Alfred Chandler passes away

Here are obituaries.  Chandler’s The Visible Hand filled in the historical boxes of how large firms developed by learning to control their immediate economic environments.  He was a father of modern business history.  His writings were sometimes dry but he had an extraordinary sense of the newness of large-scale corporate organization and the importance of new preconditions for its emergence.  His Strategy and Structure integrated managerial theory and economics.  Much of his work brought together history, economics, and business management in new and original ways.  Chandler taught at Harvard Business School for many years and was the seed of many a promising paper or book in economic history; for decades he was the center of the business history group there.  Here is Wikipedia on Chandler.  Here is a short bio.  Here is the book The Essential Alfred Chandler.

The pointer is from Kurt Schuler.

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