From Firm to Networked Systems

Thomas P. Hughes

Business History Review, 2005, vol. 79, issue 3, 587-593

Abstract: Because of Alfred D. Chandler Jr.'s widely influential books and articles, historians of management and of business have often taken a firm, especially a manufacturing firm, as their unit of analysis. Despite its usefulness as an organizing concept, the firm-based approach does not take into consideration the management of networked systems, which have spread widely and posed major managerial challenges in recent decades. In the following essay, I shall compare the firm and the networked-systems approaches, but first I should stress that I am not dealing with networked systems in general, which are numerous and vary greatly in form. My attention, instead, is focused upon networked electric-power systems.

Date: 2005
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