“Multi-unit business enterprise replaced small traditional enterprise when administrative coordination permitted greater productivity, lower costs, and higher profits than coordination by market mechanisms.”

—  Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 6.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Multi-unit business enterprise replaced small traditional enterprise when administrative coordination permitted greater…" by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.?
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. photo
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. 14
American historian 1918–2007

Related quotes

“The market remained the generator of demand for goods and services, but modern business enterprise took over the functions of coordinating flows of goods and services through existing processes of production and distribution, and of allocating funds and personnel for future production and distribution. As modern business enterprise acquired functions hitherto carried out by the market, it became the most powerful institution in the American economy and its managers the most influential group of economic decision makers. The rise of modern business enterprise in the United States, therefore, brought with it managerial capitalism.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 1.

“The coordination of information technology management presents a challenge to firms with dispersed IT practices. Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources.
Here we explore three major mechanisms for facilitating inter-unit coordination of IT management: structural design approaches, functional coordination modes, and computer-based communication systems. We define these various mechanisms and their interrelationships, and we discuss the relative costs and benefits associated with alternative coordination approaches.
To illustrate the cost-benefit tradeoffs of coordination approaches, we present a case study in which computer-based communication systems were used to support team-based coordination of IT management across dispersed business units. Our analysis reveals possibilities for future approaches to IT coordination in large, dispersed organizations.”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis and Brad M. Jackson (1994) "Coordination of information technology management: Team-based structures and computer-based communication systems." Journal of Management Information Systems Vol 10 (4). p. 85-110. Abstract

Thomas Sowell photo

“To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2003-12-26-0312241220-story.html, South Florida Sun Sentinel, December 26, 2003
2000s

“Management is the activity which plans, organizes, and controls the operations of the basic elements of men, materials, machines, methods, money, and markets, providing direction and coordination, and giving leadership to human efforts, so as to achieve the thought objectives of the enterprise.”

George R. Terry (1909–1979)

As cited in Wren & Bedeian (1972;411)
Principles of Management, 1960

“Modern factory management (but not it must be stressed the management of large modern multi-unit enterprises) had the genesis in the United States in the Springfield Armory.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 75; Cited in: Best (1990, p. 32).

Sun Ra photo

“I'm not into division. I'm into coordination, discipline and tradition.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

As quoted in "Space is still the place" by W. Kim Heron in Metro Times (6 June 2007) http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=10582
Context: People have a lot more of the unknown than the known in their minds. The unknown is great; it's like the darkness. Nobody made that. It just happens. Light and all that — someone made that; it's written that they did. But nobody made the darkness. My music is about dark tradition. Dark tradition means a lot more about than black tradition. There's a lot of division in what they call black. I'm not into division. I'm into coordination, discipline and tradition.

Ronald H. Coase photo

“Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is co-ordinated through a series of exchange transactions on the market. Within a firm, these market transactions are eliminated and in place of the complicated market structure with exchange transactions is substituted the entrepreneur-coordinator, who directs production. It is clear that these are alternative methods of coordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1930s-1950s, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), p. 388

“Markets are social constructs that reflect the unique political-cultural construction of their business enterprises and nations.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 39

“Both… the separation of labor from control and of the owner from control… have made possible the continuing development of the size of the individual enterprise, have reduced the area within which economic processes is organized through the interplay of prices and have increased the area within which production is organized… and the coordination of production on a planned basis.”

Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) American economist

Gardiner C. Means (1933; 6) as cited in: Samuels and Medema (1990; 69)

Ronald Reagan photo

“Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Related topics