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Technology, Political Economy, and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Louis Galambos
Affiliation:
Louis Galambos is professor of history at theJohns Hopkins University.

Abstract

In this suggestive essay, Professor Galambos surveys the large number of books and articles, published since 1970, that together point toward a new “organizational synthesis” in American history. Expanding upon an earlier, more tentative essay on the same subject published in the Autumn 1970 issue of the Business History Review, he contrasts the widely disparate postures adopted in recent years by historians studying organizational behavior. His survey reveals a rich diversity of opinion, less reliant than was previous scholarship upon abstractions drawn from the social sciences. This diversity of opinion, Galambos concludes, provides the organizational synthesis with much of its continued vitality, and makes possible “the kind of moral judgments that have always characterized the best historical scholarship.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1983

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References

1 Galambos, Louis, “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History,” Business History Review, 44 (Autumn 1970), 279–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar: reprinted in Perkins, Edwin J., ed., Men and Organizations: The American Economy in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1977), 15.Google Scholar

2 See the following: Cuff, Robert D., “American Historians and the ‘Organizational Factor,’Canadian Review of American Studies, 4 (Spring 1973), 1931CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, Tom G., “Agricultural History and the ‘Organizational Synthesis’; A Review Essay,” Agricultural History, 48 (April 1974), 313–25Google Scholar; Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr, “The Organizational Interpretation of American History: A New Synthesis,” Prospects, 4 (1979), 611–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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4 Berkhofer, “The Organizational Interpretation,” 611–29. One other general treatment is my own — see Galambos, Louis, America at Middle Age: A New History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1982)Google Scholar — and I make use of that synthesis in the conclusion to this article.

5 Some of this work was done by authors who explicitly placed their studies in an organizational context. But many of the historians — especially those dealing with political history and the history of technology — attached their work to other conceptual frameworks. I have lumped together these disparate analyses when they have, in my judgment, made important contributions to our understanding of the development of America's modern large-scale institutions.

6 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, 1962).Google Scholar For a few examples of the work related to this book see Didricksen, Jon, “The Development of Diversified and Conglomerate Firms in the United States, 1920–1970,” Business History Review, 46 (Summer 1972), 202–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Channon, Derek F., The Strategy and Structure of British Enterprise (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar; Rumelt, Richard P., Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar; Williamson, Harold F., ed., Evolution of International Management Structures (Newark, 1975).Google Scholar

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8 See, for instance, Hounshell, David A., “Commentary/On the Discipline of the History of American Technology,” Journal of American History, 67 (March 1981), 854–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the same author's From the American System to Mass Production: The Development of Manufacturing Technohgy in the United States, 1800–1932 (forthcoming, Johns Hopkins University Press).

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11 Chandler, The Visible Hand, p. 11.

12 Ibid., pp. 474, 476, 483.

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18 See William N. Parker's discussion of this point in “American Capitalism: The Differentiation from European Origins” (Sapporo Cool Seminar on American Studies, Hokkaido University, 1981), esp. 22–24. An International Conference on Business History (the Fuji Conference) has been meeting since 1976 and regularly publishing comparative studies. See also Williamson, Evolution of International Management Structures; Thomas, Rosamund, The British Philosophy of Administration: A Comparison of British and American Ideas, 1900–1939 (New York, 1978).Google Scholar Many of the studies in Continental and British institutions have had a built-in comparative concept because they have followed the major analyses of the U.S. experience. See Channon, The Strategy and Structure of British Enterprise; Hannah, Leslie, The Rise of the Corporate Economy: The British Experience (Baltimore, 1976)Google Scholar; Prais, S. J., The Evolution of Giant Firms in Britain (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar; Zysman, John, Political Strategies for Industrial Order. State, Market, and Industry in France (Berkeley, 1977).Google Scholar

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21 I dealt with this problem at greater length in my review of this book, Science, 208 (May 30, 1980), 1023–24.

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42 See, for example, Carle P. Parrini and Martin J. Sklar, “Periodization and History: The Corporate Reconstruction of American Society, 1896–1914” (a paper delivered at the Organization of American Historians, 1981). Kaufman, Burton I., “United States Trade and Latin America: The Wilson Years,” Journal of American History, 57 (September 1971), 342–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the same author's “The Organizational Dimension of United States Foreign Economic Policy, 1900–1920,” Business History Review, 46 (Spring 1972), 17–44; and his Efficiency and Expansion: Foreign Trade Organization in the Wilson Administration, 1913–1921 (Westport, 1974). Carlisle, Rodney, “The ‘American Century’ Implemented: Stettinius and the Liberian Flag of Convenience,” Business History Review, 54 (Summer 1980), 175–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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78 I have developed these ideas more fully in America at Middle Age.

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