{"product_id":"organizing-america-9780691123158","title":"Organizing America","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShows 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner 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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments 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","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51359106203991,"sku":"9780691123158","price":38.25,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691123158.jpg?v=1754123607","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/organizing-america-9780691123158","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}