ford avoids in this book, e.g. how did he took the controlling stake in the Ford Motor Company. He didn't write in the book that he have started another company, Henry Ford and Son, and made a show of taking himself and his best employees to the new company; the goal was to scare the remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to sell their stakes to him before they lost most of their value. The ruse worked, and Henry and his son purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company.

The best business and economics book ever written
Anyone who has read "My Life and Work" will understand exactly what is wrong with our country today. There are three ways to create wealth--grow it, mine it, or make it--and activities like flipping houses or trading carbon credits do not qualify.

Ford developed what is now known as the Toyota production system, and readers will see a very explicit description of just in time manufacturing (and its benefits) in "My Life and Work."

Ford also summarized effective labor relations in one sentence: "It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible."

Henry's thoughts in todays world
In reading the book I keep thinking what Henry was saying in 1922 could be said today. War profiteering, patriotism, interest rates, bureaucracy, education are all topics that sound so familiar in today's news. Henry had it right then in lots of ways and I think a lot of what he put forth it could be used in today's society.