Since the 1970s, the organizational synthesis has been a defining framework in the study of the modern United States. Its classics remain central in the historiography. Robert Wiebe’s The Search for Order has been cited 6,000 times; Alfred Chandler’s The Visible Hand nearly 20,000. But if a “synthesis” emerges in today’s literature on the modern United States, it emphasizes disorganization. In the history of capitalism, studies of the gig economy supplant those of corporate giants. In political history, we see accounts of decentralization and persistent localism.
This paper historicizes the development of the organizational synthesis. It shows that a confluence of forces at midcentury – concerns about totalitarian bureaucracies abroad, an attendant interest in Weberian theory, and the wartime growth of corporations and the federal state –gave rise to cross-disciplinary studies of organizations. As these conditions evolved, so too did the organizational synthesis. As the century progressed, corporate behemoths came to seem more like dinosaurs, and downsizing shattered faith in bureaucratic inevitability and hegemony. A shift to post-Weberian theory brought more contingent accounts of organizational development which stressed “adhocracy” over bureaucracy. In the 1980s, efforts to “bring the state back in” saw new applications of bureaucratic theory – but eventually it too would search for a theory of organizations beyond the Weberian paradigm. Scholars wondered: had bureaucratic organizations dominated American life after all?
Fifty years on from the organizational synthesis’ heyday, this paper considers its past and its lessons for the present day.