Ernest Dale: biography of this business administration expert

Ernest Dale's name may not mean much to many people, but he really is considered one of the world's greatest authors. revolutionaries of administration and management of the 20th century, having written several books in which he dealt with these two important areas.

In his works you can find aspects related to the structure of companies, theoretical concepts and practical aspects of them and how companies should be structured to get the most out of each one of them. the parts of it. In addition to this, he was a consultant to companies such as I.B.M., helping to improve their organizational structure by applying the same concepts that he had raised.

Next we will see a little about his life and, especially, about his vision of companies, through this Ernest Dale biography in summary.

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Brief biography of Ernest Dale

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 troubled economic periods of his century.. He was born right at the end of the First World War, he lived in the time of 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 capitalist bloc and the bloc communist. Of course, he witnessed how the economic dynamics changed at a dizzying rate.

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 classes at Columbia University, as well as teaching some courses in Pennsylvania.

During his teaching years he put 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 finishing his studies at Yale, he worked as a consultant in well-known companies, including DuPont corporation, I.B.M. and Unilever. He also served on the boards of other companies, such as 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 should also be noted that he had contacts with Martin Luther King, with whom he met in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1968. He worked on text development and as a consultant until his death on August 16, 1996 in Manhattan New York., with 79 years because of a brain aneurysm.

Contributions to administration sciences

As we mentioned, Ernest Dale has been an important exponent for the world of management and administration. In fact, he is considered the father of empirical management theory. He affirmed that the administration policies and the quality of the leadership were the foundations for the good individual performance of all the workers that make up an organization.

Dale had an advanced understanding of how companies work and how companies 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 exposed 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 business models that had been in use in the middle of the 20th century.

He considered that it was necessary for a good business plan to be subordinated to some meticulously developed plans, which had to be sent in an organized way to the employees so that they were clear about what had to be done, and avoid confusion that, of course, would significantly reduce production or even ruin the company. organization.

In this book, Dale combined concepts from his systemic thinking with their practical application in a business. He was looking for a balance between theory and real practice when it came to organizing a company and making it functional, paying special attention to the human aspect. Likewise, it can be said that This book was especially focused on manufacturing companies (assembly line), although it also deals with issues 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 methods of business activities. Nor does it establish what 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 so extensive that an in-depth explanation would be necessary, even writing a book for each one.

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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 always human beings who handle them and they are not cold machines that can be wound up indefinitely; it must be taken into account that making mistakes due to fatigue. The principles of human nature cannot be ignored.

In this text, the company was broken down into administrative units. He held that every company, regardless of its size, can be broken down into smaller units. Each of these units must 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 the event that a problem arises that can only be solved at the organizational level, the appropriate changes are decided and applied to bring the activity back to its correct state. 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 a more personalized vision of how to solve the problem. problem.

Bibliographic references:

• Dale, e. (1960) The great organizers. McGraw-Hill.
• Dale, e. (1960) Management: Theory and Practice. McGraw-Hill.
• Dale, e. (1952) Planning and Developing the Company Organization Structure. American Management Association.