ABSTRACT
The increasing speed and volume of industrial output made it almost impossible to adequately control production and distribution processes. American companies pursued a policy of increasing the levels of formal bureaucratic structures to better process information about growing sizes of national and international markets. Large and leading firms in the capital-intensive manufacturing industries invested substantially in organization building and professional management (Chandler 1977). They could do so as emerging technologies presented opportunities to achieve economies of scale and scope in order to better serve potential markets. By introducing new technologies of transmission of information, standardizing procedures and routines, as well as introducing specific management concepts to keep employees committed, conglomerates attempted to prevent a crisis of control and accelerate their activities by designing an administration as an efficient timesaving instrument. Technological improvements intensified the creation of an empire of speed. Although initially “increases in the speed and reliability of throughput outpaced the development of information-processing and communication technologies adequate enough to control the larger systems” (Beniger 1986: 248), the revolution in information technologies eventually provided an adequate solution.
