Enterprise and Society - Advance Access

The Populist Appeal of Deregulation: Independent Truckers and the Politics of Free Enterprise, 1935-1980

Hamilton, S. — 2008-05-03

Editor's Introduction

Scranton, P. — 2008-04-24

Government Control, Transaction Costs, and Commitment Between the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and the Chinese Government

Lu, Q. — 2008-04-22

We use the tools of transaction cost politics (TCP) developed from transaction cost economics and economic analysis, to analyze the business relationship building between the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the largest and most successful foreign bank in China, and the Chinese government between 1949 and 1978. We demonstrate the value of the TCP-based approach to evaluating the specialized governance structure of commitment built on mutual dependency. In particular, we identify several transaction attributes that give rise to hazards: transaction uncertainty, the role of the government in the economy, and the strength of the supporting coalition. Our analysis also confirms that commitment built on the mutual dependency between the international company and the local authorities and between the international company's home country authorities and the local authorities did reduce the company's transaction costs by guarding against the local authorities’ opportunism.

"Business Responsibilities in a Divided World": The Cold War Roots of the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement

Spector, B. — 2008-04-19

Both business executives and management scholars have, in recent years, focused a great deal of attention on the theme of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Calls for business leaders to expend resources on behalf of "social good" tend to downplay, if not ignore, what is fundamentally an ideological question: just what is a "good" society and who defines "goodness"? The ideological underpinnings of social responsibility and its relationship to the "good" society can be explored through an historical perspective. The roots of the CSR movement trace back to the early years of the Cold War. Led by Donald K David, Dean of the Harvard Business School and supported by other academics and executives given voice on the pages of the Harvard Business Review, advocates urged expanded business social responsibility as a means of aligning business interests with the defense of free-market capitalism against what was depicted as the clear-and-present danger of Soviet Communism. Today's enthusiastic calls for business to "do well by doing good" could benefit from a similar critical analysis not just of the goals of CSR but also the ideological assumptions, often unacknowledged, that underlie those goals.

"You know we are not an Employment Agency": Manpower, Government, and the Development of the Temporary Help Industry in Britain

Forde, C. — 2008-04-18

This article looks at the early development of the temporary help industry in Britain. It focuses on the activities of one of the largest suppliers of temporary workers, Manpower, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on material from The UK National Archives, the article examines Manpower's efforts to gain access as a genuine employer to the state employment exchange network to advertise their temporary vacancies. The article reveals the incremental changes in attitude within the government towards Manpower's activities and argues that this gave the company a competitive advantage over other employment agencies, facilitating their development of relations with the government and the trade unions in Britain over the 1970s and 1980s. The main conclusion of the article is that explicit attention needs to be paid to the actions and strategies of agencies themselves in order to develop an adequate understanding of the growth and development of the temporary help industry.

Richard A. Rajala. Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005

Prudham, S. — 2008-04-10

Susannah Walker. Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975

Weems, R. E. — 2008-04-09

Massimo Montanari. Food is Culture

Watts, S. — 2008-04-09

Robert Friedel. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

Sturdy, D. J. — 2008-04-09

Atsushi Akera. Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers during the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research

Roland, A. — 2008-04-09

David R. Meyer. Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America

Pascoe, C. S. — 2008-04-09

David L. Lightner. Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War

McKinney, G. B. — 2008-04-09

Kathleen M. Barry. Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

Kimmel, J. — 2008-04-09

Alan P. Rudy et al. Universities in the Age of Corporate Science: The UC Berkeley-Novartis Controversy

Hart, D. M. — 2008-04-09

Robert Shogan. Backlash: The Killing of the New Deal

Dighe, R. S. — 2008-04-09

James Hudnut-Beumler. In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism

Davis, M. L. — 2008-04-09

Paul Mason Fotsch. Watching the Traffic Go By: Transportation and Isolation in Urban America

Davidson, J. F. — 2008-04-09

David G. Schwartz. Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

Childs, W. R. — 2008-04-09

Dario Gaggio. In Gold We Trust: Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns

Amatori, F. — 2008-04-09

Glocal Mediators: Marketing in Egypt during the Open-Door Era (infitah)

Shechter, R. — 2008-04-05

This article discusses the business strategies formulated by Egyptian marketers as they established their enterprises to meet new multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) demand for marketing—research, promotion, and advertising services. This transition occurred during a period of economic liberalization, known locally as the infitah (open-door era), and rapid economic growth, resulting from the regional oil-boom of the early 1970s. Local entrepreneurship and competition for accounts would create a new, "glocal" business environment in Egypt, which concurrently mediated MNCs adaptation to local economic conditions and "Egyptianized" imported goods.

Louise Hill Curth, ed. From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing

O'Reilly, D. — 2008-04-04

Jon C. Teaford. The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America

Johnson, M. S. — 2008-04-04

Espen Moe. Governance, Growth and Global Leadership: The Role of the State in Technological Progress, 1750-2000.

Giannetti, R. — 2008-04-04

Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long Eighteenth Century

Riello, G. — 2008-04-04

In the eighteenth century subcontracting was an important way of organising production in sectors producing as different commodities as clocks, coaches, footwear, furniture and scientific instruments. This article argues that subcontracting was not simply a form of cost reduction in labour-intensive and technologically unsophisticated sectors. Subcontracting could be seen as a way to respond to profound changes in the way commodities were produced, exchanged and consumed in an eighteenth-century metropolis like London. The expansion in size and complexity of the metropolitan market, the appearance of new commodities classified as semi-luxuries and fashion items, and the consequent re-assessment of traditional social structures and norms of production, made subcontracting a tool of organisational flexibility.

Caveat Emptor: Abolishing Public Measurements, Standardizing Quantities, and Enhancing Market Transparency in the London Coal Trade c1830

Velkar, A. — 2008-04-04

This article evaluates efforts to standardize quantities in the London coal trade c1830, and traces the end of the public measurement system first introduced in the fourteenth century. Increasing traffic in coal, reduction of taxes on the commodity, inefficient public meters, etc., contributed to the demise of public measurements. This outcome was the result of extensive negotiations between merchants, the various levels of state bureaucracy, and the parliament. Switching measurement standards was difficult, if not costly, to coordinate. Abolishing public measurements and switching from volume to weight measurements was part of the efforts to strengthen governance along the commodity chain, secure property rights by making quantities predictable and alter a mechanism that powerful merchants considered had become inappropriate.

Editor's Introduction

Scranton, P. — 2008-04-02

Richard T. Stillson. Spreading the Word: A History of Information in the California Gold Rush

Coopersmith, J. — 2008-03-24

H. Roger Grant. Rails through the Wiregrass: A History of the Georgia & Florida Railroad

Collins, S. G. — 2008-03-24

Youseff Cassis. Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005

Toms, S. — 2008-03-24

Kenneth Warren. Industrial Genius: The Working Life of Charles Michael Schwab

Taylor, C. D. — 2008-03-24

Pamela E. Pennock. Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990

Schorman, R. — 2008-03-24

Steven Deyle. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life

Rael, P. — 2008-03-24

Alan Lawson. A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis

Mazzenga, M. — 2008-03-24

Jeffrey A. Engel. Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy

Launius, R. D. — 2008-03-24

Ivan T. Berend. An Economic History of 20th Century Europe: Economic Regimes from Laissez-Faire to Globalization

Kobrak, C. — 2008-03-24

Robert M. Fogelson. Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930

Hawes, J. — 2008-03-24

Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan, eds. The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West

Gokcek, G. — 2008-03-24

Alison Isenberg. Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It

Gogan, T. — 2008-03-24

Henry S. Rowen, Marguerite Gong Hancock, and William F. Miller, editors. Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech

Geselowitz, M. — 2008-03-24

B. Anne Wood. Evangelical Balance Sheet: Character, Family, and Business in Mid-Victorian Nova Scotia

Fingard, J. — 2008-03-24

James Sullivan. Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon

Fernandez, N. P. — 2008-03-24

Stephen Broadberry. Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850-2000. British Performance in International Perspective

Boyce, G. — 2008-03-24

Carl Smith. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City

Beauregard, R. A. — 2008-03-24

Steve J. Wurtzler. Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media

Baughman, J. L. — 2008-03-24

"Many a Long Day": HSBC and Its Note Issue in Republican China, 1912 1935

Horesh, N. — 2007-12-18

This article utilizes the local banknote circulation volumes of HSBC, the largest foreign bank in China, as a gauge with which to explore political stability and state-building during the Republican era (1912–1935). It will challenge the prevailing view that British banks faced little resistance in China through the 1920s–1930s, and expose new archival evidence on the perception of, and mobilization against, foreign banks.

Market Power and Market Failure The Decline of the European Fertilizer Industry and the Expansion of Norsk Hydro

Lie, E. — 2007-12-18

Trajectories of Internationalization: Knowledge and National Business Styles in the Making of Two Dutch Publishing Multinationals, 1950 1990

Van Lente, D., De Goey, F. — 2007-12-04

The internationalization of business is the subject of an extensive theoretical literature as well as a growing number of historical studies. Historians have paid relatively little attention to the development of multinationals in the service sector, and studies about international publishing are especially scarce. This article discusses the early internationalization of two Dutch publishing firms, Kluwer (now Wolters Kluwer) and Elsevier (now Reed Elsevier) and confronts these case histories with the evolutionary theory of internationalization. The Dutch cases underline the important role of experience, knowledge and learning as well as of the national context in which companies develop. They also show that these factors allow for very different trajectories of internationalization within the same branch of business and the same country.

Railroads and Time Consciousness in the Antebellum South

Marrs, A. W. — 2007-10-25

Historians have often looked to industrial capitalism to further our understanding of "time consciousness." This article explores time consciousness through the experience of a railroad in pre-Civil War South Carolina. Examining the South Carolina Railroad allows us to examine how time consciousness operated in a region not associated with industrial capitalism, and also see how multiple times could function simultaneously. While clocks were important to railroad operations, companies also had to address an array of non-clock times. Moreover, companies were never fully in control of their own time, but were in constant conflict and negotiation with various groups in the community. While industrialization and factory labor remain important ways to understand time consciousness, looking beyond the factory walls can help historians make better use of the analytical power of time.

Global Knowledge Transfer and Telecommunications: The Bell System in Japan, 1945 1952

Adams, S. B., Miranti, P. J. — 2007-09-20

This study evaluates the Bell System's role in the revival of Japanese telecommunications during the post-World War II occupation. Civilian and military personnel who had worked for the firm and who served in the Civil Communications Service (CCS) of the Supreme Command Allied Powers represented the primary agents for knowledge transfer to Japan's Ministry of Communications (MOC) and its supporting independent equipment manufacturers. The MOC became a channel for communicating ideas about management practices at the Bell System to the local telecommunications industry. The CCS's actions in Japan represent what Alfred D. Chandler has termed the "integrated learning base" in action in the public sector. The CCS's role in knowledge transfer has been underestimated by many scholars who have focused primarily on its contributions to promoting production and quality engineering in telecommunications manufacturing. Its central achievement was laying the managerial groundwork for the establishment in 1952 of the governmental enterprise Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

The Larkin Clubs of Ten: Consumer Buying Clubs and Mail-Order Commerce, 1890 1940

Stanger, H. R. — 2007-08-17