Harlow S. Person


Harlow Stafford Person was an American economist, Professor of Management and first Dean at the Amos Tuck School of Business, and later secretary and key figure in the Taylor Society.

Biography

Youth, education and early career

Person was born in Republican City, Nebraska in 1875, son of Rollin Harlow Person and Ida Person. After attending the public schools in Howell, Michigan, he studied economics at the University of Michigan. He obtained his PhB in 1899, his MA in 1900, and his PhD in 1902. His PhD thesis was on scientific management.
After his graduating from Michigan in 1902, Person joined the Amos Tuck School of Business faculty at Dartmouth College, where he served until 1917. He became the school's first Professor of Management, and its first real dean.

Taylor Society

From 1913 to 1918 Person served as 2nd president of the Taylor Society as successor of James Mapes Dodge, who had served from its initiation in 1911. Person was succeeded by John E. Otterson, who served in the year 1918-19.
From 1919, Person was secretary of the Taylor Society, which by the end of the 1920s was one of the most progressive business organisations of the period. It promoted cooperation with organized labor.
While a long-standing supporter of F.W. Taylor, Person objected to Taylor's antagonistic approach to workers and labor unions.

"Sales engineering" advocacy

In 1922, Person, elaborating on Taylor's own observations on the topic, began lecturing business audiences about the desirability of extending Taylor's managerial principles into what Person called "sales engineering," or what would later come to be called marketing. In such talks, Person predicted that the normal conditions of the big business economy would spur corporations to pursue such a move, by granting competitive advantage to firms that stayed ahead of competitors in developing "sales engineering" techniques.

Publications

;Selected articles