ABSTRACT
Twenty years ago, large multidivisional corporations were the heart and soul of developed Western economies. They employed millions of blue-collar laborers and white-collar managers and professionals who worked for most of their lives in one or two firms. Blue-collar employees were probably unionized, and corporations provided pensions and local social support (and health care in the United States). By the 1980s, firms were diversifying their activity beyond traditional core areas, sometimes deindustrializing in the process and shedding employee benefits. Blue-collar workers were shed to reduced labor costs; by the 1990s white-collar employees and middle managers were “downsized” as well to make the firm “lean and mean.”1 Unions were on the retreat after attacks from states and from cheaper, non-unionized labor forces abroad. Smaller software, information technology, and “dot-com” firms, with small numbers of educated employees, advanced technology and spurred the American stock market. The large corporation that once ruled the world with armies of employees and pools of capital seemed to have been overtaken by smaller companies that adapted to the changing market.
