Rarely has a chief executive of an American corporation been as respected and as revered as Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., was at General Motors during his long tenure at the top-from 1920 until 1955. Many GM managers, especially those who grew up in the twenties and thirties, felt a deep personal gratitude to him for his quiet but decisive acts of kindness, of help, of advice, or just of warm sympathy when they were in trouble. At the same time, however, sloan kept aloof from the entire managerial group in GM. That ho never called anyone by his first name and was Mr. Sloan even to top executives may name have been a reflection of his generation and upbringing - he was born, after all, in the 1870s and was a senior executive ,running his own business, before 1900. However, unlike most of his generation.