Creating the Corporate Soul : The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business

Over the course of the twentieth century the popular perception of America's giant corporations has undergone an astonishing change. Condemned as dangerous leviathans in the century's first decades, by 1945 major corporations had become respected, even revered, institutions. Roland Marchand's lavishly illustrated and carefully researched book tells how large companies such as AT&T and U.S. Steel created their own "souls" in order to reassure consumers and politicians that bigness posed no threat to democracy or American values. Marchand traces this important transformation in the culture of capitalism by offering a series of case studies of such corporate giants as General Motors, General Electric, Metropolitan Life Insurance, and Du Pont Chemicals. Marchand examines the rhetorical and visual imagery developed by corporate leaders to win public approval and build their own internal corporate culture. In the "golden era" of the 1920s, companies boasted of their business statesmanship, but in the Depression years many of them turned in desperation to forms of public relations that strongly defended the capitalist system. During World War II public relations gained new prominence within corporate management as major companies linked themselves with Main-Street, small-town America. By the war's end, the corporation's image as a "good neighbor" had largely replaced that of the "soulless giant." American big business had succeeded in wrapping increasingly complex economic relationships in the comforting aura of familiarity. Marchand, author of the widely acclaimed Advertising the American Dream (1985), provides an elegant and convincing account of the origins and effects of the corporate imagery so ubiquitous in our world today. Over the course of the twentieth century the popular perception of America's giant corporations underwent an astonishing change. Condemned as dangerous leviathans in the century's first decades, major corporations had become respected, even revered, institutions by 1945. Roland Marchand's lavishly illustrated and carefully researched book tells how large companies such as AT&T and U.S. Steel created their own "souls" in order to reassure consumers and politicians that bigness posed no threat to democracy or American values. His latest work does for public relations what his earlier book, the widely acclaimed Advertising the American Dream, (1985), did for corporate advertising -- it provides an elegant and convincing account of the origins and effects of the corporate imagery so ubiquitous in our world today. Over the course of the twentieth century the popular perception of America's giant corporations has undergone an astonishing change. Condemned as dangerous leviathans in the century's first decades, by 1945 major corporations had become respected, even revered, institutions. Roland Marchand's book tells how large companies such as AT&T and U.S. Steel created their own "souls" in order to reassure consumers and politicians that their size and influence posed no threat to democracy or American values. Marchand traces this important transformation in the culture of capitalism by offering a series of fascinating case studies of such corporate giants as General Motors, General Electric, Metropolitan Life Insurance, Du Pont Chemicals, and Ford Motors. Over the course of the 20th century, America's giant corporations underwent an astonishing change, from being reviled as dangerous leviathons, to being respected, and somethimes revered. This text examines the reasons for this tranformation In 1886, in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court bestowed upon the business corporation, under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the legal status of "person."