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Big Business, Growth, and Decline

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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
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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

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