Woodmansee, John and others. The World of a Giant Corporation. Seattle: North County Press, 1975. 84 pages.

This report, an in-depth look at General Electric, was produced by a group that came together through the American Friends Service Committee. AFSC's National Action Research on the Military Industrial Complex (NARMIC), along with similar efforts such as the Honeywell Project of Minneapolis, tried to understand the Vietnam war in terms of the role played by major U.S. corporations. For the GE project, this group assembled an extensive collection of the company's publications, such as annual reports, company magazines, advertisements, and reprints of speeches by executives. Then they interviewed some GE officials, and combed the press for articles on GE.

Since GE is so diversified, their report followed the same pattern, in that aspects beyond defense production are also investigated: the labor environment, public relations, who's who in top management, the corporate culture, foreign investment, and GE's dependency on the growth paradigm. Over 300 end notes are included. This is a serious piece of research, and it's utterly distressing that U.S. culture, or counterculture, no longer supports similar research projects. Today you'd have to strip out the end notes along with most of the content, add stereo and video, and present it as multimedia. And you'd still have to convince Generation X that it's worth their time to learn about the folks who are pulling their strings.
ISBN 0-916196-01-1

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