Tomáš Baťa

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Tomáš Baťa
Tomáš Baťa (Svit, Slovakia)
Born	3 April 1876 Zlín, Austria-Hungary
Died	12 July 1932 (aged 56) Otrokovice, Czechoslovakia
Occupation	Founder of Bata Shoes
Children	Thomas J. Bata

Tomáš Baťa (Czech pronunciation: [ˈtomaːʃ ˈbaca]) (April 3, 1876 Zlín, Moravia - July 12, 1932) was the Czech enterpreneur, founder of Bata Shoes company, one of the world's biggest multinational retailers, manufacturers and distributors of footwear and accessories.

Contents 1 Career 2 Subsequent history of the company 3 Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation 4 In fiction 5 Notes 6 External links

[edit] Career

Tomáš Baťa established the organization in Zlín on August 24, 1894 with 800 Austrian gulden, some $320, inherited from his mother. His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company. Though the organization was newly established, the family had a long history of shoemaking, spanning eight generations and over three hundred years. This heritage helped boost the popularity of his new firm very quickly. With the introduction of factory-style production and long distance retailing, Baťa modernized the shoe-making industry and the company surged ahead in production and profits right from its nascent years.

Eventually, Baťa obtained sole control over the company in 1908 after his brother Antonín Baťa died from tuberculosis. Fortunately, his younger brother Jan Antonin Bata begain working for the organization, eventually becoming the owner of the entire Bata organization throughout the world by 1932. World War I created a booming demand for military shoes, and the company quickly became one of the prime brands. Tomáš also exhibited his business acumen, with his initiatives towards producing low-cost shoes for the general public, whose purchasing power had been significantly reduced in the aftermath of the war. Jan set set up factories and companies in other countries like Poland, Yugoslavia, India, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. These factories were made self-sufficient and autonomous in their design, production and distribution strategies, in a move to focus them towards catering to the local population. By the early 1930s, the Baťa enterprise and Czechoslovakia were the world's leading footwear exporters. Of course, since Thomas Bata had died in 1932, the dream of Bata cities were still in the idea stage, much of the credit for their eventual build up has to go to Jan Antonin Bata. Jan launched the Bata organization into a world enterprise in the face of a world wide depression. Yet, together, Thomas and Jan designed what is today well known as the Bata system.

Baťa is also 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. He is credited with efforts to modernize his hometown providing the people with employment, and housing facilities, making him a very popular citizen in the town. He also became the mayor of Zlín.

Tomáš Baťa stated:^[1]

• "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."

[edit] Subsequent history of the company

Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash (Junkers J13 D1608) of a broken rib through the heart in 1932 near Zlín airport, trying to fly to Möhlin in Switzerland on a business trip under bad weather conditions (dense local fog). After his demise, his half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa continued to be at the helm of affairs. Jan Antonín Baťa fled to the United States before the Nazis in 1939, and later to Brazil, and relaunched the company which today operates in 68 countries.

In 1947 Thomas J. Bata and his mother Marie Baťa, as the heirs of Tomáš Baťa started legal proceedings to confirm their ownership righs. The legal proceedings, which continued until 1962, resulted in decisions in favour of the heirs. In that same year Jan A. Baťa waived any claim to the Bata companies.

[edit] Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

In a scholarly study of Tomáš Baťa as a leader and business innovator Dr. Myron Tribus 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". 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.^[2]

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 out to some manufacture specialists
• Collective task rate - defined for manufacture labour
• Profit contribution rate - received by operational managers

Also typical is so called "Baťa price" used to give a price ended almost always by number nine. Basically meaning that a price 99 or 19.99 looks apparently much better than rounded number such as 100 or 20, even though the difference is just 1 currency unit.

Aviation

For Tomáš Baťa aviation was another branch of activity - his company was apparently the world's first one to regularly use aircraft for expedient transport of not only high-echelon staff, but in case of need also e.g. skilled workers to places where their skills were needed soon - so the primary aim was the timely deployment of manpower to the spot where it was needed, not creating luxurious "royal barges" for a few chosen. He founded the famous Zlin aircraft works, starting with simple gliders, but offering, in the thirties to the eve of the WWII, several sophisticated types (e.g. the powered Zlin Z-XII, widely exported, and the Z-XIII, as well as some successful saiplanes) and even aero engines. The Moravan - Zlin factory is the direct descendant of this legacy.

[edit] In fiction

Novel Botostroj, 1933 (The Shoe-Machine) by Svatopluk Turek a communist writer portrayed Tomáš Baťa as strong willed dictator who sacrificed himself and all people around for success of the company. After being published, Jan Bata, Chief of the Bata Organization sued for defamation and tried to stop further publishing.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• [1] at www.bata.com/
• Lessons from Tomáš Baťa for the Modern Day Manager by Myron Tribus
• We are not afraid of the future - a film about Baťa and past and present employees
• Principles of the Baťa Management System I didn't know how to make the link in "Notes" active to point to the PDF, so I entered it here)