Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T03:23:20.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coming Full Circle: The Study of Big Business since 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Maury Klein
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taking a broad view of historians' work on the rise of big business in the United States over the last half-century, this article attempts to assess both where business history has been and where it may go in the future. The analysis recognizes the centrality of the impact made by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., but it also delves into other paths, including some not taken, of interest to historians. This wide-ranging interpretation also maintains the importance of big business itself as a subject worthy of historical attention and argues that its crucial role in the development of American society has not yet been considered by mainstream historians with the intensity it deserves. Musing over the nearly constant preoccupation of practitioners with defining the scope of business history as a field, the essay highlights a number of topics needing attention, suggesting that historians of business are well positioned to shed light on the growing role of business in all aspects of life in the twenty-first century.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 425 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2001

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

Allen, Frederick Lewis. Lords of Creation. New York, 1935.Google Scholar
Baltzell, E. Digby. The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
Baran, Paul A., and Sweezy, Paul M., Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Becker, William H. The Dynamics of Business-Government Relations: Industry and Exports, 1893–1921. Chicago, 1982.Google Scholar
Bell, Daniel. The End of Ideology. New York, 1962.Google Scholar
Blackford, Mansel G., and Kerr, K. Austin. Business Enterprise in American History. Boston, 1986.Google Scholar
Boulding, Kenneth E. The Organizational Revolution: A Study in the Ethics of Economic Organization. New York, 1953.Google Scholar
Bruchey, Stuart. Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People. Cambridge, Mass., 1990.Google Scholar
Bryant, Keith L., Jr. History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. New York, 1974.Google Scholar
Burnham, James. The Managerial Revolution, 4th ed. 1941; Bloomington, Ind., 1966.Google Scholar
Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870–1900. Cambridge, Mass., 1991.Google Scholar
Carosso, Vincent P. Investment Banking in America, a History. Cambridge, Mass., 1970.Google Scholar
Carosso, Vincent P. The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1845–1913. Cambridge, Mass., 1987.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, John. The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States. New York, 1963.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Giant Enterprise: Ford, General Motors, and the Automobile Industry. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D., The Railroads: The Nation’s First Big Business. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge, Mass., 1990.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Business Enterprise. Cambridge, Mass., 1962.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass., 1977.Google Scholar
Cheape, Charles W. Strictly Business: Walter Carpenter at Du Pont and General Motors. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Churella, Albert. From Steam to Diesel. Princeton, N.J., 1998.Google Scholar
Cochran, Thomas C. The American Business System: A Historical Perspective, 1900–1955. 1957; New York, 1962.Google Scholar
Cochran, Thomas C.. Business in American Life: A History. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Cochran, Thomas C.. The Inner Revolution. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
Cochran, Thomas C.. Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action. Cambridge, Mass., 1953.Google Scholar
Cochran, Thomas C., and Miller, William, Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America. 1942; New York, 1961.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur H. Business Enterprise in Its Social Setting. Cambridge, Mass., 1959.Google Scholar
Coleman, D. C., and Mathias, Peter, eds. Enterprise and History: Essays in Honour of Charles Wilson. Cambridge, U.K., 1984.Google Scholar
Dalzell, Robert F. Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. Cambridge, Mass., 1987.Google Scholar
Diamond, Sigmund. The Reputation of the American Businessman. Cambridge, Mass., 1955.Google Scholar
Dunlavy, Colleen A. Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia. Princeton, N.J., 1994.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis. Competition and Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association. Baltimore, Md., 1966.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis. The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1880–1940. Baltimore, Md., 1975.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis, and Pratt, Joseph. The Rise of the Corporate Commonwealth. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. Boston, 1958.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. American Capitalism. Boston, 1952.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The New Industrial State. Boston, 1967.Google Scholar
Grodinsky, Julius. Jay Gould: His Business Career, 1867–1892. Philadelphia, 1957.Google Scholar
Grodinsky, Julius. Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 1869–1892. Philadelphia, 1962.Google Scholar
Gunderson, Gerald. The Wealth Creators: An Entrepreneurial History of the United States. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Hacker, Louis M. The Triumph of American Capitalism. New York, 1940.Google Scholar
Hacker, Louis M.. The World of Andrew Carnegie: 1865–1901. Philadelphia, 1968.Google Scholar
Hidy, Ralph W., et al. The Great Northern Railway: A History. Boston, 1988.Google Scholar
Hidy, Ralph W., and Hidy, Muriel E.. Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882–1911. New York, 1955.Google Scholar
Hofsommer, Don L. The Southern Pacific, 1901–1985. College Station, Texas, 1986.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Daniel. The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940. Baltimore, Md., 1985.Google Scholar
Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore, Md., 1984.Google Scholar
Hughes, Jonathan R. T. The Governmental Habit: Economic Controls from Colonial Times to the Present. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
Hughes, Jonathan R. T.. The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress. 1966; New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P.. Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer. Baltimore, Md., 1971.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P.. Networks of Power: Electri?cation in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore, Md., 1983.Google Scholar
Hurst, J. Willard. The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers. Boston, 1950.Google Scholar
Hurst, J. Willard. Law and the Conditions of Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America. 1956; Madison, Wisc., 1967.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sanford M. Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in American Industry, 1900–1945. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sanford M., ed. Masters to Managers: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on American Employers. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Reese V. Images and Enterprise: Technology and the American Photographic Industry, 1839—1925. Baltimore, Md., 1987.Google Scholar
Johnson, Arthur M. The Development of American Petroleum Pipelines. Ithaca, N.Y., 1956.Google Scholar
Johnson, Arthur M., and Supple, Barry E.. Johnson, Arthur M. Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads. Cambridge, Mass., 1967.Google Scholar
Kirkland, Edward C. Dream and Thought in the Business Community. Ithaca, N.Y., 1956.Google Scholar
Kirkland, Edward C.. Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900. Cambridge, Mass., 1948.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. The Flowering of the Third America: The Making of an Organizational Society, 1850–1920. Chicago, 1993.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Baltimore, Md., 1986.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life. Hanover, N.H., 1994.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893. Garden City, N.Y., 1987.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: The Rebirth, 1894–1969. Garden City, N.Y., 1989.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury, and Kantor, Harvey A.. Prisoners of Progress: American Industrial Cities, 1850–1920. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel. Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916. Princeton, N.J., 1965.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel. The Triumph of Conservatism. New York, 1963.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel. Wealth and Power in America. New York, 1962.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, 1962.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi. The Great Merger Movements in American Business. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Lerner, Max. America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today. New York, 1957.Google Scholar
Licht, Walter. Industrializing America. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Livesay, Harold C. American Made: Men Who Shaped the American Economy. Boston, 1979.Google Scholar
Livesay, Harold C.. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business. Boston, 1975.Google Scholar
Martin, Albro. Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads, 1877–1917. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Martin, Albro. Hill, James J. and the Opening of the Northwest. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Martin, Albro. Railroads Triumphant. New York, 1992.Google Scholar
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
McCraw, Thomas K. Prophets of Regulation. Cambridge, Mass., 1984.Google Scholar
McDonald, Forrest. Insull. Chicago, 1962.Google Scholar
Miller, William, ed. Men in Business: Essays in the History of Entrepreneurship. Cambridge, Mass., 1952.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. New York, 1951.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York, 1956.Google Scholar
Miner, H. Craig. The Rebirth of the Missouri Paci?c, 1956–1983. College Station, Texas, 1983.Google Scholar
Nelson, Ralph L. Merger Movements in American Industry. Princeton, N.J., 1959.Google Scholar
Noble, David. America by Design. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
Overton, Richard C. Burlington Route. Lincoln, Neb., 1965.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. New York, 1944.Google Scholar
Pollard, Sidney. The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Cambridge, Mass., 1965.Google Scholar
Porter, Glenn. The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1910. 1973; Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992.Google Scholar
Potter, David M. People of Plenty. Chicago, 1954.Google Scholar
Prothro, James. The Dollar Decade. New York, 1954.Google Scholar
Redlich, Fritz. The Molding of American Banking. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1951.Google Scholar
Riesman, David. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, Conn., 1950.Google Scholar
Scranton, Philip. Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865–1925. Princeton, N.J., 1997.Google Scholar
Sklar, Martin J. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Sobel, Robert, and Sicilia, David B.. The Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure. Boston, 1986.Google Scholar
Stilgoe, John R. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven, Conn., 1983.Google Scholar
Stover, John F. American Railroads. Chicago, 1961.Google Scholar
Stover, John F.. History of the Illinois Central Railroad. New York, 1975.Google Scholar
Stover, John F.. The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Stover, John F.. Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
Strassman, W. Paul. Risk and Technological Innovation: American Manufacturing Methods during the Nineteenth Century. Ithaca, N.Y., 1959.Google Scholar
Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. New York, 1999.Google Scholar
Sutton, Francis X., et al. The American Business Creed. New York, 1962.Google Scholar
Taussig, F. W., and Joslyn, C. S.. American Business Leaders. New York, 1932.Google Scholar
Taylor, George Rogers, and Neu, Irene D.. The American Railroad Network, 1861–1900. Cambridge, Mass., 1956.Google Scholar
Tedlow, Richard S. New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Thorelli, Hans B. The Federal Antitrust Policy. Baltimore, Md., 1955.Google Scholar
Vietor, Richard H. K. Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America. Cambridge, Mass., 1994.Google Scholar
Wall, Joseph Frazier. Andrew Carnegie. New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Ward, James A. Railroads and the Character of America, 1820–1877. Knoxville, Tenn., 1986.Google Scholar
Warner, W. Lloyd, and Abegglen, James. Big Business Leaders in America. Boston, 1963.Google Scholar
Warner, W. Lloyd. Occupational Mobility in American Business and Industry, 1928–1952. Minneapolis, Minn., 1955.Google Scholar
Weisberger, Bernard. The Dream Maker. Boston, 1979.Google Scholar
Whyte, William H. Jr., The Organization Man. New York, 1956.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert H. Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement. Cambridge, Mass., 1962.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert H.. The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York, 1967.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert H.. The Segmented Society. New York, 1975.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Mira. The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914. Cambridge, Mass., 1970.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Mira. The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970. Cambridge, Mass., 1974.Google Scholar
Williams, William A. The Contours of American History. Cleveland, Ohio, 1961.Google Scholar
Williams, William A. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Cleveland, Ohio, 1959.Google Scholar
Wilson, Charles. The History of Unilever: A Study in Economic Growth and Social Change, 3 vols. London, 1954.Google Scholar
Yates, JoAnne. Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management. Baltimore, Md., 1989.Google Scholar
Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870–1920. Chicago, 1990.Google Scholar
Zunz, Olivier. Why the American Century? Chicago, 1998.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., “The Beginnings of ‘Big Business’ in American Industry.” Business History Review 33 (Spring 1959): 1–31.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur H. “Aggregative Business History.” Business History Review 39 (Autumn 1965): 290–91.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis. “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History.” Business History Review 44 (Autumn 1970): 279–90.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis. “Technology, Political Economy, and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis.” Business History Review 57 (Winter 1983): 471–93.Google Scholar
Hidy, Ralph W. “Business History: Present Status and Future Needs.” Business History Review 44 (Winter 1970): 483–97.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. “Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.’s The Visible Hand after Twenty Years.” Business History Review 71 (Summer 1997): 151–206.Google Scholar
Johnson, Arthur M. “Conference on the History of American Business.” Business History Review 33 (Autumn 1959): 204–10.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. “Competition and Regulation: The Railroad Model.” Business History Review 64 (Summer 1990): 311–25.Google Scholar
Klein, Maury. “Replacement Technology: The Diesel as a Case Study.” Railroad History 64 (Spring 1990): 109–20.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Daniel, M.G. Raff, and Temin, Peter, “New Economic Approaches to the Study of Business History.” Business and Economic History 26 (Fall 1997): 57–79.Google Scholar
Lipartito, Kenneth. “Culture and the Practice of Business History.” Business and Economic History 24 (Winter 1995): 1–41.Google Scholar
Livesay, Harold C. “Entrepreneurial Dominance in Businesses Large and Small, Past and Present.” Business History Review 63 (Spring 1989): 1–21.Google Scholar
Martin, Albro. “The Troubled Subject of Railroad Regulation in the Gilded Age—A Reappraisal.” Journal of American History 61 (Sept. 1974): 353–59.Google Scholar
McCraw, Thomas K. “The Intellectual Odyssey of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.” In The Essential Alfred Chandler: Essays Toward a Historical Theory of Big Business, ed. Thomas K., McCraw. Boston, 1988, pp. 1–21.Google Scholar
McCraw, Thomas K.. “Regulation in America: A Review Article.” Business History Review 49 (Summer 1975): 159–83.Google Scholar
Miller, William. “American Historians and the Business Elite.” Journal of Economic History 9 (Nov. 1949): 184–208.Google Scholar
Scranton, Philip. “Diversity in Diversity: Flexible Production and American Industrialization, 1880–1930.” Business History Review 65 (Spring 1991): 27–90.Google Scholar
Scranton, Philip, and Horowitz, Roger, “The Future of Business History.” Business and Economic History 26 (Fall 1997): 1–4.Google Scholar
Sicilia, David B. “Cochran’s Legacy: A Cultural Path Not Taken.” Business and Economic History 24 (Fall 1995): 27–39.Google Scholar
Sicilia, David B. “Distant Proximity: Writing the History of American Business since 1945.” Business and Economic History 26 (Fall 1997): 266–81.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Mira. “Business History as a Discipline.” Business and Economic History 17 (1988): 1–7.Google Scholar
Yates, JoAnne. “Using Giddens’ Structuration Theory to Inform Business History.” Business and Economic History 26 (Fall 1997): 159–83.Google Scholar