Alfred Chandler

See also: Chandler

Alfred Dupont Chandler, Jr. (born the September 15th 1918 with Guyencourt, Delaware, the United States and dead on May 9th, 2007, Massachusetts, the United States), is an economist and historian states-unien.

Chandler is often called the “historian of the businesses” . This title returns to him because its vision of management passes by the knowledge of the history of the large firms. It did work of comparative history, the evolution of the organizations of the American large companies, at the beginning of its long career of professor. Besides in the years 1950, he undertakes his thesis while being based on work of his great-grandfather, him also historian of the businesses and editor, Henry Vernum Poor. He returns then with MIT like Research Associate and becomes director of the department of history of the Université Johns Hopkins in 1965. Then, it exposes a historical fresco of the means of production of the United States, that which will retain mainly sciences of management and management.

Professor with the Harvard Business School, his research focuses himself on the model of the construction of “the modern company”.

The role of the managers: to have of a strategy and a vision on their organization

Chandler, A.D., 1989, Strategies and structures of the company

Too much often perceived as the debate between the structure of the strategic company and its possibilities, this vision, many times discussed in work of strategies, corresponds only partially to the remarks of the work and the author.

Indeed, Strategies and structures are, primarily, a work of organisational descriptions. These comparative studies have four dimensions of vertical integration. Those are presented by organisational descriptions of large historical firms of the economy of the United States; they also exemplifient four dimensions of the problems suitable for management, during the development of a firm. It is, indeed, the office plurality of the functions and the organizations which obliges the managers: either to remain with their initial structure and not to develop, or to innovate a new organization. The organisational innovation is a manner of developing the company, so that the managers, such as known as so pertinently Brown, “see more clearly”. I.e. this aptitude to become aware of the inadequacy of the organization with respect to a better economy of the coordination of the goods.

In Strategy and structure, Chandler retains four dimensions of the visibility, for a better management of the large firms: information of rigorous and quantified management, a centralization of the decision and thus an increase of this information, a company whose staff managements are coordinated between them, and then a decentralized distribution which answers the strategic function.

Against the opaque traditional market: The " visible hand of the managers"

Chandler, A.D., 1977, visible Hand of the managers.

The visible hand of the managers is his most famous work, more succeeded, undoubtedly. Chandler aimed to examine and explain the evolution of the organization; to know how the history the management as much of the production met that distribution, in the United States, since the industrial revolution (half of the 19th century). Its historical works are tests, and not summaries of simple academic research. In that, it shows, historically, how the first modern companies - the first were formed, those exposed are railway industries. It tries to show that the modern companies are those which integrate all the functions of the saving in a good: raw materials, production, until the distribution. The multidivisionnelle firm is thus the prototype of the greatest productive structures, of the greatest groups; and made historically of the United States, the first economy of the world. The matric Organization, or the Organization in networks are more modern forms. This book is a theoretical reference for the Organization of the companies, more than for the economy, because it is very descriptive and historical.

For Chandler, the visible hand of the managers is naturally the whole of the actions of the leaders who tend to oppose their profit to the primacy of a competition relentless, of a invisible Main, such as Adam Smith described it like inexorable and which would tend to level their profits.

The dynamics of Capitalism: for the USA, Germany, the United Kingdom.

Chandler, A.D., 1992, Organization and performance of the companies: Volume 1,2,3.

A leadership States-uniens which it will defend in its third great work, whose French title is Organization and performances of the companies.

He thus answers the charges to set up, by the American economic model, the single way of accession to the performance of the companies. Its company will confirm and relativize this position. Since the American model is always presented like most powerful of the world; but it shows, using the British and German cases, that each company finds its own methods of construction of the large international firm.

However, there are differences between the countries. It shows them, in order to confirm the performance of the American model. The development of the organisational capacities is thus an analyzer of economic advancement; it was less in the two other countries: because of bad historical choices of the leaders and economic environment of these countries.

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