COMM 150: PoMo in WashPo?

... which means, if you keep up with the trendier buzzwords in the national media, postmodernism (sometimes called "PoMo" for short) in The Washington Post. In today's Post, op-ed writer Robert Samuelson has a column titled "Capitalism's Next Stage." It doesn't mention postmodernism by name, but it's surely a clear, crisp explanation of how the postmodern world came about.

At the very least, Samuelson's column shows how economic trends have helped promote the decentering and fragmentation so important to postmodernist philosophers and media critics.

Samuelson's thesis is the 19th-century economy produced a "managerial revolution" that replaced one-man enterprises like John Jacob Astor's fur-trading empire with large, concentrated industries that required centralized management -- and thus, central managers. And in turn, he adds, the giant industries of the 19th and 20th centuries have been all but replaced in the 21st by a scattering of small, specialized enterprises that operate somewhat independently of each other.

Samuelson cites a study by retired Harvard Business School professor Alfred D. Chandler Jr., 88, who said the economy of the late 1800s and almost all the 1900s was essentially managerial. Samuleson says:

Until Chandler, the [history of the] emergence of big business was all about titans. The Rockefellers, Carnegies and Fords were either "robber barons" whose greed and ruthlessness allowed them to smother competitors and establish monopolistic empires. Or they were "captains of industry" whose genius and ambition laid the industrial foundations for modern prosperity. But when Chandler meticulously examined business records, he uncovered a more subtle story. New technologies (the railroad, telegraph and steam power) favored the creation of massive businesses that needed -- and in turn gave rise to -- superstructures of professional managers: engineers, accountants and supervisors.

Take railroads, for example. They required managers to look after rolling stock, coordinate schedules and centralize operations. Samuelson:

Elsewhere the story was similar. Companies didn't achieve lower costs simply by adopting new technologies or building bigger factories. No matter how efficient a plant might be, it would be hugely wasteful if raw materials did not arrive on time or if the output couldn't be quickly distributed and sold. Managers were essential; so were statistical controls. Coordination and organization mattered. Companies that surmounted these problems succeeded.

But now the economy has changed. Samuelson explains:

The trouble now is that the defining characteristics of Chandler's successful firms have changed. For example, many were "vertically integrated" -- they controlled raw materials, manufactured products and sold to the public. AT&T made electronic components, produced telecommunications equipment and sold phone services. But in many new industries, vertical integration has virtually vanished, as economists Naomi Lamoreaux of UCLA, Peter Temin of MIT and Daniel Raff of the University of Pennsylvania argue in a recent study. The computer industry is hugely splintered. Some firms sell components (Intel, AMD), some software (Microsoft, SAP), some services (IBM, EDS), some hardware (Dell, Apple). There's overlap, but not much.

It's also true that old, established firms -- despite ample capital and technical know-how -- often don't dominate new industries. Google, eBay and Yahoo rule the Internet, not General Motors, Sears or Disney.

To be sure, we understand some of these developments. Older firms often suffer from their own success; managers become wedded to existing products, technologies and procedures. We can also identify many of the forces reshaping business: new technologies, globalization and modern finance (pressure for higher profits; corporate "buyouts" by private equity firms). But the very multitude of trends and pressures is precisely the problem. No one has yet synthesized them and given them larger meaning.

But what does this have to do with postmodernism? This, I think: It's another form of fragmentation.

And what does it have to do with mass communications? Well, look back at Samuelson's list of new industries. Relative startups like Google and eBay. Dot-coms, every one. Samuelson concludes:

Just as John Jacob Astor defined a distinct stage of capitalism, we may now be at the end of what Chandler perceptively called "managerial capitalism." Managers, of course, won't disappear. But the new opportunities and pressures on them and their companies may have altered the way the system operates. Chandler admits as much. Asked about how the corporation might evolve, he confesses ignorance: "All I know is that the commercializing of the Internet is transforming the world." To fill that void, someone must do for capitalism's next stage what Chandler did for the last.