Has corporate diversification gone too far?

Abstract

The most recent wave of merger frenzy has created considerable anxiety and wide‐spread criticism about bigness in business. Over and over again we hear the accusation that it's bigness that's responsible for lack of foresight and long‐range planning among U.S. managers and is the cause of managerial lack of innovation and creativity. While in some respects bigness is a problem — creating complexities of control, direction, communication, etc. — we feel that conventional wisdom has overlooked the real cause of America's economic malaise: our collective failure to manage product diversification adequately.

Citation

Thackray, J. (1982), "Has corporate diversification gone too far?", Planning Review, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 24-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb053987