In recent years, widespread organisational change in large corporations has almost invariably led to work intensification and increased stress for managers. Managing in the Modern Corporation ...explains how and why large companies have changed their organisational structures and philosophies, focusing in particular on how these changes affect the careers of middle managers. Based on in-depth interviews with over two hundred middle and senior managers working in large corporations in the USA, UK and Japan, it shows how the working lives of managers have been subjected to major disruption, involving work intensification and reduced opportunities for career progression. Furthermore, it argues that such widespread overwork and poor treatment of highly skilled and highly motivated staff has created a major international problem that must be addressed. The book presents a range of solutions to this important problem, suggesting that there are possibilities for saner, less brutal organisational environments.
Representing ten years of research into the history of the managerial business system, this book concentrates on patterns of growth and competitiveness in the U.S., Germany, and Great Britain, ...tracing the evolution of large firms into multinational giants and orienting the late twentieth century's most important developments.
Organizing America Perrow, Charles; Perrow, Charles
2002., 20090110, 2009, 2002, 2002-01-01
eBook
American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more ...employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. Critics railed against the nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and "wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power become transformed in one century? Bountiful resources, a mass market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept private organizations small and required consideration of the public good. In America, the courts and business-steeped legislators removed regulatory constraints over the century, centralizing industry and privatizing the railroads.
From bank bailouts and corporate scandals to the financial panic of 2008 and its lingering effects, corporate governance in America has been wracked with crises. Amid a weakening system of checks and ...balances in which corporate executives have little incentive to protect shareholder interests, U.S. corporations are growing larger and more irresponsible at the same time. But dependence on corporate profit was crucial to the early republic's growth, success, and security: despite protests that incorporated business was an inefficient and potentially corrupting system, U.S. state governments chartered more corporations per capita than any other nation-including Britain-effectively making the United States a "corporation nation." Drawing on legal and economic history, Robert E. Wright traces the development and decline of corporate institutions in America, connecting today's financial failures to deteriorating corporate law.In the nineteenth century, checks and balances kept managerial interests aligned with those of stockholders, and public opinion grew supportive as corporations raised billions of dollars to finance infrastructure such as transportation networks, financial systems, and manufacturing operations. But many of these checks and balances were dismantled after the Civil War, allowing leeway for the managerial malfeasance that spiraled into economic crisis in the twenty-first century. Bolstered with archival and original data, including the first complete count of American business corporations before the Civil War,Corporation Nationmakes a compelling argument for improved internal governance and more effective external government regulation.
This is a major comparative study of big business in the three leading European nations across the course of the 20th Century. Drawing on a carefully constructed sample of leading companies from the ...UK, France, and Germany, the author analyses the relationship between corporate and national economic performance; the impact of national difference on business performance and practice; the role of large firms; and the composition and influence of the business elites in each country and their educational and training backgrounds.
While America's relationship with Britain has often been deemed unique, especially during the two world wars when Germany was a common enemy, the American business sector actually had a greater ...affinity with Germany for most of the twentieth century.American Big Business in Britain and Germanyexamines the triangular relationship between the American, British, and German business communities and how the special relationship that Britain believed it had with the United States was supplanted by one between America and Germany.
Volker Berghahn begins with the pre-1914 period and moves through the 1920s, when American investments supported German reconstruction rather than British industry. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to a reversal in German-American relations, forcing American corporations to consider cutting their losses or collaborating with a regime that was inexorably moving toward war. Although Britain hoped that the wartime economic alliance with the United States would continue after World War II, the American business community reconnected with West Germany to rebuild Europe's economy. And while Britain thought they had established their special relationship with America once again in the 1980s and 90s, in actuality it was the Germans who, with American help, had acquired an informal economic empire on the European continent.
American Big Business in Britain and Germanyuncovers the surprising and differing relationships of the American business community with two major European trading partners from 1900 through the twentieth century.
Otiginally published in 1975. At the time that Louis Galambos published The Public Image of Big Business in America in 1975, America had matured into a bureaucratic state. The expression of the ...military-industrial complex and big business grew so pervasive that the postwar United States was defined in large part by its citizens' participation in large-scale organizational structures. Noticing this development, Galambos maintains that the "single most significant phenomenon in modern American history is the emergence of giant, complex organizations." Today, bureaucratic organizations influence the day-to-day lives of most Americans—they gather taxes, regulate businesses, provide services, administer welfare, provide education, and on and on. These organizations are defined by their hierarchical structure in which the power of decision-making is allotted according to abstract rules that create impersonal scenarios. Bureaucracies have developed as a result of technological changes in the second half of the nineteenth century. Based on the premise that these structures had a stronger influence on modern America than any other single phenomenon, this book explores the public's response to the growth of the power and influence of bureaucracy from the years 1880 through 1930. What results is an examination of the social perception of bureaucracy and the development of bureaucratic culture.
The Big End of Town Fleming, Grant; Merrett, David; Ville, Simon
02/2004
eBook
Never before had a book been published which provides such a comprehensive study of Australian corporate leadership over the past 100 years. Written by a team of economic historians The Big End of ...Town, first published in 2004, is a proper business history of twentieth-century Australia. This book traces the evolution of large business enterprises in Australia, from the giants of the nineteenth century - such as Dalgety's, CSR and BHP - to the contemporary leaders in Newscorp and Qantas. It delves into why the market leaders became the major players, examines what was crucial to their success, and their roles in leading the Australian economy. By investigating their evolution this book provides a useful evaluation of the factors that have led to their competitive success and provides an essential guide for all businesses in Australia and beyond.
Although observers of the Pakistani economy are well aware that a small number of family groups, popularly called "the twenty-two families," dominates the industrial structure of the country, the ...actual effects of this concentration of economic power on income distribution and on other areas of widespread social and political concern arc less well understood. In this important work, Lawrence J. White uses the concepts of industrial organization analysis to achieve an overall view of the problems stemming from the marked industrial concentration in Pakistan.
After discussing the economic effects of industrial concentration as they apply generally to less developed countries, Professor White reviews the Pakistani experience, estimating the overall concentration of power that exists in manufacturing, banking, and insurance. Following an estimate of the extent of concentration in individual markets, he examines the origins of this concentration of power and analyzes its economic and noneconomic effects in Pakistan. The author concludes with a review of the policies that Pakistan has pursued in dealing with industrial concentration and suggests new courses of action for the future.
Originally published in 1974.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
What are the political motivations behind firms' decisions to adopt policies that self-regulate their behavior in a manner that is beyond compliance with state, federal and local law? Public Forces ...and Private Politics in American Big Business advances a new understanding of the firm as a political actor that expands beyond the limited conceptualizations offered by economists and organization theorists. Timothy Werner develops a general theory of private politics that is tested using three case studies: the environment, gay rights and executive compensation. Using the conclusions of these case studies and an analysis of interviews with executives at 'Fortune 500' firms, Werner finds that politics can contribute significantly to our understanding of corporate decision-making on private policies and corporate social responsibility in the United States.
