Commercializing high-technology industries

Business History Review

Volumn 79, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 595-604

  Chandler Jr , Alfred D ^a  

^a HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL   (United States)

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EID: 30344457307     PISSN: 00076805     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0007680500081460     Document Type: Review

References (16)

1. Neither, by the way, did Naomi Lamoreaux, Daniel Raff, and Peter Temin, in "Beyond Markets and Hierachies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History," published in the American Historical Review.
2. They argue, "[B]y the 19805, classic Chandlerian firms frequently were being outperformed, even in their core businesses, by more specialized, vertically disintegrated rivals," so a "new synthesis" must be made to modify Chandler's framework. But, they continue, "we aim to do more than that-to provide an alternative methodology for writing business history that avoids the tendency (exemplified by Chandler but also generally characteristic of the field) to view the present as the final stage in an evolutionary process and thus, effectively, the end point of business history." For a trained historian, though possibly not for a theorist, this statement is absurd. Their new synthesis in .American Business History portrays "a New Economy" dominated by small specialized enterprises. Certainly in this age of global capitalism and multinationals, one that has been evolving since the 1880s, their view violates historical reality. Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin, "Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History," American Historical Review 106 (April 2003): 404-33.
3. This two-book series appears under the rubric "Paths of Learning: The Evolution of High Technology Industries Worldwide."
4. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977),
5. and Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
6. William S. Dutton, Du Pont: 140 Years (New York, 1959), vol. 3, ch. 5.
7. Paul Nightingale, "The Economies of Scale in Experimentation: Knowledge and Technology in Pharmaceutical R & D," Industrial and Corporate Change 9 (June 2000): 315-59.
8. Richard Whittington and Michael Mayer, The European Corporation: Strategy, Structure, and Social Science (London, 2000), 124.
9. A striking example of the potentially destructive nature of the conglomerate is the decision of the senior executives at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the creator of both audio and video, to adopt a strategy of unrelated diversification, a decision that destroyed not only their company but also the American audio and video industry.
10. On innovation in the 19205, see Thomas Nicholas, "Why Schumpeter Was Right: Innovation, Market Power, Creative Destruction in the 19203," Journal of Economic History (Dec. 2003): 1023-58. For a parallel situation, see the paragraph on concatenation in the computer industry on page 603.
11. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 236-57.
12. Chandler, Shaping the Industrial Century, 13-14. My goal is to explain the successes and failures of the individual companies in terms of technological innovation and financial return.
13. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (New York, 2001), ch. 2, esp. pp. 21-34, on RCA's becoming a conglomerate.
14. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries Ibid., 51-72.
15. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries Ibid., 91-94.
16. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries Ibid., 118.