Peter F. Drucker Boxed Set (8 Books) (The Drucker Library)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A Crisis of Capitalism: Who’s in Charge?

“CORPORATE CAPITALISM” was the buzzword of the 1960s. The American Challenge, a worldwide best-seller by a prominent French intellectual, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, predicted that by 1980 the world’s manufacturing would be in the hands of a dozen or so giant American multinationals.

Under corporate capitalism, these economic superpowers were run by autonomous managements. With share-ownership dispersed among millions of individual investors, corporate management had the power to appoint itself, was accountable only to itself, and enjoyed unchallengeable security except in the event ...