ABSTRACT
Cosimo dei Medici created a diversified multinational company and invented the multidivisional form or M-form of business organisation 400 years before it was defined by Alfred Chandler. In an age when communications technology was limited to the speed of the fastest horse or ship, Cosimo controlled an organisation with assets across Western Europe and the Middle East, and with trading links as far afield as China and Iceland. He did so by setting up a decentralised organisation with professional management and a system of contractual arrangements which made the restructuring of business units easy and quick to adapt to changing circumstances. Many of the methods of organisation and control used by businesses as late as the twentieth century were pioneered or developed at the Medici Bank.
