Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
He received the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977).
[5] Chandler began looking at large-scale enterprises in the early 1950s when he assisted a team of researchers that supported Alfred P. Sloan's production of his long delayed book My Years with General Motors (1964).
Chandler's book Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (1962) examined the organization of E.I.
du Pont de Nemours and Company, Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Motors, and Sears, Roebuck and Co.
This ultimately prompted the beginning of the small business era which consisted of a multitude of "mom-and-pop" shops opening up nationwide, each meeting a different need presented by society.
Instead of replacing this economic analysis, Chandler sought to extend it -- arguing that managerial firms evolved to take advantage of productive techniques available after the rail network was in place.
As a result of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, technology was causing business processes to increase in efficiency which allowed firms to expand into several functional areas at a time.
For example, railroad companies used to primarily fulfill the need of transportation by laying down tracks in specific regions of the country.
Once inventions such as the assembly line, steam power, and the telegraph emerged, the supply for railroads finally met its demand and the industry boomed financially as operations were optimized.
This led to a surge in both horizontal and vertical integration as railroad companies were granted the ability to expand both on a financial and operational level.
The "managerial class" in America emerged as firms learned to coordinate the increasingly complex and interdependent system.
According to Steven Usselman, this ability to achieve efficiency through coordination explained the high levels of concentration in modern American industry.
While this ended up driving many "mom-and-pop" storefronts to bankruptcy, it ultimately grew the economy of the United States by creating greater wealth and opportunity for millions of Americans today.
Chandler has never argued that the management evolution brought the storm of multifunctional corporations to existence (that was technology); however, it did open the floodgates as it optimized the integrations that were necessary in order for America to grow.
Alfred Chandler has drawn many fans over the past century due to his accomplished work that eventually led to the genesis of the topic of business history.
Along with the thousands of business historians that would not be employed without his work, there are several critics who seek to extend Chandler's arguments, and some who would rather than replace it.
Much like Chandler himself, historians such as Wallace Williams and Milorad Novicevic are noticing another case of evolution that is taking place in modern business America, (refs required) one that is founded upon a need for systemization that results in globalization.
Due to recent information technological advances such as the internet and cloud networking, corporations have the capacity to expand even further into regions and areas unknown, thus concentrating the economy more than before.
As a result of Chandler's findings, we are in a much better situation now that we possess knowledge and documentation of what used to be the business realm, in order to predict what is yet to come.
In sociology, prior to Chandler's research, some sociologists assumed there were no differences between governmental, corporate, and non-profit organizations.
Chandler's focus on corporations clearly demonstrated that there were differences, and this thesis has influenced organizational sociologists' work since the late 1970s.
Hatten, Kenneth J., Schendel, Dan E., and Cooper, Arnold C., 1978, A strategic model of the U.S. brewing industry: 1952-1971, Academy of Management Journal, vol.
Huff, Anne Sigismund, and Reger, Rhonda Kay, 1987, A review of strategic process research, Journal of Management, vol.
