For a very different example of the development of corporate culture, let us now turn to
the development of ITT under the tough and uncompromising leadership of Harold Geneen. The
story here is one of success built on a ruthless style of management that converted a mediumsized
communications business with sales of $765 million in 1959 into one of the world’s largest
and most powerful and diversified conglomerates, operating in over ninety countries, with
revenues of almost $12 billion in 1978. Under Geneen’s twenty-year reign, the company
established a reputation as one of the fastest-growing and most profitable American companiesand,
following its role in overseas bribery and the downfall of the Allende government in Chile,
as one of the most corrupt and controversial.