Tomáš Baťa

Tomáš Baťa (3 April 1876 – 12 July 1932) was a Czech entrepreneur and founder of the Bata shoe company. His career was cut short when he died in a plane accident due to bad weather.

Baťa's half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa took over his company, expanding it during the Great Depression. World War II resulted in much destruction of the business. After Communist governments were established in Czechoslovakia and other nations of Eastern Europe, they nationalized the Baťa enterprises, taking over the company group.

Tomáš's son Thomas J. Bata rebuilt and expanded shoe manufacturing in the company name after moving to Canada in 1939, at the time of the Nazi invasion and annexation of Czechoslovakia.

Career

Tomáš Baťa established the organization in Zlín on 24 August 1894 with 800 Austrian gulden (equivalent to $320 at the time), inherited from his mother. His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company. Though this 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.[1]

In 1904, Baťa travelled to Lynn, a city outside

Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

In a scholarly study of Tomáš Baťa as a leader and business innovator, 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.[7]'"

Wages scheme

Tomáš Baťa used 4 basic types of wages:

Also typical is so called "Baťa price", establishing a price usually ending in the number nine. He found that psychologically, a price of 99 or 19.99 was apparently more appealing to customers than a rounded number, such as 100 or 20, even though the difference is just 1 currency unit.

Aviation

Baťa considered aviation another branch of commercial activity. His company was apparently the world's first to use air transportation for travel of not only high-echelon staff, but also to send skilled workers quickly to places where their skills were critically needed. The emphasis was on timely deployment of manpower, not on the creation of prestige travel for a few chosen.

Fixed rate - paid to a technical-operative and an administrative staff

Individual order based rate - paid to some manufacture specialists

Collective task rate - defined for manufacture labour

Profit contribution rate - paid to operational managers

birth date	3 April 1876
birth place	Zlín, Moravia, Austria-Hungary
death date	12 July 1932 (aged 56)
death place	Otrokovice, Czechoslovakia
occupation	Founder of Bata Shoes
children	Thomas J. Bata

Career

Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

Death and future of company

Legacy

In fiction

See also

External links

References