From Trust to Contract: The Legal Language of Managerial Ideology, 1920–1980

1 January 1992

journal article
Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Business History Review

Vol. 66 (3) , 523-572
https://doi.org/10.2307/3116980

Abstract

Although the managerial function arises out of organizational needs imposed by market competition and technological development, managers' professional status has come in large part from legal conceptions that perceive the managerially run firm as an institutional bulwark for modern democracy. This article examines how the law, through its doctrines of trust and contract, has made and unmade management as a semi-public profession. The article explores the history of tender-offer regulation as a case study of this process.

Keywords

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