This article answers, in part, questions raised by new rural and agricultural historians concerning how farmers interacted with the rise of large-scale organizational society in the era after the 1896 Presidential election. It argues that California citrus growers reacted by bringing the revolution of corporate capitalism to Southern California, 1893–1920. The article tests the activities of California orange growers against the theoretical models of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Martin J. Sklar. It concludes that a pro-corporate group of orange growers embraced corporate managerial capitalism at a time when most other American farmers were in open revolt against industrialization. In 1912, these growers appointed G. Harold Powell, pomologist with the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry, as General manager of their mammoth California Fruit Growers Exchange. By 1920, Powell and the Exchange board of directors completed the corporate consolidation of the citrus enterprise, and by example the reconstruction of California's potent agricultural empire.

Using a Chandlerian strategy/structure framework for comparative purposes, the authors examine the early development of an important public institution, The World Bank Group. As they demonstrate, The Bank gradually evolved toward the model provided by the multidivisional or M-form corporation. In its early years, The Bank was a centralized organization with functional departments and a unique check and balance system to control lending. Guided by signals coming from its development personnel, The Bank evolved incrementally until 1952, when a formal reorganization took place. In the years that followed, functional considerations continued to reshape this innovative institution. Then, under President Robert McNamara, The Bank acquired a new and broader mission that led to another formal reorganization in 1972. The authors analyze the cultural as well as organizational aspects of these changes, relating them to a series of long cycles of innovation at The Bank.

By the 1930s, the American Locomotive Company (ALCo) and the Electromotive Company (EMC) controlled the diesel locomotive industry. Although ALCo enjoyed sound financial status, decades of experience in steam locomotive production, and close ties with its customers, it quickly lost ground to the newly established EMC. Electromotive's founder, Harold Hamilton, emphasized the importance of marketing, including post-sales support services, and his strategy helped Electromotive to surpass ALCo's diesel locomotive production by 1935. ALCo continued to neglect its marketing capabilities, and remained a poor second to Electromotive until it ceased production altogether in 1969. ALCo failed in large part because it could not modify its corporate culture, which was superbly equipped for steam locomotive production but ill-suited to the diesel locomotive industry.