Corporate Dreams: Big Business in American Democracy from the Great Depression to the Great Recession

Contents

vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 The Corporate American Dream Part I at Its Height and in Its Origins 1 The Corporate American Dream 9 2 Corporate and National Character 15 3 From Public Purpose to Private Profit 22 4 Corporations as Enemies of the Free Market 27 Corporate Failure and Part II Government Fix 5 Corporate Crashes 35 6 Managers versus Markets 40 7 Corporations Blow Their Chance to End the Depression 45 8 Roosevelt’s Confused Anticorporatism 51 Part III The Corporation Strikes Back 9 The Right to Manage 61 10 Corporations Recover Their Moral Authority 67 11 Killing the Unions Softly 72 12 Creating Reagan and His Voters 76 Part IV What Manner of Man(ager)? 13 Masking the Arrogance of Power 87 14 Responsibility versus Profit at General Motors 93 15 Critics of Managerial Character 100 16 JFK’s Pyrrhic Victory over U.S. Steel 106 The Corporation in the Part V Wilderness Again 17 McNamara and the Staffers 115 18 The False Confidence of the Anticorporatists 122 19 Corporate America Loses World Supremacy 130 20 Laying the Groundwork for the Corporation’s Cultural Comeback 137 Part VI Leadership 21 Managing by Values 145 22 Creating the Concept of Corporate Culture 152 23 Inventing the Leadership Development Industry 156 24 Reagan Aids Corporations by Bashing Government 163 Part VII Entrepreneurship 25 Supply-Siders versus the Big Corporation 173 26 Reengineering the Corporation 180 27 George W. Bush, Enron, and the Great Recession 189 28 Can the Corporate American Dream Be Saved? 198 Notes 209 Index 219 Contents viii ...