Book & podcast collection

The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise

byRichard Langlois

Economist Richard Langlois reinterprets the rise of the large American corporation during the twentieth century. He examines how managerial hierarchies, mass production, professional administration, antitrust, finance, technology, and government policy created powerful enterprises and then transformed them again. Rather than treating the managerial corporation as the inevitable endpoint of business evolution, Langlois shows it as a response to specific conditions that later changed. The book connects organizational design with innovation and economic power, offering a broad history of why firms grew, how managers governed them, and why older models eventually fragmented.

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Publication date

2023

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9780691246987