Abstract

The article focuses on leadership changes and other strategic changes in times of crisis. Usually in the history of human institutions including business enterprises, there are sharp temporal breaking points, when leadership changes, or during crisis periods, when strategic decisions are made that change directions or set new courses. Such has not been the case of business man Levi Strauss in the period covered in this memoir. Here is a record of growth and success reflecting both overlapping and unbroken executive leadership and control and the gradual adjustment of policies without the pressures of sharp crises or threatened catastrophes. The metaphor of the continuous spectrum, or of overlapping spectra, seems the most appropriate to depict the processes of growth and adjustments and managerial guidance over the years. This is not to say that there were no strategic decisions or moves or milestones in the decision processes, but merely that these were not, for the most part, episodic in nature. Of course, choices or decisions had to be made from time to time among policies, personnel, and many other aspects of the operations.