From 1958 to 1961 he was president of the Whirlpool Corporation. In 1961 he joined Montgomery Ward as president until 1966. He served another four years as chair, and from 1970 to at least 1974 he was chair of the executive committee.[4] In 1972 he received the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal.
Personal life
Robert Elton Brooker was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Robert E Brooker and Isadora Brooker. His father was a Cleveland baker. He earned his B.A. in civil engineering from the University of Southern California in 1927. After college Brooker spent six years working for the power company Southern California Edison. At the age of 95, Brooker died in Longwood, Florida on May 17, 2001, survived by his wife Sarah Burton Harrison Brooker and two children.[5]
Whirlpool Corporation
Leaving Southern California Edison, Brooker worked for ten years at Firestone Tire and Rubber Company running all the Firestone Stores in the western states. In 1944 he was recruited by Sears, where he worked under Robert E. Wood, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who was then the company's president.[6] Brooker rose through the ranks, becoming head of manufacturing, a member of Sears' board of directors, and, in 1958, president of the newly formed Whirlpool Corporation. At the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, Brooker supervised the Whirlpool kitchen, the exhibit that prompted the Kitchen Debate between then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.[7] At Whirlpool, Brooker applied the systems of General Wood, developing long-term relationships with suppliers and treating people fairly.[6]
Montgomery Ward
In 1961 then-president John Barr hired Robert Brooker to lead Montgomery Ward as president in its turnaround. Brooker brought with him a number of key new management people, including Edward Donnell, former manager of Sears' Los Angeles stores.
Ward's new management team achieved the turnaround, reducing the number of suppliers from 15,000 to 7,000 and the number of brands being carried from 168 to 16. Ward's private brands were given 95 percent of the volume compared with 40 percent in 1960. The results of these changes were lower handling costs and higher quality standards. Buying was centralized but store operations were decentralized, under a new territory system modeled after Sears.[8]
In 1966, Ed Donnell was named President of Montgomery Ward. Brooker continued as chairmen and chief executive officer until the mid-1970s. In 1968 as Brooker helped engineer a friendly merger with the Container Corporation of America; the new company was named MARCOR. In 1974, Mobile Oil bought MARCOR.[9]
Bettering Communities
Under Brooker's leadership at Montgomery Ward the Ward's store managers became more involved in their community's affairs. Brooker realized he had to apply the methods he used in business leadership to getting people who represented Montgomery Ward to be more involved in their own communities. Brooker once said, "It's sound economic sense to preserve an environment in which we all do our fair share for our community. It's the greatest product in the world to sell."[10]
When Montgomery Ward's headquarters needed new space, the company needed to decide if it would move to a safer location, as Sears had already announced, or to stay put. Brooker decided the company would remain and work with its neighborhood to better the environment. Brooker making the commitment to invest in its neighborhood helped clear up one of the more explosive areas in Chicago.[10]
Honors
In 1972 Robert Elton Brooker received the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal for distinguished achievement in management and service to the community.
Notes
↑ "Mergers: Wards' New Package." in: Time, Friday, July 12, 1968.
↑ Lester Robert Bittel, Muriel Albers Bittel (1978), Encyclopedia of professional management . p. 456
↑ Refrigeration and Air Conditioning', Vol. 57. 1954, p. 106
↑ The international who's who, Europa Publications Limited. 1974, p. 224
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
The Henry Laurence Gantt Medal was established in 1929 by the American Management Association and the Management section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for "distinguished achievement in management and service to the community" in honour of Henry Laurence Gantt. By the year 1984 in total 45 medals had been awarded.
Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The current Montgomery Ward Inc. is a national online shopping and mail-order catalog retailer that started several years after the original Montgomery Ward shut down.
Whirlpool Corporation is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of home appliances headquartered in Benton Charter Township, Michigan, United States. The Fortune 500 company has annual revenue of approximately $21 billion, 78,000 employees, and more than 70 manufacturing and technology research centers globally.
Richard Warren Sears was an American manager, businessman and the founder of Sears, Roebuck and Company with his partner Alvah Curtis Roebuck.
Robert Elkington Wood was an American military officer and business executive. After retiring from the U.S. Army as a brigadier general, Wood had a successful career as a corporate executive, most notably with Sears, Roebuck and Company. A Republican, Wood was a leader in the Old Right American Conservatism movement from the 1920s through the 1960s as well as a key financial backer of the America First Committee prior to the United States' entry into World War II.
Alan J. Lacy was the last chairman and CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Company, which was acquired by Kmart in 2005, at which point he became Vice Chairman of that organization.
Louis Cassius Upton is best known for co-founding the Whirlpool Corporation with his uncle Emory Upton and investor Lowell Bassford in 1911.
Robert Julius Thorne was an American businessman who was president of Montgomery Ward from 1917 to 1920.
Sewell Lee Avery (November 4, 1874 – October 31, 1960) was an American businessman who achieved early prominence in gypsum mining and became president of the United States Gypsum Company (1905–1936). At the beginning of the Depression, he was asked by J.P. Morgan & Co. to turn around the failing Montgomery Ward and succeeded in restoring its profitability by making huge changes. In 1936, Fortune magazine said that Avery was "generally held to be the No. 1 Chicago businessman." In the postwar years, however, he failed to take advantage of the demand for durable goods and did not expand Montgomery Ward, costing it prominence in the retail field.
The Indestructible Record Company was an American record label that produced plastic cylinder records between 1907 and 1922.
Henry Wallace Clark was an American consulting engineer, known for popularizing the work of Henry Gantt with his 1922 work "The Gantt chart; a working tool of management".
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Lawrence Asa (Larry) Appley was an American management specialist and organizational theorist, known for his early work on management and organization, especially quality management. In 1962 he was awarded the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal.
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Thomas Roy Jones was an American industrialist and management author, known as business school graduate, company president, and recipient of the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal in 1951.
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