Consequently, managerial careers now less often have benign endings. In addition, CEOs have become less reliable servants of the corporation. The story was much different during the previous 100 years. From the 1870s to the 1970s, the large industrial corporation was highly stable. Its stability was derived, in part, from investments in a corporate structure that centered on a sales and administrative staff. In this article, Leonard Nakamura argues that the electronics revolution of the 1970s sharply reduced the value of this corporate asset and made corporations more susceptible to competition.
This article appeared in the Third Quarter 2004 edition of Business Review.
View the Full Article