When Corporations Rule the World, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 17Managed Competition

The business system is increasingly taking the form of lean and mean core firms, connected . . . to networks of other large and small organizations, including firms, governments, and communities . . . [These] networked forms of industrial organization . . . exhibit a tendency to reinforce, and perhaps to worsen, the historic stratification of jobs and earnings.

—BENNETT HARRISON

On September 14, 1993, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company announced it would dismiss 4,500 employees in its US-based chemical business by mid-1994 to cut costs. While 4,500 families struggled to adjust to the fact that the economy had labeled their breadwinner a redundant burden, the money markets cheered. This layoff was part of a larger ...