Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:02:00.903Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

High-Tech Corporatism: Management–Employee Relations in U.S. Electronics Firms, 1920s–1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Christophe Lécuyer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I examine corporative management practices in electronics firms in Boston and in Silicon Valley from the 1920s to the 1960s. Managers in several key firms developed these practices in response to political and professional ideologies and as a way to address the problems of hiring, using, and retaining a highly skilled work force. They did this independently of the welfare capitalism plans of corporations such as Eastman Kodak and before the guru theorists and work empowerment programs of the 1960s. The corporatist methods first developed in Boston and further refined in Silicon Valley later diffused to most U.S. firms in the software, computer, Internet, and biotechnology industries.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 01 September 2003 , pp. 502 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2003. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Auerbach, Felix. The Zeiss Works and the Carl Zeiss Foundation in Jena: Their Scientific, Technical, and Sociological Development Popularly Described. London, 1927.Google Scholar
Blasi, Joseph, Kruse, Douglas, and Aaron Bernstein. In the Company of Owners: The Truth about Stock Options and Why Every Employee Should Have Them. New York, 2003.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc, and Chiapello, Eve. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris, 2000.Google Scholar
Brandes, Stuart. American Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1940. Chicago, 1970.Google Scholar
Cusumano, Michael, and Selby, Richard. Microsoft Secrets. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Hayes, Dennis. Behind the Silicon Curtain: The Seduction of Work in a Lonely Era. Boston, 1989.Google Scholar
Jackson, Tim. Inside Intel. New York, 1997.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sanford. Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism since the New Deal. Princeton, N.J., 1997.Google Scholar
Knight, Robert. Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900– 1918. Berkeley, Calif., 1960.Google Scholar
Layton, Edwin. The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession. Cleveland, Ohio, 1971.Google Scholar
Morgan, Jane. Electronics in the West: The First Fifty Years. Palo Alto, Calif., 1967.Google Scholar
Packard, David. The HP Way. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Siegel, Lenny, and Markoff, John. The High Cost ofHigh Tech: The Dark Side ofthe Chip. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Donald. The General Radio Company, 1915–1965. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Thiessen, Arthur. A History of the General Radio Company. West Concord, Mass., 1965.Google Scholar
Varian, Dorothy. The Inventor and the Pilot. Palo Alto, Calif., 1983.Google Scholar
Waring, Stephen. Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory since 1945. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Layton, Edwin. “Scientists and Engineers: The Evolution of the IRE.” Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976): 1390–92.Google Scholar
Lécuyer, Christophe. “Electronic Component Manufacturing and the Rise of Silicon Valley.” Journal of Industrial History 5, no. 1 (2002): 90–113.Google Scholar
Lécuyer, Christophe. “Fairchild Semiconductor and Its Influence.” In The Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ed. Chong-Moon Lee, et al. Stanford, Calif., 2000, pp. 158–83.Google Scholar

Magazines

Business Week. Dec. 1957, April 1974, and March 1976.Google Scholar
Fortune. July 1997.Google Scholar
Harvard Business Review. May-June 1980.Google Scholar
Training. Sept. 1992.Google Scholar
Watt’s Current. Nov. 1949 and June 1956.Google Scholar

Oral Histories

James, David, interview with author, 14 Dec. 2000.Google Scholar
Moreno, Ted, interview with author, 19 July 1996.Google Scholar
Sporck, Charley, interview with author, 15 May 1995.Google Scholar
Stearns, Myrl, interview with author, 25 Nov. 1996.Google Scholar
Terman, Frederick, oral history interview conducted by Norberg, Arthur L., Charles Susskind, and Roger Hahn, 1984; Stanford University Archives and Special Collections, Palo Alto, Calif.Google Scholar
Withol, Arnold, interview with author, 9 April 1996.Google Scholar
Yelverton, Jack, interview with author, 18 Dec. 2000.Google Scholar

Dissertations

Greenberg, Jaclyn. “Industry in the Garden: A Social History of the Canning Industry and Cannery Workers in Santa Clara Valley, 1870-1920.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1985.Google Scholar
Lécuyer, Christophe. “Making Silicon Valley: Engineering Culture, Innovation, and Industrial Growth, 1930-1970.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999.Google Scholar

Archives and Unpublished Sources

Charles Litton Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.Google Scholar
Historical files of the Campus Report, Stanford University News Service, Palo Alto, Calif.Google Scholar
Stanford University Archives and Special Collections, Palo Alto, Calif.Google Scholar
Edward Ginzton PapersGoogle Scholar
Russell and Sigurd Varian PapersGoogle Scholar
Yelverton, Jack. Talk to the History of Silicon Valley Seminar, Stanford University, 23 Oct. 2001, copy in author’s possession.Google Scholar