Tomáš Baťa () (3 April 1876 – 12 July 1932) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

entrepreneur and founder of the Bata shoe company. His career was cut short when he died in a plane accident due to bad weather. His half-brother

Jan Antonín Baťa Jan Antonín Baťa (March 7, 1898 – August 23, 1965) (also known as ''Jan Antonin Bata'' or ''Jan Bata'', called The King of Shoes) was a Czech- Brazilian shoe manufacturer from Uherské Hradiště (southeastern Moravia), half-brother of Tomáš ...

took over his company, expanding it during the Great Depression. World War II resulted in much destruction of his businesses. After Communist governments were established in Czechoslovakia and other nations of Eastern Europe, they nationalized the Baťa enterprises, taking over the company. Tomáš's son

Thomas J. Bata Tomáš Jan Baťa, (; anglicised to Thomas J. Bata; September 17, 1914 – September 1, 2008), also known as Thomas Bata Jr. and Tomáš Baťa ml., was a Czech-Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He ran the Bata Shoe Company from the 1940s ...

rebuilt and expanded shoe manufacturing in the company name after moving to Canada in 1939, at the time of the Nazi invasion and annexation of Czechoslovakia.

Career

Tomáš Baťa established the organization in

Zlín Zlín (in 1949–1989 Gottwaldov; ; german: Zlin) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 73,000 inhabitants. It is the seat of the Zlín Region and it lies on the Dřevnice river. It is known as an industrial centre. The development of the ...

on 24 August 1894 with 800 Austrian gulden (equivalent to $320 at the time), inherited from his mother. His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company. Though this organization was newly established, the family had a long history of

shoemaking Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand, often by groups of shoemakers, or cobblers (also known as '' cordwainers''). In the 18th century, dozens or even hundreds of masters, journeymen ...

, spanning eight generations and over three hundred years. This heritage helped boost the popularity of his new firm very quickly. In 1904 Baťa worked on an

assembly line An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in se ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and later introduced this method to

in 1927. With modern production and long-distance retailing, Baťa modernized the shoemaking industry. From its start, the company developed rapidly in production and its profits rose. Tomáš Baťa obtained sole control over the company in 1908 after his brother Antonín Baťa died from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...

. Tomáš brought two of his younger brothers, Jan and Bohuš, into the business.

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

created a booming demand for military shoes, which the company started to produce. During the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relative ...

, Baťa again visited the United States, to observe progress at the River Rouge Plant of

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...

Dearborn, Michigan Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976. Dearborn is the seventh most-populated city in Michigan and is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States per ...

. Upon his return, he directed his company to look towards decentralizing operations. Baťa recognized the needs of his customers, whose purchasing power had been significantly reduced in the aftermath of the war, and enlarged his offerings to produce low-cost shoes for the general public. He also established factories and companies in other countries, including

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

and, away from Europe: the

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

. These factories were allowed to be self-sufficient and autonomous in their design, production and distribution strategies, in order to be able to cater to their local population. By the early 1930s, Bata had led the Baťa enterprise and

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

to be the world's leading footwear exporters. Bataville 1940s.jpg, Bata factory at Bataville,

, appr. 1940. Moehlin-Bata-Park-3.jpg, Bata factory at Bata-Park,

Möhlin Möhlin () is a municipality in the district of Rheinfelden in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. History The area around Möhlin was prehistorically settled. A neolithic settlement has been discovered at ''Chleizelgli'', while scattered Bro ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

Bata Factory, Bata Estate, East Tilbury.jpg, Bata factory at Bata Estate,

Tilbury Tilbury is a port town in the borough of Thurrock, Essex, England. The present town was established as separate settlement in the late 19th century, on land that was mainly part of Chadwell St Mary. It contains a 16th century fort and an anc ...

, the

. Best Rijksmonument 512318, 512319, 515262 BATA de drie gebouwen samen.JPG, The three Bata factories in line at Batadorp,

Best Best or The Best may refer to: People * Best (surname), people with the surname Best * Best (footballer, born 1968), retired Portuguese footballer Companies and organizations * Best & Co., an 1879–1971 clothing chain * Best Lock Corporation ...

, the

. Batawa bata.jpg, Bata factory at

Batawa Batawa is a small community in southeastern Ontario, Canada, in the city of Quinte West. The community was set up by the Bata Shoe Company as a planned community around a shoe factory. The factory opened in 1939 and closed in 2000. History Condi ...

, Ontario, Canada. Borovo bata.jpg, Former Bata factory in

Vukovar Vukovar () ( sr-Cyrl, Вуковар, hu, Vukovár, german: Wukowar) is a city in Croatia, in the eastern region of Slavonia. It contains Croatia's largest river port, located at the confluence of the Vuka and the Danube. Vukovar is the seat of ...

today's

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = " Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capi ...

, 1930s

Baťa was regarded as an advocate of

Taylorism Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineeri ...

, functionalism and a proponent of many aspects of the

Garden city movement The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, and ...

. Bata is credited with efforts to modernize his hometown, both through employment and construction of housing facilities, making him a very popular citizen. He was elected as mayor of Zlín. Baťa is widely regarded as a businessman with an acute sense of social consciousness. He is quoted by many as one of the first pioneers of employee welfare and social advancement programs. Tomáš Baťa stated:

"Let's bear in mind that the chances to multiply wealth are unlimited. All people can become rich. There is an error in our understandings - that all people cannot become equally rich. Wealth can not exist where the people are busy with mutual cheating, have no time for creating values and wealth. It is remarkable that we can find the greatest number of wealthy tradesmen and a population on a high standard of living in countries with a high level of business morality. On the other hand, we can find poor tradesmen and entrepreneurs and an impoverished population in countries with a low standard of business morality. This is natural because these people concentrate on cheating one another instead of trying to create value.
We are granting you the profit share not because we feel a need to give money to the people just out of the goodness of the heart. No, we are aiming at other goals by this step. By this measure we want to reach a further decrease of production costs. We want to reach the situation that the shoes are cheaper and workers earn even more. We think that our products are still too expensive and worker's salary too low."

Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

In a scholarly study of Tomáš Baťa as a leader and business innovator, Dr.

Myron Tribus Myron T. Tribus (October 30, 1921 – August 31, 2016) was an American organizational theorist, who was the director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT from 1974 to 1986. He was known as leading supporter and interpreter of W. E ...

states:

"When I first began this paper, I intended to demonstrate that what Baťa did is a superb illustration of what is now called "
quality management Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not on ...
". The record shows that Tomáš Baťa did indeed precede modern "quality management" practices by at least half a century. If we look only at that side of the man, we must conclude that he was the first to use quality as a way to lower cost at the same time as he created customer delight."

"However, as I delved more deeply into Baťa's management methods, it became clear that looking at his work through such a lens gives much too narrow a focus. It is possible, of course, to analyze Baťa's work as an example of what W. Edwards Deming has called his "System of Profound Knowledge". However, the level of abstraction at which Dr. Deming describes this system makes it capable of encompassing many different activities and while it provides great generality, it does not provide a focus on what was unique about Baťa. I have chosen a less abstract approach, concentrating on the Baťa contributions I thought would be of greatest value in contemporary management. My objective is to find the most important lessons that the Baťa system of management can teach today's entrepreneurs."

Wages scheme Tomáš Baťa used 4 basic types of wages: * Fixed rate - paid to a technical-operative and an administrative staff * Individual order based rate - paid to some manufacture specialists * Collective task rate - defined for manufacture labour * Profit contribution rate - paid to operational managers Also typical is so called "''Baťa price''", establishing a price usually ending in the number nine. He found that psychologically, a price of 99 or 19.99 was apparently more appealing to customers than a rounded number, such as 100 or 20, even though the difference is just 1 currency unit. Aviation Baťa considered aviation another branch of commercial activity. His company was apparently the world's first to use air transportation for travel of not only high-echelon staff, but also to send skilled workers quickly to places where their skills were critically needed. The emphasis was on timely deployment of manpower, not on the creation of prestige travel for a few chosen.

Death and future of company

Baťa died in a plane crash (Junkers J13 D1608) in 1932 near the Zlín airport while trying to fly to

in Switzerland on a business trip under bad weather conditions of dense local fog. After his death, his half-brother

took over ownership of the Bata companies. He greatly expanded the business into new fields, even during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. He founded the famous Zlin aircraft works two years after Baťa's death, starting with simple gliders. From the 1930s to the eve of the World War II, he developed for sale several sophisticated types (e.g. the

Walter Mikron The Walter Mikron is a four-cylinder, air-cooled, inverted straight engine for aircraft. Development Developed in Czechoslovakia in the early 1930s, the engine saw limited use in late 1930s and early 1950s. In the 1980s an initial batch of engi ...

avgas-powered Zlín Z-XII, which was widely exported, and the Z-XIII, as well as some successful sailplanes) and aero engines. The Moravan-Zlin factory is the direct descendant of Jan Bata's Czech aviation legacy. In addition, Jan Antonín Baťa started new manufacturing and set up markets in numerous new countries. In 1939 after the Nazi invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia, he tried to negotiate to keep the company, before emigrating to the United States. In 1941 he resettled in Brazil, where he continued to act as an entrepreneur, creating several company towns. World War II resulted in much destruction of Bata businesses in Europe and Asia. After Communist governments were established in Central and Eastern Europe, they took over and nationalized the companies.

Legacy

In 1934 his son Tomáš Baťa established an industrial manufacturing unit south of

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

, India. It was a complete industrial settlement and was named

Batanagar Batanagar is a neighbourhood in the Maheshtala of the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is a part of the area covered by the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA). History Batanagar was established to ...

. A Metro station in Delhi, Bata Chowk, is also named after him. Anticipating the Second World War, Baťa's son

, along with over 100 families from Czechoslovakia, moved to Canada in 1939. There he developed the Bata Shoe Company of Canada, founding the factory town of

, Ontario. During the Second World War, many Baťa businesses in Europe and the Far East that had been developed by Jan Baťa were destroyed. After the War, the core business enterprise in Czechoslovakia and other major enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe were nationalized by the Communist governments. Thomas J. Bata devoted himself to the rebuilding and development of the Bata Shoe Organization, together with his wife and partner Sonja Bata. He successfully expanded into new markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Under his leadership, the Bata Shoe Organization had unprecedented growth. It became the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of footwear selling over 300 million pairs of shoes each year and employing over 80,000 people.

In fiction

*Musical revue, ''Ostrov Dynamit'', 1930 (''Dynamite Island'') by Jiří Voskovec,

Jan Werich Jan Werich (; 6 February 1905 – 31 October 1980) was a Czech actor, playwright and writer. Early life Between 1916 and 1924, Werich attended "reálné gymnasium" (equivalent to high school) in Křemencova Street in Prague (where his future b ...

, and the composer Jaroslav Ježek. This comedy satirized Tomáš Baťa as the villain Thomas Batha, who together with his Chinese servant Wu-Fang, exploit the natives of a tropical island in the South Pacific. The plot revolves around the magical powers of the island's volcano, which every fifty years erupts, releasing a beneficial gas that lulls the people into calm and docility. Batha is the only one unaffected, as he uses a gas mask hidden in a forest (the exact location of which, however, he is unable to find). *Novel, ''Obuv','' 1932 (''Shoes''), a part of ''Our day chronicles'' by

Ilya Ehrenburg Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (russian: link=no, Илья́ Григо́рьевич Эренбу́рг, ; – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, revolutionary, journalist and historian. Ehrenburg was among the most prolific and notable autho ...

*Novel, ''Botostroj'', 1933 (''The Shoe-Machine'') by

Svatopluk Turek Svatopluk Turek (25 October 1900 in Hodslavice – 30 December 1972 in Zlín) was a Czechoslovak novelist, known under pen name T. Svatopluk. After studying arts at the university he worked as graphics designer in Baťa company in Zlín. He is m ...

. This communist writer portrayed Tomáš Baťa as a strong-willed dictator who sacrificed himself and all people around for success of the company. After its release, Jan Bata sued for defamation and tried to stop further publishing. In 1954, Turek's novel was adapted as a movie of the same name, made by director K.M. Walló. * Bata is featured as a character in Vikram Seth's novel ''

A Suitable Boy ''A Suitable Boy'' is a novel by Vikram Seth, published in 1993. With 1,349 pages (1,488 pages in paperback), the English-language book is one of the longest novels published in a single volume. ''A Suitable Boy'' is set in a newly post-inde ...

,'' but his firm is called the ''"Praha"'' (Prague) Shoe Company.

References

External links

Bata topics bibliography, biography of Tomáš Baťa and contemporary photosLessons from Tomáš Baťa for the Modern Day Manager
by

Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future
- a British film about Baťa ideals seen through the eyes of past and present employees, as they travel to the company's heartland of Zlin.
Principles of the Baťa Management System

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bata, Tomas Bata family Bata Corporation 1876 births 1932 deaths People from Zlín 20th-century Czech businesspeople Shoemakers Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Czechoslovakia Czech company founders Czech businesspeople Austro-Hungarian businesspeople

Career

Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

Death and future of company

Legacy

In fiction

See also

References

External links