Published in 1977, it successively won the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes of 1978 and also the Newcomen Book Award 1975-1978, for the best essay of the triennium.
Alfred Chandler describes the appearance of “the visible hand” of the managers, and how this replaced what Adam Smith had called “the invisible hand” of the market. This represents no less than the passage from the familiar liberal capitalism of Smith, in the 18th century, to the professional management capitalism of Chandler, in which we currently live.