{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.028116907140214576, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00924898261191269, 'mean_word_length': 5.159453302961276, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The End of the Chemical Century? Organizational Capabilities and Industry Evolution

The latter decades of the twentieth century have revealed a dynamic version of industrial capitalism that represents a marked departure from the more stable variety that dominated the first three-quarters of the century. Unfortunately, most of our concepts for understanding economic phenomena are based on equilibrium models that can only account for incremental changes from optimal conditions. In business history, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. [9] has developed concepts that explain the relative stability of industrial capitalism, but can his model also account for instability and change? At an abstract level, Chandler's analysis posits that large firms exist because they have organizational capabilities; that is abilities and knowledge that are peculiar to their institutions. Some of these abilities are organizational: ways to gather, process, and act upon pertinent information. Some of these abilities are know-how--ways of doing things. When combined with economies of scale and scope in production and distribution, organizational capabilities allowed large firms to enjoy long periods of growth and profitability. This paper explores the evolution of organizational capabilities in the chemical industry, one of the great "Chandler" industries of the past 150 years. The industry was very stable until recent decades when numerous mergers, asset sales and swaps, and, demerging--firms dividing themselves into separate companies--have reshaped it. Recently, Union Carbide spun off its industrial gas business as Praxair; ICI America split itself into two companies creating Zeneca, a biology-oriented entity; and Eastman Kodak announced plans to separate itself from Eastman Chemicals [1; 5; 7; 11; 17; 20; 22; 25]. How can one account for all this churning in an industry that was one of the most stable and profitable for most of this century? Is this a response to the development of the market for corporate control? The &merger of ICI might have been inspired by a takeover attempt by Hanson [17]. To pay for the acquisition, Hanson probably would have sold or split-off ICI's profitable pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical businesses to pay off the investors. The new entity, Zeneca, is less likely to be undervalued by the stock market, which would close the door on would-be corporate raiders. This analysis does not answer the question as to why a traditional diversified chemical company was undervalued in the first place. The chemical industry has been labelled "mature" since at least the beginning of the 1960s [30]. Maturity can be defined by a set of symptoms including slowing growth,