Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Eileen Bevis
CITATION:
Chandler, Alfred Dupont. Strategy and Structure: chapters in the history of the industrial
enterprise. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1962. Pages 1-51.
ABSTRACT:
While Chandler’s book is an institutional history of American industrial administrative
innovation up to ~1960 and includes detailed case studies and comparative analyses, the two
assigned chapters include only an introduction with theoretical framework and a general
background chapter surveying “changing patterns in the growth and administration of the large
enterprise in the United States, based on the experience of many of the largest companies” (4).
The main thesis is that strategy (expansion of volume, geographical dispersion, vertical
integration, and/or product diversification) determines structure (especially a centralized,
functionally departmentalized structure or multidivisional, decentralized structure).
SUMMARY:
I. Introduction—Strategy and Structure
A. Motives and Methods (1-7)
This book is a comparative history of business administration, with a focus on
innovation. [Justification:] Because administration is a hot topic and because
administrators do not change unless forced, studying administrative innovation
[=”modern ‘decentralized’ form of organization” (4)] will “point to urgent needs and
compelling opportunities both within and without the firm” (2). It will examine [some
of] the largest and most complex of American industrial enterprises.
The structures used to administer these great enterprises are: multidivisional, a.k.a.,
“decentralized”; i.e., a “general office plans, coordinates, and appraises the work of a
number of operating divisions and allocates to them the necessary personnel, facilities,
funds and other resources” (2). Each division usually handles either a specific line of
products or a specific geographical region. For graphic representation, see chart page 10.
The first “decentralized” companies were Du Pont, General Motors, Standard Oil (NJ),
and Sears Roebuck, who all began major administrative reorganization in the 1920s.
These Big Four are the main focus of Chandler’s study, though he also looks briefly at
about a hundred other large industrial companies’ histories for context, comparison,
generalizability (3). Note: these four developed their new administrative structures
independently of the others, though many other companies later imitated the structure(s)
of one or more of the Big Four.
[I’m skimping on a lot of the methods and justification because they relate to chapters we
were not assigned.]
B. Some General Propositions (7-17)
[Taking after Durkheim,] “the terms and concepts used in these [upcoming] comparisons
and analyses must be carefully and precisely defined” (7), and some theoretical
propositions put forth for “conceptual precision” (8)…
Chandler 2
5. This structure had one basic weakness: a very few men were in charge of a
great many complex decisions (41), men who’d been trained in one functional
area and then promoted and didn’t have great grasp of corporation as a whole
—serious problem when technology, markets, and sources of supply changed
rapidly, as they did from 1880 on in certain industries (41-42).
E. Further Growth – The Coming of the Multidivisional Enterprise
1. In new industries (electrical, auto, chemical, electronic) and in old-being-
revolutionized-by-science-based-technology industries (rubber, petroleum,
agricultural implement, power equipment chain-store, mail-order), increasingly
complex administrative problems arose. The leading firms in these industries
turned to new “multidivisional, ‘decentralized’ structure” (42).
2. Urbanization and technology advancement led to three types of industrial
strategies for growth: (a) expand existing product lines to same type of
customers, (b) look for new markets and suppliers in distant lands, a.k.a.,
“going overseas,” or (c) open new markets with range of new products for new
types of customers, a.k.a. “diversification”; helped out by scientific research
(42-43).
3. Diversification had bigger developmental impetus toward decentralized
structure than world-wide expansion, except in petroleum industry, where
regions rather than new product lines served as basis for autonomous,
multidepartmental divisions and, partially, chain stores and mail-order
companies (42, 47).
4. The big “decentralized” innovators were the Big Four in the 1920s, who served
as model for many others, especially after WWII (44). Most started with
centralized form [of D.4.] before moving to decentralized form [of E.1.].
[Some of slowness of change seems to be caused by presence of original
founders of companies; they die and organizational reform finally gets
implemented (46-47).]
5. Through urbanization and technological advancement, response strategies of
diversification and overseas expansion, and resulting complexity of
administrative problems, “the multidivisional type of administrative structure,
which hardly existed in 1920, had by 1960 become the accepted form of
management for the most complex and diverse of American industrial
enterprises” (49) [not, for instance, copper, zinc, iron, steel, tobacco, meat,
sugar, liquor, and banana (42)].
6. In conclusion, historical record does support thesis that structure follows
strategy and that different types of growth brought different needs and resulting
administrative organizations (49). But a lot of the details of what, why, and
how as well as variance in corporation responses still missing…so goes to case
studies (49, 51).
RELEVANCE: