Business History articles from April 1995

Business History archives from April 1995

Japanese economic success: timing, culture, and organisational capability.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... Those economic and business historians who remain unaware of the advantages of comparison must now number very few indeed, but all attempts to abandon national insularity are in practice constrained by understandable barriers of language. Because...

The role of managerial enterprise in post-war Japan's economic growth: focus on the 1950s.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... A specific form of business, the managerial enterprise, has made a significant contribution to the development of Japanese organisational capabilities and post-war economic growth. With comparatively few natural factor endowments, Japan's success...

Kigyo Shudan: the formation and functions of enterprise groups.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... It is widely accepted that the formation of enterprise groups after the Second World War founded a notable characteristic of the 'Japanese management system'. The report of the US-Japanese Structural Impediments Initiative Talks, published in...

The formation of distribution keiretsu: the case of Matsushita Electric.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... The ongoing Structural Impediments Initiative, held between the United States and Japan since 1989, has proved to be a forum for reconsideration of the various economic systems that have contributed to Japan's rapid post-war growth and...

The rise of the mass market and modern retailers in Japan.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... The nature of the Japanese distributive system has become a source of international contention in recent years. Western nations have argued that its complexities act as barriers to free trade, and have called for its reform. This article examines...

The evolution of the financial system in post-war Japan.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... Many scholars, businessmen and policy makers regard the Japanese experience as a model for developing countries, while others try to derive lessons for the transforming socialist countries of eastern Europe. The Japanese financial system in the...

The development of production management at the Toyota Motor Corporation.(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... The brilliant debut of the Japanese automobile industry into world markets was assisted by the two oil crises of the 1970s which brought about soaring petrol prices and a rapid shift in demand towards smaller cars. During this period, the...

Work rules, wages, and single status: the shaping of the 'Japanese employment system.'(Special Issue on The Origins of Japanese Industrial Power: Strategy, Institutions and the Development of Organisational Capability)
April 1, 1995... What are the defining characteristics of the 'Japanese employment system'? From an historical perspective, it is apparent that the popular view of the 'three pillars' which comprise the system - seniority-based wages, lifetime commitment, and...

The City of London, vol. 1, A World of Its Own.
April 1, 1995... The publicity for this book uses such adjectives and phrases as 'superlative', 'vivid', 'meticulously researched', 'unparalleled range of original source material', and 'first comprehensive study of the City of London'. With David Kynaston as...

Black Country Elites: The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area, 1830-1900.
April 1, 1995... Richard Trainor belongs to a group of historians who in the early 1970s set out to rediscover the nineteenth-century middle class, a search which eighteenth-century historians have now belatedly joined. His long-awaited monograph provides a...

The British Brewing Industry: 1830-1980.
April 1, 1995... For years historians have been lamenting the fact that there was no comprehensive history of the brewing industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to complement the one written by Peter Mathias covering the period from 1700 to 1830....

The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry.
April 1, 1995... Roy Church's book provides a thorough yet manageable survey of the rise and decline of motor car manufacturing in Britain as an independent national industry. It also emphasises the industry's wider importance, noting that in the 1950s and 1960s...

Business, Politics and International Relations: Steel, Cotton and International Cartels in British Politics, 1924-1939.
April 1, 1995... The author, translator and publishers are to be congratulated for making this excellent, revised version of Industrielle Interessenpolitik und Staat. Internationale Kartelle in der britischen Aussen- und Wirtschaftspolitik Wahrend der...

Economic Planning, 1943-1951: A Guide to Documents in the Public Record Office.
April 1, 1995... The Public Records Office has previously commissioned or produced from within its own resources handbooks to categories of records which have attracted scholarly attention If researchers are able to undertake groundwork before arriving at Kew,...

Managing Industrial Decline: Entrepreneurship in the British Coal Industry between the Wars.
April 1, 1995... This book, which is lucidly written, seeks to examine the causes of the decline of the inter-war British coal industry through a detailed comparative study of the managerial performance of four coal companies. In this way, Dintenfass seeks to...

Masculinity and the British Organization Man.
April 1, 1995... On 9 February 1977 Harold Geneen, the archetypal cold corporate raider, bid a tearful farewell to ITT. Geneen's tears spoke not just of his regret at losing his bitter fight to remain CEO, but also of the importance of management and power to...

Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Business Leaders.
April 1, 1995... Dictionaries (even short ones) can be excruciatingly boring. This one is not. In addition to the usual biographical details relating to origins, education, business and public achievements, some entries also contain allusions to political, sexual...

Proto-Industrialisation in Europe.
April 1, 1995... As the first of three major works in press on the state of proto-industrial research, the six articles in this special issue of Continuity and Change are a valuable resource for English scholars, not least because they summarise much work not...

The Precision Makers: A History of the Instruments Industry in Britain and France, 1870-1939.
April 1, 1995... The precision instruments industry in Britain and France comprised small to medium firms specialising in optics (including range-finders for guns), scientific instruments and electrical apparatus. In contrast, in Germany the optical instrument...

Geschichte der deutschen Nahrungs- und Genuss-mittellindustrie, 1750-1914.
April 1, 1995... This book merits the claim, 'contribution to knowledge', more than most, by bringing the hitherto neglected German food, drink and tobacco industries (hereafter FDT) firmly on to the stage of German economic history. It aims primarily to chart...

Eugen Schmalenbach and German Business Economics.
April 1, 1995... David Forrester's extensive forays into understanding the works of Eugen Schmalenbach are represented in Eugen Schmalenbach and German Business Economics. Forrester describes his magnum opus as a Teutonic work, being 'a biography of Eugen...

Greek Shipowners and Greece, 1945-75: From Separate Development to Mutual Interdependence.
April 1, 1995... The aim of this study is to examine the growing interdependence between the Greek shipowning community and the state since 1945. This aim is pursued through the investigation of three principal issues, each comprising one part of the book: the...

L'Europe du Patronat: de la Guerre froide aux annees soixante.
April 1, 1995... This interesting edited collection derives from the fourth colloquium on aspects of European integration to be held by the Group for the Historical Study of Contemporary Europe, this one focusing on European employers and employers' associations...

European Mergers and Merger Policy.
April 1, 1995... Europe, say the editors, 'stands at the start of its first great merger wave', triggered largely (and predictably) by the Single Market programme. This book is a 'European' version of Mergers and Merger Policy (1989) edited by James A. Fairburn...

Die Entwicklung von Unternehmensformen und -strukturen in Westdeutschland seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Referate und Diskussionsbeitrage des 13. Wissenschaftlichen Symposiums der Gesellschaft fur Unternehmensgeschichte e. V. am 13./14. Dezember 1990 in Berlin.
April 1, 1995... In 1990, German reunification swept away the socialist economic system in the former East Germany. In the immediate aftermath of reunification, the West German Gesellschaft fur Unternehmensgeschichte (Association for Business History) organised a...

Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930.
April 1, 1995... Business historians of the United States have traditionally paid considerable attention to the heavy industries in the nineteenth century and to motor vehicles and the science-based industries in the twentieth century. These branches have been...

Out of the Garden: Toys and Children's Culture in the Age of TV Marketing.
April 1, 1995... Business historians of the United States have traditionally paid considerable attention to the heavy industries in the nineteenth century and to motor vehicles and the science-based industries in the twentieth century. These branches have been...

Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of US Broadcasting, 1928-1935.
April 1, 1995... This book explores the extent to which there was an organised popular opposition to the rise of commercial broadcasting in the United States, and thereby seeks to modify the traditional notion that Americans tamely acquiesced in the foundation of...

Alberta's Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board.
April 1, 1995... This book was undertaken to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Energy Resources Conservation Board, the official body responsible for the regulation of energy resources in the province of Alberta, Canada. The book took much longer than...

Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance.
April 1, 1995... This ambitious and provocative book re-examines government-business relations in post-1945 Japan from the perspective of the allocation of industrial credit. This subject is interpreted widely. A spectrum of matters are addressed ranging from...

Small Business Enterprise: An Economic Analysis.
April 1, 1995... Reid's frustration with the immaturity of the small firms literature, combined with his awareness of the growing political significance of small businesses during the 1980s, encouraged him to embark on this major research project investigating...

The Growth of Global Business.
April 1, 1995... Following a useful general introduction by the editors, John Cantwell begins the first section on evolutionary approaches to international business, with a chapter exploring the importance of the notion of technological competence on...

The World of Consumption.
April 1, 1995... This book comes with 'an early warning' for the unsuspecting reader. 'The subject matter covered and theoretical knowledge are extremely wide ranging'. Advice follows, 'each chapter has been made as self-contained as possible . . . to allow the...

Dynamics of the Firm: Strategies of Pricing and Organisation.
April 1, 1995... The volume under review seeks to break out of the static mould in which the neo-classical theory of the firm and Williamsonian transaction-cost economics have imprisoned our analytical thinking about firms. It comprises papers of a conference...

Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise.
April 1, 1995... This is the ninth volume to be published as part of the International Library of Critical Writings in Business History under the general editorship of Geoffrey Jones. The volumes derive their justification from the recent advance of business...