Kenneth Hopper

Biographical Background

He is married to Claire White Hopper, a former bank executive, and lives in Hackettstown, New Jersey. His brother, William Hopper, is an investment banker, based in London. Kenneth Hopper was born Glasgow, Scotland (May 1926).

Kenneth Hopper is the son of an eminent Scottish professor of chemistry who had been raised on a small farm in Northern Ireland and educated in a one-room schoolhouse through secondary school. The father's talent, however, earned him a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Science in Dublin. Professor Hopper, being Irish, was not allowed to serve in the Army during World War I, so he found employment as a graduate foreman with British Dyestuffs ( later the Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd.). The nitroglycerine section, where he worked, was known as "the land of the one-legged stools," as plant operators could not be allowed to doze off allowing a vat of new highly explosive liquid to overheat and explode. His father, in addition to his duties at the Royal Technical College, was co-author of a respected text on organic chemistry which is still being used. Professor Hopper also headed the Scottish section for the Society of Chemical Industry. Kenneth recalls many discussions about the chemical industry around the family table, particularly the issues raised about his father's opinion that the Haber labs in Germany were much superior to any British installation. This question of the superior efficacy of various nations' manufactures was thus an early perception of Kenneth Hopper's.

Issues and Publications

A grant from the Foundation for Management Education allowed Hopper to carry out research on college graduate foremen at the Harvard Business School from 1965 to 1966, some of which was published by the University of Michigan. Entering consulting practice in the US, he provided seminars for Industrial Education International in the US, Canada and the UK and continued publishing articles on the strategy of placing college graduates in strategic manufacturing positions as foremen to get "on the ground" experience . This practice was still rare outside of American industry in the Sixties, and with the rise of a certain business school curriculum that promoted financial management over most other skills, it became rarer even in US industry in subsequent decades. His seminal article, "Can the US Stay Competitive?" raised his profile among industrialists for a time. From 1970 onwards. However, illness restricted Mr. Hopper from active consulting but allowed him to pursue research into comparative factory management from his base in New Jersey, and he developed a considerable collection of primary and secondary documents as background for a major publication. This research effort revived the interest of some academic scholars (such as Myron Tribus, emeritus Dean of the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth) in lesser known members of the US Occupation team which sparked the Japanese Miracle after World War II:

• Frank A. Polkinghorn • Charles W. Protzman • Homer M. Sarasohn • Joseph M. Juran and, of course, • W. Edwards Deming

In 1979, with his health much improved, Hopper took his studies to the Japanese, making a five-week tour of Japanese industry, sponsored by Mr. Bunzaemon Inoue, former chairman of the Sumitomo Group. He subsequently publishing several articles about his findings. He continued to publish occasionally while working with his brother, William Hopper, on a major book, The Puritan Gift. Hopper, Kenneth and William Hopper, The Puritan Gift. NY: I.B. Tauris/Macmillan, 2007. He also developed an interest in American colonial history and lectured on various subjects at Waterloo Village, a restored canal museum (now defunct) in western New Jersey. Kenneth also provided a background seminar on sailing ships for NBC news announcers, John Chancellor and David Brinkley, during the 1975 New York Bi-Centennial Tall Ships festival.

In 1994, the brothers organised and contributed to a major seminar on the work of MacArthur’s Civil Communications Section at the Japanese Embassy, London, chaired by Lord Howe, former British Foreign Secretary and attended by manufacturing, governmental and financial leaders from the European Union as well as Asian and East European nations.

Book Reviews: Among the many very positive reviews of The Puritan Gift we note that The London Financial Times called the Hoppers' book "one of the most important business books of the past decade” Stefan Stern, The Financial Times, 22 December 2009 and The Harvard Business Review reviewed it as “This astonishing book about American managerial culture … 'I’ve never read a business book that packed so much information, history, and insight into one compact volume.” Harvard Business Review, January 2010. Senior Editor, Sarah Cliffe