The Making of Harcourt General: A History of Growth Through Diversification, 1922-1992

Pruitt, Bettye Hobbs, with Smith, George David

ISBN 10: 0875845096 / ISBN 13: 9780875845098

Published by Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, 1994

About this Item

310, notes, note on sources, index, Compliments of the Chairman of the Board card laid in. Study of the parent company of Harcourt-Brace, Neiman-Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman.

Seller Inventory # 39990

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Making of Harcourt General: A History of Growth Through Diversification, 1922-1992
• Publisher: Harvard Business School, Boston, MA
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0875845096
• ISBN 13: 9780875845098
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Printing.
• Condition: very good, good

About this title

Synopsis

Traces the company's seventy-year evolution from a small family-owned company operating drive-in theaters into a multi-billion dollar corporation deriving 12% of its revenues from movie theaters, 50% from its ownership of the Neiman Marcus Group, and the remaining 38% from the businesses of its diversified publishing subsidiary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ). The author focuses on two themes that have had a strong influence on the company's success. The first of these is the issue of succession and professionalization in a family firm: Harcourt General is one of the rare companies in which the founding family has both maintained a controlling interest and sustained active participation of family members in corporate management into the third generation. The second theme relates to Harcourt General's strategy of diversification by acquisition, particularly during the mergers-and-acquisitions period of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the company struggled to expand into the three major businesses mentioned above.

About the Author

Eric van Heck is a Professor at Erasmus University's Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands.