The Blue Books: In 1951, GE CEO Ralph Cordiner put together a team of executives, consultants, and professors (including management guru Peter Drucker) to put on paper a prescription for improving GE’s management. After studying GE and 50 other companies, and performing countless studies, they produced the “Blue Books.” Compiled in 1953, the Blue Books consisted of five beefy volumes totaling close to 3500 pages. They were designed to minimize the “human element” in decision making and included hundreds of theories and prescriptions that were designed to help GE managers deal with any business situation.

 藍皮書(shū)（The Blue Books）

1951年，通用電氣公司首席執行官拉爾夫·科迪納爾（Ralph Cordiner）成立了一支執行官員、咨詢(xún)師和教授組成的團隊（包括管理學(xué)宗師彼得·德魯克），要將改善通用電氣公司管理的良方編定成書(shū)。這支團隊調查了通用電氣以及其它50家公司，并執行了無(wú)數的研究工作，最后便于1953年匯編了這套“藍皮書(shū)”，它們包括煌煌五大卷、總共將近3,500頁(yè)，是專(zhuān)門(mén)為最大程度減少決策過(guò)程中的“人類(lèi)因素”而編纂的，其中收羅了數百條專(zhuān)門(mén)幫助通用電氣公司管理人員處理各種工作形勢的理論和定式。

 

Its words and ideas dictated GE’s processes, procedures, and rules of hierarchy. The notion that books should be used to replace thinking was anathema to Welch. He “rewrote” GE’s methods, replacing strict scientific management and Taylorism (which favored command and control models) with more participative models of management (see also Scientific Management). His learning organization was built

on the assumption that it is thinking and ideas that will help organizations to evolve and grow, not canned prescriptions and thousand-page books.

 正是這套藍皮書(shū)的措辭和理念規定了通用電氣公司的過(guò)程、手續以及等級制度規則。韋爾奇深?lèi)和唇^那種用書(shū)本來(lái)替代思考的觀(guān)念。他“改寫(xiě)”了通用電氣公司的方法，用參與程度更高的模式來(lái)替代刻板的科學(xué)管理和“泰勒主義”（這種管理體系喜歡指揮與控制模式，參見(jiàn) “科學(xué)管理”）。他的學(xué)習型組織是構建在一項假定的基礎上的，也就是說(shuō)，能夠幫助組織前進(jìn)和發(fā)展的是思考與創(chuàng )想，而不是罐裝好的現成方法和厚如磚頭的書(shū)籍。