Saturday, June 21, 2008
Owen and Jones of Newtown.
Friend of mine, Dr Peter Starbuck came over for tea this afternoon. Peter has recently been awarded his doctorate as a consequence of his study of 'the father of modern management, Peter Drucker. He came over to collect some cuttings that I was growing on for him, and for a discussion about the two most famous sons of Newtown in Montgomeryshire, Robert Owen and Pryce Jones. Peter takes the view that Robert Owen is one of the greatest authorities in the field of management that the world has ever seen, and that Newtown does not make anything like enough of its association with such a great man. I refer to this two hours of conversation as a warning that this blog will be referring to the work of these two famous sons of Montgomeryshire over the next few weeks.
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6 comments:
Peter Starbuck ? WSJ?
unixman - Thats him
Most of the supercomputers used UNIX "in my day", great o/s, miss it.
Robert Owen contributed at least as much to Liberal Party thinking (and thence to LibDems) as to socialism, yet the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Labour Party seems to claim him as their own.
frank - I'm interested in him because of his fame, and the way that can be used to benefit Newtown. Dr Starbuck tells me that while he was not particularly successful as a businessman himself, finishing up without wealth after business failures, he left behind him ideas that transfomed 'management systems' - bringing wider social benefit into the business owner's thinking as well as direct business efficiencies. But he was also 'hot' on performance targets as well - so his ideas promise to be an interesting read. I feel a bit ashamed that I've not studied his work before.
Your 100% right Glyn - more fuss made of RO in Scotland than Wales. When you go up to Scotland next - perhaps you can pop in to see how they recognise a hero - and not just William Wallace.
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