The American Corporation and the Twentieth Century

Eli F Heckscher Lecture 2024 with Professor Richard Langlois.

Welcome to the Eli F. Heckscher Lecture 26 September at 17.00-18.45!

The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism, brought forth what became a dominant narrative: that administrative coordination by trained professional managers is essential to the efficient running of organizations, both public and private. And yet if managerialism was the apotheosis of administrative efficiency, why did both its practice and the accompanying narrative lie in ruins by the end of the century? Drawing on his recent book The Corporation and the Twentieth Century (Princeton 2023), Professor Richard Langlois will attempt to reassess the history of managerialism – stressing the importance of the historical cataclysms of war and depression – and point to lessons for twenty-first century industrial policy.

Richard Langlois is Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut. His subject areas include economics of organizations and institutions, business and economic history.

Date: Thursday 26 September
Time: 17.00-18.45
Place: Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavägen 65, Stockholm
Room: Aulan

Read more about this year’s keynote speaker here.

About the Eli F Heckscher Lecture

The Eli F Heckscher Lecture is arranged each year by The EHFF Institute for Economic and Business History Research and The Ratio Institute, to honor Professor Eli F. Heckscher and his work.

For each year’s lecture, a distinguished economist and researcher is invited, of which a few have later received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, including the 2018 laureate, Paul Romer.

Eli F. Heckscher was active at the Stockholm School of Economics as an economist and economic historian, being the leading scholar in those subjects for half a century. His work was mainly focused on economic theory and methods, Swedish economic history and institutional economic analyses. He is most famous for co-developing the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem in international economics.