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Gardiner C. Means Quotes

1896–1988 United States

Gardiner Coit Means (June 8, 1896 – Feb. 15, 1988) was an American economist, government advisor and researcher, who worked at the Committee for Economic Development. At Harvard University he had met lawyer-diplomat Adolf Berle, and together they wrote the seminal work of corporate governance, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932).

United States
Economists

Also known as: Gardiner Coit Means, Gardiner Means

Random Gardiner C. Means quote

6 quotes

Gradually but steadily, great segments of economic activity have been shifted from the market place to administration.

The Modern Corporation has undermined the preconceptions of classic economic theory as effectively as the quantum undermined classic physics at the beginning of the 20th century.

In traditional economic writings dealing with the economy as a whole, it is usually assumed that prices are highly flexible and that economic adjustment is brought about through price changes. We are going to examine inflexible prices.

It is in the development of further administrative coordination that we must come to political scientists for aid. We ask that you apply to the field of economic administration the technique of analysis and principles of organization which you have developed in the study of administrative organization in the form of the state.

The increasing discussion of the importance of inflexible prices in the. American economy has been somewhat stimulated by previous articles by the present writer. In one of these, material was presented on inflexible administered prices and their importance for monetary policy.

We now have single corporate enterprises employing hundreds of thousands of workers, having hundreds of thousands of stockholders, using billions of dollars' worth of the instruments of production, serving millions of customers, and controlled by a single management group. These are great collectives of enterprise, and a system composed of them might well be called "collective capitalism."

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gardiner C. Means (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.