Who managed large corporations during the first half century of their emergence? How did modernizing firms navigate periods of rapid technological change such as those that swept the U.S. economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What role did engineers play in the management of large corporations? This paper draws on an original database of tens of thousands of mining and metallurgical engineers who graduated from universities during this period, examining patterns in their employment records, job descriptions, and career trajectories, matching our data on individual engineers with a linked database of mining and metallurgical corporations. We trace two distinct phases in engineers’ managerial role that corresponded to periods of rapid technological change and technological quiescence in the industry. We argue that explaining the rise of the modern corporation and the historical dynamics of corporate management requires a better understanding of technical expertise in management.

谁在大公司出现的前半个世纪管理着它们？现代化企业如何应对技术快速变革的时期，例如 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初席卷美国经济的那些时期？工程师在大公司的管理中扮演什么角色？本文利用了这一时期从大学毕业的数万名采矿和冶金工程师的原始数据库，检查了他们的就业记录、工作描述和职业轨迹中的模式，将我们关于个别工程师的数据与矿业的链接数据库相匹配和冶金企业。我们追溯了工程师管理角色的两个截然不同的阶段，这两个阶段对应于行业中技术快速变革和技术停滞的时期。