Business History articles from January 1997

Business History archives from January 1997

Family firms and business networks: textile engineering in Yorkshire, 1780-1830.
January 1, 1997... Businesses need networks, for industrialists must connect with others in order to buy and sell, to find finance and partners, to recruit and train staff, and to develop technology and discover technical information. Such networks are generally...

Technological divergence in a continuous flow production industry: American and British paper making in the late Victorian and Edwardian era.
January 1, 1997... The relative economic decline of Britain since the last quarter of the nineteenth century has often been attributed to its firms' continued predilection for small-scale batch production and highly skilled labour.(1) Yet in at least the paper...

Austrian manufacturing MNEs: long-term perspectives. (multinational enterprises)
January 1, 1997... The long-run propensity of the companies of a number of smaller European economies to engage in multinational investment has been discussed in several recent studies. The Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden in particular have traditionally held...

Regional business networks and the diffusion of American management and organisational models to Norway, 1945-65.
January 1, 1997... [MISSING PAGES 72-86] Americanisation after World War II. It has been suggested that such studies need to include research on the micro-level - how the message was received by industries, single firms and industrial districts. Certainly,...

Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700-1850.
January 1, 1997... This is a lot of book for the money. Well over 600 pages for less than [pounds]15 is good value. It is not only volume that one is purchasing but also a quality product. It combines an excellent synthesis of the most recent work on the classic...

Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785.
January 1, 1997... In Citizens of the World David Hancock makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of eighteenth-century business and imperial growth. Eschewing approaches to commerce that concentrate on either individual merchant houses or shipping...

The Factory Question and Industrial England: 1830-1860.
January 1, 1997... Robbie Gray brings a new insight, that of the cultural historian, to the story of the campaign for factory regulation, the Ten Hours Movement, in the textile districts of Lancashire and the West Riding, the 'Industrial England' of his book's...

Fieldens of Todmorden: A Nineteenth Century Business Dynasty.
January 1, 1997... This book is a business history with a difference. Dr Law first achieved success in the world of business: now as a scholar he relates the history of a truly representative Lancashire firm. He deftly weaves together four distinct themes, the...

Working Children in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire.
January 1, 1997... It is easy to forget just how many children there were in Victorian Britain. The demographic structure of the country then was similar to many third-world countries today with a large proportion of children and young adults and relatively few in...

Lord Linoleum: Lord Ashton, Lancaster and the Rise of the British Oilcloth and Linoleum Industry.
January 1, 1997... This book fills a large gap in the literature of economic history. Its four main themes are the history of an industry, of a firm, of an entrepreneur and of a county town. Linoleum, as the most prosaic of products, has never aroused the interest...

True and Fair: A History of Price Waterhouse.
January 1, 1997... The date of the foundation of Price Waterhouse is generally taken as 1849, when Samuel Lowell Price from Bristol set up in practice in the City. In 1865 he was joined in partnership by Edwin Waterhouse, from Aigburth, Liverpool. By the 1960s the...

Organised Capital: Employers' Associations and Industrial Relations in Britain, 1880-1939.
January 1, 1997... Organised Capital is a study of the behaviour of employers' associations in cotton, engineering and building in Lancashire between 1880 and 1939. McIvor takes great pains to demonstrate how his research is related to the existing literature on...

Britain in the World Economy Since 1880.
January 1, 1997... The relative performance of Britain in the international economy is a subject of interest and importance; and it is the subject of Professor Alford's new book. This is not an economic history of Britain, but rather an account of the British...

An Economic and Social History of Gambling in Britain and the USA.
January 1, 1997... This is a timely and revealing book. Timely, since in Britain the introduction of the National Lottery has proved a far greater success than its organisers or the government anticipated, and it has aroused considerable interest in gambling...

Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914-1939.
January 1, 1997... The changes to the organisation of manufacturing processes and to the gender composition of the workforce within the French and British metalworking industry imposed by the material requirements and the labour constraints of the First World War,...

Modern Britain: An Economic and Social History.
January 1, 1997... This is an extremely well-written and sensibly organised textbook which provides a general overview of British economic and social developments since the First World War. The targeted market consists of first-year undergraduates and sixth-form...

Themes in Macroeconomic History: The UK Economy, 1919-1939.
January 1, 1997... For those with under-utilised econometrics software, and an eye for applying the latest developments in economic theory, the inter-war years continue to offer a rich seam of research possibilities: time-series data in abundance (if not quality);...

User-Driven Innovation: The World's First Business Computer.
January 1, 1997... Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) was the first electronic computer to go into service for business data processing. Until the time that LEO arrived, computers had been almost exclusively used for scientific computation - number crunching. In 1949,...

Companias y negocios en la Cataluna preindustrial (Barcelona, 1650-1720).
January 1, 1997... The author's aim in this book is to contribute to filling a gap in Catalan historiography consequent upon the priority which has been given to the study of the medieval period and that since the eighteenth over the sixteenth and seventeenth...

Three Centuries of De Kuyper: A History of Geneva and Liqueurs, 1695-1995.
January 1, 1997... This short, beautifully designed book should be compulsory reading for those who believe dynamic management essential for business survival, for it relates the story of a deeply conservative, family-owned firm. The present managing director is...

Zur Geschichte des managements bei Krupp. Von den Unternehmensanfangen bis zur Auflosung der Fried. Krupp AG (1811-1943).
January 1, 1997... Three things are striking to any visitor to the Vila Hugel near Essen, these are: the importance of the humble beginnings of Krupp to the identity of the firm he founded; the astonishing growth of the plant, which dwarfed old Essen and the...

The Deutsche Bank: 1870-1995.
January 1, 1997... This book is a multi-authored history of the Deutsche Bank from its foundation in 1870 until the present day. Each of the five authors writes on a specific historical period with Feldman serving as co-ordinating editor. The study is based on...

Jakten pa kjempemarkedet: Norsk business i Singapore.
January 1, 1997... Not much is written on the development of Norwegian foreign direct investments (FDI). One reason for this is that Norway was the home country for only a handful of multinational enterprises (MNEs) until the 1960s. However, during the 1970s and...

Italian Industrialists from Liberalism to Fascism: The Political Development of the Industrial Bourgeoisie, 1906-1934.
January 1, 1997... Adler's book contributes to the literature on the rise of Fascism by examining the attitude of Confindustria, the employers' association. It makes two basic claims. The first is that Confindustria did not throw in its weight behind Mussolini, at...

Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution: Anglo-Soviet Relations and the Metro-Vickers Crisis.
January 1, 1997... Anglo-Soviet relations were sent into crisis in 1933 by the Metro-Vickers affair. In April six engineers employed by the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Export Company were put on trial in Moscow. Along with 11 Soviet citizens, they were accused...

Transnationale Wirtschaftkooperation und der Nationalstaat.
January 1, 1997... During the 1930s a conflict developed between Washington and Berlin. The Roosevelt administration wanted to lead the Western world to international co-operation and open markets. National-socialist Germany used its bilateral trade and clearing...

Transforming Russian Enterprises: From State Control to Employee Ownership.
January 1, 1997... This volume constitutes a welcome addition to the now expanding literature in English devoted to the process of economic transition in eastern Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union. The initial chapters cover familiar ground in...

Empresas multinacionales. Estructura organizativa y function financiera.
January 1, 1997... Alfredo Martinez Bobillo's compact and nicely written study of multinational enterprises, their organisational structure and financial behaviour appears under the imprimatur of the University of Valladolid where the author first submitted the...

Industrial Enterprise and European Integration: From National to International Champions in Western Europe.
January 1, 1997... This excellent book examines the transformation of industrial enterprise in western Europe since the late 1980s, in the wake of the far-reaching political and economic change ushered in by the single market project. Its primary focus is on the...

European Financial Reporting: A History.
January 1, 1997... The editor states that this book is intended to serve as a tool in understanding contemporary financial reporting in most countries in Western Europe, (p.9). Walton chose history for this purpose, and there is much of interest in the book, mostly...

American Artisans; Crafting Social Identity: 1750-1850.
January 1, 1997... The economic fate of American artisans, their vigorous republican politics, and their patterns of association, protest and adaptation to an industrial order have been key themes for US labour historians ever since Herbert Gutman's essays helped...

Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century.
January 1, 1997... Within a century of escaping from British rule, the United States emerged as the world's leading manufacturing nation and the pioneer of industrial corporatism. Walter Licht's book provides a survey of US industrialisation during the century...

Labouring Lives: Work and Workers in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.
January 1, 1997... This book will be of more interest to business historians than they probably imagine. For although it is explicitly and consistently concerned with work and workers, the editor and his contributors make clear time and again that labour can be...

Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse.
January 1, 1997... Spreading the News exemplifies the kind of sophisticated and nuanced research that US postal history has long needed. Richard R. John breaks from the internalist, antiquarian tradition characteristic of so many post office histories to place the...

Reaping the Bounty: McCormick Harvesting Machine Company Turns Abroad, 1878-1902.
January 1, 1997... Developed from a dissertation, this study examines the ways in which McCormick's reapers, binders and mowers were demonstrated and marketed overseas from the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851 to the formation of International Harvester in...

Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn of Century Pittsburgh.
January 1, 1997... The recent paperback edition of Sons and Daughters of Labor is a welcome addition to books which are financially accessible to undergraduates. Previously too expensive for use as supplementary reading on American courses, presumably because its...

The Local State: Public Money and American Cities.
January 1, 1997... This volume was not written exclusively for a history readership but also for scholars in political science, urban studies and other social science disciplines. Thus the normal evaluation standards for historical works should probably not be...

The Dynamics of Japanese Organizations.
January 1, 1997... It is fascinating to see how in unravelling the alleged mysteries associated with Japanese management and organisational style a multidisciplinary approach can provide some useful tools. Richter would certainly argue that this eclectic style has...

When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt.
January 1, 1997... This book is a worthwhile study, but is also a sad instance of a lost opportunity - an opportunity, that is, to communicate its subject matter to a wider readership than the narrow circle of political science specialists who will probably be the...

Coal, Class, and Community: The United Mineworkers of New Zealand, 1880-1960.
January 1, 1997... Richardson presents a comprehensive study of the mineworkers' movement in New Zealand from the pioneering days of the coal industry to its defeat during the conflict with the government over the Emergency Regulations imposed in 1951. The study is...

The Management of Labour: A History of Australian Employers.
January 1, 1997... This is the fourth study in a series written by members of the Department of Industrial Relations at the University of Melbourne and entitled 'Australian Studies in Labour Relations'. The idea of the book is to redress the neglect of the employer...

Small and Medium-Size Enterprises.
January 1, 1997... This volume provides a series of in-depth national case studies of the development and role of small and medium-sized firms, set strongly within the framework of industrial districts or regions. It provides a mature and sophisticated commentary...

Rich Nations - Poor Nations: The Long-Run Perspective.
January 1, 1997... This book originates in a 'C' session of the 1994 International Economic History Congress, Professors Aldcroft and Catterall having assembled a distinguished group of scholars to address the issue of 'Why the West Grew Rich and the Third World...

The Organization of International Business: Studies in the Economics of Trust, vol. 2.
January 1, 1997... The prolific, knowledgeable and always stimulating Mark Casson presents herein a free-ranging collection of his own papers written between 1990 and 1994, some previously published, most not. Casson often uses history in his analyses and pushes...

Education, Training and the Global Economy.
January 1, 1997... The book arises from the authors' dissatisfaction with naive versions of the widely held view that education and training stimulate economic growth. It benefits from the expertise which they have acquired from many years of research on the...

Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology.
January 1, 1997... This book, edited by a former librarian at the Science Museum and a former Executive Secretary of the Newcomen Society, contains almost 1,300 entries in the space of some 800 pages. The entries, compiled by 29 specialist contributors, vary...

The Growth of Nations: Culture, Competitiveness, and the Problem of Globalization.
January 1, 1997... By its lucidity, the clear order of its contents, the simplicity of its language and, indeed, the intention expressed at the start, this is marked out as a text for undergraduate and similar courses. Yet, far from explaining the accepted canon to...