Description
Book SynopsisShows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. This book concludes that the driving force of our history is not technology, politics, or culture, but large, bureaucratic organizations. It features various vignettes and offers insights presaging a different historical genre.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2003 Max Weber Award "Organizing America is a provocative and passionate account of the nineteenth century origins of modern American corporate governance and its far-reaching effects. It is highly appropriate for our times."--Michael H. Best, The Journal of Economic History "An ambitious and important book that is sure to provoke controversy... Organizing America takes on fundamental issues in a way that is provocative, compelling, and all too rare ... and provides a wealth of insights... [T]his is an important book that will stimulate research and debate for decades to come."--Robert Freeland, Administrative Science Quarterly "Perrow's book ... is clearly and cogently expressed, and his refutations of alternative theories are often strong and convincing. This is a useful and stimulating book... The passionate intensity of the author and the lack of obfuscation in his arguments are refreshing."--Gerald Zahavi, American Historical Review
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 Some Central Concepts 3 Density and concentration 3 Size and small-firm networks 4 Organizations or capitalism 6 Noneconomic organizations 7 Power 8 Culture and other shapers of society 9 Organizations as the independent variable 10 What Do Organizations Do? 12 What Kind of Organizations? 16 Alternative Theories 17 Conclusion 19 CHAPTER 2: Preparing the Ground 22 Communities, Markets, Hierarchies, and Networks 22 Community 23 The market direction 25 Toward hierarchy and networks 28 The Legal Revolution that Launched Organizations 31 Fear of corporations 33 What organizations need to be able to do 35 Making capitalism corporate 36 Capitalism to Corporate Capitalism 40 Lawyers: "The Shock Troops of Capitalism" 43 CHAPTER 3: Toward Hierarchy: The Mills of Manayunk 48 Getting the Factory Going: The Role of Labor Control 48 The first mill-a workhouse 50 To mechanize or not? 51 Social Consequences 53 Labor Policies and Strikes 58 Organizations and Religion 60 From Working Classes to a Working Class 61 The politics of class 62 Conclusion 63 CHAPTER 4: Toward Hierarchy and Networks 65 Lowell and the Boston Associates 65 Wage dependence and labor control 65 Lowell I: The benign phase 67 Profits and market control 69 Lowell II: The exploitive phase 70 Explaining the First Modern Business 75 Structural constraints 77 The Slater Model 79 Toward Networks with the Philadelphia Model 81 When capital counts 82 Philadelphia's large mills 84 Size and technology 86 Networks of Firms 88 Labor conflict 90 Externalities 90 The Decline of Textile Firms 92 Summary 94 CHAPTER 5: Railroads, the Second Big Business 96 Railroads in France, Britain, and the United States: The Organizational Logic 102 France 104 Britain 108 The importance of the railroads 111 Why Were the Railroads Unregulated and Privatized? 113 The efficiency argument 115 Historical institutionalism 117 Historical institutionalism assessed 122 The neoinstitutionalist account 123 The organization interest account 127 The details 129 Self-interested opposition to the railroads 139 Corruption Observed but Not Interpreted 141 Evidence from the public record, and the outcry 144 Scholars explain corruption 151 Summary and Conclusions 157 CHAPTER 6: The Organizational Imprinting 160 Making the Railroads Work 160 Divisionalization 161 Finance takes charge 162 Inevitable, or a chance path? 165 Contracting out 166 Leadership Style and Worker Welfare 173 Work in general 175 Nationalization and Centralization: The Final Spike 179 Organizational versus political interpretations 180 Where did the money come from? 183 Regionalization versus Nationalization 186 The debate over the ethos 187 A political or an organizational interpretation of the struggle? 192 Was Regionalism Viable? 194 Concentrating Capital and Power 196 The corporate form triumphs 197 Explaining the arrival of the corporate form 201 An organizational agency account 204 Summary and Conclusions 212 CHAPTER 7: Summary and Conclusions 217 Appendix Alternative Theories Where Organizations Are the Dependent Variable 229 Notes 237 Bibliography 243 Index 251
