Hans Blohm (economist)

Hans Blohm (born August 24, 1920 in Magdeburg ; † April 6, 2005 in Karlsruhe ) was a German economist .

The economist Hans Blohm

Life

After graduating from high school, Hans Blohm studied industrial engineering at the Technical University of Berlin . Interrupted by six and a half years of military service, he completed his studies in 1948 as a qualified engineer. After a subsequent postgraduate course at the University of Oxford , he returned to the Technical University of Berlin , where he worked as a research assistant for Waldemar Koch (politician) until 1952 and received his doctorate in engineering in 1950. At the same time he was actively involved in founding the Association of German Industrial Engineers (VWI).

In 1952 he joined Osram GmbH as an authorized signatory , where he held various management positions until 1960. As a part-time job, he completed his habilitation in 1958 with Otto Hintner at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

In 1960 he followed the call of the Technical University of Karlsruhe (today Karlsruhe Institute of Technology ) to a full professorship in business administration , initially for the subject of industrial management , in particular production management . Until 1976 he was head of the Institute for Applied Business Administration and worked in close cooperation with the cyberneticist Karl Steinbuch . As head of the commission for the introduction of industrial engineering studies, he also brought industrial engineering to the University of Karlsruhe. In addition to his work in teaching and research, he took on activities in academic self-administration: he was dean of the faculty for natural sciences and humanities and chairman of the Karlsruhe student service and the student dormitory. His role as a pioneer in business informatics should not be left unmentioned ; since 1961 he has been providing courses on "mechanical and electronic data processing" through teaching assignments to external parties and employees of the institute.

In 1976 he was appointed to the Technical University of Berlin , where he taught at the chair for production management until his retirement in 1988 . From 1979 he headed the accompanying business research there. a. on the research project “Humanization of Work” on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology ( BMFT ). He also trained managers at the German Institute for Internal Auditing, the German Hospital Institute and the Shanghai Industrial Management Training Center (SIMTC).

In addition, from 1976 to 1979 he was President of the German Society for Business Administration, which he accompanied in 1979 in the merger with the Schmalenbach Society. In the successor company, the Schmalenbach Society for Business Administration , he then worked as a board member until 1986. At the same time he took over the chairmanship of the Association of German Industrial Engineers (VWI) from 1977 to 1982.

He spent the time from 1989 until his death in 2005 as an emeritus resident in Karlsruhe. He continued to teach as a visiting professor at the Technical University of Chemnitz . In his private life , he researched the “principle of fullness” as a counter-principle to economic efficiency under the sign of scarce economic goods. He was also a member of the supervisory board of the Rietbergwerke, an honorary member of the German Institute for Internal Auditing and the VWI and a member of the advisory board of the VWI.

Hans Blohm had been married since 1948 and had two children.

plant

Hans Blohm took the scientific position that it was necessary to approach business problems as empirically and practically as possible. He always spoke out in favor of a practice-oriented, applied business administration, the task of which is to conduct empirical research and to help practitioners solve their problems. Blohm's scientific position also included the pragmatic approach to problems and the endeavor to find problem-appropriate solution methods. "His endeavor has always been to counteract the observed alienation between science and practice, between theory and empiricism and thus a development that leads on the one hand to the formulation of empirically insubstantial scientific statements and on the other hand to expert advice without theory".

According to Blohm's ideas, science and practice should form two linked control loops, as his "ideal model of the interaction between science and practice" shows.

The areas of organization and information, now known as business informatics, can be named as core areas of Hans Blohm's scientific work . Lutz J. Heinrich owes him essential suggestions for his contribution to the origin and development of business informatics as a scientific study and as a science.

His central work includes: a. to count his publications in the field of internal auditing. These contributed significantly to the fact that "from the backward-looking auditor as a 'hooker' who looks more for the culprit than for the deeper causes in the event of complaints," a constructive adviser to the management of all who participates in short, medium and long-term learning processes Levels and that the purely comprehensive revision became the forward-looking revision. As early as 1957, he saw the task of internal auditing primarily as being the "eyes and conscience" of the company management. From this he concluded that the internal audit must not be limited to regularity audits based on individual cases, but that material audits in the form of functionality and profitability audits are also part of their area of ​​responsibility. The development from a primarily case-by-case audit to an audit of structures and procedures (system audit) is based on the fact that the implementation of organizational audits is one of the main tasks of the internal audit. For the future, Blohm already saw internal auditing as an integral part of controlling in a learning system "company", which includes the methodical control of the system in the direction of short, medium and long-term goals and also adapts the organization with foresight.

The term learning organization is of fundamental importance for Blohm's view of the company as a system, of organizational design and of the importance of information and reporting. As early as the 1960s he introduced cybernetic ideas into business organization theory and pointed out parallels between the development of organizations as artificial systems and organisms as natural systems.

What is special about Blohm's view of the organization as a learning system can be summarized as follows:

1. The organization is a complex, probabilistic system . It is therefore not possible to map this system in an optimization model, the solution of which - quasi “one-step” - could determine an optimal state of the system . Organizing can therefore only mean making an organization capable of learning, i. H. Install learning processes that enable the system to develop in the direction of “good” states.
2. The organization consists of a large number of primary control loops and a superimposed meta control loop. The meta-control cycle ensures the learning ability of the organization and controls its development.
3. The control of the development of an organization through the meta-control loop is a function of the information that is fed into this control loop . Therefore, in addition to the design of the meta control cycle, the design of the information system is of decisive importance for the ability of an organization to learn .

In addition to fundamental questions from the area of organizational theory , Hans Blohm also dealt with directly practical topics, such as the problem of the transferability of the matrix organization to small and medium-sized enterprises. Blohm showed u. a. that a division or product group organization does not have to be limited to large companies, but can also represent a viable and successful path for small and medium-sized companies.

Fonts

• with H. Funke : General principles of industrial operations. Girardet, Essen 1952.
• Internal auditing as a management function in industrial companies. Girardet, Essen 1957.
• Organization. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1960.
• with Lutz J. Heinrich et al.: The annual report as a means of company policy - practical tips for preparation and evaluation. Publishing house for corporate management, Baden-Baden 1962.
• The way to the internal reporting of the future. Verlag Neue Wirtschafts-Briefe, Herne 1966.
• The design of operational reporting as a problem of management organization. Verlag Neue Wirtschafts-Briefe, Herne / Berlin 1970.
• Organization, information and monitoring. 3., completely reworked. Edition. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN 3-409-31174-2 .
• Cybernetics and marketing. Hansen and Hansen, Itzehoe 1969.
• as publisher: German Society for Business Administration: a piece of contemporary history 1935–1979. Poeschel, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-7910-0351-8 .
• with Lutz J. Heinrich: weak points in operational reporting. Publishing house for corporate management, Baden-Baden 1965.
• with Lutz J. Heinrich: How do you create a report? A four step method. Advice no. 2020. Verlag F. Baierl, Eßlingen 1967.
• with Lutz J. Heinrich, Helmut Fischer, Karl Horbelt: Data processing outside the home - introduction and decision support. AWV publication No. 246. Forkel Verlag, Stuttgart 1967.
• as publisher: Economic efficiency of corrosion protection. Edition Lack und Chemie Moeller, Filderstadt 1978, ISBN 3-921854-00-8 .
• with Thomas Beer, Ulrich Seidenberg, Herwig Silber: Production Management. 5th, completely revised. Edition. Verlag Neue Wirtschafts-Briefe, Herne 2016, ISBN 978-3-482-63025-5 .
• with Günter Danert (Ed.): Research and Development Management. Poeschel, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-7910-0356-9 .
• with Klaus Lüder, Christina Schäfer: Investment: Analysis of weak points in the investment area and investment calculation. 9., revised. and updated edition. Vahlen, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8006-3168-7 .

literature

• Lutz J. Heinrich, Klaus Lüder (Ed.): Applied business administration and corporate management. Verlag Neue Wirtschafts-Briefe, Herne / Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-482-56731-X . (Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Hans Blohm)
• Klaus J. Zink (Ed.): Socio-technological system design as a future task. Hanser, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-446-17972-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Blohm in the catalog of the German National Library
• Association of German Industrial Engineers
• Schmalenbach Society for Business Administration

Individual evidence

1. ^ TU Berlin: TUB documentation for congresses and conferences. Issue 27, Berlin 1986.
2. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Obituary: Memories of Hans Blohm. ) In: VWI-NEWS. on: t-und-m.de
3. ↑ ^{a b c} K. Lüder: Laudation and presentation of the Festschrift. In: TU Berlin: TUB documentation for congresses and conferences. Issue 27, Berlin 1986.
4. ↑ H. Blohm: The design of operational reporting as a problem of management organization. 2nd Edition. Herne / Berlin 1974, p. 147.
5. ^ Hans Blohm: The internal audit in the course of time. In: Journal for Internal Auditing. 19, 1, 1984, p. 8ff.
6. ↑ Hans Blohm: The internal audit as a function of management in industrial companies. Essen 1957, p. 31.
7. ^ Hans Blohm: Office automation and internal auditing. In: Insurance companies. 1, 1983, p. 19 ff.
8. ↑ Hans Blohm: The design of operational reporting as a problem of management organization. 2nd Edition. Herne / Berlin 1974, pp. 144 ff and Hans Blohm: Organization, information and monitoring. 3. Edition. Wiesbaden 1977, p. 29.
9. ↑ Herwig Silber: Matrix management in small and medium-sized businesses. The cross-sectional coordination function as a special element of the matrix organization, Frankfurt a. M./Thun 1985.
10. ^ Klaus Agthe: Management in stagnating industries. In: L. Heinrich, K. Lüder (Hrsg.): Applied business administration and management. Herne / Berlin 1985, p. 199.