Failing in Style
Failing in Style
Business Consulting in Wartime Berlin
Chapter 5 focuses on the restructuring of the Berlin-based Auergesellschaft, one of the Gilbreths’ first consulting contracts, in which, from 1914 on, they began to implement their consulting method on a major scale. It charts the Gilbreths’ strategic use of sports studies from baseball and fencing to showcase their method to potential customers—which included the German military—and how they eventually acquired a long-term contract with the Auergesellschaft. It describes the installation of a central planning room and a charting department, as well as the implementation of visualization techniques, including route models and flow charts. It analyzes how such visualization devices were used to train workers, while also allowing Gilbreth to give lectures about his system to middle management, thereby legitimizing his consulting model. The failure of the restructuring process shows the gap produced between the aspirations of their method and the reality of their concrete consulting activity, but also the high value that media techniques were given in this process.
Keywords: route models, Wilheminism, Auergesellschaft, military, sport studies, union, visualization techniques, data visualization, flow charts, Walter Camp
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