Alfred D. Chandler Jr.

He received the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He has been called "the doyen of American business historians".

Chandler Jr. Studied at Harvard University, Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is business history. Residence is recorded at Cambridge and Delaware. Employment is recorded with Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Bancroft Prize and Pulitzer Prize for History.

• Name — Alfred D. Chandler Jr. • Born — 15 September 1918 • Birthplace — Guyencourt, Delaware, US • Died — 9 May 2007 • Place of death — Cambridge, Massachusetts, US • Fields — Business history • Workplaces — Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Johns Hopkins University • Education — Harvard University (BA, MA, PhD) • Doctoral Advisor — Frederick Merk • Awards — Bancroft Prize (1978) Pulitzer Prize for History (1978)

Chandler was the great-grandson of Henry Varnum Poor. "Du Pont" was apparently a family name given to his grandfather because his great-grandmother was raised by the Du Pont family, and there are other connections as well. Chandler graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1936 and Harvard College in 1940. After naval service in World War II, he returned to Harvard, finished his M.A. in 1946, and earned his doctorate in 1952 under the direction of Frederick Merk. He taught at M.I.T. and Johns Hopkins University before arriving at Harvard Business School in 1970.

• Illustration — The distribution created by the railroad was one of the many contributing factors into Chandler's Second Industrial Revolution. Chandler's most highly regarded work was The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). When he wrote it, the American business world was under the assumption that the economy followed a laissez-faire model, meaning the market was controlled by larger economic forces and did not require governmental intervention but that businesses and consumers would operate out of self-interest. Whenever there was a need, Adam Smith believed that an entrepreneur would both identify this need and seek to fulfill it at a price reasonable to the consumer. While some business professionals interpreted Smith's logic to understand the economy from a wholistic point of view, many others understood it quite literally as they saw it as a need for several entrepreneurs to create businesses of their own in order to fulfill different needs presented by the market. This ultimately prompted the beginning of the small business era which consisted of a multitude of "mom-and-pop" shops opening up nationwide, each meeting a different need presented by society. Instead of replacing this economic analysis, Chandler sought to extend it—arguing that managerial firms evolved to take advantage of productive techniques available after the rail network was in place. As a result of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, technology was causing business processes to increase in efficiency which allowed firms to expand into several functional areas at a time. For example, railroad companies used to primarily fulfill the need of transportation by laying down tracks in specific regions of the country. Once inventions such as the assembly line, steam power, and the telegraph emerged, the supply for railroads finally met its demand and the industry boomed financially as operations were optimized. This led to a surge in both horizontal and vertical integration as railroad companies were granted the ability to expand both on a financial and operational level. Instead of a need that revolved around goods and services from the consumer's end, there was a massive need for coordination and systemization from the corporation's end now that the complexity of these larger firms began to increase. The "managerial class" in America emerged as firms learned to coordinate the increasingly complex and interdependent system. According to Steven Usselman, this ability to achieve efficiency through coordination explained the high levels of concentration in modern American industry. In a similar fashion to laissez-faire, businesses saw a need and sought to fulfill it, thus creating the modern corporation. While this ended up driving many "mom-and-pop" storefronts to bankruptcy, it ultimately grew the economy of the United States by creating greater wealth and opportunity for millions of Americans today. Chandler has never argued that the management evolution brought the storm of multifunctional corporations to existence (that was technology); however, it did open the floodgates as it optimized the integrations that were necessary in order for America to grow.

Chandler Jr. Worked in business history. He was employed by Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Japan Academy and American Philosophical Society. He worked at Cambridge and Delaware.

Chandler Jr. Is recorded as having received Guggenheim Fellowship, Bancroft Prize and Pulitzer Prize for History. The identifiers under which Alfred D. Chandler Jr. May be traced in institutional catalogues.