The People's Network
The People's Network

Author: Robert MacDougall

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2014-01-08

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0812245695

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The Bell System dominated telecommunications in the United States and Canada for most of the twentieth century, but its monopoly was not inevitable. In the decades around 1900, ordinary citizens—farmers, doctors, small-town entrepreneurs—established tens of thousands of independent telephone systems, stringing their own wires to bring this new technology to the people. Managed by opportunists and idealists alike, these small businesses were motivated not only by profit but also by the promise of open communication as a weapon against monopoly capital and for protection of regional autonomy. As the Bell empire grew, independents fought fiercely to retain control of their local networks and companies—a struggle with an emerging corporate giant that has been almost entirely forgotten. The People's Network reconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived.

Creating New Knowledge in Management
Creating New Knowledge in Management

Author: Ellen O'Connor

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2011-12-07

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 080477837X

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Creating New Knowledge in Management rediscovers lost sources in the work of Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard, providing a foundation for management as a unique and coherent discipline. This book begins by explaining that research universities, and the management field in particular, have splintered into smaller and less related parts. It then recovers a lost tradition of integrating management and the humanities, exploring ways of building on this convention to advance the unique art and science of business. By way of Follett and Barnard's work, author Ellen S. O'Connor demonstrates how the shared values, purposes, and customs of management and the humanities can be used to build an enterprise that will help to meet the challenges of business today. Igniting approaches to management that build on humanistic traditions is the ultimate goal of this book. Therefore, the text ends with two experiments—one in the classroom and one with a business executive—that take up this call and offer a perspective on where management must go next.

Chester I. Barnard: Innovator of Organization Theory
Chester I. Barnard: Innovator of Organization Theory

Author: Kazuhito Isomura

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-19

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9819970393

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This book looks at Chester I. Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to organization theory by examining his life, career, experience, intellectual relationships, philosophy, method, and theory. Barnard (1886–1961) is considered an innovator in the field with the publication of his seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, in 1938. But why was Barnard able to publish such a groundbreaking book despite the fact that he was a practitioner, not an academic researcher? In pursuit of that question, this book carefully investigates the background of his ideas about management, such as his experience, philosophy, and method. It then traces the process of how Barnard built his concepts of organization as it examines his books, published papers, unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence and systematically summarizes how he built his theory of organization and management. Finally, the author explores how Barnard’s theory has the potential to be developed and put into practice by examining his important works after his publication of The Functions of the Executive, which is well known as abstract and difficult. Readers of this present book will come away with a clearer and more systematic understanding of Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to the field.