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American Century and rise of Giant Firms
The American firm : its birth, its growth and its rise to hegemony
1860-1980
Grenoble IEP
Preston Perluss Associate Professor
[Grenoble IAE—Grenoble Graduate Business School]
The American Industrial Revolution began in the 1790s with the introduction
of mechanized spinning, the appearance of factory work and the concentration of
mills on various waterways. Simultaneously, a transportation network in the form of
canals took form to link the vast North American spaces. Early state sponsored or
subsidized projects mostly linked to canals, hospitals, banks adopted the “corporate
form” through share issues, but not necessary under the protection of limited
liability normally only granted to “publically beneficial” projects. Corporations
enjoying limited liability for industrial firms gradually spread throughout the USA.
In 1830 railroads burst on the scene and wrought incredible changes in North
American business and the US economy.
From the 1860s until the 1980s, US business followed a course of
consolidation, growth and international conquest. At the same time European firms
also began to vie for market control : the most telling example involves petroleum, a
product whose marketing was initially dominated by John W. Rockefeller’ s
Standard Oil Company. The late 1880s witnessed of holding companies that enabled
the proprietary coordination and consolidation of dispersed interests into
oligopolistic groups. Colonial market domination shifted to competition between
colonial powers as each colonial power sought to make inroads into its rivals
markets or neutral territories (take, for example, the German investment in Haiti
prior to WW1)
At the end of this course, students will have a much clearer understanding of the
bases of United States business development during the crucial period of the 19 th
century.
Starting from the rise of industrial concentration in the 1860s, as evidenced in
Rockefeller’s refineries and Carnegie’s iron and steel mills, this course concentrates
on the second wave of American business development from the Great Merger
Movement (1897-1905) whose inception is linked to the New Jersey law on holding
companies, through the rise of major multinational corporations and the American
dominance in the realm of automotive, aviation, computer and radio
communication.
We shall study firms as varied as Singer, Swift, General Motors, IBM and
RCA. In general we shall examine both the domestic and international expansion of
these firms. We seek to situate firms within both their economic and social context.
We wish to understand the conditions which allowed American firms to achieve their
ascendancy and what elements might lead to their long term decline.
Films
This class will view a number of documentary films including William
Winship’s Pioneers in Aviation, Sarah Colt’s Henry Ford, Ken Burns’s Empires of the
Air and Randall MacLowry’s Silicon Valley.
Main Subjects
American Century and rise of Giant Firms
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1)
Rockefeller refining strategy and his international competitors
2)
Singer Sewing machines and world marketing
The US Great Merger Movement
3)
Swift meat-packing and transportation
4)
Henry Ford and the rise of Mass Production
5)
General Motors consolidation and innovation
6)
IBM : From Herman Hollerith to Charles Watson
7)
RCA and the battle for international communication
8)
American Aviation : Boeing, Mcdonnell, Douglas
9)
The Solid State Century, Silicon Valley and Fairchild Semiconductors
Grading
Your grade will result from a written dissertation on either a specific
international firm or some specific strategic relationship between enterprise
and several states with respect to their historical development. This research
paper will equally be presented in an oral form for the general edification of
the class.
Class is participation is strongly encouraged. I would like students to feel
free to ask questions and debate the issues raised in class.
Readings and Bibliography
Students shall read short case studies based on material from the following
historical studies
Two main overviews
Fitzgerald (Robert) The Rise of the Global Company, Cambridge University
Press, 2015
Jones (Geoffrey), Multinationals and Global Capitalism, Oxford University
Press, 2005.
Bonin (Hubert), Lung (Yannick), Tolliday(Steven), Ford, 1903-2003: The
European History, P.L.A.G.E, Paris, 2003
Bonin (Hubert), de Goey (Ferry), American Firms in Europe : Strategy, Identity,
Perception and Performance (1880-1980), Droz, Geneva, 2009.
Brinkely (Douglas) Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of
Progress, Penguin Books, 2004
Chandler (Alfred) , McCraw (Thomas) and Tedlow (Richard) Management : Past and
Present, A casebook on the History of American Business, South Western College
Publishing, 1996.
Dassbach (Carl Henry August) , Global Enterprises and the World Economy : Ford,
General Motors and IBM, the Emergence of the Transnational Enterprise, 1988,
American Century and rise of Giant Firms
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Dissertation New York State University Binghamton. Advisors G. Arrighi, Immanual
Wallerstein, Terence K. Hopkins.
Fields (Gary), Territories of Profit: Communications, Capitalist Development, And-The
Innovative Enterprises of G.. F. Swift and Dell-Computer, Stanford University Press,
2003.
Heppenheimer (T.A.), Turbulent Skies : the History of Commercial Aviation, John Wiley,
New York, 1995.
Lecuyer (Christophe), Making Silicon Valley - Innovation and the Growth of High Tech,
1930-1970, MIT Press, 2007.
Pugh (Emerson), Building IBM - Shaping an Industry & its Technology, MIT Press, 2009
Rae (John B.) Climb to Greatness : the American Aircraft Industry, 1920-1960, MIT
Press, 1968.
Sobel (Robert) RCA, Stein and Day, New York, 1986.
Schwoch (James), The American Radio Industry and its Latin American Activities,
1900-1939, Illinois University Press, 1990.
Sturgeon (Timothy), What Really Goes on in Silicon Valley?
Spatial Clustering and
Dispersal in Modular Production Networks, Journal of Economic Geography, draft
version 2004.
Sturgeon (Timothy) , How Silicon Valley Came to Be, in Kenney (Martin) ed.
Understanding Silicon Valley: Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region., Stanford
University Press, 2000.
Tolliday (Steven) The origins of Ford of Europe: From multidomestic to transnational
corporation, 1903-1976, in Bonin Ford, 1903-2003: The European History.