Narrating the Rise of Big Business in the USA: How Economists Explain Standard Oil and Wal-Mart

by Mayhew; Anne

• ISBN13: 9780415775342
• ISBN10: 0415775345
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this book, Anne Mayhew focuses on the stories surrounding the creation of Standard Oil and Wal-Mart, combining the accounts of economists with the somewhat darker pictures painted by writers of fiction.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
The agreed upon stories	p. 11
John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and Standard Oil	p. 11
Sam Walton and Wal-Mart	p. 18
A preliminary comparison	p. 29
Popular accounts and wider contexts	p. 30
Rockefeller's context	p. 31
Sam Walton's context	p. 52
Economists, trusts, and big business	p. 60
Theorizing the railroads	p. 61
The challenge of the trusts	p. 65
An associationist detour	p. 74
The invisible hand returns	p. 76
Alternative stories	p. 79
Seeing the firm whole	p. 79
Alfred Chandler's stories	p. 87
A search for theoretical consistency	p. 91
Economies of scale and speed: the modern firm in abstract	p. 92
Supply chains and M to C to C' to M'	p. 104
M to C	p. 105
C to C'	p. 113
C' to M'	p. 123
Holistic management/holistic problems	p. 127
Toward relevance	p. 132
A template to drill by	p. 135
Stories and policies: a final word	p. 147
Notes	p. 149
Bibliography	p. 168
Index	p. 179
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.