"For decades, the public company has played a dominant role in the American economy. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the nature of the public company has changed considerably. The transformation has been a fascinating one, marked by scandals, political controversy, wide swings in investor and public sentiment, mismanagement, entrepreneurial verve, noisy corporate "raiders," and various other larger-than-life personalities. Nevertheless, amidst a voluminous literature on corporations, a systemic historical analysis of the changes that have occurred is lacking. The Public Company Transformed correspondingly analyses how the public company has been recast from the mid-twentieth century through to the present day, with particular emphasis on senior corporate executives and the constraints affecting the choices available to them. The chronological point of departure is the managerial capitalism era, which prevailed in large American corporations following World War II. Managerial capitalism's rise, its 1950s and 1960s heyday, and its fall in the 1970s and 1980s are canvassed. Prosperity that American public companies and their executives enjoyed during the 1990s is described. So is a reversal of fortunes in the 2000s, precipitated by corporate scandals and the financial crisis of 2008. The Public Company Transformed concludes by offering conjectures on the future of the public corporation, indicating that predictions the public company will soon be an afterthought are likely to be proven incorrect"-- Read more...
