C. Wickham Skinner (February 20, 1924 – January 28, 2019) was an American business theorist. He was the Emeritus James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration at the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

and has been called "the father of manufacturing strategy".

Early life

Wickham Skinner graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering.Harvard Business School: Wickham Skinner
/ref>Wickham Skinner
''Bloomberg Business'' After serving with the Engineering Corps for duty on the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, Skinner earned a masters degree in business administration from

in 1948.

Career

Skinner worked for

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

for a decade. Skinner became a professor at his alma mater, the Harvard Business School. He served as its Director of International Activities from 1967 to 1970. In 1974, he was appointed to the

James E. Robinson James Edgar Robinson (15 August 1868, near Marysville, Ohio – 27 January 1932) was an American lawyer who served as an List of justices of the Ohio Supreme Court, Associate Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court from 1919 to 1932. He was the ma ...

chair in Business Administration. He was Associate Dean from 1974 to 1977. One of the students he mentored was William J. Abernathy.William Abernathy, 50, Dies; Harvard Business Professor
''The New York Times'', December 30, 1993 Skinner was a director and the vice president of the Ocean Energy Institute. He was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the

University of Ghent Ghent University ( nl, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated as UGent) is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium. Established before the state of Belgium itself, the university was founded by the Dutch King William I in 1817, when the ...

in 2002. He was a Fellow of

Academy of Management The Academy of Management is a professional association for scholars of management and organizations that was established in 1936. It publishes several academic journals, organizes conferences, and provides others forums for management professors ...

Selected writings

Books

*''Impact of New Technology: People and Organizations in Manufacturing and Allied Industries'' (with

Arup K. Chakraborty Arup K. Chakraborty is an American engineer, focusing in biophysics, computational modeling and infectious disease, currently the Robert T. Haslam Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and formerly the Warren and Katherine Schlinger D ...

, Elsevier Science, 1982). *''Manufacturing: The Formidable Competitive Weapon'' (New York City: John Wiley & Sons, 1985).

Articles

*
Manufacturing—Missing Link in Corporate Strategy
' (''Harvard Business Review'', May 1969): in this article he addresses a concern that companies' senior executives are out of touch with

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

as an activity and value earner, while industrial and computing engineers lack knowledge of

corporate strategy In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment ...

.Foreword to Manufacturing—Missing Link in Corporate Strategy
version hosted at https://pessoas.feb.unesp.br/, accessed 16 August 2023 *
The Productivity Paradox
' (''Harvard Business Review'', July 1986).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skinner, Wickham 1924 births 2019 deaths Yale University alumni Harvard Business School alumni Harvard Business School faculty American business theorists