Enterprise & Society, Vol. 5 No. 3, © the Business History Conference 2004; all rights reserved.
Chandler in a Larger Frame: Markets, Transaction Costs, and Organizational Form in History
Richard N. Langlois is professor of economics at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1063, USA.
E-mail: richard.langlois{at}uconn.edu.
Abstract
In 1977, when Alfred D. Chandler's pathbreaking book The Visible Hand appeared, the large, vertically integrated, "Chandlerian" corporation had dominated the organizational landscape for nearly a century. In some interpretations, possibly including Chandler's own, The Visible Hand and subsequent works constitute a triumphalist account of the rise of that organizational form: the large, vertically integrated firm arose and prospered because of its inherent superiority, in all times and places, to more decentralized, market-oriented production arrangements. A quarter century later, however, the Chandlerian firm no longer dominates the landscape. It is under siege from a panoply of decentralized and market-like forms that often resemble some of the "inferior" nineteenth-century structures that the managerial enterprise had replaced.
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