Producing Prosperity

CHAPTER 6

Rebuilding the Commons

The Visible Hand of Management

Business leadership matters. No economy can succeed without an ample supply of talented, well-trained, and motivated managers. Indeed, business historian Alfred Chandler says that one of the main reasons for the rise of the American economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the emergence of a professional “managerial class.” In the latter part of the twentieth century, American entrepreneurs transformed the economy by driving the creation and growth of the semiconductor, personal computer, software, biotechnology, and computer graphics industries, as well as e-commerce and the Internet. This chapter is about the role managers can and should play in the twenty-first ...