The American general management degree is taken by engineers, lawyers, teachers and officers, and its premise is that management is a transferable discipline. Roughly two hundred thousand are awarded in the United States each year.
business
The dealmaker
An American occupational identity. Investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, sports representation, entertainment — all have a recognised role whose skill is bringing parties to agreement. The title is not a euphemism. It is on the business card.
Two kinds of superior
German organisations distinguish the technical superior from the disciplinary one. Two different people, two different kinds of authority, and the split is normal enough to have standard vocabulary. Authority over the work and authority over the person are treated as separate things that need not sit together.
The specialist track
Die Fachlaufbahn. The specialist career track. Larger German companies maintain a technical progression path running parallel to the management one, with equivalent grades and equivalent pay. The existence of the structure is the evidence. It concedes that a valuable person may not want to manage anybody, and builds a way for them to rise anyway.
The works agreement
A Betriebsvereinbarung between employer and works council binds both and governs how work is organised. Negotiating one is a genuine contest, and its terms determine daily working life more directly than most management decisions.
Above the standard
German engineering practice treats the standard as a floor rather than a target, and specifications are commonly written above the required value. The norm states what is sufficient. A German specification states what the engineer was willing to sign.
The mark imposed in 1887
The words Made in Germany were imposed on German goods by the British Merchandise Marks Act of 1887, intended as a warning to consumers that the product was foreign and inferior. Within a generation it had become the opposite. An insult was turned into the most valuable country-of-origin mark in the world.
Shark Tank
An American television format in which entrepreneurs negotiate investment terms live, on camera, and the negotiation is the entertainment. Millions watch people haggle over equity percentages for pleasure.
Actionable
An American business adjective applied to information, and used as a test rather than a description. Is this actionable? Information that fails it is not called wrong or incomplete. It is called interesting — which in that context is a dismissal.
Headcount and budget
American organizational power is counted in people and dollars, and both are stated plainly in reviews and negotiations. How many people do you have? is a question about standing, asked directly, and answered.