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Reflections on Global Business and Modern Italian Enterprise by a Stubborn “Chandlerian”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Franco Amatori
Franco Amatori
Affiliation:
Franco Amatori is professor of economic history atBocconi University, Milan, Italy.
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Extract

It is perfectly correct to place the work of Alfred Chandler at the center of a discussion of globalization as seen by business historians. No other author in our field of studies has offered us so much both in terms of research results as well as tools for the analysis and definition of the global characteristics of the modern large enterprise. It is enough in this respect to consider his last book, Scale and Scope, where the author examined the history of six hundred firms (the top two hundred in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany) for the period from the 1880s to the 1940s.

Type
Essays
Information
Business History Review , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 309 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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References

1 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, (with the assistance of Hikino, Takashi), Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).Google Scholar

2 The work of Alfred Chandler has been very much debated in the course of the years. Recently, the most interesting and provocative discussion was held at the “Symposium” of the Business History Conference, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 17–19 March 1995. See Leslie Hannah, “The American Miracle, 1875–1950 and After: A View in the European Mirror,” the subsequent interventions by Alfred Chandler and Takashi Hikino, Mary O'Sullivan, Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Patrick Fridenson, and the rebuttal of Leslie Hannah. All can be found in Business and Economic History 24 (Winter 1995). Business History Review.

3 The necessity of keeping together the two terms is emphasized in Berger, Suzanne and Dore, Ronald, eds., National Diversity and Global Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1996).Google Scholar

4 A clear-cut critical position in this respect is taken by Cassis, Youssef, Big Business: The European Experience, 1900–1990 (New York, forthcoming).Google Scholar

5 See Geoffrey Jones, “Global Perspectives and British Paradoxes,” above.

6 Sabel, Charles F. and Zeitlin, Jonathan, “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets, and Technology in Nineteenth Century Industrialization,” in Past and Present (Aug. 1985): 108.Google Scholar

7 Landes, David S., “Small is Beautiful. Small is Beautiful?” in Fondazione ASSI di Storia e Studi sull'Impresa, Istituto per la Storia dell'Umbria Contemporanea, eds., Piccola e grande impresa: un problema storico (Milan, 1987).Google Scholar

8 Philip Scranton offers a different argument from the one advanced by Sabel and Zeitlin. Scranton has emphasized the evolution of the economic activities of a specific region, rather than a firm or sector. He has demonstrated how small and big business co-exist and cooperate in this area. See Scranton, Philip, “Diversity in Diversity: Flexible Production and American Industrialization, 1880–1930,” in Business History Review (Spring 1991): 27–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See also Chandler, , “The Computer Industry: the First Half of the Century,” in Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence, ed. Yoffie, David B. (Boston, Mass., 1997).Google Scholar

10 Harrison, Bennett, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

11 Chandler, and Hikino, , “The Large Industrial Enterprise and the Dynamics of Modern Economic Growth,” in Big Business and the Wealth of Nations, ed. Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, Amatori, Franco, and Hikino, Takashi (New York, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 I have provided a summary of the Italian story in “Italy: the Tormented Rise of Organizational Capabilities Between Government and Families,” in Big Business and the Wealth of Nations, ed. Chandler, et al.

13 Andrei Yu. Yudanov, “USSR: Large Enterprises in the USSR. The Functional Disorder,” in Big Business and the Wealth of Nations.

14 See, for instance, McCraw, Thomas K., ed., America Versus Japan (Boston, Mass., 1986).Google Scholar

15 Franco Amatori, “Beyond State or Market: Italy's Impossible Search for a Third Way,” paper presented at the International Colloquium on the Rise and Fall of State-Owned Enterprise in the Western World, Milan, 10–12 Oct. 1996.

16 On the Italian success story see, for example, Porter, Michael E., The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York, 1990), 210–225 and 421–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Best, Michael, The New Competition (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), chaps. 7–8Google Scholar; and Locke, Richard M., Remaking the Italian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995).Google Scholar

17 The quotation appears on p. 628.