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A Survey of Business Historians on America's Greatest Entrepreneurs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Blaine McCormick  and
Burton W. Folsom Jr
Blaine McCormick
Affiliation:
Burton W. Folsom Jr. is Charles Kline Professor of History and Management at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan
Burton W. Folsom Jr
Affiliation:
Blaine Mccormick is assistant professor of management in the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University in Waco, Texas
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Abstract

We surveyed fifty-eight professors of history and management to develop a ranking of the greatest entrepreneurs and businesspeople in American history. The goal of this research is to begin an ongoing conversation about what constitutes “greatness” in American business history, and, in particular, how academics perceive greatness among business leaders. The results were predictable: Henry Ford topped the list, followed by Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Thomas Edison. We also surveyed these scholars regarding greatest female and most underrated entrepreneur or businessperson in American history to make the exercise more interesting.

Type
Research Note
Information
Business History Review , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , Winter 2003 , pp. 703 - 716
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2003

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References

1 Tedlow, Richard, Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

2 Two examples help show the negative treatment of entrepreneurs in popular histories. Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States (New York, 1995)Google Scholar has now sold over one million copies. Zinn's chapter, “Robber Barons and Rebels,” is a scathing indictment of all American industrialists. In a somewhat similar way, Thomas Bailey's U. S. history text, The American Pageant (Lexington, Mass., 2001)Google Scholar, has gone through twelve editions and has sold over two million copies. Bailey, and his coauthor, David Kennedy, find little to praise in the lives of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Ford. A corrective to Zinn's and Bailey's view would be Folsom, Burton W. Jr, The Myth of the Robber Barons, 4th ed. (Herndon, Va., 2003)Google Scholar.

3 Although responses to the survey are anonymous, the data have been preserved by Blaine McCormick and can be accessed by contacting him at Baylor University.

4 Representative journal ranking citations include Stahl, M. J., Leap, T. L., and Wei, Z. Z., “Publication in Leading Management Journals as a Measure of Institutional Research Productivity,” Academy of Management Journal 31 (1988): 707–20Google Scholar; Johnson, J. L., “Journal Influence in the Field of Management: An Analysis Using Salancik's Index in a Dependency Network,” Academy of Management Journal 37 (1994): 1392–1407Google Scholar; Tahai, A. and Meyer, M. J., “A Revealed Preference Study of Management Journals’ Direct Influences,” Strategic Management Journal (1999): 279–96.3.0.CO;2-2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar For MBA rankings see Trieschmann, J. S., Dennis, A. R., Northcraft, G. B., and Niemi, A. W., “Serving Multiple Constituencies In Business Schools: MBA Program Versus Research Performance,” Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 1130–41Google Scholar.

5 Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., “The U.S. Presidents: What Makes a President Great? Or a Failure? The Verdict of History Provides Some Answers,” Life (1948): 65-6; and New York Times Magazine (29 July 1962).

6 Representative journal articles include Amlund, C. A., “President-Ranking: A Criticism,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 8 (1964): 309–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maranell, G. M., “The Evaluation of Presidents: An Extension of the Schlesinger Polls,” Journal of American History 57 (1970): 104–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simonton, D. K., “Presidential Greatness and Performance: Can We Predict Leader-ship in the White House?” Journal of Personality 49 (1981): 306–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly 112 (1997): 179–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some representative books include Bailey, T. A., Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to Present (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; Murray, R. K and Blessing, T. H., Greatness in the White House: Rating the Presidents, Washington through Carter (University Park, Penn., 1988)Google Scholar; and Ridings, W. J and Mclver, S. B., Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of U.S. Leaders from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent (Secaucus, N.J., 2000)Google Scholar.

7 See. Schlesinger Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” for a full discussion of the convergence of the two approaches.

8 See Nation's Business, “Name the 10 Greatest Men of American Business,” (Sept. 1970): 52-3; and Nation's Business, “The 10 Greatest Men of American Business—As You Picked Them” (Mar. 1971): 44-50.

9 Wren, D. A. and Hay, R. D., “Management Historians and Business Historians: Differing Perceptions of Pioneer Contributors,” Academy of Management Journal 20 (1977): 470–75.Google Scholar

10 Organ, Dennis W., “And the Winners are…,” Business Horizons 43 (2000): 1–3Google Scholar.

11 Bedeian, Arthur G. and Wren, Dan, “Most Influential Management Books of the Twentieth Century,” Organizational Dynamics 29 (2001): 221–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 An excellent description of the effect of computers is Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (New York, 2000).Google Scholar

13 The outside scholars polled included Jay Barney (Ohio State University); Jonathan Bean (Southern Illinois University); Jack Beatty (Atlantic Monthly); Art Bedeian (Louisiana State University); Brad Birzer (Hillsdale College); Mansel Blackford (Ohio State University); Al Bolton (Averett University); Don Boudreaux (George Mason); H.W. Brands (Texas A&M University); Victoria Buenger (Texas A&M University); Shawn Carraher (Texas A&M); Kerry Carson (University of Louisiana); Paula Carson (University of Louisiana); Jim Collins (Author); Larry Cox (Kauffman Center); David Deeds (Case Western Reserve University); Jay Dial Case (Western Reserve University); W. Winston Elliott, III (Center for the American Idea); Andrea Gabor (Baruch College); John Steele Gordon (American Heritage Magazine); James Gwartney (Florida State University); Robert Higgs (Independent Institute); Richard Hodgetts (Florida International University); Bob Hoskisson (University of Oklahoma); Duane Ireland (University of Richmond); Paul Israel (Rutgers University); Jerome Katz (Saint Louis University); Eileen Kelly (Ithaca College); Maury Klein (University of Rhode Island); Nancy Koehn (Harvard Business School); Edwin Locke (University of Maryland); Justin Longenecker (Baylor University); Fred Luthans (University of Nebraska); John Majewski (University of California-Santa Barbara); Thomas McCraw (Harvard Business School); John McCusker (Trinity University); Forrest McDonald (University of Alabama); Andre Millard (University of Alabama); Daryl Mitton (San Diego State University); Karl Moore (McGill University); David Nasaw (City University of New York); Dennis Organ (Indiana University); Pete Petersen (Johns Hopkins University); Michael Plater (Brown University); Lawrence W. Reed (Mackinac Center); Joseph Rishel (Duquesne University); Larry Schweikart (University of Dayton); Ray Smilor (Foundation for Enterprise Development); Mary Stockwell (Lourdes); Charles Van Eaton (Pepperdine University); David Van Fleet (Arizona State); Richard H.K. Vietor (Harvard Business School); Steven Watts (University of Missouri); Mira Wilkins (Florida International University); Morgan Witzel (Independent Institute); and Daniel Wren (University of Oklahoma).

14 The results listed in the tables are abbreviated for the sake of space. A complete listing of all nominees and all results across these categories may be obtained by contacting the lead author.

15 Tedlow, Giants of Enterprise, 123.

16 Millard, A. J., Edison and the Business of Innovation (Baltimore, 1990)Google Scholar.

17 A prominent example of the older research is Miller, William, “American Historians and the Business Elite,” Journal of Economic History 9 (Nov. 1949): 184–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Newcomer, Mable, The Big Business Executive: The Factors That Made Him (New York, 1955)Google Scholar. Recent business historians who give more credibility to the rags-to-riches story include Schweikart, Larry, The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States (Ft. Worth, 2000)Google Scholar; Gunderson, Gerald, The Wealth Creators (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; and Haeger, John D., John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic (Detroit, 1991)Google Scholar. The rags-to-riches theme in U. S. business history still generates interest and disagreement among historians. See the contrasting results in these essays: Folsom, Burton W., “Like Fathers, Unlike Sons: The Fall of the Business Elite in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1880-1920,” Pennsylvania Histoiy 46 (Oct. 1980), 291–309Google Scholar; and Peter Temin, “The Stability of the American Business Elite,” Industrial and Corporate Change (1999), 189-210.

18 Along with inquiring about the greatest entrepreneur, female entrepreneur, and underrated entrepreneur, we also also asked a third question: “Who do you believe to be America's greatest minority entrepreneur or businessperson?” Unfortunately, almost one third of our respondents did not answer this question, and those who did lacked agreement on what constituted a “minority.” Thus, our results were inconclusive. Perhaps it is worth noting that John H. Johnson received the most votes (eight), with Berry Gordy and Oprah Winfrey close behind (seven votes each).

19 Ash, Mary Kay, Mary Kay (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)Google Scholar; and Ash, Mary Kay, Mary Kay on People Management (New York, 1984)Google Scholar.

20 Israel, Paul, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; and Millard, Edison and the Business of Innovation.