Business History articles from April 1992

Business History archives from April 1992

British business history: a review of the periodical literature for 1990.
April 1, 1992... The range of issues considered by journal articles in British business history during 1990 suggests a discipline which is growing in ambition and maturity. It is no longer the case that business historians are unwilling to stray much beyond...

The introduction of scientific management by the Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Co. and the formation of an organised scientific management movement in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s.
April 1, 1992... The aim of the paper is to identify the most distinctive features of the introduction and development of scientific management in pre-war Japan by examining the case of the Mitsubishi Electric Co. The case study shows the following. First,...

From licensor to multinational enterprise: the small Dutch firm Oce-van der Grinten in the international world, 1920-66.
April 1, 1992... This article gives a long-term analysis of the international activities of a Dutch firm. It demonstrates that a very small firm can play its part in international business. Lacking financial resources and managerial experience, the firm...

The Eastern & Australian Steampship Company and the shipping dispute between Australia and Japan, 1936-39.
April 1, 1992... In the 1930s British shipping companies in the Far East found it difficult to compete with Japanese lines, which enjoyed subsidies and other support from the Japanese government. However, in the trade between Australia and Japan, the Eastern &...

British businessmen as wealth-holders, 1870-1914: a response. (response to Hartmut Berghoff, Business History, vol. 33, p. 225, Apr 1991)
April 1, 1992... Hartmut Berghoff's |British Businessmen As Wealth-holders, 1870-1914: A Closer Look' (April 1991), which takes issue with my previous research at several important points, is an interesting piece of work which in part raises some significant...

A reply to W.D. Rubinstein's response. (Business History, vol. 34, p. 69, Apr. 1992)
April 1, 1992... Professor Rubinstein is very worried about the comparison between Dr Cassis' and my data. Although he does not seem to be aware that the particular table in Cassis' book I referred to was composed |A l'exclusion des directeurs generaux',(1) as...

An historiographical assessment of New Zealand business history.
April 1, 1992... The business history of New Zealand has yielded a substantial literature: a recent bibliography listed close on 1,000 items.(1) These cover many aspects of the subject, including the important primary sector, most of the manufacturing...

British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century.
April 1, 1992... |Maritime warfare has assumed many guises over the centuries'- so begins this important study of privateering; an aspect of sea power once commonplace but now extinct. It would be a pity if the apparently specialist nature of this book leads it...

Doncaster, Town of Train Makers.
April 1, 1992... With the decline of Britain's railways, to some extent possibly reversible and certainly not terminal, railway towns have inevitably suffered. Unlike Swindon, Ashford and Inverurie, Doncaster has survived. Indeed, the National Store, where all...

Made in Birmingham: Design Industry, 1889-1989.
April 1, 1992... Barbara Tilson was more than brave to embark upon producing an edited work on the history of design and industry in Birmingham from the late nineteenth century until the present day. The resulting collection of 21 essays, written by a diverse...

Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism.
April 1, 1992... Despite the fact that tourism is now the largest and fastest growing industry in the world, academics have paid scant attention to it. In particular, the |history' of tourism has been woefully neglected which is why Piers Brendon's book is a...

Edward Arnold: 100 Years of Publishing.
April 1, 1992... This book, as its title suggests, has been written to mark the centenary of the book publishing firm, Edward Arnold. It could not mark the centenary of the firm as an independent business, for, like many other smaller publishing houses, Edward...

A History of GKN, vol. 2, The Growth of a Business, 1918-1945.
April 1, 1992... This is the second of a projected three-volume history of GKN and represents the final contribution of Edgar Jones as chronicler of the company's fortunes. Lavishly produced and copiously illustrated, Volume 2 covers the period from the end of...

Competitiveness and the State: Government and Business in Twentieth-Century Britain.
April 1, 1992... This book is the outcome of an enterprising conference sponsored by business historians at the Universities of Lancaster and Reading. Although its perspectives are shaped by the revival of interest in national competitiveness and the role of...

Patterns of Labour, Work and Social Change in the Pottery Industry.
April 1, 1992... It is almost two decades since the debate on the |labour process' provoked by Braverman's writings started in earnest. Early Marxist studies were grounded on the assumption that explorations of the workplace would explain the dynamics of...

Reshaping Work: The Cadbury Experience.
April 1, 1992... This is an excellent book and should be read by all business historians as an exemplar of thoughtful, analytic investigation into recent business change. It is an in-depth study of a vast investment programme undertaken by Cadburys at...

Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe.
April 1, 1992... This loosely-knit collection of innovative work that began life in a series of workshops at the University of Warwick is broadly based on an analysis of industrial organisation before the factory which emphasises the market rather than...

Die Textilindustrie in Calw und Heidenheim, 1750-1850. Eine regional vergleichende Untersuchung zur geschichte der Fruehindustrialisierung und der Industriepolitik in Wuerttemberg. Zeitschrift fuer Unternehmensgeschichte, Beiheft 57.
April 1, 1992... In the mid-eighteenth century the town and district of Calw in western Wuerttemberg was a flourishing centre of the manufacture of worsted cloth, whilst Heidenheim, on the eastern side of same principality, was becoming a centre of linen...

Britain Ascendant: Comparative Studies in Franco-British Economic History.
April 1, 1992... Professor Crouzet's reputation as an economic historian ranks highly in Britain and several of the papers included in this volume have long been classics. This applies notably to his comparative analysis of economic growth in France and Britain...

Women's Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective.
April 1, 1992... The editors of this book are to be congratulated for their courage and success in bringing together a volume which explores the historical importance of women's work over several centuries and countries. Women's Work and the Family Economy is...

Charles Morel: Constructeur Dauphinois sous la Troisieme Republique.
April 1, 1992... In July 1978, the archives of Charles Morel et cie, a small engineering firm founded in the late nineteenth century in the Isere department of south-west France, were saved from destruction by Jean-Pierre Borgis. The result was in 1987 a...

Les relations economiques italo-belges: 1861-1914.
April 1, 1992... This book looks into two areas: trade between Italy and Belgium and the flow of Belgian investment into the Italian industrial and service sector. Reciprocal trade was not enormously important as a percentage of each country's total trade....

A History of Foreign Labor in Germany: 1880-1980.
April 1, 1992... In 1975, as a school-leaver, I spent six months working for the German chemical giant BASF in its huge plant at Ludwigshafen/Rhine. Living in pre-fab barracks behind the factory gates, I shared a small, sparsely furnished, ant-infested room...

From Outpost to Outport: A Structural Analysis of the Jersey-Gaspe Cod Fishery, 1767-1886.
April 1, 1992... The |staple theory' is by far the most important twentieth-century Canadian contribution to the theory of economic growth. This study of the Canadian Atlantic cod fishery is part of the contemporary evolution of the staple theory in Canada....

Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914.
April 1, 1992... The latest product of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project (ACSP) analyses the rise and decline of the shipping industry in the course of the nineteenth century. Sager and Panting build upon and revise previous work on the subject, including...

Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, vol. 5, Banking and Finance to 1913.
April 1, 1992... This is the fifth volume to appear in this |encyclopaedia'. (Earlier volumes dealt with topics such as railroads, automobiles, and iron and steel. A subsequent volume will take the story of banking through the twentieth century.) There are 520...

Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography: The Automobile Industry, 1896-1920.
April 1, 1992... The automobile industry continues to be a focal point in the history of industrialisation. In America it expanded from very small beginnings around the turn of the century to become, by the inter-war years, the country's largest manufacturing...

The American Amusement Park Industry.
April 1, 1992... In the comedy film That Touch of Mink Cary Grant suggests to his heroine that her Mid-west home town must have been pretty staid. To this Doris Day roguishly replies that he |doesn't know the girls of Sandusky'. For Sandusky Ohio (I learn) has...

Easy Money: Oil Promoters and Investors in the Jazz Age.
April 1, 1992... In the long span of American history, the decade of the 1920s stands out as the era when political and business ethics appear to have reached their lowest ebb, perhaps only approached by the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant's Presidency in the...

The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences.
April 1, 1992... This book explores the large issue of the relationship between the growth of the state and the growth of economic knowledge. When, in what form and with what effects did the state seek such economic knowledge? The contributors approach such...

The Rise of the Korean Economy.
April 1, 1992... Despite South Korea's increasing industrial might, the forces which have shaped that country's economic growth remain poorly understood in the outside world. In recent years it has been common for Friedmanite advocates of the free market to...

Markets, Money and Empire: The Political Economy of the Australian Wool Industry.
April 1, 1992... This is a quite provocative book which builds a case against the notion of Australia's dependent position within the British Empire. It argues that an |imperial fallacy' has distorted interpretations of Australia's relationship with Great...

The New Masters: Can the West Match Japan?
April 1, 1992... It is no surprise to find that a Conservative MP has written a book about post-war Japan that is a plea for free trade and minimal government intervention. Oppenheim's hero is Cobden and his opinions suffuse the text. Thus, domestic...

Working for the Japanese: Myths and Realities, British Perceptions.
April 1, 1992... Working for the Japanese should be warmly welcomed because it brings clarity to matters which have hitherto been obscure. Dr Stephanie Jones bases her work on 20 myths about Japanese business which are regularly quoted and about which most...

The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason.
April 1, 1992... This is an excellent volume, bringing together much of Larry Neal's earlier work on the growing sophistication and closer integration of financial markets in Western Europe from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth. Much of this...

The Birth and Death of Companies: An Historical Perspective.
April 1, 1992... This collection of conference papers marks a concerted attempt to establish business demography (or la demographie des enterprises, as the project involves several French historians) as an area requiring much more detailed investigation. The...

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.
April 1, 1992... Daniel Yergin, the American author of this well-researched, comprehensive study of the world oil industry between 1850 and 1990 is President of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an international consulting firm which he founded in 1982....

The Political Economy of World Energy: A Twentieth Century Perspective.
April 1, 1992... In this book Professor Clark draws on a wide array of secondary material to write an overview of energy in the world economy in the twentieth century, examining the various energy industries of coal, oil, gas, electricity, and nuclear power....

A Bibliography of Historical Economics to 1980.
April 1, 1992... This book provides a bibliography of what is variously known as new economic history, quantitative economic history, cliometrics, econometric history, or historical economics, the latter now being McCloskey's preferred term. It contains about...

History and Computing III: Historians, Computers and Data. Applications in Research and Teaching.
April 1, 1992... Having witnessed the birth of the Association for History and Computing in 1986, I began reading these papers from the Association's 1988 conference with eager anticipation, heightened by the editors' promise that they would reveal the |state...

Markets or Governments: Choosing Between Imperfect Alternatives.
April 1, 1992... As business historians forge ever closer links with the social sciences, one topic above all assumes a key role in their joint studies: that of market failure. The unfettered market, or what Adam Smith called the |invisible hand', which...

Workers, Owners and Politics in Coal Mining: An International Comparison of Industrial Relations.
April 1, 1992... This volume aims to relate and comparatively evaluate industrial relations in the coal mining industries of the more notable Western industrial nations. This is not yet another collection of loosely related conference papers, but a carefully...

Evolving Technology and Market Structure: Studies in Schumpeterian Economics.
April 1, 1992... This collection of essays emerged from the Second International Congress of the J.A. Schumpeter Society held in 1988. The first section of three papers explores aspects of Schumpeter's own work on business cycles and in relation to that of...

The Strategic Management of Technological Innovation.
April 1, 1992... Ray Loveridge and Martyn Pitt have edited a collection of 16 articles on the strategic management of technology, in which a majority of authors adopt a |firm in sector' perspective. This is potentially an interesting and useful approach for...

The Nature of the Transnational Firm.
April 1, 1992... There are a variety of theoretical explanations for the existence of the multinational enterprise (MNE). The essays in this volume critically review, interpret and re-interpret the existing explanations, and some attempt new explanations. They...