The Engine That Could: Seventy-Five Years of Values-Driven Change at Cummins Engine Company - Hardcover

Cruikshank, Jeffrey L.; Sicilia, David B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875846130 ISBN 13: 9780875846132

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 1997

Synopsis

The rise of Cummins Engine Company from a tiny Indiana machine shop to one of the world's leading producers of diesel engines is a story rich with lessons for today's managers. By responding to challenges familiar to all American manufacturers with a tough competitive stance and a uniquely people-centered philosophy, Cummins has carved out a distinctive profile in the international industrial landscape. A compelling and important contribution to the literature of business history, The Engine that Could showcases the strategic choices and the pivotal decisions that have shaped and influenced Cummins Engine. Drawing extensively on interviews as well as archival research, the authors provide an in-depth look at a way of doing business that is unconventional, flexible, and pragmatic. They explain how the firm's business model has evolved over time, and how it has survived the pressures of a dramatically changing competitive arena. Cummins' remarkable seventy-five year history captures much of what is interesting - and important - about the evolution of American business from the 1920s to the 1990s.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Cruikshank is President of the Cruikshank Company, Inc., and the author or coauthor of numerous business books, including several published by HBS Press.

Review

"[THE ENGINE THAT COULD] does the job well enough of charting the company's ups and downs...But the real usefulness of the narrative is the way Cruikshank and Sicilia use the Cummins story as a framework for two broader themes...One is the inventor/patron relationship which can be discerned behind many business start-ups...The second theme which the book illustrates is the "staying power" that companies require to remain focused on basically the same products throughout their development." -- Financial Times, June 9, 1998

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0875846130
• ISBN 13: 9780875846132
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640