The Vanishing American Corporation, Gerald F. Davis
The Vanishing American Corporation, Gerald F. Davis
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The Vanishing American Corporation
Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy

Author: Gerald F. Davis

Narrator: Jeff Hoyt

Unabridged: 6 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/02/2016


Synopsis

It may be hard to believe in an era of Walmart, Citizens United, and the Koch brothers, but corporations are on the decline. The number of American companies listed on the stock market dropped by half between 1996 and 2012. In recent years we've seen some of the most storied corporations go bankrupt (General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman Kodak) or disappear entirely (Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Borders). Gerald Davis argues this is a root cause of the income inequality and social instability we face today. Corporations were once an integral part of building the middle class. He points out that in their heyday they offered millions of people lifetime employment, a stable career path, health insurance, and retirement pensions. They were like small private welfare states. The businesses that are replacing them will not fill the same role. For one thing, they employ far fewer people—the combined global workforces of Facebook, Yelp, Zynga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Tableau, Zulily, and Box are smaller than the number of people who lost their jobs when Circuit City was liquidated in 2009. And in the “sharing economy,” companies have no obligation to most of the people who work for them—at the end of 2014 Uber had over 160,000 “driver-partners” in the United States but recognized only about 2,000 people as actual employees.Davis tracks the rise of the large American corporation and the economic, social, and technological developments that have led to its decline. The future could see either increasing economic polarization, as careers turn into jobs and jobs turn into tasks, or a more democratic economy built from the grass roots. It's up to us.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura on March 24, 2017

This was a bit dry, but the last few chapters made it all worthwhile. Davis has great support for the ideas he posits, and I fully bought into his idea of what the future economy will look like. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone in the business world.......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on March 06, 2018

Read this for the class I'm TAing, thought it was quite interesting. One narrative about inequality in the contemporary US is that the expansion of corporate power, mechanization, and outsourcing have wrecked the middle class career and sent inequality into the stratosphere. Davis agrees with the in......more

Goodreads review by Jim on March 03, 2018

a really interesting book. davis succinctly and clearly summarizes the history of american corporations with a focus on how recent cultural, economic and political trends have changed the very nature of corporations over the last several decades. one of davis's core arguments is that corporations, p......more

Goodreads review by melina on April 01, 2023

I read this book for my Sociology of Organizations class. It was interesting to see how the role of corporations has changed over time in society, especially in regards to technology, the gig economy, Wall Street, pop-up companies, and changes when corporations entered society around Reagan's admini......more

Goodreads review by Tommy on December 23, 2019

The corporation as the primary method of conducting business in America might be in decline and this will cause social problems because of a "paradox of hierarchy" i.e. bigger corporations are more internally unequal but economies composed of them are on average overall more equal. Since the modern......more