Arch Wilkinson Shaw
| Arch Wilkinson Shaw | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
August 4, 1876 Jackson, Michigan, USA |
| Died | March 9, 1962 (aged 85) Winnetka, Illinois, USA |
| Occupation | Management theorist, editor and publisher |
| Known for | System, The Magazine of Business (1900-1927) |
Arch Wilkinson Shaw (4 August 1876 – 9 March 1962) was an American management theorist, editor and publisher, who applied the ideas of scientific management in the areas of offices and the tertiary sector. It was also during the First World War, Secretary of Commercial Economy Board and member of the board of directors of the Harvard Business School.
Arch Shaw stopped his studies at the Olivet College before graduating, and at the age of 23, in 1899 founded, with Louis C. Walker, the Shaw-Walker Company in Muskegon Michigan, specializing in office supplies and plugs and files. Four years later, while still in the board of directors of the firm, he founded the Shaw Company, which published the reviews System, The Magazine of Business, specializing in the service and offices (typing, office furniture, etc.), and Factory. The firm also published books on management. Shaw sold it in 1928 to the McGraw-Hill Company.
He took a sabbatical in 1910, when his business was flourishing, to study the economy at Harvard University in Cambridge, where he especially appreciated the courses by Frank William Taussig, which demonstrated its influence later on in his writings. He also befriended the Professor of economic history Edwin Francis Gay, first dean of Harvard Business School. In 1911, Shaw became lecturer, inaugurating the first course in Business Policy, and became a member of the board of the Harvard Business School. He wrote the article Some Problems in Distribution Market, published in August 1912 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which became a seminal article in marketing studies. With E. Gay, he then helped found the Harvard Bureau of Business Research, which he helped to fund. He was also a shareholder and member of the board of the Kellogg Company.
Shaw argued in his books and System journal, that the federal government should be involved in the collection and data processing for business. In 1917, when the United States were about to enter war, he persuaded the Council of National Defense to create the Commercial Economy Board, of which he became the secretary. This council then became the conservation division of the War Industries Board under his responsibility.
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