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IBM
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IBM
For most of last century, the
history of computing was the story of IBM.
Thomas J Watson Jr (with a little help from Peter Petrie) wrote
Father,
Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond (New York, Bantam 90),
of interest in its own right and for its perspective on the Lou
Gerstner turnaround at Big Blue. Geoffrey Austrian's Herman
Hollerith (New York, Columbia Uni Press 82) is a
definitive study of the punch card king.
Watson understandably concentrates more on the famous 'Think',
IBM's corporate socialism - a considerable achievement amid the 1930's
dustbowls and dole queues - and IBM's marketing prowess than on
company songs with lyrics such as
- our
voices swell in admiration
- of
TJ Watson proudly sing
- He'll
ever be our inspiration
- to
him our voices loudly ring.
or his
father's profound resistance to the development of electronic
computing.
Emerson Pugh's Building IBM: Shaping an Industry &
its Technology (Cambridge, MIT Press 95) is outstanding
academic history of Big Iron's early days. With its companion
volumes - IBMs 360 & Early 370 Systems (91),
Memories That Shaped An Industry (84) and IBMS's
Early Computers (84) - it offers insights into the
company, technology and US business in the first half
of last century.
Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington
Rand & the Industry They Created 1865-1956 (Princeton,
Princeton Uni Press 00) by James Cortada is essential
reading. Edwin Black's IBM & The Holocaust: The
Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany & America's
Most Powerful Corporation (London, Little Brown 01),
published in conjunction with a lawsuit against the IT
giant, is a tendentious expose.
Franklin Fisher's IBM
&
the U.S. Data Processing Industry (New York, Praeger
83) is an economic analysis at the height of the bust-IBM
wars.
Broken Promises: An Unconventional View of What Went Wrong
at IBM (Boston, Harvard Business School Press 96)
by Daniel Quinn Mills blames corporate arteriosclerosis
for the decline in IBM's fortunes, arguing that the mixture
of jobs for life and proprietary systems was nearly fatal.
A perspective is provided by Sanford Jacoby's Modern
Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since The New Deal (Princeton,
Princeton Uni Press 97).
The earlier Blue Magic: The People, Power & Politics
behind the IBM Personal Computer (London, Grafton
89) by James Chposky & Ted Leonsis was deferential,
concentrated on corporate politics and barely recognised
the rise (and rise ... and rise) of Darth Gates and Deathstar
Microsoft. The Quality Journey: How Winning the
Baldridge Sparked the Remaking of IBM (New York, Dutton
93) is a triumphalist tome by Joseph Boyett, Stephen Schwartz
& Roy Bauer - the world according to just-in-time
and quality circles.
Paul
Ceruzzo's excellent A History of Modern Computing
(Cambridge, MIT Press 98) in discussing the IBM anti-trust
litigation notes that
...both
sides, with all their highly paid legal and research staffs,
utterly and completely missed what everyone has since
recognised as the obvious way that computing would evolve
... one expert witness testified that "it is most
unlikely that any major new venture into the general purpose
computer industry can be expected. As late as 1986
one Justice Department economist, still fuming over dismissal
of the case, complained that "IBM faces no significant
domestic or foreign competition that could threaten its
dominance".
Robert
Heller's The Fate of IBM (London, Little Brown 94) and
Computer Wars: The Fall of IBM & the
Future of Global Technology (New York, Times 94) by Charles
Ferguson & Charles Morris caught the company at its nadir, with
speculation among the business press that IBM was toast and its new
CEO would be arranging for a tasteful corporate burial. Appears they
were wrong, although the corporate socialism is now sleeping with the
fishes.
Doug Garr's IBM Redux: Lou Gerstner & the Business
Turnaround of the Decade (New York, Harper 99) is better
researched and more analytical than the scissors-&-paste Saving
Big Blue: Leadership Lessons & Turnaround Tactics of IBM's Lou
Gerstner (New York, McGraw Hill 99) by Robert Slater. After the
heady days of the 1970s the turnaround from losses of $20 billion
began in a wave of panic, with one executive memorably being given his
termination notice while in a coma ... a cultural revolution for an
organisation that was one of the first to provide group life
insurance, survivor benefits and paid vacations.
next page (the 5 Sisters:
Unisys, Hewlett-Packard & Co)
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