COLLEGE TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING - PATTERNS OF CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION AND THE RATIONALIZATION OF THE PUBLISHING PROCESS

Following World War II, the popularization of higher education in the United States produced a mass market for college textbooks. This oppor tunity attracted business concerns quite remote from book publishing. In a parallel move, large book publishers began to diversify their ope rations to promote growth and profitability. What impact has such dive rsification had an the college publishing process? The author studied a sample of twenty two U.S. college publishers, classified them accord ing to four levels of corporate diversification, and identified the as sociation of corporate diversification with the rationalization of the publishing process. The findings suggest that the more diversified a publishing business entity is, the more rationalized its college publi shing operation is likely to be.