Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199251894 ISBN 13: 9780199251896

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Why and how has the Business Corporation come to exert such a powerful influence on American Society? The essays here take up this question, offering a fresh perspective on the ways in which the business corporation has assumed as enduring place in the modern capitalist economy, and how it has affected American society, culture and politics over the past two centuries. The authors challenge standard assumptions about the business corporation's emergence and performance in the United States over the past two centuries. Reviewing in depth the different theoretical and historiographical traditions that have treated the corporation, the volume seeks a new departure that can more fully explain this crucial institution of capitalism. Rejecting assertions that the corporation is dead, the essays show that in fact it has survived and even thrived down to the present in part because of the ways in which it has related to its social, political and cultural environment. In doing so, the book breaks with older explanations ground in technology and economics, and treats the corporation for the first time as a fully social institution. Drawing on a variety of social theories and approaches, the essays help to point the way toward future studies of this powerful and enduring institution, offering a new periodization and a new set of questions for scholars to explore. The range of essays engages the legal and political position of the corporation, the ways in which the corporation has been shaped by and shaped American culture, the controversies over corporate regulation and corporate power, and the efforts of minority and disadvantaged groups to gain access to the resources and opportunities that corporations control.

About this title

About the Author:

Kenneth Lipartito is Professor of History, and Chair of the Department of History, at the Florida International University. His previous publications include Investing for Middle America: John Elliott Tappan and the Origins of American Express Financial Advisors (St. Martins Press, 2001).
David B. Sicilia is Visiting Fulbright Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. His previous publications include The Greenspan Effect (McGraw-Hill, 2000) with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, The Engine that Could: Seventy-Five Years of Values-Driven Change at Cummins Engine Company (Harvard Business
School Press, 1997) with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, and The Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure (Houghton-Mifflin, 1986) with Robert Sobel.

Review:

"The great achievements of Constructing Corporate America lie in its compelling demonstrations that US corporations' forms, functions, and discourses evolved--and still change--as products of their cultural, social, legal, and political environments. The authors of this unusually cohesive and well-written collection vary in how they balance abstractions with specifics, but all offer rich insights and abundant citations that can guide readers toward both theory and evidence. In looking beyond standard notions to explore corporate history and functions, Constructing Corporate America reflects and advances the state of the art in business history. This superb volume has demolished what was left of the artifical and unfortunate walls formerly separating "business history" from what everyone interested in American history should be reading." --Enterprise and Society"

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0199251894
• ISBN 13: 9780199251896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Lipartito Kenneth, Sicilia David B.