Toc: The concept of the "visible hand" in big business enterprise, so persuasively and brilliantly argued in Alfred D. Chandler's prizewinning volume (The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business), is tested and extended in this book. These essays show that the growth and complexity of managerial hierarchies ("visible hands") in large business firms are central to the organization of modern industrial activity. Leading American and European historians retrace and compare the historical evolution of the contemporary giant managerial hierarchies in the United States, Britain, Germany, and France.