Henning Webb Prentis Jr.

Henning Webb Prentis Jr. (July 11, 1884 - October 29, 1959) was an American industrialist, known as president of the Armstrong Cork Company, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and recipient of the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal in 1956. In the 1940s, he described the “Prentis Cycle”, according to which popular self-governance leads people from bondage to abundance and back to bondage.
Life and work.
Prentis was a son of Henning Webb Prentis Sr. and Mary Morton McNutt Prentis. He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, attended Central High School in St. Louis graduating in 1901, and obtained his AB from the University of Missouri in 1903
After his graduation in 1903 he started his career in industry. In 1907 he joined the Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he worked his way up to First Vice President in 1933. In 1934 he became the next president of the Armstrong Cork Company. In his later years he was also president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
In 1956 the American Management Association and the ASME awarded him the annual Henry Laurence Gantt Medal for distinguished achievement in industrial management as a service to the community."
The Prentis Cycle.
In a 1943 address to the University of Pennsylvania entitled Tʜᴇ Cᴜʟᴛ ᴏғ Cᴏᴍᴘᴇᴛᴇɴᴄʏ (later reprinted as Iɴᴅᴜsᴛʀɪᴀʟ Mᴀɴᴀɢᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ ɪɴ ᴀ Rᴇᴘᴜʙʟɪᴄ), Prentis described what has become known as "The Prentis Cycle" in which, he asserted, "popular self-government ultimately generates
disintegrating forces from within", as:
In a 1946 book, Prentis renamed one stage of the cycle and added two stages. The cycle, as revised, is: