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George Tilyou developed or perfected many of the managerial practices for amusement parks that are still in use today.
The changes caused by the industrial revolution led a number of writers and observers to focus on the new roles and responsibilities of the manager in the emerging industrial organization. Classic management theories were developed by such writers as Taylor, Gilbreth, and Mayo, based on observations and research in industrial and manufacturing settings.1 These writers' core assumption was that management was management, regardless of the setting. That theory has been challenged in recent years, as a separate literature has arisen to examine management in the service industry.2
Our research on the early development of Coney Island's Steeplechase Park, opened by George C. Tilyou in 1897, demonstrates that some of the service-management concepts that have become commonplace in the past few years were extant more than 100 years ago. As we discuss in this article, Tilyou was not only a pioneer of amusement parks, but also developed servicemanagement concepts that are still in use today, particularly those that relate to amusement parks. First, we review the differences between service management and manufacturing management. Then we examine Steeplechase Park and Tilyou's management concepts.
Although George Tilyou died in 1914, his management policies were continued by his son, Edward Tilyou, and Steeplechase Park survived (and even prospered) through numerous natural and man-made disasters-including the Depression, two world wars, several fires, and at least two tidal floods. Steeplechase could not, however, survive two social trends of the 1960s-rising crime in the surrounding neighborhood and the changes that made the real estate under the park more valuable than the park itself. Even then, the park might have survived had Tilyou's descendents been willing to maintain his original principles.3
Reviewing Service-management Concepts
Service-management researchers have concluded that the managerial concerns of the service sector diverge from those of manufacturing in three chief ways: (1) the location of the core technology, (2) the timing of production and consumption, and (3) the extent to which the product is tangible. First, the locus of production for a service is at the point of sale, meaning that the customer watches some or all of the "manufacture," while factories producing hard goods can be located...