Rarely has a chief executive of an American corporation been as respected and as revered as AlfredP. sloan, Jr., was at GeneralMotors during his long tenure the top-from 1920 untll 1955. Many GM managers, especially those who grew up in the twenties and thirties, felt deep personal gratitude to him for his quiet but decisive a acts of kindness, of help, of advice, or just of warm sympathy when they were in trouble. At the same time, however, Sloan lopt aloof from the entra managerial in GM. That he never called anyone by his first name and was Mr. Sloan even to top executives may have been reflection of his generation and upbringing-he was born, after all in the 1870s and was a senior executive, running his own business, before 1990. However, unlike most of this generation, he also. Addressed the black elevator men in the GM building in Detroit or New York in the same way.