(FORTUNE Magazine) – WHAT more can be said about the Mafia? Well, plenty. Organized crime is, among other things, a potent economic force. Yet rarely, if ever, has the press examined the mob as a business, one that has its own management style and culture, that struggles with personnel problems and murderous competition, ! that rakes in billions of dollars every year and involves itself in many legitimate enterprises. In our cover story, starting on page 24, writer Roy Rowan scrutinizes the business domain of the underworld and the men who manage it. Rowan's career as editor, writer, and correspondent for FORTUNE and other Time Inc. magazines spans four decades. He has reported on the mob off and on since the late 1950s when, as Chicago bureau chief for Time and Life, he encountered such characters as hot-tempered Sam Giancana, who ran Chicago's ''Outfit,'' and Anthony ''Tony Pro'' Provenzano, who is ranked 29th on FORTUNE's list of the 50 most powerful Mafia bosses in the U.S. To dig out this immense store of information, Rowan, aided by reporter Andrew Kupfer, spent two months interviewing law enforcement officials and other informants in New York, Chicago, San Diego, Phoenix, Seattle, and other cities. The cover package -- including subsidiary stories about the Mafia's outside business consultants and its bookkeeping methods, as well as the rising competition it faces from other crime groups -- was edited by assistant managing editor Ann Morrison. She has handled almost every subject from marketing to politics in her ten years as a reporter, writer, and editor at FORTUNE. ''This one is certainly different from the range of stories I've been involved in,'' she says. ''But the parallels to business organizations and strategies are striking.'' Rowan is a student of management. His widely quoted book, The Intuitive Manager, was published this year by Little Brown & Co. As he notes, ''Modern mobsters may act more like corporate executives than the old-time hit men I knew in Chicago, but that's all the more reason to fear them.'' And, one might add, to learn about them and their methods.