Multiples of Six: The Six Companies and West Coast Industrialization, 1930–1945

Christopher James Tassava

Enterprise & Society, 2003, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: In this article I explore the protean organizational forms used by the Kaiser and Bechtel construction companies between 1930 and 1950. Kaiser and Bechtel prospered during the Depression and World War II because, as members of the Six Companies consortium of construction firms, they refused to adopt a “best practice” model of corporate organization drawn from the diversified manufacturing and distribution sectors. Instead, Kaiser and Bechtel used a variety of organizational forms to win numerous government contracts for public works and defense production, transforming themselves from small regional firms into substantial national and global corporations. I contribute to modern academic debate over the historical forms of business enterprise and the conjunction of state consumption and private production.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:4:y:2003:i:01:p:1-27_01

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Enterprise & Society from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().