The Managerial Ideal and Business Magazines in the Great Depression

In: Enterprise & society: the international journal of business history, Band 19, Heft 3, S. 578-609

Abstract

The 1930s transformed American capitalism. This article interrogates the political economy of two business magazines created at the start of the Great Depression. I argue thatBusiness Week's andFortune's signature approaches to reporting articulated an ideal conception of the manager. The early century conception saw the manager as engineer of operational efficiency. The new ideal viewed the manager as a political economist coordinating firms with their external environment, notably an interventionist and scrutinizing state, volatile markets, and a critical public opinion.