Enterprise and Society - current issue

Editor's Introduction

Lipartito, K. — 2008-01-27

The Accidental Business Historian

Hausman, W. J. — 2008-01-27

The Soul of the Service Economy: Wal-Mart and the Making of Christian Free Enterprise, 1929-1994

Moreton, B. — 2008-01-27

"The Soul of the Service Economy" explains the rise of Christian corporate globalism in the twentieth century, that always unfinished task of sanctifying capitalism and consumption under Christianity. As the biography of the Sunbelt service sector's "free enterprise" ideology, "The Soul of the Service Economy" is not an examination of Wal-Mart itself but an analysis of Wal-Mart's world—the interconnected commercial, religious, and educational institutions which both produced the world's largest company and then depended upon its patronage. This culture united Southwestern entrepreneurs, service providers, middle managers, students, missionaries, and even waged employees in an ethos of Christian free enterprise. On the basis of archival research in local and ephemeral sources, "The Soul of the Service Economy" uses the stories of people linked through Wal-Mart and its philanthropies to understand the shift to post-Fordist regimes in work, gender relations, education, and geography.

The Iron Horse Turns South: A History of Antebellum Southern Railroads

Marrs, A. W. — 2008-01-27

Making Tobacco Bright: Institutions, Information, and Industrialization in the Creation of an Agricultural Commodity, 1617-1937

Hahn, B. — 2008-01-27

The New England Cod Fishing Industry and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution

Magra, C. P. — 2008-01-27

Converting Academic Expertize into Industrial Innovation: University-based Research at Solvay and Gevaert, 1900-1970

Bertrams, K. — 2008-01-27

The question this article seeks to address relates to the strategies deployed by the chemical firms Solvay & Co. and Gevaert N.V.—two multinationals operating in a highly innovative sector and depending on Belgium's national system of innovation—by taking advantage from the research capabilities located in the surrounding academic landscape. The two companies adopted different methods to capture the knowledge produced in university laboratories, which corresponded best to the kind of research they wished to explore. It will be argued that, instead of conforming to any previous blueprint for linear innovation, industrialists and academics have sought to overcome their conflicting interests and cultural divergence by bringing out mutual opportunities that eventually led to unexpected forms of utilitarian cooperation. In the long run, informal linkages and social networks helped shaping the patterns of increasingly coordinated and elaborated procedures of innovation.

Bankers, Industrialists, and their Cliques: Elite Networks in Mexico and Brazil during Early Industrialization

Musacchio, A., Read, I. — 2008-01-27

The historiographies of Mexico and Brazil have implicitly stated that business networks were crucial for the initial industrialization of these two countries. Recently, differing visions on the importance of business networks have arisen. In the case of Mexico, the literature argues that entrepreneurs relied heavily on an informal institutional structure to obtain necessary resources and information. In contrast, the recent historiography of Brazil suggests that after 1890 the network of corporate relations became less important for entrepreneurs trying to obtain capital and concessions, once the institutions promoted financial markets and easy entry for new businesses. Did entrepreneurs in Brazil and Mexico organize their networks differently to deal with the different institutional settings? We examine whether in Mexico businessmen relied more on networks of interlocking boards of directors and other informal arrangements to do business than in Brazil. Our hypothesis is confirmed by three related results: (1) the total number of connections (i.e., the density of the network) was higher in Mexico than Brazil; (2) in Mexico, there was one dense core network, while in Brazil we find fairly dispersed clusters of corporate board interlocks; and most importantly, (3) politicians played a more important role in the Mexican network of corporate directors than their counterparts in Brazil. Interestingly, even though Brazil and Mexico relied on very different institutional structures, both countries had similar rates of growth between 1890 and 1913. However, the dense and exclusive Mexican network might have ended up increasing the social and political tensions that led to the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920).

Jealous Monopolists? British Banks and Responses to the Macmillan Gap during the 1930s

Scott, P., Newton, L. — 2008-01-27

By the end of World War I successive merger waves had produced an oligopolistic, tightly cartelized, English banking system, which was widely viewed as having restricted lending to small-medium-sized firms—the famous ‘Macmillan Gap’ in industrial finance. We explore the reasons behind the failure of market entry to bridge this gap. The clearing banks are shown to have acted as ‘jealous monopolists’, obstructing the activities of the Credit for Industry Ltd (CFI), the only significant firm established to breach the gap (rather than narrow its upper limit). By poaching many clients it had vetted and approved, the banks blocked CFI's growth, deterring further market entry, and thus, preserving their monopoly position.

Organizational Culture and Organizational Change: The Transformation of Savings Banks in Denmark, 1965-1990

Hansen, P. H. — 2008-01-27

In this article, I argue that organizations' historical narratives are a basic and important component of their culture and identity, and that these narratives can be resources as well as constraints. I combine a narrative approach with Joanne Martin's three perspective theory of organizational culture, and using the transformation of Danish savings banks as a case, I demonstrate how a narrative approach can provide a new and better understanding of organizational behaviour and change than mainstream economics and the abundant functionalist organizational culture literature. I demonstrate how, when change was called for by external pressures, the savings banks choice set was constrained by a shared narrative about their historical origins. This narrative, in turn, constituted the identity, image and organizational culture of savings banks and to a high degree restrained learning capabilities, created organizational inertia and delayed the adoption of a new strategy.

Paul Jobling. Man Appeal: Advertising, Modernism, and Menswear * Linda Welters and Patricia Cunningham, eds. Twentieth-Century American Fashion

Blaszczyk, R. L. — 2008-01-27

Jonathan A. Grant. Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

Carlisle, R. — 2008-01-27

David P. Billington and David P. Billington, Jr. Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century

Hochfelder, D. — 2008-01-27

Warren Belasco. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food

Miller, J. P. — 2008-01-27

Mary Frank Fox, Deborah G. Johnson, and Sue V. Rosser, eds. Women, Gender, and Technology

Cukier, W. — 2008-01-27

Gustav Schachter and Saul Engelbourg. Cultural Continuity in Advanced Economies: Britain and the US versus Continental Europe

Selva, S. — 2008-01-27

George Feifer. Breaking Open Japan: Commodore Perry, Lord Abe, and American Imperialism in 1853

Sylla, R. — 2008-01-27

Martin J. Iversen. GN Store Nord. A Company in Transition, 1939-1988

Buhrer, W. — 2008-01-27

Terry Gourvish. The Official History of Britain and the Channel Tunnel

Millward, R. — 2008-01-27

Graeme J. Milne. North-East England, 1850-1914: The Dynamics of a Maritime-Industrial Region

Salmon, M. S. — 2008-01-27

Deborah A. Symonds. Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods: The Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteenth Century

Jackson, L. A. — 2008-01-27

S. Max Edelson. Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina

Downey, T. — 2008-01-27

Daniel W. Hamilton. The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

Noll, F. — 2008-01-27

Richard Abel. Americanizing the Movies and "Movie-Mad" Audiences, 1910-1914

Ross, J. A. — 2008-01-27

Ruth Crocker. Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

McCarthy, K. D. — 2008-01-27

John Patrick Diggins. Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and Making of History

Phillips-Fein, K. — 2008-01-27