The Blue Books: In 1951, GE CEO Ralph Cordiner put together a team of executives, consultants, and professors (including management guru Peter Drucker) to put on paper a prescription for improving GE’s management. After studying GE and 50 other companies, and performing countless studies, they produced the “Blue Books.” Compiled in 1953, the Blue Books consisted of five beefy volumes totaling close to 3500 pages. They were designed to minimize the “human element” in decision making and included hundreds of theories and prescriptions that were designed to help GE managers deal with any business situation.

 蓝皮书（The Blue Books）

1951年，通用电气公司首席执行官拉尔夫·科迪纳尔（Ralph Cordiner）成立了一支执行官员、咨询师和教授组成的团队（包括管理学宗师彼得·德鲁克），要将改善通用电气公司管理的良方编定成书。这支团队调查了通用电气以及其它50家公司，并执行了无数的研究工作，最后便于1953年汇编了这套“蓝皮书”，它们包括煌煌五大卷、总共将近3,500页，是专门为最大程度减少决策过程中的“人类因素”而编纂的，其中收罗了数百条专门帮助通用电气公司管理人员处理各种工作形势的理论和定式。

 

Its words and ideas dictated GE’s processes, procedures, and rules of hierarchy. The notion that books should be used to replace thinking was anathema to Welch. He “rewrote” GE’s methods, replacing strict scientific management and Taylorism (which favored command and control models) with more participative models of management (see also Scientific Management). His learning organization was built

on the assumption that it is thinking and ideas that will help organizations to evolve and grow, not canned prescriptions and thousand-page books.

 正是这套蓝皮书的措辞和理念规定了通用电气公司的过程、手续以及等级制度规则。韦尔奇深恶痛绝那种用书本来替代思考的观念。他“改写”了通用电气公司的方法，用参与程度更高的模式来替代刻板的科学管理和“泰勒主义”（这种管理体系喜欢指挥与控制模式，参见 “科学管理”）。他的学习型组织是构建在一项假定的基础上的，也就是说，能够帮助组织前进和发展的是思考与创想，而不是罐装好的现成方法和厚如砖头的书籍。