Studebaker

Book excerpt: While the Big Three automobile companies came to dominate the industry, its early history was characterized by an array of competing companies. Studebaker's story is the chronicle of the life and death of an American automobile company where managements concept of "tradition" played a fundamental role in modeling corporate culture, rhetoric, and strategy. Donald T. Critchlow focuses on how organizational philosophies, developed by successive managerial regimes, reflected and influenced corporate strategies concerning product development, investment policies, employee relations, and the allocation of resources. The upper management of Studebaker thus shaped corporate strategy within an institutional environment that embodied company tradition and responded to market forces.