Bata Management System: A built-in resilience against crisis at the micro level

Abstract

The Bata Company became the largest and thriving global enterprise of the 20s and 30s, during the decades of economic crises. Why could Bata prosper when everybody around was contracting, laying people off and passively waiting for governmental bailouts and handouts? Our answer lies in the existence of a unique, inimitable, integrated management system—a rare thing among modern companies operating with patchworks of disconnected, dysfunctionaland non-synergistic, albeit fashionable methods and techniques. Roosevelt's New Deal was the beginning of the end of management-employee cooperation, strengthening adversarial relations, trade unionism and the final emergence of so-called macroeconomics, reversing the promising microeconomic trends of the time. Resilient, flexible and human-oriented companies are the best protection against government-induced crises.