The 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.