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Although the dioxin alarm broke at the same time in Sweden and the US in the mid-1980s, Swedish pulp and paper (P&P) firms led the way towards the new market for low-chlorine and chlorine-free P&P products. This study explores the transition in the Swedish P&P industry and contrasts the Swedish case to the US experience. We highlight the importance of already established technological paths to deal with pollution, paths which were strongly formed by the different national environmental policies since the 1970s. Thus while US P&P firms were technologically locked-in when the dioxin alarm broke, the strategy of Swedish P&P firms to proactively collaborate in environmental research and development (R&D) together with a national policy that favoured process integrated abatement technology, helped Swedish firms take technological leadership. This article particularly stresses the implications of technological path-dependency and different national regulatory styles in understanding the evolution of different modes of corporate environmental strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative economic decline of Britain since the last quarter of the nineteenth century has often been attributed to its firms' continued prediction for small-scale batch production and highly skilled labor. Britain's loss of leadership in paper making in the second half of the nineteenth century was most apparent in the level of output it and its main competitor, the U.S., produced. While in 1860 both the U.S. and Britain shared the honor of the being the world's biggest paper producers, each with around 100,000 long tons of paper and board per annum, by 1914 the United States had shot out ahead; in that year manufacturing some 4,705,400 tons to Britain's 1,110,000. This changing fortune of the British industry in the late nineteenth century was clearly recognized by contemporaries. Many of these observers noted that, in addition to the advantages that nature had bestowed on the American industry in terms of cheap and accessible supplies of wood and energy. The idea that the U.S. had established a lead in paper-machine technology by 1900 also appears to be supported by the different types of data available from the period.

Large firms are faced with an ever-widening array of consultancy services and providers. From management consulting to accounting to logistics to human relations, the professional services industry has seen extraordinary growth in the number of firms and range of services they provide. In this paper, we examine the history of one consultancy firm, albeit a small and particular one. The Fantus Factory Locating Service was established in 1919 and pioneered what we know today as the site selection or location consulting industry. Brokering between firms and communities seeking to attract investment, Fantus was able to structure and powerfully shape the landscape of economic activity in the United States. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and a primary source of archived company files the paper examines the growth of the firm, the nature and scale of its work and its extraordinary and lasting influence on the changing US economic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History can provide invaluable insights into important issues of the economic and social regulation of utilities, and offer lessons towards future debates. But the history of utility regulation - which speaks of changing, diverse and complex experiences around the world - was, unfortunately, sidelined or marginalised when economists and policymakers enthusiastically embraced the question of how to reform the utilities from the 1970s. This paper provides an overview of the three, overarching, 'waves' of utility regulation from the nineteenth century to the present, documenting how, when and why the ways in which the roles of the state, the market and firms altered over time. It then contextualises and explains the main contributions of each of the papers included in this special issue of Business History, which cover energy, communications, water, transportation and other urban infrastructure regulation, across Western Europe, the United States and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the career of William D. Straight, a U.S. banker-diplomat from New York City. Historians have differed as to whether the First World War was characterized by Anglo-American co-operation or by fierce competition, particularly in the economic sphere. Several, notably Burton I. Kaufman and Carl P. Parrini, have argued that during the war New York bankers were divided into two groups so far as international banking activities were concerned: those associated with the pre-eminent firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., whose partners favored financial and commercial Anglo-American co-operation on a global scale, and those working with the National City Bank, who preferred fierce competition with the British for export and overseas investment opportunities. Morgans concentrated on war financing for the Allies, while the National City Bank attempted to expand both its network of foreign branches and its overseas investments. Both economic strategies had their weakness: the expansion of United States's war-related commerce, while temporarily profitable, made the U.S. economy dangerously dependent upon business which was, by its very nature, transient; the National City Bank's Russian branches proved a complete loss when the Bolshevik government nationalized them in December 1917.

This paper challenges the recent suggestion that a new financial elite has evolved which is able to capture substantial profit shares for itself. Specifically, it questions the assumption that new groups of financial intermediaries have increased in significance primarily because there is evidence that various types of financial speculators have played a similarly extensive role at several junctures of economic development. The paper then develops the alternative hypothesis that, rather than being a recent development, the rise of these financial intermediaries is a cyclical phenomenon which is linked to specific regimes of capital accumulation. The hypothesis is underpinned by historical data from the US National Income and Product Accounts for the period from 1930 to 2000, which suggest that the activities of 'mainstream' financial intermediaries have been accompanied by the frequently countercyclical activities of a 'speculative' sector of security and commodity brokers. Based on the combination of this qualitative and quantitative evidence, the paper concludes that the rise of a speculative financial sector is a potentially recurrent phenomenon which is linked to periods of economic restructuring and turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the natural monopoly features of infrastructure industries, together with their strategic roles, have been important elements in state intervention. The aim of this paper is to evaluate what relative weight was attached to market failure problems on the one hand and geo-political factors on the other. For the period 1830-1939, how far were geo-political factors stronger than natural monopoly problems in accounting for the scale of intervention in the various countries of the Western World? How far did the policy instruments for security and market failure overlap? Whilst most of the infrastructure sectors are covered - including internal telecommunications, coal, gas, shipping, electricity and water - special attention is devoted to international submarine telegraph tables and railways. The paper concludes by demonstrating strong differences between Britain and USA on the one hand and Continental Europe plus Japan on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes a case study of HSBC acquiring Marine Midland Banks, Inc. (MMBI) in the US between 1978 and 1980, a historic incident that had a catalytic impact on the whole debate about foreign banking in the US and re-examination of the restrictions on the US banks' inter-state operations. This paper explores the impact of the US government's financial regulatory structure on HSBC's acquisition and how HSBC dealt with difficulties caused by the US government regulations. We find that the structure of the US government financial regulation caused political hazards which further influenced HSBC's contractual hazards and business transaction costs. We have established that the different attitudes of the federal and state regulatory authorities toward HSBC's acquisition were closely related to their interests, regulatory capability and resources. Our analysis also confirms that HSBC's commitment strategy did help it to earn the federal regulatory authorities' support and MMBI's cooperation, which facilitated the conversion of Marine Midland Bank (MMB), a principal subsidiary of MMBI, to the status of a national chartered bank and allowed HSBC to circumvent the NYBD's regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of the Danish construction company Christiani & Nielsen in the period 1941-1945 shows that Scandinavian companies were not just pawns in a bigger political game but were to a certain degree capable of promoting their own interests. This paper reveals that the political imperative is not only a matter of political risk but also of political opportunity. The history of Christiani & Nielsen offers a useful case of the political risks and fiscal opportunities faced by multinationals working in dictatorial settings. The paper concludes that, in a choice between a forestalling strategy and an absorption strategy, the latter offers a better way of managing such risks and to minimise exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively few records survive of firms engaged in British-American trade in the century and a half preceding the American Revolution. The three major collections of British firm records that do survive were preserved because they were presented as evidence in lawsuits and not reclaimed by the litigants. There has recently come to light in the "fonds" of the Court of the Exchequer in the Public Record Office in London some papers of a London firm trading to Maryland in the 1690s. These records (accounts and correspondence) were brought into court in connection with a suit--Sheffeild v. Starke--between the executors of a London merchant, Thomas Starke, and his former apprentice, John Sheffeild. No other Chesapeake trade records of this character and antiquity are known to survive. In the first half of the article, the nature and progress of the lawsuit is sketched; in the second part, the documentary sediment left behind by the lawsuit and other evidence are sifted and analyzed for a fuller picture of the firm's activities and of commercial practice in this significant branch of Anglo-American trade in the war years after 1689.

An important tenet of a burgeoning ‘law and finance’ literature is that stock market development is contingent upon corporate law offering ample protection to shareholders. This paper addresses this claim, using as its departure point developments occurring in the United States between 1930 and 1970. It shows that, contrary to what the law and finance literature would predict, during this period and throughout the twentieth century generally the US lacked corporate law that provided extensive protection to shareholders. It also points out that while federal securities legislation introduced in the mid-1930s bolstered investor protection, this reform effort did not energise the stock market in the manner implied by law and finance analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In early American corporations, the power of large shareholders was frequently limited by voting rules that partially disenfranchised them. In particular, stock held in an individual's name was granted a number of votes per share that decreased with the number of shares held. Using data from the corporations created in New York up to 1825, this paper analyses the use of these ‘graduated’ voting rights. Consistent with the view that they were intended to help small investors protect themselves against the predations of controlling shareholders, the data indicate that graduated voting rights were imposed in industries that attracted small investments from ordinary households. The results highlight the importance of concerns over the controlling influence of large shareholders in early corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Italy's catch-up in the course of the twentieth century has been nothing short of extraordinary, it has failed to produce a large number of global business players. Nonetheless, half a century ago an Italian company concluded what was at the time the largest-ever foreign takeover of a US company. The paper analyses Olivetti's acquisition of Underwood and frames it in the broader picture of the literature on the management and performance of foreign companies in the United States. We provide a historical narrative focused on three main issues: 1) Olivetti's adaptation to the American business system; 2) head office control and subsidiary autonomy; 3) the development of internal knowledge resources. The implications are relevant for business historians and management scholars in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the circulation of junk in nineteenth-century American markets, concentrating on its various stages of commodification - and the people responsible for that commodification - as scrap was transformed from worthless garbage found on the streets into lucrative materials suitable for industrial use. The study adds to historians' understanding of the emergence of capitalism, whose formation happened as much from the bottom up as the top down. The often-overlooked populations who engaged in petty and often illegal entrepreneurship, including the children discussed here, had a very real impact on the emerging economy. Looking at scrap more clearly elucidates the processes of commodification and the logic of capitalism at work - the transformation of miscellaneous, valueless goods into aggregated abstractions with significant economic worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correspondence education has received very little attention from business historians. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to draw attention to The Sheldon School and the work of its entrepreneurial founder, Arthur Frederick Sheldon. Sheldon's correspondence course was studied by thousands of students in the early twentieth century. His interests, as reflected in his correspondence course materials and related articles, range from a focus on facilitating exchange relationships through to concerns with distributive justice, sales ethics and the promotion of an American economic and political vision across the globe. As a key figure in the sales education industry, Sheldon had a major impact on the social environment of the twentieth century via his involvement with the Rotary Club. Courtesy of his influence at Rotary, his ideas continue to shape the way prominent scholars have reflected on the consumer and marketing concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the lessons to be learned from why the neighbouring banking systems of Canada and the United States, that share numerous commonalities, fared so differently during two major financial crises. The explanations are deeply rooted in different tolerances for industry concentration and state involvement, and the divergent routes of the development of their financial systems, founding institutions, on-going governance and regulation, and competitive structures. Canada's success during the more recent 2007-09 financial crisis is attributed to more effective regulation and conservative banking practices, including (self-) imposed stricter limits on bank leverage, much stricter limits on unconventional mortgages, and less reliance on the use of more 'creative' investment types (e.g. subprime lending) and structured products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a newly constructed database of bank failures for the period 1900 to 1930, this paper estimates a dynamic regression model to examine the extent to which banking instability at the state level affects the proportion of state deposits relative to national deposits. The main results indicate that banking failures reduce the proportion of state deposits by approximately 0.04% in the short run and by nearly 1% in the long run. In the eight states that adopted deposit insurance systems during the 1910s, however, there is little evidence that banking crises affected deposit growth. In addition, there is no evidence that the banking crisis of the 1980s and 1990s had any significant effect on state deposit growth. These results suggest that deposit insurance may have lessened the effects of banking instability on deposit growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the risk environment of film consumption in the United States during the 1930s when moviegoing dwarfed all other paid-for leisure activities. We argue that the wide variability in the financial performance of films, reflecting the considerable risks that were involved in film production, can be interpreted as being mirrored in the risks incurred by consumers in the film consumption process. We further argue that production risk needs to be understood within the context of consumer risk. Using a dataset derived from the trade journal Variety, we examine the weekly fortunes of movies in first-run cinemas as consumers rapidly substitute movies that are currently on release for the promised pleasures of yet unseen movies. That expected utility was not always realised was commonplace, as was the pleasurable surprise that came with being thrilled by certain films. These are important results since, perhaps for the first time in modern society, they led to the emergence of the long right tail of consumer preferences for mass distributed goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A single-letter stock ticker symbol is a limited resource - only 26 possibilities are available in a stock universe of over 475,000 possible one-, two-, three- or four-letter ticker symbols. These symbols were first allocated based on trading volume therefore some of the most important companies at the time were initially placed into this group. This paper examines the history of this group of stocks and documents a decline in the importance of these firms due to a natural turnover in commercial leadership and no established mechanism to remove the single-letter designation from firms that lost their prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on an aspect of confederate finance during the American Civil War. The attitudes of France and Great Britain toward the American Civil War were important to both the South and the North; and these attitudes also had a bearing on any European financial operations involving the disunited states. At the beginning of the war, the ruling classes of both France and Great Britain were in sympathy with the Confederacy. Because of his colonial plans in the western hemisphere, French President Louis Napoleon was in favour of intervening on the side of the South, but he could not do so without the concurrence of Great Britain with whom France was joined in an entente. Great Britain was unwilling to undertake such an overt action, partly because a large segment of English liberals and English working men saw the Civil War as a struggle of free versus slave labour and hence supported the North even though southern cotton was wanted for English mills. Although France and Great Britain both issued proclamations of neutrality, thus according to the South, the status of a belligerent nation rather than an internal territory in rebellion, neither they nor any European nation ultimately took the further step of granting diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.

The paper examines the role played by Canadian chartered banks in the banking crises that occurred in the U.S. over the period from 1870 to 1914. The particular hypothesis investigated is whether Canadian chartered banks, operating through their U.S. branch offices, increased their share of total U.S. deposits during these crisis periods. Such an occurrence would imply that the U.S. depositors perceived the Canadian chartered banks as being safer than American banks during periods of financial distress. This perception would have enhanced the reputation of Canadian chartered banks and facilitated their expansion into the U.S. market. The period 1870-1914 is chosen to consider this hypothesis for several reasons. First, in 1870 the Canadian government enacted the Bank Act, the first piece of formal legislation governing chartered banks in Canada. This act required that all chartered banks keep records of their domestic and foreign operations and submit monthly reports to the Minister of Finance. Second, during this period prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1914, there were many instances of financial distress in the U.S. banking system.

In 1911, one of the most significant United States anti-trust decisions resulted in the dissolution of the Standard Oil trust, which had dominated the oil industry of the United States since the 1870s. A half century later, eight of the original members of the trust ranked among the eighteen largest oil companies in the nation. This paper traces the development of these companies which emerged from the trust, showing the growth of competition as they expanded their marketing areas beyond the territories originally assigned to them under the trust agreement, and came into direct competition with one another. The tactics employed to gain and maintain this dominance, together with the mere size of the group, aroused public animosity, which in turn led to various attempts to curb its power. In 1892, the Ohio courts ruled that the original charter of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio) did not allow it to operate under a trust agreement. As a result, the trust was abandoned in favor of a less formal "community of interest" arrangement. But this arrangement had disadvantages, and some of the member companies came under legal attack. Accordingly, in 1892 the group established a holding company structure. The charter of the largest member of the group, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, was broadened to permit it to become the primary holding company, and its name was changed to Standard Oil Company (New Jersey).

The United States Council for International Business today is one of the United States most powerful domestic business organisations and is a leading ambassador for US international business interests abroad. It is also the US affiliate of the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and Business at OECD. At its founding in 1945, the United States Council of the International Chamber of Commerce (as it was called until 1981) was intended to represent the specific interests of US-based multinationals striving to expand their international trade and investments. Based on new archival documents, this article aims to shed light on the largely under--researched history of the US Council, demonstrating that the Council gained prominence during the 1960s and 1970s through a series of political campaigns aimed at defending and expanding American companies' international direct investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the position of US and European business in the debate about American direct investment in Western Europe in a historical perspective, from the establishment of the Common Market to the introduction of US regulation of foreign direct investment (FDI) a decade later. Based on abundant and diverse archival documents, it sheds new light on the process of Americanisation and contributes to existing research on transnational networks, by revealing the active role industrial leaders on both sides of the Atlantic played in shaping the political responses to problems raised by the American firms' massive presence in the Common Market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the technological development of laser diodes from 1960 to 2000, this study examines how US and Japanese firms diverged from the same technological target to take separate evolutionary paths over time and came to be competitive in the different areas. Scrutinising the level of vertical integration, entrepreneurial start-ups, scientists' mobility and research networks, it shows that R&D efforts were scattered over different technological domains, giving US firms the chance to obtain technological advantages in customised and small markets. R&D efforts were concentrated in the same targeted markets in Japan, giving Japanese companies the opportunity to capture the markets offering the highest sales volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests Alfred Chandler's thesis that the managerial revolution, that is, the building of managerial hierarchies, clustered in a selected set of industries where the need for co-ordination was particularly high. These fast-growing, capital-intensive, and high-volume producing industries are denoted as Chandlerian industries. We compare the latter with the other industries in the Netherlands and the USA using census data covering the first half of the twentieth century. The comparison reveals that administrative intensity, measured by the proportion of administrative employees to production workers (A/P-ratio), was clearly higher than average in the US Chandlerian industries in the sample used only from c. 1920, considerably later than Chandler's account suggests. In the Netherlands, the A/P-ratios of Chandlerian industries were considerably higher in all three reference years, but the more specific middle managers to workers ratio (MM/W-ratio) only in the middle one (1930). We conclude that differences in the need for co-ordination between industries in the Chandlerian sense are relevant for explaining the pattern in administrative intensity, but suggest that - given the high variety in scores on the A/P- and MM/W-ratios within the category of Chandlerian industries - one should take into consideration additional criteria in further exploring the 'logic' of the managerial revolution. Finally, in particular outside the USA, more consistent differences in administrative intensity between Chandlerian and non-Chandlerian industries are perhaps to be found only in the period after World War Two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to use industry and company histories to examine the experience of manufacturing in the United States, post Civil War. An industry-by-industry approach is needed because of the inadequacies of gross generalizations and because the industrial effects of the war were selective and uneven. One of the most effective ways of minimizing the impact which the Civil War may be said to have had on American manufacturing is to demonstrate how much had been accomplished before the war. The small arms industry is a case in point and it is a logical place of departure, for if production technique in this strongly war-related industry was not revolutionized, it must immediately raise questions as to the impact of the war on other, more tangential, manufacturing industries. Early attempts at mass production were unprofitable because a vast market was required for profitability, although the system of interchangeable parts was successfully innovated by various arms manufacturers such as Colt and Robbins and Lawrence by the 1850s.

This article investigates the capacity of the slave plantation in southern U.S. to engage in judicious agricultural adaptation in the decades preceding the Civil War. In the discussion, the South is narrowed to the old Atlantic states, from Delaware to Georgia, where the problems of low yields, low land values and population loss were most intense and where, accordingly, the need for adjustment was most pronounced. Agricultural improvement becomes responsiveness to proposals formulated by the greatest reformer of the antebellum South, Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, these focusing on soil amelioration and product diversification. The plantation is reduced to its owner and coordinator, the planter; and his entrepreneurship, in turn, is analyzed in exclusively epistemological terms. Ruffin has been described as the father of soil chemistry in the U.S., and the most influential leader of Southern agriculture. He combined in his person the roles of scientist, journalist, farmer and Virginia patriarch. Reform of farming methods would, as he saw it, bring with it an increase of political power especially significant to the well-being and defense of the Southern States, and the preservation of their yet remaining rights, and always vital interests.

What is outstanding about the development of pharmaceutical laboratories in German, British and American drug companies is their differences. The outstanding differences stem from the organisation of medical science and practice, and differences in the structure and evolution of the industry. The use to which a company put its laboratory depended upon the advantage the firm saw in investing in scientists, and the extent to which the company was linked to the medical profession. The industry's relation to government was also crucial. These factors were quite different in Germany from Britain, and different again from the United States. At the Bayer Corp. in Leverkusen there was no commitment to organised research until the late 1880s. The crisis in the dyestuffs trade of the early 1880s made them receptive to change. Research offered Bayer a strategy that might reduce vulnerability to the fluctuations of the business cycle. The need to invest in research staff and facilities was only slowly accepted in the 1880s. Bayer established a pattern of hiring Ph.D. chemists for one year, and then sending them to a university or Technisehe Hochschule laboratory, where they worked on research problems related to the company production programme.

We demonstrate that even though during WWII the interest rate was close to zero supporting the financing of the military effort, dissent inside the FOMC occurred with a similar frequency to other policy episodes. Our analysis highlights that the debates which resulted in dissents turned around two broad issues: the size of the Fed's balance sheet as well as the functioning of and communication with financial markets. Thus, we argue that the conventional view depicting the Fed as merely accommodating treasury needs should be revised. Our detailed investigation of dissents emphasises the modernity of the objections raised by Fed officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general incorporation laws enacted in Britain and the US in the nineteenth century had strikingly different structures. Whereas British law was laissez-faire in spirit, the American statutes were highly regulatory. The literature on the efficiency of the common law might lead one to expect that these statutory differences would become less salient over time, as businesses litigated their disputes and courts in the two countries came to similar resolutions. However, the authors find that the case law tended, if anything, to accentuate the differences in the statutes. British courts typically enforced whatever arrangements shareholders wrote into their articles of association or otherwise contracted among themselves, so long as the agreements were not contrary to law. In the US, by contrast, courts generally refused to enforce shareholders' agreements that deviated in any significant way from statutory norms. US law would not really begin to converge on British law until the second half of the twentieth century, when states began to enact more flexible general incorporation statutes. By that time, British company law was also becoming more regulatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the developments in the market for residential mortgage-backed securities (MBS) during the period 1970–2008. Drawing on an analysis of trade publications, business press, and interviews with practitioners, it shows that an MBS market meltdown in 1994 provided clear signals of problems with MBS. The market participants did not re-evaluate their use of risk management tools or adjust security design in response to the 1994 crisis, suggesting a lack of understanding of the implications of the crisis. The 1994 meltdown showed that MBS were vulnerable to systematic risks and that these risks could precipitate an MBS market crash. Furthermore, the 1994 meltdown demonstrated that large-scale investment in MBS could affect the primary mortgage market, thereby rendering the MBS risks unpredictable. After 1994, MBS investment shifted to MBS backed by mortgages with default risk – a development that led to the crash of 2008. By drawing parallels between the 1994 and 2008 crises, this article shows how the MBS market failed to self-correct. The results suggest that financial market participants do not always incorporate relevant information in their decision-making and that market participants have difficulties in both foreseeing the effect of financial innovations on markets and interpreting these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the evolution of biopharmaceutical firms as they bore great uncertainty and risks in their endeavours to commercialise new therapies – through the regenerative medicine industry in the United States, Britain and Japan. Despite its beginnings in the 1970s, regenerative medicines have yet to become a widely accepted form of medicine. A large part of the problem lay with the lack of 'fit' with the broader health context. This article illustrates how the trajectory of the sector was shaped, not only by the nature of the technology, but also by the complex contexts in which firms were embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textiles are central to our understanding of the second-hand trade in Georgian England, but the focus is generally on clothing; much less attention has been given to domestic textiles in the form of linen, beds and drapery. This article draws on auction catalogues from Northamptonshire, 1761-1836, to identify the changing quantity and nature of textiles being sold, the ways in which they were promoted and valorised, and what this might tell us about consumers' motivations. It highlights how the continued appeal of second-hand textiles was framed in a rhetoric of gentility and respectability, and reveals the country house auction as a key institution in the recirculation of second-hand goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the material and everyday practices of a community of thrift-shoppers at the Goodwill Bins. Their practices reveal that shopping in these cutthroat environments is anything but leisurely. By attending to how these spaces are utilised as resources for independent ventures in the informal economy, I show how the occupation of reselling blurs the lines between consumption and production, and shopping and work. I argue that the thrift store can be viewed as a microcosm of the broader shifts occurring in the economy and the latest capitalist reorganisation of work into non-standard and precarious forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians identify the process of registration as key to the 'modern mark'. Hence the introduction of trademark registration with the US federal law of 1870 appears as a pivotal event, endorsing Chandlerean accounts of the modern mark as a product of the 'Second Industrial Revolution'. Such accounts overlook the earlier registration laws in places where economic conditions challenge claims for an industrial origin to registration. This article looks at California's registration law, which antedated the US federal law by seven years, asking whether it is merely an exception to prove the Chandlerean rule, or an example that asks us to question Chandlerean assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery of dangerously high levels of mercury in the Great Lakes from industrial wastewater discharge severely shook the United States and Canada in 1970. Emergency actions covered industrial shutdowns, fishing bans and accelerated monitoring programmes. Charges against local chlor-alkali businesses, such as Dow Chemical, became the first instances of green-collar crime in the context of modern environmentalism in North America. At the same time, the legal, scientific and political management of the crisis foreshadowed the difficulties victims, prosecutors and polluters would face more generally in the field of environmental crime in the future. This contribution on Dow Chemical and the Great Lakes mercury crisis extrapolates the ambiguities inherent to ecological disaster and corporate behaviour, and encourages scholars to situate their analysis within a framework of scientific uncertainties and legal loopholes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is a case study of financial fraud. The Associated Gas & Electric Company (AG&E), controlled by Howard C. Hopson, was one of the largest utility holding companies of the ‘Roaring 20s’. Hopson’s AG&E rose spectacularly in the market boom and fell hard following the 1929 crash. Hopson tried unsuccessfully to save the company, while simultaneously enriching himself, using financial transactions that ultimately were determined to be illegal. The major policy reaction to the financial manipulations of the period, for which Hopson became a public symbol, was passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which mandated the ‘death’ of most electric utility holding companies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Crop and weather forecasting are some of the least predictable elements of agri-business, and public and private sector interests have developed different approaches to improving results in each area. This article examines how organisations produced, acquired, and shared the environmental knowledge they needed for success in the increasingly global supply chains of agri-business. Crop knowledge was extensive and growing in the late nineteenth century, including a series of nascent forecasting methods. Climate knowledge was limited and retreating because of underfunding and spurious theories about solar radiation. But the records of Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) and crop scientists in the Northern Great Plains show that linseed oil manufacturers created extensive knowledge networks to gather crop and some climate information in almost real time. Business associations served an asymmetrical role in these knowledge networks, and some manufacturers, like the members of the Flax Development Committee, treated scientists as a crop reporting service. As Argentina became a major linseed producer the US oilseed sector used public and private intermediaries to develop specialized knowledge of grassland agriculture in both the Prairies and the Pampas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article makes a critical examination of the economic case made for the prohibition of individual resale price maintenance (IRPM) in 1964. The Resale Prices Act had major implications for the future structure of British retailing and was lobbied for by multiple grocery retailers. This article demonstrates how a government enquiry which preceded the legislation privileged one side of the debate and marginalised other – arguably more rigorous – analysis. The article endorses a central role for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and is a case study of the role of economic theory in business–government relations and the development of economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estate agency industry played a key role in the growth of the interwar property market. An important feature of the industry was the low barriers to entry, particularly in terms of regulating practitioners. Yet repeated attempts were made to introduce mandatory licensing of estate agents during this period, all of which failed. This article explores why these attempts were instigated, by whom, and why they failed. It utilises the comparison with the successful introduction of licensing for real estate brokers in the US. The article argues that the desire for a professional identity fuelled these regulatory efforts, and that industry specific endogenous tensions led to their failure. In doing so, this article informs our knowledge of both the interwar development of this key service industry, and of the concepts used to analyse regulation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sylla and Wright's statistics of new US special incorporations in 1790–1860 show that they exceeded those in France, Prussia and the UK, but the aggregate paid-up share capitals of extant companies were not so far apart in 1860. The UK continued to lead corporatisation, as measured by the ratio of corporate share capital to GDP. The distinctive features of US corporations were that they were small, diverse and numerous, while UK corporations were larger, more capital-intensive, less prone to disappear and had more dispersed ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Fredericksburg Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company's ironmaking facility, Catharine Furnace, had the look of a prime mover in antebellum Virginia's industrial sector when it opened in 1838. Its manager and principal owner, John Spotswood Wellford, successfully tapped into his social capital to secure military ordnance contracts, but in the process the firm became utterly dependent upon his ability to secure this work through personal connections. By failing to expand the market for its pig iron and castings in local, regional, and national markets, the firm relied upon these ordnance contracts for shot and shell for its existence. When Wellford died in 1846, the Fredericksburg Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company collapsed. A few years later, Catharine Furnace stood cold and abandoned – a severe reminder of the limited prospects of Virginia's industrial economy and the perils of relying on an individual entrepreneur's personal capital during a critical period of American industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the effects of globalisation on the organisation of family philanthropy. It aims to assess whether the increased visibility and social and economic relevance of foundations connected to entrepreneurial families and family firms, has also involved the adoption of similar organisational models internationally over the last three decades. The article examines the interplay between family philanthropy and its institutional framework in the US, Germany and Spain by identifying two basic models of relationship between the entrepreneurial family, the family foundation, and the family firm: the non-controlling model, which continues to characterise most US foundations; and the controlling model, characteristic of most German foundations. In Spain, where large family foundations have traditionally adopted the controlling model, newer foundations have tended to adopt the non-controlling model. This reveals the mixed effects of globalisation and national cultural and institutional patterns on the organisational structure adopted by family philanthropy across Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1790 and 1860, US state governments chartered 22,419 businesses, with minimum authorised capital totalling $4.58 billion, by special statute. The US, in both total and per capita terms, had considerably more corporations and authorised corporate capital than the UK, France or Prussia did over that same span. Differences in incorporation and capitalisation rates between nations were largely a function of differences in laws and politics but differences among American states resulted more from differences in the timing and character of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines a historical case study of failed institutional entrepreneurship in the context of a mature lightning protection standard developed under the auspices of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in the United States. Particular emphasis is placed on events post-1989 when entrepreneurs who had continuously supported the conventional standard sought to establish a competing standard in parallel. When unsuccessful, they sought to entirely remove the existing standard of almost 100 years. The study shows how failure of institutional work may in fact lead to a strengthening and reproduction of existing institutions and their underlying logics, contrary to the institutional entrepreneurs' intent. It also underscores the potential value of history as an interpretive device and strategic resource for both challengers and custodians of institutions, and moves beyond heroic conceptions of institutional entrepreneurship to recognise the discontinuous, non-linear, collective processes that take place in institutional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development credit corporations (DCCs) were innovative not-for-profit organisations first set up in the United States in the years after World War II. DCCs borrowed from financial institutions and lent on a long-term basis to small companies that needed funds to expand or maintain their operations but did not qualify for long-term credit from conventional lenders. DCCs were private-sector bodies created at the state level under charters issued by state governments. The organisations were established in more than half the American states. DCCs continue to function in the contemporary era, and have thus proved to be a permanent fixture in the landscape of development entities and not-for-profit financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American thrift industry began in the mid-nineteenth century as a way for people of modest financial means to purchase homes. Modelled after British building societies, thrifts relied on members adhering to the principle of mutual cooperation to achieve this goal. Over time five basic operating structures emerged to assist in this process. When the collapse of fraudulent competitors in the 1890s tarnished the industry's image, thrifts leaders promoted the core values of mutuality and the cooperative spirit, as opposed to the need for operational uniformity, to regain the public's trust in their businesses. As a result, thrifts continued to follow a wide variety of organisational structures and procedures well into the 1920s. This changed during the Great Depression when industry consolidation, federal regulations, and internal industry efforts combined to bring greater uniformity to thrift business practices. These conjoining actions resulted in one set of operating procedures becoming dominant – the one that relied the least on mutual cooperation. By the end of the decade the process of repositioning the industry was well underway, and with it the spirit of cooperation that characterised thrifts for more than a century had become more an emotional attachment and less a pragmatic business choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]