Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE RETROSPECT
- PART TWO EIGHT REVOLUTIONS
- 6 Affluence
- 7 From Isolation to International Hegemonic Power
- 8 The Rise of the Military in American Society
- 9 The Reorganization of American Business
- 10 The Revolution in Racial Relations
- 11 The Revolution in Gender-Based Roles
- 12 Revolution in Sexual Behavior
- 13 The Demise of Privacy
- PART THREE COUNTERREVOLUTION
- PART FOUR EPILOGUE
- Index
9 - The Reorganization of American Business
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE RETROSPECT
- PART TWO EIGHT REVOLUTIONS
- 6 Affluence
- 7 From Isolation to International Hegemonic Power
- 8 The Rise of the Military in American Society
- 9 The Reorganization of American Business
- 10 The Revolution in Racial Relations
- 11 The Revolution in Gender-Based Roles
- 12 Revolution in Sexual Behavior
- 13 The Demise of Privacy
- PART THREE COUNTERREVOLUTION
- PART FOUR EPILOGUE
- Index
Summary
[The] increasingly democratic structure of English commerce is very unpopular. It prevents the long duration of great families of merchant princes … who are pushed out by the dirty crowd of new little men from the rough and vulgar crowd.
Walter BagehotA few hundred industrial megacorporations under the potential control of an even smaller group of financial institutions today represent the central core of economic power. Furthermore, these dominant industrial and financial institutions are tied together with overlapping boards of directors drawn from a limited pool of several thousand unrepresentative men and a few women with the same backgrounds, values, and affiliations.
Phillip BlumbergThe spread of a military–industrial complex – that is, the growth of a significant military stake in the midst of the private business sector – represented just one feature of a more general transformation of the American business system. In the late 1950s, the conglomerate and the multinational megacorporation bloomed to alter the American business system as nothing had since the “corporation revolution” of the late nineteenth century. The result was what can be called the “second business revolution.”
There were two major parts to the radical restructuring of the American business system in the decades after the Second World War: first, the conglomerate merger mania beginning in the late fifties and sixties; second, the rapid spread of multinational corporations throughout the era. Both were stimulated by remarkable advances in technology, especially communications and transportation technology that globalized business transactions. But cultural and political changes also played a role.
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- Information
- America TransformedSixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001, pp. 92 - 120Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006