Reflections on global business and modern Italian enterprise by a stubborn "Chandlerian"

Business History Review

Volumn 71, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 309-318

  Amatori, Franco ^a  

^a BOCCONI UNIVERSITY   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0031329663     PISSN: 00076805     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3116164     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (with the assistance of Takashi Hikino), Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
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).
3. The necessity of keeping together the two terms is emphasized in Suzanne Berger and Ronald Dore, eds., National Diversity and Global Capitalism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1996).
4. A clear-cut critical position in this respect is taken by Youssef Cassis, Big Business: The European Experience, 1900-1990 (New York, forthcoming).
5. See Geoffrey Jones, "Global Perspectives and British Paradoxes," above.
6. Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets, and Technology in Nineteenth Century Industrialization," in Past and Present (Aug. 1985): 108.
7. David S. Landes. "Small is Beautiful. Small is Beautiful?" in Fondazione ASSI di Storia e Studi sull'Iinpresa, Istituto per la Storia dell'Umbria Contemporanea, eds., Pircola e grande impresa: un problema storico (Milan, 1987).
8. Philip Scranton offers a different argument from the one advanced by Sabel and Zeitlin. Scranton lias 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 Philip Scranton, "Diversity in Diversity: Flexible Production and American Industrialization, 1880-1930," in Business History Review (Spring 1991): 27-90.
9. See also Chandler, "The Computer Industry: the First Half of the Century," in Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence, ed. David B. Yoffie (Boston, Mass., 1997).
10. Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility (New York, 1994).
11. Chandler and Hikino, "The Large Industrial Enterprise and the Dynamics of Modern Economic Growth," in Big Business and the Wealth of Nations, ed. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Franco Amatori, and Takashi Hikino (New York, 1997).
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, Thomas K. McCraw, ed., America Versus Japan (Boston, Mass., 1986).
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, Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York,'1990), 210-225 and 421-155; Michael Best, The New Competition (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), chaps. 7-8; and Richard M. Locke, Remaking the Italian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995).
17. On the Italian success story see, for example, Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York,'1990), 210-225 and 421-155; Michael Best, The New Competition (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), chaps. 7-8; and Richard M. Locke, Remaking the Italian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995).
18. On the Italian success story see, for example, Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York,'1990), 210-225 and 421-155; Michael Best, The New Competition (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), chaps. 7-8; and Richard M. Locke, Remaking the Italian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995).
19. The quotation appears on p. 628.