Alfred DuPont Chandler Jr. (September 15, 1918 – May 9, 2007) was a professor of business history at Harvard Business School and

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

, who wrote extensively about the scale and the management structures of modern corporations. His works redefined business and economic history of industrialization. He received the

Pulitzer Prize for History The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history ...

for his work, '' The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business'' (1977). He was a member of both the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

and the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. He has been called "the doyen of American business historians".

Family and life

Chandler was the great-grandson of Henry Varnum Poor. "Du Pont" was apparently a family name given to his grandfather because his great-grandmother was raised by the Du Pont family, and there are other connections as well. Chandler graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1936 and

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1940. After World War II, he returned to Harvard, finished his M.A. in 1946, and earned his doctorate in 1952 under the direction of Frederick Merk. He taught at M.I.T. and

before arriving at Harvard Business School in 1970.

Publications

Chandler used the papers of his ancestor Henry Varnum Poor, a leading analyst of the railway industry, the publisher of the ''

American Railroad Journal ''Railway Age'' is an American trade magazine for the rail transport industry. It was founded in 1856 in Chicago (the United States' major railroad hub) and is published monthly by Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation. History The magazine's ...

'', and a founder of Standard & Poor's, as a basis for his Ph.D. thesis. Chandler began looking at large-scale enterprise in the early 1960s. His 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 ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its roo ...

, General Motors, and Sears, Roebuck and Co. He found that

managerial Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities ...

organization An organization or organisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is an legal entity, entity—such as ...

developed in response to the

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

business strategy In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessmen ...

. The book was voted the eleventh most influential management book of the 20th century in a poll of the Fellows of the

Academy of Management The Academy of Management is a professional association for scholars of management and organizations that was established in 1936. It publishes several academic journals, organizes conferences, and provides others forums for management professors ...

. This emphasis on the importance of a cadre of managers to organize and run large-scale corporations was expanded into a "managerial revolution" in ''The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business'' (1977) for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. He pursued that book's themes further in ''Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism'', (1990) and co-edited an anthology on the same themes, with Franco Amatori and

Takashi Hikino is specially appointed professor at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University after serving as associate professor of industrial and business organization at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University where he taught industr ...

, ''Big Business and the Wealth of Nations'' (1997).

''The Visible Hand''

Chandler's masterwork was '' The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business'' (1977). His first two chapters looked at traditional owner-operated small business operations in commerce and production, including the largest among them, the slave plantations in the South. Chapters 3-5 summarize the history of railroad management, with stress on innovations not just in technology but also in accounting, finance and statistics. He then turned to the new business operations made possible by the rail system in mass distribution, such as jobbers, department stores and mail order. A quick survey (ch 8) review mass innovation in mass production. The integration of mass distribution and mass production (ch 9-11) led to many mergers and the emergence of giant industrial corporations by 1900. Management for Chandler was much more than the CEO, it was the whole system of techniques and included middle management (ch 11) as well as the corporate structure of the biggest firms, Standard Oil, General Electric, US Steel, and DuPont (ch 13-14). Chandler argued that managerial firms evolved in order to take advantage of productive techniques available after the rail network was in place. These firms had a higher productivity and lower costs resulting in higher profits. The firms created the "managerial class" in America because they needed to coordinate the increasingly complex and interdependent system. According to Steven Usselman, this ability to achieve efficiency through coordination, and not some anti-competitive monopolistic greed by robber barons, explained the high levels of concentration in modern American industry.

Organizational synthesis

Along with economist

Oliver E. Williamson Oliver Eaton Williamson (September 27, 1932 – May 21, 2020) was an American economist, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Elinor Ostro ...

and historians Louis Galambos, Robert H. Wiebe, and Thomas C. Cochran, Chandler was a leading historian of the notion of organizational synthesis. He argued that during the 19th century, the development of new systems based on steam power and electricity created a

Second Industrial Revolution The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The Fi ...

, which resulted in much more capital-intensive industries than had the industrial revolution of the previous century. The mobilization of the capital necessary to exploit these new systems required a larger number of workers and managers, and larger physical plants than ever before. More particularly, the thesis of ''The Visible Hand'' is that, counter to other theses regarding how

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

functions, administrative structure and managerial coordination replaced Adam Smith's "

invisible hand The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the British moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the unintended greater social benefits and public good brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mention ...

" (market forces) as the core developmental and structuring impetus of modern business. In the wake of this increase of industrial scale, three successful models of capitalism emerged, which Chandler associated with the three leading countries of the period:

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

("personal capitalism"), the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

("competitive capitalism") and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

("cooperative capitalism.") Despite the important differences in these three models, the common thread among the developed nations is that the large industrial firm has been the engine of growth in three ways: first, it has provided focal points for capital and labor on large scales; second, it became the educator whereby a nation learned the pertinent technology and developed managerial skills; third, it served as the core around which medium and small firms that supply and serve it grew.

Influence

Chandler's work was somewhat ignored in history departments, but proved influential in business, economics, and sociology. In the business field, Chandler, along with Kenneth R. Andrews and Igor Ansoff, has been credited with the foundational role in introducing and popularizing the concept of business strategy. In sociology, prior to Chandler's research, some sociologists assumed there were no differences between governmental, corporate, and nonprofit organizations. Chandler's focus on corporations clearly demonstrated that there were differences, and this thesis has influenced organizational sociologists' work since the late 1970s. It also motivated sociologists to investigate and critique Chandler's work more closely, turning up instances in which Chandler assumed American corporations acted for reasons of efficiency, when they actually operated in a context of politics or conflict.

Neil Fligstein Neil Fligstein (born May 23, 1951) is an American sociologist and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his work in economic sociology, political sociology, and organizational theory. He has produced both empiric ...

, "Chandler and the Sociology of Organizations," ''Business History Review,'' Summer 2008, Vol. 82 Issue 2, pp 241-250

Bibliography

* Chandler, Alfred D. "The beginnings of 'big business' in American industry" ''Business History Review'' 33#1 (1959): 1-31. * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., 1962/1998, ''Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise'' (MIT Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. ed. 1964, ''Giant Enterprise: Ford, General Motors, and the Automobile Industry. Sources and Readings'' (Harcourt, Brace & World). * Chandler, Alfred D. "The railroads: pioneers in modern corporate management" ''Business History Review'' 39#1 (1965): 16-40
in JSTOR
* Chandler, Alfred D. "Anthracite coal and the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the United States" ''Business History Review'' 46#2 (1972): 141-181. * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 1977, '' The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business'' (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. and Herman Daems, eds. 1980, ''Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise'' (Harvard University Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. "The emergence of managerial capitalism" ''Business History Review'' 58#4 (1984): 473-503. * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. and Richard S. Tedlow, eds. 1985, ''The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions'' (R. D. Irwin). * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 1990, ''Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism'' (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. "What is a firm?: A historical perspective" ''European Economic Review'' 36#2 (1992): 483-492. * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. and James W. Cortada, eds. 2000, ''A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present'' (Oxford University Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 2001, ''Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries'' (Harvard University Press). * Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 2005, ''Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries'' (Harvard University Press). * Chandler, Alfred Dupont Jr. 1988, ''The Essential Alfred Chandler: Essays Toward a Historical Theory of Big Business'' Thomas K. McCraw, ed. (Harvard Business School Press).

References

External links

* *
Summary of ''The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business'' by Max Olson
*

Archives and records

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. papers
at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.
Poor family Papers, 1791-1921.Schlesinger Library
, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Additional papers of the Poor family, 1778-2008.Schlesinger Library
, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 1918 births 2007 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Economic historians Harvard College alumni Harvard Business School faculty Historians of the United States Johns Hopkins University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty People from New Castle County, Delaware Bancroft Prize winners Pulitzer Prize for History winners Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Tower Hill School alumni 20th-century American Episcopalians American male non-fiction writers Members of the American Philosophical Society