Biography - Alfred Chandler Sept. 15, 1918 - May 9, 2007

Alfred Chandler Sept. 15, 1918 - May 9, 2007

Update: September 2008:
Tributes to Chandler are found in the following issue of the Business History Review - Vol. 82, No.2, Summer 2008. There are 9 articles followed by an Archival Note: "Alfred D. Chandler Jr. Papers and Library at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School," p.317. The articles:

- "Alfred Chandler: His Vision and Achievement,";
-"Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progessive Historians,";
-"Chandler and the Sociology of Organizations,";
-"Chandler and Global Business History,";
-"Alfred Chandler, Founder of Strategy...,";
-"Measuring Chandler's Impact on European Business Studies...,";
-"Chandler's Paths of Learning,";
-"Chandler and Business History in Japan,";
-"Lessons from Al Revisited,".

Update: May 9, 2007. Alfred Chandler, Harvard Business School historian, dies.
View announcement from HBS.

The bibliography below was prepared a few years ago as a tribute to Professor Chandler and to it we now add articles about his recent death. It was pointed out in one brief obituary that Chandler was the keynote speaker here at Western in the early 1990s when an attempt was made to establish a Chair that would be devoted to Canadian Business History. (see: "I Remember," by Joe Martin, The Globe and Mail, May, 25, 2007. Martin is the Director of Canadian Business History at Rotman. He indicates that a chaired position in Business History will be occupied there beginning in 2008).

Coverage of Chandler's death appears in the following articles.
Full text is available online for current students, staff and faculty.

Alfred Chandler is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. For an introduction to Chandler and his work see The Essential Alfred Chandler: Essays Toward a Historical Theory of Big Business, edited by Thomas McCraw (DBWSTK HD2785.C4732 1988). This book is very thorough and provides a complete bibliography up to 1987/88. Therefore it is not necessary in this brief guide to attempt to list all of Chandler's publications.

Update: The "Boswell of big" has published a new work: Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. For a review see "How Tech Companies Grow Big and Strong," Business Week, November 12, 2001, p23.

The Essential Alfred Chandler... begins with a very helpful biographical essay by McCraw: "Introduction: The Intellectual Odyssey of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr." For an earlier and slightly different version of this essay see, "The Challenge of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.: Retrospect and Prospect", Reviews in American History, 14, March 1986, p.160. The book then presents 19 Chandler essays that were published between 1950 and 1988. For your convenience, the titles of those essays are provided below:

1. "Henry Varnum Poor: Business Analyst"
2. "The Beginnings of "Big Business" in American Industry"
3. "Development, Diversification and Decentralization"
4. "Recent Developments in American Business Administration and their Conceptualization"
5. "Introduction to Strategy and Structure"
6. "The Railroads: Pioneers in Modern Corporate Management"
7. "The Organization of Manufacturing and Transportation"
8. "The Large Industrial Corporation and the Making of the Modern American Economy"
9. "The Structure of American Industry in the Twentieth Century: A Historical Overview"
10. "Comment on the New Economic History"
11. "Business History as Institutional History"
12. "Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States"
13. "Decision Making and Modern Institutional Change"
14. "The Development of Modern Management Structure in the U.S. and U.K."
15. "Introduction to The Visible Hand"
16. "Administrative Coordination, Allocation and Monitoring: Concepts and Comparisons"
17. "Markets and Hierarchies: A Discussion"
18. "Introduction to Scale and Scope"

Since the publication of The Essential Alfred Chandler, Chandler has published articles and the book, Scale and Scope. He is also the editor of Big Business and the Wealth of Nations and The Dynamic Firm: The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organizations and Regions. For some recent articles see: "What Is a Firm? A Historical Perspective," European Economic Review, (Vol 36, No 3, Apr.1992, p.483­492, DBWPER HB1.E84); "The Functions of the HQ Unit in the Multibusiness Firm," Strategic Management Journal, (Vol 12, Winter 1991, p.31­50, BUSPER); "The Enduring Logic of Industrial Success", Harvard Business Review, (Vol 68, No 2, Mar/Apr 1990, p.130, BUSPER). For several discussions of Chandler and the importance of Business see: "A Chat with the Dean of American Business History," Financial World, (Vol 160, No 13, Jun 25, 1991, p.40,42, BUSPER); "Corporate Structure: Why Big Might Remain Beautiful," Economist, (Vol 314, No 7647, Mar 24, 1990, p.79, BUSPER); Teece, David J. "The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Perspectives on Alfred Chandler's Scale and Scope," Journal of Economic Literature, (Vol 31, No 1, Mar 1993, p.199­225, DBWPER); Business School Bulletin, February, 1985, p.76. For an indication of Chandler's far-reaching influence see the note on page 13 of The Essential Alfred Chandler, where it is recorded that as of 1984 Chandler had been cited almost 700 times in various journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index.

Selected Books by Alfred Chandler

Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (BUS stack HD2350.8.B54)
For two reviews see, "To compare or not to compare: Two books that look at capitalist systems across centuries, countries & industries," Business History Review, Vol. 72, No.1, Spring, 1998, p.123 and "Big Business and the Wealth of Nations," Sloan Mangement Review, Vol. 39, No.2, Winter, 1998, p.102.

The Changing Economic Order: Readings in American Business and Economic History (BUS stack & DBW stack HC103.C46)

The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook in the History of American Economic Institutions (BUS stack HD2785.C47 1985)

The Dynamic Firm: The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organization and Regions (BUS stack HD31.D95)

Giant Enterprise: Ford, General Motors, and the Automobile Industry (BUS, DBW & EDU stack HD9710.U52C38)

Henry Varnum Poor: Business Editor, Analyst and Reformer (DBW stack PN4874.P58C5)

Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and The New Global History (BUS stack HD 2755.5.L484 2005)
"Leviathans represents a path-breaking effort to look at multinational corporations in the round, emphasizing especially their scope, history, development, culture and social implications, and governance problems. Following the first chapter, a primer on MNCs, the book consists of eight chapters devoted to a variety of aspects, including global elites. The overall perspective is provided by the New Global History initiative described in the Introduction. This approach compels us to recognize that the MNCs are not merely economic entities but part of a complex interplay of factors. In turn, our study of MNCs forces us to rethink our views on the globalization process."

Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of Modern Industrial Enterprise (DBW stack HD30.5.M34)

The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower (DBW stack E836.A22)

Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation (BUS stack HD9651.9.D8C5)

The Railroads: The Nation's First Big Business (BUS stack & DBW stack HE2751.C45)

Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (BUS stack & DBW stack HD2785.C474 1990)

Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (BUS stack & DBW stack HD70.U5C5 1966)

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (BUS stack HF5343.C584)

For a long analysis of this work see, "Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler's The Visible Hand After Twenty Years" in the Business History Review, Vol.71, No.2, Summer 1997, p.151.

Additional books and articles by Chandler may be located by consulting "A List of Chandler's Publications" in The Essential Alfred Chandler, p.505.