The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise

by Richard N. Langlois Narrated by Stephen Bowlby

Overview

The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism, brought forth what became a dominant narrative: that administrative coordination by trained professional managers is essential to the efficient running of organizations both public and private. And yet if managerialism was the apotheosis of administrative efficiency, why did both its practice and the accompanying narrative lie in ruins by the end of the century? In The Corporation and the Twentieth Century, Richard Langlois offers an alternative version: a comprehensive and nuanced reframing and reassessment of the economic, institutional, and intellectual history of the managerial era.



Langlois argues that managerialism rose to prominence not because of its inherent superiority but because of its contingent value in a young and rapidly developing American economy. By the end of the twentieth century, Langlois writes, these market-supporting institutions had reemerged to shift advantage toward entrepreneurial and market-driven modes of organization.



This magisterial new account of the rise and fall of managerialism holds significant implications for contemporary debates about industrial and antitrust policies and the role of the corporation in the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

03/20/2023

Corporations are as much a creation of war, depression, and government fiat as of scientific management, according to this sweeping history. University of Connecticut economist Langlois (The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism) examines the factors that contributed to the 20th-century rise of centrally planned corporations, distinguished by their integration of multiple business functions in a single firm (Ford, for instance, was a mining company, steel maker, electric utility, parts manufacturer, auto assembler, and retailer). These factors include antitrust laws that criminalized forms of cooperation between independent companies yet were legal within a single corporation’s business divisions (bicycle maker Schwinn was hit with an antitrust lawsuit in the 1960s for cutting exclusive deals with regional distributors, a practice that would have been legal if Schwinn owned the distributors) and the Great Depression, during which government regulation of competing ways of organizing business left the corporation as an increasingly attractive option. Langlois embeds his sharp analysis within a searching, unconventional survey of economic history, arguing, for example, that most New Deal policies did little to alleviate the Great Depression and that government coordination of war production mainly flopped. Chock-full of sophisticated economic theory rendered in lucid prose, this adds up to a bracing evaluation of a consequential and once dominant commercial entity. (June)

From the Publisher

A Foreign Affairs Best of Books

"Finalist for the Hayek Book Prize, Manhattan Institute"

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191403984
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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