Graduates Only At Top

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 14

Graduates Only At Top

In time, the only people filling top executive positions in management would be university graduates, a leading Australian consultant, Sir Walter Scott, said in Christchurch yesterday.

And a bachelor’s degree would not be good enough to

get to the top—only a master’s degree would do, he said.

Sir Walter is the only Australian to be awarded the gold medal of the International Committee for Scientific Management From a one-man accounting business started in 1938, he has established a management consulting business with offices throughout the world. He is also chairman

of the Australian Decimal Currency Board. He said there was a shortage all over the world of well-trained executives. The United States was going as fast as it could to get all who were going. Big American enterprises were flying British executives to the United States at week-ends and interviewing them in search of high class men. Sir Walter said it was necessary to look to salaries of executives if their services were to be maintained. He claimed that a top executive’s salary would be the least expense of a firm if he could increase profits substantially. Sir Walter said he did not care what school a man went to when it came to the choice of executive staff. What mattered was the standard of his training. He described himself as one of the last generataion of. untrained managers.

He did not agree with the suggestion that New Zealand was far behind the rest of the world in business techniques, but it would soon lag behind if it did not try to keep abreast of management trends overseas. He said that it was in New Zealand’s interest to match thj salaries paid by overseas companies to top men. New Zealanders holding . high posts abroad might answer the call: “New Zealand needs | you.”