Bookstores are filled with how-to business books on strategy, management, and marketing as well as tell all stories from corporate chieftains. All try and provide the secrets to successful businesses and yet all, to some degree, fail. They fail in their ability to provide historical context to their work of what has been effective in growing companies. They are unable to move beyond a single story or fad and provide a comprehensive understanding of business structure. Alfred Chandler, professor of history at the Harvard Business School, was able to provide broad stories on the major developments of corporations.
He was able in his three major books, Structure and Strategy, The Visible Hand, and Scale and Scope, to describe the development of corporations around the world as the driver of economic growth. He focused on detailing the ascent of the professional manager class which has been the grease that has grown business over the last century. He described the environmental differences in corporate growth around the world, contrasting the United States with other regions. He was also a visionary on the importance of coordination, logistics, and communication as a key feature in making a large corporation successful. While these books are well-written, they are not filled with pithy statements and solutions but with the careful work of a scholar who wanted to understand the developments in the business environment over the last century.
He impresses on everyone who reads his books that choices of corporations are made by the incentives and motivations of managers. There is a human element with all of the choices of managers which cannot be captured with a single theory but through the study of behavior. He made business history relevant. Perhaps we would be better off if we spent more time on this historical record than trying to glean easy solutions with today’s business books. We will miss this excellent scholar.
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