American Business Since 1920

Thomas K. McCraw is the Straus Professor of Business History Emeritus at Harvard Business School. Among the many books he has written or co-authored are Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, which in 2008 was awarded the Hagley Prize for Business History, the Spengler Prize in the History of Economics and the biennial award given by the International Schumpeter Society; Creating Modern capitalism: How Entrepeneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions (1997); Management Past and Present: A Casebook in American Business History (1996); American Versus Japan: A Comparative Study of Business-Government Relations (1986), and Prophets of Regulation, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1985 and the triennial Thomas Newcomen Book Award in 1986. He has served as editor of the Business History Review, as associate editor of The Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, and as president and trustee of the Business History Conference. He has been a member of the Board of Syndics of Harvard University Press, the Council of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the advisory board of Nomura School of Advanced Management (Tokyo), and the editorial boards of Reviews in American History and Harvard Business Review.

Introduction; Decentralisation in the 1920s: GM Defeats Ford; Brand Management in the 1930s: Decentralisation at Procter & Gamble; The New Deal & World War II, 1933-1945: Decentralising Regulation & War Mobilisation; Science & R&D: Colour TV, Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Strengthen Post-War Prosperity; Franchising & McDonalds; The Empowerment of Women & Minorities; The Financial System; Information Technology; Epilogue.