E.C.A. at Tuck
The Marshall Plan will come to Hanover this summer when the Tuck School, in cooperation with the National Management Council, offers a special study program for fifteen Frenchmen selected by the E.C.A. and sent to this country to learn the ways of the American free enterprise and competitive business system. The 12-week program at Dartmouth will serve as an initial orientation course, after which the French business executives will spend six months with a variety of industrial companies throughout the United States, receiving highly specialized and technical training and experience. When the Frenchmen return home they will become the leaders of a productivity center, designed as a source of information, advice and dissemination of American industrial methods. It is the hope of E.C.A. that this center will be one means of improving the productivity and efficiency of industries in all parts of France.
Dean Herluf V. Olsen '22 and eight members of the Tuck School faculty who will comprise the teaching staff for the summer have been assigned a large responsibility for getting the whole venture off to an effective start. The work in Hanover will be intensive, with seventeen hours of classes a week and many more hours than that devoted to preparation for class lectures and discussions. The Tuck School professors will provide instruction in the nature of the American competitive system and what makes it tick; in the basic principles of management in American industrial companies; in the operation of the main principles in such fields as personnel administration and labor relations, production and engineering, domestic and foreign marketing, including sales management, advertising and marketing research; and in the use of finance, accounting and statistics as managerial control devises; with some concluding sessions devoted to the purpose of coordinating the study program as a whole.
The fifteen Frenchmen who will be the "student body" at Tuck School this summer will all be 32 years of age or older, will be holders of one or more college degrees, and will all speak English fluently. Present plans call for turning one of the Webster Avenue fraternity houses over to the group for living quarters and for feeding them at the Hanover Inn. Despite the intensive work program outlined for them, the men will have time to enjoy some of the summer delights of the North Country, and for Hanover there will be special pleasure in having this outstanding group of Frenchmen as members of the community for a three-month period. A great deal should be learned on both sides, and the town as well as Tuck School will have an opportunity to contribute to the American education of these men and, through them, to the economic well-being of France.
The National Management Council, which is sponsoring the Tuck School program in colloboration with E.C.A., has as its primary objective the spread of understanding of the best management principles in foreign countries. Tuck School is a member in the educational division and in its Council activities is associated with professional management societies, corporations which are subscribing members, and trade associations and trade unions.
