Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise

It is impossible in a bare outline to do anything like justice to the subtlety (if also, sometimes, the prolixity) of the argument and to the wealth of telling instances with which it is illustrated. The argument is not dogmatic or rigid and allows plenty of room for deviations, variants, and exceptions…. There is no doubt that this is a book of first-class importance…significant, not only for its substantive conclusions, original though these are, but as an example of the way in which fruitful relations can be established between economic and business history.
– Journal of Economic History This book shows how the seventy largest corporations in America have dealt with a single economic problem: the effective administration of an expanding business. The author summarizes the history of the expansion of the nation’s largest industries during the past hundred years and then examines in depth the modern decentralized corporate structure as it was developed independently by four companies–du Pont, General Motors, Standard Oil (New Jersey), and Sears, Roebuck.
This 1990 reprint includes a new introduction by the author.