FACTORS IN BUSINESS SUCCESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 17, 21 January 1931, Page 6

FACTORS IN BUSINESS SUCCESS.

What arc the qualities that make for success in business management? asked the "Financial Times" in a recent editorial. In these days, when it is becoming more and more evident that the large-scale organisation of industry, instead of reducing the opportunities for personal leadership, is actually multiplying both their number and scope, it is not unprofitable to pause a moment to consider such questions. If three qualities had to be selected to afford a key to the whole, we should be inclined to choose those of couragc, industry and imagination. But even the most exhaustive list of exceptional virtues does of itself explain the essentials of business success, nor does their possession connote any guarantee of its achievement. Efficiency in industrial management is no more merely a matter of personality than is proficiency in the practice of medicine, law or teaching. The most perfect array of qualities will not enable a man to succeed, in industrial life unless they are formed by close familiarity with the technique of management in the widest possible sense.

Fortunately the day has passed when it was the custom, if •» boy were not clever enough to pass examinations, to put him into business as a matter of course. The world at large is beginning to realise at last that the controlling of an industrial concern calls for as high an order of intelligence, as clear a grasp of affairs and as thorough a training, as any of the learned professions. The time has arrived when the great commercial interests of this country should make it clear in their turn that they are not ashamed to say they are men of business, "for there were none more capable of judging the realities of life than those engaged in business." To do so should not be regarded as a matter of personal prestige, but a duty to the community at the hour of its greatest need.