Alfred D. Chandler, Founder of Strategy: a Lost Tradition and Renewed Inspiration

Richard Rumelt, Dan Schendel, and David Teece are clear: "The foundation of strategic management as a field may very well be traced to the 1962 publication of Chandler's Strategy and Structure" For these three doyens of strategy, Alfred Chandler was a fundamental influence on the shap...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Whittington, R
Format: Journal article
Published: 2008
Description
Summary:Richard Rumelt, Dan Schendel, and David Teece are clear: "The foundation of strategic management as a field may very well be traced to the 1962 publication of Chandler's Strategy and Structure" For these three doyens of strategy, Alfred Chandler was a fundamental influence on the shape of the strategic-management discipline that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, unlike the two other pioneers they identify, Kenneth Andrews and Igor Ansoff, Chandler stood firmly outside the discipline, working as a business historian, not as a strategist. Remarkably, it is Chandler's work that resonates most strongly in the discipline today and, I shall argue, still offers the most powerful inspiration for scholarly work in the future.