Author Description

This book focuses on new groups of middle-class Americans who filled hierarchical corporate structures and promoted new ways of working, living, and interacting with one another. Building on the work of Alfred D. Chandler, Thomas Cochran, and their followers, Zunz explores the social origins, status, and outlook of several types and levels of managerial employees in the new bureaucracy of big business, including office managers, an increasingly female clerical force, agents in branch offices, foremen and personnel workers. With samples drawn from several leading archives, such as those of the Du Pont Company, C.B.&Q. Railraod, McCormick and International Harvester firms, AT&T, Metropolitan Life, and Ford Motor Company, he shows the complexity in the contribution of rather "ordinary" managerial people at all levels, who made the visible hand of managerial capitalism work. ISBN 0-226-99459-7: $24.95.