Contemporary capitalism appears to be undergoing deep-seated transformations in the organisation of business enterprise. Business organisation has traditionally been understood in terms of a model of corporate development confined to a single administrative hierarchy, offering current debates a focus to contrast and gauge the historical changes occurring in modem economies. "Chandlerism" has provided a guiding assumption that increasingly complex, diversified businesses would evolve ever-larger administrative structures to manage operations. Yet many believe that business organisation now operates under a different set of assumptions in the era of "Alliance Capitalism". Changes in business organisation appear to embody a new chapter of business history, challenging the traditional assumptions that Chandlerism embodies. Stripped of previous assumptions, attempts to develop an alternative paradigm have searched for a new explanation for the strategies and motivations associated with interfirm networking. Yet an unacknowledged problem in this literature is that current accounts embody an assumption that modem forms of competition and strategy occur within organisational boundaries, albeit shifting boundaries, captured by classificatory concepts such as "alliances", "networks", etc. Few pursue the idea that business enterprise does not simply exist within organisational boundaries but, indeed, develops through the creation and maintenance of new organisational forms. In synthesising an extensive range of secondary material, this thesis argues that business pursuits are inextricably organisational in nature. Business organisation is not simply a by-product of business enterprise but a theoretical problematique underlying Chandlerism and equally relevant to contemporary capitalism. At the heart of this problematique is the idea that business organisation is tied to the 'practicalities of capitalism' , concrete problem-solving activities which, in both latent and explicit ways, design the organisational pursuit of business enterprise. The basic aim and contribution of this thesis lies in developing a fundamentally different organisational thinking-a different conceptual, analytical and theoretical system-through which to more effectively articulate this problematique.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:341077 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Phillips, Richard |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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