A 1923 proposal remains distinct from the successful institution
Identify a contemporaneous document, preserve enough of its actual claim, proposal or approach to inspect, and distinguish it from later commentary about its making, outcomes or what the writer now understands.
My Years with General Motors
Alfred P. Sloan Jr. · 22 weeksA 1923 proposal remains distinct from the successful institution
SHORT SOURCE EXCERPT“making it seem more logical than it was”
Sloan explains that recollection might make the formation of the technical committee look too logical, then reproduces the September 1923 proposal. Its conditional language, limits on interference with divisions and intended cooperation precede his later description of who assembled, how the body operated and what he believed it accomplished.
The document exposes the proposed solution before the narrator’s account of the institution it became. The reader can distinguish intention and jurisdiction from the retrospective judgment that coordination improved.
The source in context.
Different committees become practical ways to connect divisional and corporate activity. The technical committee answers tensions exposed by the engine episode, with a reproduced proposal showing the intended limits of its authority.
Open this chapterWhat this example supports
The document exposes the proposed solution before the narrator’s account of the institution it became. The reader can distinguish intention and jurisdiction from the retrospective judgment that coordination improved.
Its limit
The proposal is Sloan’s own selected document, not an independent witness. The commentary’s favorable assessment of the committee remains his interpretation; the excerpt also includes visible omissions and insertions.
Source & edition
Alfred P. Sloan Jr., My Years with General Motors; supplied eNet Press digital edition, 2015, ISBN 978-1-61886-397-3; original copyright 1963; edited by John McDonald with Catharine Stevens.
Supplied text, lines 1050–1088. The short quotation is checked against the source.
The completed whole-source AI synthesis supplied candidate observations and the broad argument map. This Codex editorial pass checked original source headings, section boundaries, openings and selected argumentative contexts; inspected every retained example; checked the existing pattern dictionary and base examples; and rewrote or rejected nominations. It is a source-checked editorial pass, not a new independently adjudicated whole-book reading.
supplied eNet Press digital edition, 2015, ISBN 978-1-61886-397-3; original copyright 1963; edited by John McDonald with Catharine Stevens