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100 years of Corporate Planning. From Industrial Capitalism to Intellectual

Monopoly Capitalism through the lenses of the Harvard Business Review
(1922-2021)

Bensussan, Hannah; Durand, Cédric; Rikap, Cecilia

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BENSUSSAN, Hannah, DURAND, Cédric, RIKAP, Cecilia. 100 years of Corporate Planning. From
Industrial Capitalism to Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism through the lenses of the Harvard Business
Review (1922-2021). 2023

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Political Economy Working Papers | No. 5/2023

100 years of Corporate Planning

From Industrial Capitalism to Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism
through the lenses of the Harvard Business Review (1922-2021)

Hannah Benussan (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord)

Cédric Durand (Université de Genève)

Cecilia Rikap (City University of London)

Working paper

Department of History, Economics and Society, University of Geneva, UniMail, bd du Pont-d'Arve 40,
CH-1211 Genève 4. T: +41 22 379 81 92. Fax: +41 22 379 81 93
100 years of Corporate Planning
From Industrial Capitalism to Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism through the lenses
of the Harvard Business Review (1922-2021)

Hannah Bensussan, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

hannahben@hotmail.fr

Cédric Durand, Université de Genève

cedric.durand@unige.ch

Cecilia Rikap, City University of London

cecilia.rikap@city.ac.uk

Abstract
This paper reopens the question of Corporate Planning (CP) from a political economy
perspective by analyzing its evolving role in capitalism. To account for the evolution yet
persistent relevance of CP, we analyze the content of Harvard Business Review (HBR) since
its foundation in 1922 until 2021 included, using text mining and network analysis techniques.
Our results show that CP found new venues but remains crucial in the process of capital
circulation and accumulation. Through Industrial Capitalism, CP used to be conditioned by two
types of means of planning identified as means of information and knowledge appropriation
(MIKA) and means of spatio-temporal projection (MSTP). The former was used to capture
relevant intangibles for the construction and assessment of the plan while the latter were used
to deploy the plan and concretely control and organize the activity from production to
consumption. From the 1980s on, in a context of ample socioeconomic changes, the spread of
digital technologies and the growing relevance of (and capacity to capture) intangibles for large
corporations led to a transformation in the temporal orientation of the plan and contributed to
change not only the how managers plan but also the immediate purpose of planning.

Key Words
Corporate Planning - Harvard Business Review - Network Analysis – Industrial Capitalism –
Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism

1
1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 3

2. CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION OF CORPORATE PLANNING ................................... 5

2.1. CORPORATE PLANNING AS COMPREHENSIVE CORPORATE STRATEGY ...................................................................... 6

2.2. CORPORATE PLANNING AS THE STRUGGLE FOR DOMINATION OVER LABOR AND AGAINST THE UNCERTAINTIES OF MARKET
EXCHANGE ............................................................................................................................................................. 10

2.3. A FEEDBACK PROCESS OF DELIBERATION AND SUBJECTION ................................................................................ 13

3. CORPUS AND METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 15

3.1. CORPUS .................................................................................................................................................. 15

3.2. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................................... 16

4. RESULTS....................................................................................................................................... 19

4.1. NETWORK ANALYSIS AND CLUSTERING .......................................................................................................... 19

4.2. THE EVOLUTION OF THE MEANS OF CORPORATE PLANNING ............................................................................... 21

5. DISCUSSION AND FINAL REMARKS ........................................................................................ 23

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 26

APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................................. 31

2
1. Introduction
In the mid-eighties, Marxist economist Ernest Mandel observed that the “growing objective
socialization of labour” was “the basic historical trend of capitalist development, from the
Industrial Revolution onwards” (Mandel, 1986, p. 6). In his view, the “growing
interdependence of both work-processes themselves and of the choice and production of the
goods we consume” reflects this evolution, which is mostly caused by a “dramatic extension of
the planned organization of work”. Planning - broadly defined as a “direct allocation, ex-ante”
of resources - was not mainly a matter of state policy but the consequence of a “decline in
market allocation” internal to capitalism’s “dynamic of accumulation and competition”.
Certainly, Mandel’s claim echoes Marx’s famous vision of capitalist accumulation unfolding
throughout history as “the centralization of the means of production and the socialization of
labour” that ultimately leads to the demise of the capitalist system (Balibar, 2019; Marx, 1867,
Chapter 32). Yet, Mandel’s insistence on the growing importance of planning also echoed a
very practical reality faced by managers: their need to deal with the growing “difficulties of
determining over-all objectives, formulating product-market strategies, and evaluating the joint
effects of combined programs” (Gilmore & Brandenburg, 1962, p. 61).
This paper reopens the question of Corporate Planning (CP) from a political economy
perspective by analyzing its evolving role in capitalism. CP can be loosely defined as the
deployment of capabilities to organize the labour process, develop the means of production,
and control both the supply and demand sides of the market throughout various temporalities.
Indeed, while academic interest in this issue has dramatically recessed since Mandel’s writing,
the reality of CP is at least as crucial now for corporations as it used to be in the mid-20th
century. Indeed, corporations continue to grow in size and complexity (Kwon et al., 2023),
while the pace of commodity production and circulation continue to accelerate requiring more
organization (Bonacich & Wilson, 2008; Rosa & Scheuerman, 2010).
To account for the evolution yet persistent relevance of CP, we analyze the content of Harvard
Business Review (HBR) since its foundation in 1922 until 2021 included. Addressed directly to
management, this journal embodies the growing interest for the formalization of management
practices in the wake of the transformation of the workplace propelled by Taylor’s views. Being
CP the main role of top management, it is to be expected that HBR will provide testament of

3
the evolution of CP’s nature over the course of the past century. Hence, we use text mining and
network analysis techniques to examine the content of this journal’s full sample of articles.

Our results show that CP found new venues but remains crucial in the process of capital
circulation and accumulation.
CP used to be conditioned by two types of means of planning that we proposed to call means
of information and knowledge appropriation (MIKA) and means of spatio-temporal projection
(MSTP). The former was used to capture relevant intangibles for the construction and
assessment of the plan while the latter were used to deploy the plan and concretely control and
organize the activity from production to consumption.
The emergence and spread of digital technologies, and more broadly the growing relevance of
(and capacity to capture) intangibles for large corporations, contributed to transforming these
distinct means into a single type of multifaceted means of planning that simultaneously operates
as MIKA and MSTP. In the 1980s, in context of broader socioeconomic changes towards
neoliberalism, those new possibilities enabled a transformation in the temporal orientation of
the plan and contributed to change not only the how managers plan but also the immediate
purpose of planning.

Our motivating intuition is that the development of information technology and the related new
unfolding of CP call for a fresh outlook on the intrinsic or historical limits of planning. If the
immediate focus of this research is to trace the evolution of CP, an indirect stake is the potential
and limits for a renewal of socialist planning and/or the scope for ecological planning in our
time (Barasz et al., 2022; Durand, 2021; Durand & Keucheyan, 2019; Keucheyan & Durand,
2020; Krahé, 2022; Phillips & Rozworski, 2019a). In such a perspective we will not concentrate
on financial dimension of CP. Although it is not possible to completely disentangle financial
from operational and investment planning in profit-driven organization, in this article we focus
mainly on the operational and strategic dimension of the planning process, which are in fact
presented as a problem of its own in HBR articles.
The next section proposes a general conceptualization of CP as a matter of information and
knowledge appropriation mobilized to organize economic processes. Section 3 exposes our
corpus, methodology and section 4 our results. Section 5 analyses those results in light of what
we identify as two periods in capitalism regarding CP: industrial capitalism and intellectual
monopoly capitalism. The shift of the logic and methods of CP from IC to IMC and their
implications for the planning debate are outlined in the concluding section 6.

4
2. Conceptualizing the evolution of corporate planning
Academic interest in CP emerged in the late 1950s and reached its peak the 1970s (Figure 1
and Figure 2). After the mid-1980s1, the topic was marginalized, victim of a wider loss of
interest in planning in the context of rising assertiveness of neoliberal ideas (Amable, 2011;
Plehwe et al., 2020). Research on economic and organizational coordination focused instead on
what appeared at the first sight as an extension in depth and scope of the realm of market
exchange. Some scholars even predicted the demise of the dominance of big businesses and the
rise of a new kind of “creative” capitalism based on small firms (Clegg, 1990; Sengenberger et
al., 1990; Weiss, 1988).
Remarkably, the issue of CP is widely overlooked by the economic literature, with only 35
economic publications of a total of 505 that include the term “corporate planning” in the Web
of Science. It is thus not surprising that this notion does not appear among the 8 occurrences of
the term “planning” in the JEL Classification System.
Overall, most of the literature on CP pertains to management studies (279 of the 505
publications of our sample and 218 are classified as “business” publications). Hence, we first
overview this body of research before relating it to the “knowledge problem” raised in political
economy and finally mobilize both frameworks to elaborate an original conceptualization to
explore the evolution of CP over the last century.

1 On Figure 1 , the peak of 2016 is explained by 10 chapters that belong to the same book, entitled “Modernising
school governance: corporate planning and expert handling in state education”.

5
Figure 1: Number of scientific publications, all research areas, that include the term
“corporate planning” in their abstract, title or keywords in web of science (1970- 2022)

30

25

20

15

10

0
1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022
Authors' elaboration using WoS data

Figure 2: Google Books Ngram for "corporate planning" and "Corporate Planning" over the
period 1922-2019 (screenshot May 10th, 2023)

2.1. Corporate planning as comprehensive corporate strategy

Several difficulties arise when one attempts to grasp the notion of CP from management and
business studies. First, its boundaries are blurred with a lot of overlap with closely related
concepts such as “corporate strategy” and “strategic planning”. Second, and directly linked to
this research, the very idea of planning covers changing realities over time. Finally, since the

6
topic was most heavily discussed from the mid-sixties to the mid-nineties (Figure 1 and Figure
2), the canonical definitions arose in that period, which means that we should bear in mind that
they are also infused by business practices of that time and the broader historical context. To
overcome these difficulties, we focus here on seminal and influential pieces, judging by their
number of citations.

In an early influential article on the topic published in the HBR, CP is conceived as a “task of
top-management” consisting “of determining over-all objectives, formulating product-market
strategies, and evaluating the joint effects of combined programs”. It is thus distinguished from
“operating decision areas such as production planning and inventory control” (Gilmore &
Brandenburg, 1962, p. 61). Explicitly inspired from military decision-making process in the
U.S. Army, the master plan of the top management comprise four elements: formulating the
economic mission, which refers to the kind of business the firm should be in and its performance
objectives; determining the competitive strategy, which concerns more directly the marketing
mix; specifying a program of action to complement the competitive strategy; and finally, giving
room to a reappraisal phase which allows to assess the relevance of the implemented plan and
to decide the required modifications.
In a classical contribution on the subject, Russel Ackoff provides a concise definition of
planning as “the design of a desired future and of effective ways to bringing it about” (1970, p.
2). Strategic planning can be distinguished from tactical planning as a process concerned with
longer timeframe and broader functional scope. More importantly, while the latter is only
concerned with the selection of means, the former “is concerned with both formulation of the
goals and selection of the means by which they are to be attained” (Ackoff, 1970, p. 3). In his
view, planning is a process made of five interdependent dimensions. In addition to ends and
means, resources must be gathered to deploy the activities, procedures and organizational
setting drive the implementation of the plan and control features are designed to anticipate,
detect, prevent, and correct error in, or failure of, the plan on a continuous basis. Finally,
planning practices can be animated by three distinctive “philosophies”: i) satisficing aims at
plans that are “good enough”, favoring a conservative evolution of current policies; ii)
optimizing aims at plans that are as good as possible and rely on mathematical tools deployed
mainly for tactical dimensions and iii) adaptivizing concerns the changes in needs and values
and its most important advantage arises from the knowledge generated in the social process of
planning.

7
Another classical article discussing the notion of planning for diversified companies was
published initially in HBR in 1975 and republished in 1997 by the same journal, indicating the
ongoing relevance of this conceptual framework and the stabilization of the uses of the notion
among scholars and managers alike. Very much oriented toward practices, it advances that “CP,
leading to the formulation of corporate strategy, is the process of (a) deciding on the company’s
objectives and goals, including the determination of which and how many lines of business to
engage in, (b) acquiring the resources needed to attain those objectives, and (c) allocating
resources among the different businesses so that the objectives are achieved” (Vancil &
Lorange, 1975). This process is then broken down at the level of business lines and into
functional planning at the department level for several cycles allowing some feedbacks to
inform the corporate level about the more detailed planning processes.
A theoretically ambitious survey was published in Long Range Planning, the leading journal of
the field, under the title “Rational and Non-Rational Planning”. Among the 17 definitions
identified, one stands out for its clarity and ability to grasp CP’s diverse dimensions: “CP is a
formal, systematic management process, organized by responsibility, time and information, in
order to ensure that operational planning, project planning and strategic planning are regularly
carried out, so that top management can influence and control the future of the undertaking”
(De Smit & Rade, 1980, p. 89). An important singularity is that the article discusses the
evolution of planning conceptions and practices. At the time of writing, there was widespread
acknowledgement that society in general, and companies in particular, were becoming
“ungovernable” (Chamayou, 2021). This historical context was marked by workers’ aspirations
to democratic management, the rise of the environmental critique, politicization of science and
business and the interwinding of economic, energy and raw material crises. Against this
backdrop, De Smit and Rade (1980) consider that planning is becoming both more pressing but
also more difficult. In terms of the need to plan, they distinguish “an essential and a technical
formal aspect which increasingly prompts us to plan”:

The essential aspect concerns the change in the pattern of social needs, the political and social
developments (democratization, codetermination), the structuring of inter-organizational
networks, etc.

The technical, formal aspect concerns the increasing amount of information to be processed,
irrespective of the nature of the problems, as a result of a larger number of factors which
have to be taken into account, the increasing inter-dependence, feed-back loops with

8
 different delays and, in addition, the variability, the uncertainty of all these factors and
associated relationships.” (De Smit & Rade, 1980, p. 88)

The problem of planning is thus embedded in both the predominant values of the historical
context and the informational dimension of the considered time. Planning is a politicized
process; it is not value-free, “while at the same time scientific techniques increasing our
embracive power” are applied (De Smit & Rade, 1980, p. 94).
On this basis, the authors question CP and its evolution since WWII from diverse perspectives.
Their study of the literature detects a shift in planning methods from operational planning until
the fifties toward various modalities of long-term planning afterwards (De Smit & Rade, 1980,
pp. 94–98). Initially, they observed that (conventional) long-term planning integrated at the
organization level mainly relied on budgeting extrapolations, before becoming properly
strategic via the investigation of alternative futures, articulating those two dimensions from the
1960s onward. By the late the 1970s, they identify the emergence of a communicative
(normative) model. It is characterized by the affirmation of new types of problems (Wicked
problems / Messes / Meta-problems), new types of goals (“stylistic objectives” and meta goals),
new research methods (adaptative learning) and new means of planning (Intensive
communication cyclic process).

In the last three decades, the rare research on CP focused on the issue of performance. The
hypothesis was that the more sophisticated planning the better the performances, i.e. strategic
CP was a more powerful driver of firm performance than lower-level strategic planning or
solely financial planning and that non-planning firms were worse in terms of profitability,
survival (Capon et al., 1994) and others economic dimensions (growth, liquidity, stock market
valuation). The results have been regarded as inconclusive (Wolf & Floyd, 2017), but recent
meta-data analysis confirms that CP sophistication tends to improve firms’ performances, in
particular in the manufacturing sector where task interdependence is supposed to be higher than
in services (Hamann et al., 2022). Importantly, this research still relies on De Smid and Rade
(1980) classical paper to define CP as “strategic planning in a comprehensive sense”, which
implies “a formal, explicit, and systematic organizational decision-making process” (Hamann
et al., 2022, p. 4).

Summing up, management studies understand CP as a set of comprehensive business processes

that allows to deploy a long-term strategy under the general arbitrage of top management. This

9
decision-making process relies on a wide range of formal and informal procedures that inform
the elaboration of broad ends and concrete goals and allows the implementation of the plan but
also its constant evolution and adaptation across different timespan and organizational entities.
From the mid twentieth century up-to the early eighties, the literature documents a growing
sophistication of CP from a simple practice of operational and budget extrapolations up-to a
comprehensive strategic analysis and open-ended processes. As recent research focused more
on the issue of performance, the interest for complex theoretical thinking about CP recessed,
leaving surprisingly undertheorized/unexplored the implications of new information
technologies for CP.

2.2. Corporate planning as the struggle for domination over labor and against
the uncertainties of market exchange

The legacy of management studies from the 1970s leaves us with powerful descriptions and
conceptual insights to grasp CP’s changing forms. However, this literature overlooks the
knowledge dimension. Political economy, by contrast, acknowledges the tension between
conflict and cooperation concerning both the gathering of information, the production of
knowledge and the implementation of the plan within and beyond the organization. The most
salient chapter in this literature stems from the discussion of the “knowledge problem” in the
context of the socialist calculation debate.

Knowledge is a pre-condition for planning and is intrinsically related to conflictual productive

relations. As identified by Braverman (1998, p. 82), management attempts to build a “monopoly
over knowledge to control each step of the labor process and its mode of execution” because
this is the way, in the shadow of Taylorism, to control the workplace by appropriating workers’
knowledge thanks to the replication of the production process “in paper form before, as, and
after it takes place in physical form” (Braverman, 1998, p. 86).

Management studies neglect of knowledge leads also to a lack of engagement with the
distinction between capitalist market exchange and planning. CP, as economic planning in
general, implies an ex-ante allocation of resources. In capitalist economies, CP ex-ante
allocation is “validated” or not ex-post as the product is subjected to a “salto mortale” when it
is offered in the market (Marx 1990 [1867], p. 200). At this stage, corporate planners are no

10
longer in full control of their resources: external individuals or organizations ultimately decide
whether the products will be realized as commodities or left unsold. In the face of such
“unreliability” (Galbraith, 1967, chap. 3, III, §1), CP can be understood as a constant struggle
of firms’ specific goals against the undetermined order brought about by market’s impersonal
forces. Information and knowledge are therefore central weapons mobilized by CP to protect
firms’ interests from market forces. To navigate through this struggle and achieve outcomes
despite the uncertainty of market allocation, CP targets both production and consumption.

The founders of the Austrian school, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, developed a
sophisticated theory devoted to vilify the idea of socialist planning on the basis of what they
have dubbed as “the knowledge problem” (Kirzner, 1984; Lavoie, 2016). They argued that
knowledge was so dispersed, subjective and tacit that central authorities could not access it to
plan, thus needed to leave economic decisions to the “man on the spot”, guided by the market.
From this tradition, Richard Adelstein attempts to make sense of the growing importance of
CP, that is, of planning within capitalist economies. He points out that corporate planning must
overcome three challenges: purpose, information and control. Purpose refers to setting a goal
to afterwards assess the plan. Sufficient information, continues the author, needs to be collected
by the planning corporation, in order “to devise a strategy for reaching the goal. Finally,
effective control over events and behavior must be gained, so that the planner’s whishes are
carried out” (Adelstein, 2005, p. 62). In his view, the success of planning ultimately depends
on the willingness of those involved in sharing the relevant information with the planning
authority. This can occur only to the extent that individuals contributing to the firm productive
activity - i.e. the workers - are incentivized by what the author names a “purpose in common”,
which materializes in “the pursuit of profit” (Adelstein, 2005, p. 73).
This proposal is problematic for several reasons. First, by supposing an alignment of interests
between owners, workers and managers around the profit motive, he overlooks the internal
conflictual dynamics arising from the distribution of value-added and the organization of the
labor process that was so accurately analyzed by Braverman (1998). More surprisingly, coming
from the Austrian tradition, his argument rests on a naïve conception of knowledge as fully
articulable, explicit and individually carried (as opposed to the outcome of a collective process),
supposing that the success of planning just requires that individuals “actively want to tell the
planner what they know” (Adelstein, 2005, p. 65). Finally, Adelstein’s frame does not account
for the growing complexity of economic planning as firms’ sizes and market shares’

11
concentrations continue to grow. In short, by drawing on the Austrian tradition, this author is
led to undermine the political as well as historical dimensions of CP.

Contrastingly, the Marxist perspective of Charles Bettelheim provides key insights to

understand both dimensions of CP. Informed by an active participation in the debates
concerning real historical experiences of socialist and developmental planning (Denord &
Zunigo, 2005), Bettelheim was aware of the practical difficulties of socialist planning. This led
him to conceive the limits of planning as historic and socio-technic, depending on the ability of
the productive forces to transform dispersed subjective knowledge into codified information,
and process that information into usable knowledge at a more aggregated level:

“The size of the economic subjects, their internal organization and their external links appear
to be partly subject to the techniques of collecting, codifying, transmitting, assembling
and interpreting information (…). This implies that the advances made in the sphere of
information techniques may have considerable practical consequences affecting the size of
the real economic subjects” (1975, p. 82).

For Bettelheim, planning possibilities evolve with the availability of information techniques.
Echoing him, James Beniger (1986, p. 292) observed, for the case of post-war macroeconomic
planning, that “increasing reliability and predictability of flows, in turn, sustained a continuing
succession of planning technologies”. This suggests a self-reinforcing dynamic between the
capacity to appropriate knowledge and information and the ability to implement actions and
fulfill objectives. As the former grow, the latter also develops. Drawing on this perspective,
recent studies argue that fewer corporations increasingly monopolize these “forces of control”
(Schaupp & Jochum, 2022; Phillips & Rozworski, 2019b).

Overall, the issue of CP from the political economy perspective is related to the efforts made
by profit-seeking corporations to secure profitability and survival. It implies controlling the
labor process and reducing uncertainties of the market on the sourcing and marketing sides. Its
potential reach and effectiveness evolve over time, depending on the dynamic of class struggle
at the point of production and the development of information technologies as “planning
technologies” or “forces of control”.

12
 2.3. A feedback process of deliberation and subjection

Regarding knowledge and information, recent research explores how leading corporations’
accumulation relies on their systematic and to some extent self-reinforcing concentration and
assetization leading to the perpetuation of intellectual monopolies (IMs) (Durand & Milberg,
2020; Pagano, 2014; Rikap, 2021; Rikap & Lundvall, 2020). Given the centrality of knowledge
and information for CP, the expanding monopolization of society’s knowledge and information
render the undertheorized question of CP in contemporary capitalism all the more pressing. As
leading corporations monopolize intangibles, one could argue that the firms deprived from such
knowledge to organize the labor process, to handle technological change and to manage and
reduce the uncertainties of market exchanges then become their planning subjects. Inspired by
this literature and informed by management research, we propose an updated conceptual
framework to analyze CP and delineate a set of dimensions to capture its changing forms.
As we have seen in section 2.1, according to De Smit and Rade (1980), each planning model
has its associated means of planning. Building on this concept from a political economy
perspective - thus acknowledging the centrality of knowledge and information for conflict and
coordination issues in the dynamics of economies, one can distinguish two types of means that
inform CP processes and sustain their deployment. Those capabilities are partly distinctive,
partly overlapping means of information and knowledge appropriation (MIKA) and means of
spatio-temporal projection (MSTP) that combine technical devices and social practices.

As shown in Figure 3, both production and consumption spheres generate information that feeds
back the planning process through the MIKA (blue lines). Feedback processes are characterized
by three distinctive logical moments: information, evaluation, and action (Paquette, 1987).
First, information needs to be captured and encoded in signals in order to be inscribed on
material supports such as paper or digital devices. Second, these signals are gathered and treated
to allow the production of strategically selected pieces of knowledge. In this context, the idea
of appropriation not only refers to the incorporation of pieces of information but also to their
structuration in a way that is adequate to the organization’s overarching goals. Third, the
contextualized evaluation of the available information orients the action to take, that is, the
operational moment of planning.
These actions take place through the MSTP (red lines). They are primarily directed to the inner
productive and financial strategy of the firm. However, they can extend beyond its frontier to
reach and influence other actors such as providers and consumers. Public bodies and regulatory

13
agencies could also be the target of these MSTP to the extent that their decisions matter for
production and consumption operations that affect the profitability of the firm.

Considering the permanent feedback process, CP is indissociably a process of material and

semiotic temporal projection and a process of knowledge centralization resulting in continuous
– though imperfect – adjustment. The red box titled CP indicates that this collective action of
management is deployed upon deliberation but under the hegemony of the profit motive, on
which the firm’s long-term survival depends, and under the condition of an effective ability to
control – i.e. to monitor and affect – key operational parameters. The time horizon of profit-
seeking may vary as short-term returns can be sacrificed in exchange for more rapid growth
and/or broader control. CP is nurtured by world views emanating from managers leading the
planning process and interpreting the information they gather according to what Fligstein
(1993) calls their “conceptions of control”. Crucial attribute of managerial power, CP
contributes thus to generate a form of curated reality as decisions cascade onto the subaltern
bodies along hierarchical lines. It is thus a process of subjection that leads to the subsumption
of labor and nature and an attempt to shape markets for the sake of the firm’s management
strategy.

Figure 3: Basic elements of corporate planning as a feedback process

14
In the rest of this paper, we propose to explore the evolution of CP through the lenses of the
knowledge problem with a special attention to the rise of Intellectual Monopoly in the past
decades. Accordingly, we will not systematically examine the class-conflict drives of CP, which
ought to be explore in future investigations, but rather focus on the following hypotheses:
1) CP evolves in time2 in relations to the transformations of MSTP and MIKA, which
derives from the insights of Bettelheim (1971, 1975), Beniger (1986) and De Smit and
Rade (1980);
2) Since digital technologies directly impact on information generation, circulation and
treatment, their diffusion substantially altered CP through changes in the MIKA and
MSTP. We anticipate an increase in the scope and sophistication of CP that can be
captured along four dimensions of CP identified in managerial studies (section 2.1):
a. Temporal orientation
b. Type of knowledge
c. Type of management
d. Purpose

3. Corpus and methodology

To analyze the evolving role of CP in capitalism from a political economy perspective, we
examined the content of HBR articles since its foundation in 1922 until 2021 included, using
text mining and network mapping. This section explains the rationale behind the choice of this
corpus and our methodology.

3.1. Corpus

We chose this journal due to its centrality in the field and its hybrid character, at the frontier of
management science and management practices. As its founder Prof. Donham explained, this
journal is “intended to be the highest type of business journal (…) for use by the student and
the business man” (Harvard Business Review, 2023). In HBR very first issue, he explains that
the overarching goal of HBR is to make available “the representative practices of business men
(…) as a broader foundation for [executive] decisions” and to contribute to the development

2 It also evolves across space, but for the sake of space and due to our empirical focus on HBR’s contributions
we do not examine this important aspect here.

15
of “a proper theory of business” (Donham, 1922, p. 1). This general aim laying at the juncture
of research and practices is still valid a hundred years later. The HBR public LinkedIn profile
thus explains that the journal “provides professionals around the world with rigorous insights
and best practices to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a
positive impact” (LinkedIn, 2022).
Given also that CP has been mostly discussed by management and business literature, there is
even more reason to focus on such a journal for the purpose of this article.

3.2. Methodology

After retrieving the whole dataset containing the bibliometric information of all the HBR
publications until 2021 included from the journal’s website, we used a series of statistical and
algorithmic techniques to analyze the evolution of the content of HBR articles. The data were
processed using the CorText platform (Tancoigne et al., 2014), which allowed us to build
network maps by using specific algorithms that associate entities according with their frequency
of co-occurrence within a corpus (Barbier et al., 2012).

Text mining
We used text mining of the titles and abstracts of all the publications in our sample. We did an
algorithmic extraction of the top 2000 multi-terms of one up to five words from each corpus to
proxy privileged topics. To be included in that list, a multi-term had to appear in at least three
different scientific publications. The resulting list was refined following an in-depth cleaning
process. This filtering was performed to avoid words whose frequency responds to either their
grammatical function (generic monograms like “and”, “then”, “or”, etc.) or that were non-
content specific. We eliminated among others, terms like: “previous methods”, “academic
research”, “key aspects”, “central role”, “challenges and opportunities” and “experimental
design”. After these cleaning processes, the resulting list contained 1233 multi-terms.

Using those 1233 terms as a proxy to HBR articles’ content, to study the evolutionary nature of
CP, we used a period detection function to automatically identify periods in which the content
of HBR articles significantly changed, pointing to potential changes in the references to CP.

16
Periodization
The used function to detect periods considers the frequency distribution of the mined terms to
produce a matrix representing distances between the content of HBR articles for every pair of
different years. The function follows Tibshirani et al. (2001) to build a matrix of the cosine
distances between the content of each pair of years. Periods are detected by minimizing the sum
of all the cosine distances between all pairs of years for each possible period. In other words,
the cut is made so that the years that remain inside a period are more like each other than what
would result from making the cut in any other year.
To define the number of periods that we wanted to automatically detect, we built network maps
of the 150 most frequent multi-terms for regular time slices -same number of years per period.
We consider from 2 to 10 periods. We analyzed the evolution of the maps -thus the content of
HBR- with a tubes’ layout where the network evolution is traced by connecting related clusters
from different periods with a tube. Clusters are represented as rectangles, identified by their
most frequent terms, and placed in the year corresponding to the midpoint of each period.
Clusters may merge, split into multiple clusters, appear occasionally, or remain unchanged
throughout the whole period. The width of the tubes connecting different clusters is proportional
to their number of records. The colour of the tubes provides evidence on the degree of similarity
between two connected clusters. Darker tubes are more robust in the sense that more nodes are
shared between connected clusters in two consecutive time periods.

The tubes’ layout corresponding to 8 periods clearly shows a marked breakpoint in the late
1970s (between the 4th and 5th period) whereas the 6 periods’ tubes layout plotted a breakpoint
by the mid 1950s (so between the second and third periods). Splitting the sample into more than
8 periods made the networks too dissimilar, thus not useful for our long-term analysis (see
Figures A.1 to A.3 in appendix). Having two potential breakpoints led us to choose three periods
for the automatic period detection, expecting to find one period until the mid 1950s, a second
one until the late 1970s and the third one coming up to the present days. Applying the above-
mentioned technique for automatic period detection for a total of three periods we obtained the
following split, which approximately aligns to our observation of potential periods by splitting
the sample in regular periods: 1922-1949; 1950-1985; 1986-2021 (see Figure 4).

17
Figure 4: HBR content automatic periodization

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

Network analysis and clustering

Next, we used network mapping and clustering to analyse the co-occurrence of the extracted
multi-terms from HBR in each of the periods. Clustering is a technique that groups the closest
entities forming communities within networks (Fortunato & Hric, 2016). The Louvain
community detection algorithm was applied as cluster detection method in every network
(Blondel et al., 2008).
Network maps were built for each automatically identified period. For each of them, nodes
represented the 150 multi-terms with the highest frequency of co-occurrences. In this case,
direct ties (edges) were determined by the chi-square measure. This is a direct local measure,
meaning that it considers actual occurrences between entities (two multi-terms in the same HBR
article). To define the direct ties (edges), chi-square normalization prioritises links towards
higher degree nodes; these are the most frequent co-occurrences within the network. It thus

18
privileges the strongest links for each multi-term, so edges can be interpreted as an indicator of
closeness between terms, thus providing more insights on the overall topics discussed.

Each network clusters can be interpreted as referring to a specific broad topic discussed in HBR
during the corresponding period.

As we show in detail in the following section, each map included a sub-set of clusters of interest
for our research question and other clusters that referred to other themes of relevance for the
journal, such as geopolitical matters and the evolution of the relationship between firms and
workers. For our analysis, we only focused on those clusters that referred to areas comprised
within CP. After interpreting each of this cluster’s main theme, it became clear that, for the
purpose of CP, the 2nd identified period can be interpreted as a transitional period since it
anticipates dynamics that are fully deployed in the last period while also includes topics more
specific of the first period.

Engagement with most significant papers

For each of the clusters referring to CP topics in each of the maps we complemented our analysis
by in depth engagement the most relevant papers. We extracted the top 10 papers in terms of
the number of multi-terms from the list of 1,233 appeared in the paper (or more if the 10th paper
had same number of terms as the 11th, etc.). We read all the abstracts and selected one article
per cluster as the most representative in relation to our research question. From this selection
and considering the overall analysis we observed five most relevant qualitative changes of CP
features – in the light of our conceptual framework (section 2.3) - between the different periods.

4. Results

4.1. Network analysis and clustering

Figures A.4, A.5 and A.6 in the appendix present the networks of the top 150 multi-terms for
each automatically detected period and Figure A.7 summarizes the evolution of the clusters in
a tubes’ layout. Our analysis focuses on the 10 clusters that we associated with CP, each labelled
with its two most frequent multi-terms in Figure . We left aside those that refer to other topics
covered by HBR such as financial, historical or macroeconomic issues and specific discussions
about labor. Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

19
Table 2 in appendix illustrates each clusters’ theme with quotes from papers associated with
each of the ten clusters.

Period 1 presents four clusters with terms related to CP (Figure A. 4). One of the clusters,
labelled “tax & revenues”, is focused on what we identify as public intervention in corporate
activity and includes references to “forecasts”. The cluster labelled “utility & public utility” is
dedicated to the development of information management tools and skills, comprising terms
like “control”, “data” and “information”, which stress their importance even before the
development of computers in the 1950s. A third cluster, identified as “stores & chains”, is
integrated by papers related to management technics developed by chain stores to scale up in a
context of concentration of the retail industry. The fourth cluster, “food & advertisements”,
mainly relates to methods for boosting sales and consumers expenses including the term
"radio”. The radio was the first sophisticated information technology used for reaching out
consumers through advertisement. This cluster contains multiple terms that continue to be
prominent in the journals’ papers during the following periods, as evidenced by the tubes
connecting this with following periods’ clusters in Figure . Nonetheless, the content of these
connected clusters evolves throughout the periods.

Interestingly, we found that the second period (Figure A.5) can be considered transitional in
what concerns CP because it contains only two clusters on associated topics that are both
connected to clusters from other periods (see Figure A.7). One of them, labelled “products &
advertisements” in the second period, stems from the above-mentioned cluster focused on
advertisement. Papers in this cluster are related to the control of demand such as radio
advertising, which is a continuation of the previous period, but also anticipates from the
following period the subordination of management and information systems to financial
objectives. The other cluster, labelled “plant & computers”, anticipates the ICT revolution with
terms such as “information”, “data” and “technology”. Many papers in this cluster discuss the
complexification and tightening of formal procedures thanks to new technologies.

As expected, ICT gains much more traction in the third period (Figure A.6). The third period
portrays four clusters relevant for our purpose. The cluster “customer & consumers” is the
continuation of the advertising-related clusters. New terms include “internet” and
“relationship”. This cluster’s papers mainly discuss how firms can benefit from customers’

20
relations empowered by information technology. The cluster on “creativity & innovation” stems
from the “plant & computer” cluster from period 2. It is concerned with means for controlling
innovation and creativity inside and outside the firm. A third cluster, identified as “plant &
manufacturers”, reflects on the strategic character of science, technology and other intangible
assets like skills. It comprises technology-related terms such as “system”, “software”,
“computer”, “technology” and “science”, and terms pointing to hierarchical relations of
production such as “control” or “influence”. Finally, the “supplies & chains” cluster also
includes terms related to intangible assets such as “knowledge”, “competence”, “data”,
“information” and “expertise”. They are linked to terms connoting the development of closer
production relations among different firms such as “partnerships”, “partners”, “network” or
“collaboration”. Most of these terms are new. A central theme of this cluster is how information
technologies can leverage horizontal cooperation inside and among firms.

4.2. The evolution of the means of corporate planning

On the basis of the most relevant papers of each cluster, identified following the methodology
explained above (section 3), we analyzed changes in the means used for corporate planning as
well as in the logics of corporate planning focusing on the dimensions delineated at the end of
our critical review of the literature: Temporal orientation, Type of knowledge, Role of
management and Purpose. Table 1 presents the papers’ quotes that illustrate such changes. In
this analysis, building on our findings, we refer to two instead of three periods since the middle
one in our original split is transitional in terms of CP. Thus we distinguish between intellectual
monopoly capitalism and a previous era we labelled industrial capitalism, inspired by
Chandler’s analysis of the Modern corporation of that epoch (Chandler, 1977).

Regarding temporal orientation, we observe a shift from a linear representation of planning

activities to a circular one, structured by constant loop with online feedback. This change is
underpinned by the development of information technologies that intensified feedback loops,
giving companies access to more granular and real-time data as well as adaptative means of
calculation. For instance, radio advertising (Cassady & Williams, 1949), which is a MSTP, does
not provide any feedback regarding how the ad was perceived by consumers, who received the
information, or whether it convinced them to buy the advertised product. By contrast, “smart
products” (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014) allow companies to receive massive amount of data

21
on consumers’ situation, and adapt their communication, products, and services accordingly.
These devices merge tools that operate planning with those that inform decision, integrating
MIKA and MSTP.

The type of knowledge captured by MIKA and used in MSTP also evolved between periods. In
the first one knowledge appeared predefined and formalized while in the last period the focus
is on creative and idiosyncratic knowledge. Papers published in the first two periods display a
management of workers’ activities by means of very formal types of knowledge. For instance,
“indexes of machine utilization” (“Indexes of Machine Utilization,” 1929) are a MIKA that
allows companies to compare the use of its equipment across its departments, while the timing
and standardization of jobs (Likert & Seashore, 1963) correspond to relatively rigid and fixed
MSTP. Papers of the third period, by contrast, insist on the importance of discovering new
knowledge contained in agents’ “creativity” (Florida & Goodnight, 2005) in order to “formulate
creative strategic initiatives nimbly” (Kotter, 2012). MIKA evolve towards the capture of a
more evolutive and undetermined knowledge. This capture of creative and agile knowledge is
said to stem from organizational arrangements that, for instance, “blend the self-organizing
advantages of markets with the low transaction costs of hierarchies” (Evans & Wolf, 2005).

Management’s role also changes towards a greater subordination of human decision to

technological MIKA. In the first period, papers underline that new technics, data or instrument
are used by management to guide their decisions. But while these tools “provide valuable
assistance in making decisions and estimates” (Smith, 1927), authors warn that they must not
be substitute for managers’ judgement and intuitions, which remain the main compass for
decision making. By contrast, articles in the most recent period focus on more sophisticated
data-driven tools of management replacing human subjectivity in driving decision making
processes (Friend & Walker, 2001).

Finally, the purpose of planning has also shifted from a productive-oriented purpose toward a
knowledge-oriented one. In former periods, corporate planning seems to be concerned with the
maximization of productivity gains (“Indexes of Machine Utilization,” 1929) and limiting
waste (Smith, 1927). Knowledge, in the first and second periods, appeared as a functional
resource that could be used to fulfil these purposes. In the last period, knowledge becomes an
end in itself. “Intellectual assets” (Hayes & Jaikumar, 1988) are recognized as the most strategic
assets that corporations must capture and manage. The never-ending process of “learning”

22
becomes the goal of any corporate strategy (Leslie & Holloway, 2006). That the goal of
companies become more related to knowledge acquisition suggests, again, that MIKA and
MSTP become more integrated to each other: companies’ operations would aim at developing
MIKA, which in turns can be used to ensure the success of operations and, ultimately, the
protection of long-term financial interests.

Table 1: Changing means and logics in the various dimensions of Corporate Planning

DIMENSION INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY

CAPITALISM
TEMPORAL ORIENTATION
MEANS OF PLANNING “radio advertising” (Cassady & Williams, 1949) “vast quantities of data that smart, connected
products offer” (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014)
LOGIC Linearity (unilateral communication) Circularity (feedback loop)

TYPE OF KNOWLEDGE
MEANS OF PLANNING “summary figures”, “index of machine “dynamic structure free of bureaucratic layers”,
utilization” (“Indexes of Machine Utilization,” “network” (Kotter, 2012)
1929) “arsenal of creative thinkers” (Florida & Goodnight,
“timing and standards”, “budgets” (Likert & 2005)
Seashore, 1963)
LOGIC Predefined and standardized Creative and evolutive

ROLE OF MANAGEMENT
MEANS OF PLANNING “estimates of future sales”, “sales forecasts”,
“executives and salesmen”, analysis of
markets”, analysis of records” (Smith, 1927)
LOGIC Discretionary management decisions equipped
with local metrics
“software tools”, “merchandising optimization
systems (…) determine the right quality allocation,
and price of items to maximize retailers’ returns”,
“sophisticated data-processing techniques” (Friend &
Walker, 2001)
Data driven management decisions

PURPOSE
MEANS OF PLANNING “large-scale machine production” (Clare Elmer “new information partnerships, (…) strategic
Griffin, 1925) coalitions through the sharing of data” (Konsynski &
“large volumes of sales” (Mullen, 1924) Mcfarlan, 1990)
“maximum utilization of the equipment” “intellectual assets to capture the knowledge and
(“Indexes of Machine Utilization,” 1929) develop the skills that will permit the company to
compete” (Hayes & Jaikumar, 1988)
“sales learning curve” (Leslie & Holloway, 2006)
LOGIC Expanding production Capturing knowledge

5. Discussion and final remarks

Our analysis of HBR articles exhibits contrasting characteristics of corporate planning between
the heyday of IC and the formation of IMC since the 1980s. Under IC, corporate plans were

23
mainly designed according to a linear view of time and followed neatly defined forward-looking
steps mostly oriented toward the development – and control – of operations and the markets for
pre-defined products. MIKA corresponded to formalized procedures of information calculation,
such as budgeting, sales forecasts, or indexes at the disposal of managers, but since information
system’s development was limited in comparison to contemporary systems, they were used
mainly for getting/capturing the necessary inputs (knowledge and information) for tailoring a
pre-conceptualized plan. In such a context, forecasts are illustrative because they attempt to
anticipate the future but with an overall static view, simply projecting key established technical
relations into the future.
Meanwhile, IC’s MSTP were placed at the end of the planning process. The radio is a
paradigmatic example of how advertising was conducted; just like for MIKAs under IC,
unidirectionality prevailed: messages were sent to consumers in order to influence their
behavior, but no feedback were sent to the firm which was incapable of measuring their ads’
direct impact on consumers.
Comparing both periods, the distinction between MIKAs and MSTPs became increasingly
blurred under IMC, in a context of growing versatility of information devices and broadening
of data of interest. Information gathering went beyond strictly delineated operational field of
the firms to engage more systemically with external sources in order to capture emerging trends
and contextual dynamics but also to coerce the behavior of subordinated actors beyond both
formal power and market relations (Pistor, 2020). Harvested big data is here both used as an
input for planning and created as an output of corporate plans. The future is constantly curated
by the plan by using digital technologies and this process takes place continuously as devices
like platforms and computing as a service operate both as MIKA, crucial for gathering the
information and knowledge necessary to plan, but also MSTP, influencing the future.
The linearity of the plan during IC is thus fundamentally broken, opening up the possibility to
plan in a non-linear way. Under IMC, the historical linear projection of the IC planning is thus
substituted with a new temporality: in place of the sequential dynamic of IC planning, IMC
planning takes place as a condensation in the “perpetual present” (Baschet, 2001) of neoliberal
managers. The potentialities of projection of seemingly variegated but fundamentally similar
futures are continuously reevaluated by a pervasive inflow of heterogenous information.
Planning for the valorization of capital thus increases its reach further away from the formal
boundaries of the firm at a time when it becomes increasingly disconnected from broader socio-
economic development prospects and managerial inclination to prioritize firm growth in which
corporate planning had been previously inscribed (Fligstein, 1993).

24
The reasons of this qualitative shift of planning practices in terms of temporal orientation, type
of knowledge, role of management and purpose are multifold, and their exploration goes
beyond the scope of this paper. But among the factors coming to play one can mention the loss
of confidence in rigid planning procedures epitomized by the sclerosis of east-European
socialist economies (Ellman & Kontorovich, 2015), the availability of new technological
devices regarding the collect and the treatment of information, a compulsion to plan faster in
order to adapt more rapidly to an increasingly competitive landscape (Brenner, 2006), an
attempt to reverse the exhaustion of productivity gains from the Fordist era (Aglietta, 1979;
Piore & Sabel, 1984; Streeck, 2012), short termism of shareholders (Reddy & Rabinovich,
2022) in a context of liberalized financial markets, the retreat of industrial policy and the
dismantlement of state planning institutions, the assertiveness of workers mobilization and
broader social unrest calling for renewed form of labour subjection and new ways to
accommodate socio-ecological claims (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999; Chamayou, 2021; Coriat,
1979; De Smit & Rade, 1980).
Beyond the identification of the changing characteristics of corporate planning and the analysis
of the potential causes of this transformation, the main contribution of this article is to document
the persistence of this set of practices that are uniquely related to the social power of large
corporations’ managers. Restating this systemic role seems particularly important at a time
when the percolation of multiple crisis tendencies can nurture the sentiment that the conscious
government of society is becoming increasingly out of reach (Morin, 1976; Tooze, 2021). This
is all the more important under the light of the renewal of industrial policy in core countries,
growing recognition of the merits of Chinese centralized economic coordination and broader
concerns about the need to pervasively integrate ecological issues to the unfolding of economic
activities.
A hypothesis that our research invites to explore further is the role of the uneven development
of planning capabilities in the course of the past decades between the public and private sector
at the expense of the former and of society at large. A fragmentation of planning capabilities
and of narrowing focus on profitability could contribute to increasingly dysfunctional
socioeconomic coordination, calling for a rebalancing in favor of public planning submitting
economic long-term choices to historically informed broader socio-ecological concerns.

25
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Appendix

Figure A.1 Tubes layout 10 periods

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

A.2. Tubes layout 8 periods

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

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A.3. Tubes layout 6 periods

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

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Figure A.4. Top 150 multi-terms from HBR during the 1st period (1922-1949)

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

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Figure A.5. Top 150 multi-terms from HBR in the 2nd period (1950-1985)

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

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Figure A.6. Top 150 multi-terms from HBR in the 3rd period (1951-2021)

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

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Figure A.7. Tubes layout 3 periods

Source: Authors’ analysis based on HBR bibliometric data.

Table 2: Relevant clusters and themes

CLUSTER THEME PAPERS & QUOTE

Period 1 (1922-1949)
Tax & revenue Public “the financial help of local bankers or community
intervention indevelopment corporations [in place ok] government
corporate activityaid to small business” (1946); “scientific research and
new product development” (1945).
Utility & Development of “whether there is a need or desire for a product and
public utility information whether or not there exists the ability to purchase that
management tools product” (1926); “indexes of machine utilization [to
and skills measure] maximum utilization of the equipment”
(1929); “time, know-how, and objectivity needed for
basic and long-term business planning” (1946)
Stores & Management “grocery chains, drug store chains, tobacco chains
chains technics [implying] management of the warehousing and
developed by transportation of commodities” (1925)

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 chain stores to Ford stores are given as example of a rationalized retail
scale up industry able to minimize operating costs (1928)
Food & methods for “sales forecasts (…) from sub-executives and salesmen
advertisement boosting sales and [or] analysis of markets [or] analysis of records”
consumers (1927); “sales promotion [and] marketing costs”
expenses (1944); “mortgage advertising [to] stimulate home
ownership and residential construction” (1945).
Period 2 (1950-1985)
Plant & Complexification a “formal system of controls to review efforts”
computer and tightening of (1963a) ; standards for jobs, extending procedures to
formal office operations, or detailing budgets (1963b) ; “the
procedures thanks logistics of distribution” (1960)
to new
technologies
Product & Control of “for persuasion rather than information” (1949);
advertisements demand & the “ franchising” (1964) ;
subordination of
management and market share increases, a business is likely to have a
information higher profit margin” (1975). In the same vein
systems to “productivity changes” must be analyzed in terms of
financial their “contribution to profit growth” (1984).
objectives
Period 3 (1986-2021)
Customers & How firms can millions of bytes of customer data stored in their
consumers benefit from databases” (2000) ; “new set of software tools [and]
customers’ sophisticated data processing technics [that can]
relations revolutionize the entire merchandising system”
empowered by (2001) ; “smart, connected products [through which]
information customer relationships become continuous and open-
technology ended” (2015)
Creativity & Means for “new technologies and more sophisticated databases”
innovation controlling (1991) ; to “proprietary architectural control” (1993) ;
innovation and “creative energies of all its stakeholders, including
creativity inside customers, software developers, managers, and
and outside the support staff” (2005a) ; “collaboration rules [to] create
firm rich common knowledge, the ability to organize teams
modularity, extraordinary innovation” (2005b) ;
“dynamic structure free of bureaucratic layers [that]
liberate information from silos[and allow]
individualism, creativity, and innovation beyond the
reach of any hierarchy” (2012)

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 Plant & The strategic “CAD, CAM, FMAS and CIM”3 (1988)
manufacturers character of
science, outsourcing parts of the production process that does
technology and not require specific skills (1992)
other intangible
assets like skills
Supplies & How information “collective learning in the organization [and] working
chains technologies can across organizational boundaries” (1990a) ;
leverage “information partnership” (1990b) ; “data processing
horizontal tools [used for] information sharing across companies”
cooperation and (1995); « point of sale scanners [allowing] electronic
information data interchange [ to inform] all stages of the supply
sharing inside and chain” (1997).
among firms

3 These acronyms relate to computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing, flexible manufacturing
systems, computer integrated manufacturing

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