This book explains how four major firms--American Airlines, El Paso Natural Gas, AT&T, and Bank America--and their respective managements were challenged by the deregulation of markets starting in the late 1970s. The four stories illustrate the dynamic process of market restructuring and organizational adjustment, as well as the ways in which managers and regulators painfully learned to operate effectively as their economic and political environments shifted around them.

Richard H. K. Vietor is Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and the author of several previous books on aspects of regulation, business, and public policy.