Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T14:35:42.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Big Business, Growth, and Decline

Review products

Big Business and the Wealth of Nations. Edited by ChandlerAlfred D.Jr., AmatoriFranco, and HikinoTakashi. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 608. $64.95, cloth; $24.95, paper.
Big Business: The European Experience in the Twentieth Century. By CassisYoussef. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. 280. $75.00, cloth; $24.95, paper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

G. N. von Tunzelmann
G. N. von Tunzelmann
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The downside of Chandler's success is that it has placed the large enterprise and the American economy on a pedestal, next to which eveiy other case appears a fumbling effort towards their apparent virtues. As some of the individual country studies in CAH show, well before even Chandler set out on this mission, American management consultants such as McKinsey were “exporting” the M-form company structure as their nostrum for all the world's business ills. As is shown in Fear's chapter and in several others, this involved a very simplistic diagnosis ofwhat those ills consisted of. The M-form conferred substantial advantages at a certain time and place in the evolution of industry, but it was no panacea. Furthermore, as I have suggested previously, its aetiology for comprehending its own prognoses was too shallow.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 787 - 794
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Prees, 1977.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Franklin M., and Temin, Peter. “Returns to Scale in Research and Development: What Does the Schumpeterian Hypothesis Imply?” Journal of Political Economy 81, no 1. (1973): 56–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galambos, Louis, and Sewell, Jane E.. Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merch Sharp Dohme, and Mulford, 1895–1995. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Hounshell, David A., and Smith, John K. Jr, Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, 1902–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Kozul-Wright, R. “The Myth of Anglo-Saxon Capitalism: Reconstructing the History of the American State.” In The Role of the State in Economic Change, edited by Chang, Ha-Joon and Rowthorn, Robert, 81–113. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Leonard-Barton, Dorothy. Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Susraining the Sources of Innovation. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Mowery, David C. “The Boundaries of the U.S. Firm in R&D.” In Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise, edited by Lamoureaux, Naomi R. and Raff, Daniel M. G., 147–82. Chicago: NBER/University of Chicago Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Mowery, David C., and Rosenberg, Nathan. Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nonaka, Ikujiro, and Takeuchi, Hiro. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prais, S. J.. The Evolution of Giant Firms in Britain: A Study of the Growth of Concentration in Manufacturing Industry in Britain, 1909–70. Cambridge: NlESR Cambridge University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Scazzieri, Roberto. A Theory of Production: Tasks, Processes, and Technical Practices. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Tunzelmann, G. N.. “The Supply Side: Theory and History.” In Industrial Dynamics, edited by Carlsson, Bo, 55–84. Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Tunzelmann, G. N.. Industry and Technical Progress. The Foundations of Economic Growth. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995.Google Scholar
von Tunzelmann, G. N. “Time-Saving Technical Change: The Cotton Industry in the English Industrial Revolution.” Explorations in Economic History 32, no. 1 (1995): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar