There is a saying circulating in western academic circles: "Before Chandler in the field of enterprise history." This vividly expresses Alfred D. Chandler Jr.' s great pioneering contribution to the study of enterprise history.
Before him, the study of enterprise history was mostly about the stories of individual enterprises and entrepreneurs. On the basis of many cases, Chandler extracted the theme of "establishing enterprise history as an independent and important research field" with universal theoretical significance, which had a wide and far-reaching impact on economics, history, management and sociology.
Chandler firmly believes that modern large enterprises are the most important creators of national wealth and the engine of capitalist economic development. The organizational ability of enterprise's large-scale production and circulation not only provides the power source for enterprise growth, but also provides the growth power that leads to the rise and fall of national economy in the competition of international industrial leadership, which determines the rise and fall of enterprises and countries.
Chandler has always believed that large enterprises grow up in market competition, because management ability can only be forged under such conditions. He once commented that under the central planned economy, the development of organizational capacity is greatly limited because the relevant decisions of enterprises can only be made by planning institutions. Therefore, in terms of organizational ability, large enterprises can be pieced together without administrative orders.
Like any scholar, some of Chandler's views have also been questioned and criticized. For example, some people criticized him for attributing all the reasons for organizational innovation to technology; Some people also question whether "vertically integrated" large enterprises are outdated in the era of economic globalization and Internet. Some critics criticized him for focusing only on top management and ignoring labor issues. These views are reasonable, but no one denies Chandler's contribution.
In fact, there is little controversy about Chandler and his research, which is rare in academic circles because his achievements are overwhelming; It is because of his research that people have a systematic understanding of the causes and evolutionary dynamics of modern large-scale industrial enterprises. His rigorous history and conclusive evidence set a benchmark for corporate history and even general academic research.
Alfred Dupont Chandler Jr (19 18-2007) is famous for his research on corporate history. To a great extent, he initiated the research field of enterprise history (which Americans call business history). In English abbreviations, BC is BC, and AC is ad. American Businessweek once used this word to praise Chandler: "In business history, BC means before Chandler." So the era of Shang history is also called AC (after Chandler). Compared with Chandler's AC, someone pulled Drucker out, calling it the era of managing AD (after Drucker). From this, it is not difficult to see Chandler's academic status. It is said that when Chandler began to study corporate history, there were only 13 relevant scholars in the United States, but when he died in 2007, there were 1300 scholars engaged in this research. If Max Weber, a German sociologist, provides an ideal organizational model for management, then Chandler, an American corporate historian, provides a realistic organizational evolution trajectory for management. From 65438 to 0962, Chandler published his first important book, Strategy and Structure: Several Chapters in the History of American Industrial Enterprises. Taking DuPont and General Motors as the main cases, he studied in detail the transformation process of American large enterprises from linear functional structure to multi-sector structure in the early 20th century, and put forward the theme of "structure following strategy", that is, the expansion strategy of enterprises must follow the corresponding structural changes. Because of this masterpiece, Chandler is considered as one of the founders of strategic management; The interaction between strategy and structure has since become the eternal theme of enterprise strategy research.
1977, Chandler's second major book, The Visible Hand: The Management Revolution of American Enterprises, came out and won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1978. In this book, Chandler combines the growth of American large enterprises with another aspect of this process-the replacement of business owners by professional managers in management functions, and defines it as "management revolution". As a result of this management revolution, the "visible hand" (administrative coordination within modern enterprises) has replaced Adam Smith's "invisible hand" (market coordination) in many aspects and has become an important means of resource allocation in modern industrial economy.
Of course, Chandler does not deny the overall role of the market economy. In his own words, "it must be emphasized that the new manager-style enterprises have not replaced the market and become the primary force in determining the provision of goods and services"; However, "new enterprises do replace the market to coordinate and integrate the flow of goods and services from raw material production to several production processes to sales to final consumers". Importantly, he believes that the coordination of production and marketing processes and the replacement of business owners by large-scale management organizations are the source of productivity improvement.
1990, when Chandler was 72 years old, he published his third landmark book, Scale and Scope: the Motive Force of Industrial Capitalism. In this book, his vision expanded to the world stage. Chandler selected 200 largest industrial enterprises from the three major industrial powers of the United States, Britain and Germany and investigated their dynamic development from 1870 to 1990. He proved that industrial and commercial enterprises played a central role in the industrial economic development of the United States, Britain and Germany-by developing their organizational capabilities. This theme is contrary to the viewpoint of mainstream economics, which regards the growth source of output as the growth of production factors or factor productivity. But for Chandler, the decisive factor that makes the United States and Germany surpass Britain is not only the investment rate of material capital, nor the personal quality or culture of the government and entrepreneurs, but the development of professional management and organizational system that supports the development of "vertically integrated" large enterprises. He expounded the blind spot of mainstream economics: organizational innovation is an integral part of "technological" progress, while investment in management systems and structures in production, distribution and sales is an integral part of the formation of total capital.
After the trilogy of big enterprises was completed one after another, Chandler ended the investigation of a single company in 1993 and began to focus on the summary and analysis of the evolution of high-tech industry, chemical industry and pharmaceutical industry. Of course, the research path has not changed in essence, and we should start with the comments of key enterprises in the industry, which determine the fate of the whole industry in the country. So far, the most important research achievement at this stage is Shaping the Industrial Age: The Extraordinary Course of Modern Chemical Industry and Pharmaceutical Industry published in 2005. In this book, which was created by his skillful chronicle skills, Professor Chandler eloquently and perfectly demonstrated his central idea about the gradual deepening of industrial transformation. This central idea is the comprehensive learning foundation of enterprises following a certain cognitive path. This comprehensive learning foundation is interpreted as the dynamic organizational knowledge and organizational ability needed to enter a specific business niche market. The key point is that the comprehensive learning foundation of enterprises initially determines a continuous learning path of industrial organizations, and it is they that establish a direction of industrial evolution. Leviathan: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (co-edited), Cambridge University Press, 2005.
The Formation of the Industrial Century: The Amazing Story of Modern Industry and Pharmaceutical Industry, Harvard University Press, 2005.
Inventing the electronic century: an epic story of consumer electronics and computer industry, free press, 200 1.
A Country Changed by Information: How Information Changed America from Colonial Times to Today's Times, Oxford University Press, 2000.
Dynamic Enterprise-The Role and Region of Technology, Strategy and Organization (co-edited), Oxford University Press, 1998.
Big Enterprises and National Wealth (co-edited), Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Scale and scope, Harvard University Press, 1994.
Bureaucracy of Managers: A Comparative Perspective of the Rise of Modern Industrial Enterprises, Harvard University Press, 1980.
The innovation of general motors manager. ), Arnold Press, 1979.
Dupont and the Establishment of Modern Company, Harper and Law Press, 197 1.
Railway: the largest enterprise in the United States, Columbia University Press, 1965.
Strategy and structure, MIT press, 1962.
Poole- Editor, Analyst and Reformer, Harvard University Press, 1956.
Roosevelt's Letters (co-edited), Harvard University Press, 195 1-54.
Among them, three books are recognized as classics: The Visible Hand, Strategy and Structure, and Scale and Scope, among which The Visible Hand is the most famous. This book won the Bankloft Award, the highest prize of historical works, and also won the Pulitzer Prize for its detailed investigative description.