"This is a story about stories and specifically about some of the stories that Americans have told themselves about corporate economic power." In this book, Anne Mayhew focuses on the stories surrounding the creation of Standard Oil and Wal-Mart and their founders , John D. Rockefeller and Sam Walton, combining the accounts of economists with the s
In this book, Anne Mayhew focuses on the stories surrounding the creation of Standard Oil and Wal-Mart, combining the accounts of economists with the somewhat darker pictures painted by writers of fiction.
Throughout the Twentieth Century, big business has been a basic institution. Large corporations have provided a fundamental contribution to the wealth of nations and, at the same time, have had a remarkable impact on the political and social systems within which they have operated. It is difficult to understand the development of the most advanced economies if we do not consider the specific evolution of big business in every national case. On the other hand, it is not possible to explain the shape and behavior of big business without considering its development as part of the history of the country in which they operate. The largest US, German, British and French firms were key actors in favoring their nations' development and, even at the end of the Twentieth Century, made a very important contribution to their growth. In many countries, a stable core of large corporations developed only relatively lately, or did not develop at all, and under these circumstances, big business was not able to significantly participate in the economic growth of such countries. Scholars who dealt with the economic history of Italy and Spain are generally unanimous in tagging these nations as industrial late-comers, ineffective in promoting big autochthonous private and State-owned firms, dominated by family companies, and characterized by a strong competitive advantage on the part of small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, Spanish and Italian business and economic historians have tended to say little about the role and features of big business. This book thus fills a significant gap in the work on the development of Southern European capitalism and its large corporations by analyzing the Italian and Spanish cases and comparing them with each other and with what has occurred in the United States and in the largest European nations. Examining both the macro dynamics (national but also supra national) and the micro level, utilizing samples of big corporations and going deeply into some company cases, this volume identifies some important protagonists of the Italian and Spanish economies (such as the State, families and foreign investors) and investigates a wider panorama which includes the political, economic and social relationships of the corporations, providing insights into the form of capitalism that exists in these countries.
This book brings together leading organization scholars and business historians to examine the opportunities and challenges of incorporating historical research into the study of firms and markets.
A collection that includes both refereed articles and review essays of recently published books in the history of economic thought and methodology. It also includes articles that highlight the work of founding editor Warren J Samuels, American economists' role in the creation of federal trade acts, and Islamic economic methodology.
Law and economics are interdependent. Using a historical case analysis approach, this book demonstrates how the legal process relates to and is affected by economic circumstances. Glen Atkinson and Stephen P. Paschall examine this co-evolution in the context of the economic development that occurred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as the impact of the law on that development. Specifically, the authors explore the development of a national market, the transformation of the corporation, and the conflict between state and federal control over businesses. Their focus on dynamic, integrated systems presents an alternative to mainstream law and economics.
In contrast to widespread assessments that family enterprises lack sufficient resources and capabilities to go global, many family companies are competing successfully in an increasingly globalized business environment. Worldwide, a large number of thriving multinationals are still family-owned and/or under family control. While there is abundant literature on the phenomenon of globalization from many different disciplines, neither the literature on multinationals nor the growing field of family business studies have systematically investigated family multinationals yet. This volume is one of the first to deal explicitly with family multinationals and the role of the family in internationalization. It situates itself at the crossroads of internationalization studies on the one hand and family business research on the other. Why do families continue to play such a large role in some of the most prominent firms in emerging and mature economies? How did they manage to maintain ownership control, yet divest of unrelated business ventures? How did they internationalize yet maintain control? This book identifies the idiosyncratic strategies and structures of family multinationals in different countries and at different points in time. A comparative historical and case study approach allows us to explore the role of the family through the firms’ various internationalization pathways and understand long-term developments and path dependencies.
The Origins of Globalization presents a startling look at the shape of “known world” globalization, dating back to the Roman Empire and earlier, including multicultural workforces, tariff reduced zones, interregional tax issues, currency risks, and other phenomena.
The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship explores the relationship between home, household headship and enterprise in Victorian London. It examines the notions of duty, honor and suitability in how women’s ventures are represented by themselves and others and engages in a comparison of the interpretation of historical female entrepreneurship by contemporaries and historians in the UK, Europe and America. It argues that just as women in business have often been hidden by men, they have often also been hidden by the ‘home’ and the conceptualization of separate spheres of public and private agency and of ‘the’ entrepreneur. Drawing on contextual evidence from 1747 to 1880, including fire insurance records, directories, trade cards, newspapers, memoirs, the census and extensive record linkage, this study concentrates on the early to mid-Victorian period when ideals about gender roles and appropriate work for women were vigorously debated. Alison Kay offers new insight into the motivations of the Victorian women who opted to pursue enterprises of their own. By engaging in empirical comparisons with men's business, it also reveals similarities and differences with the small to medium sized ventures of male business proprietors. The link between home and enterprise is then further excavated by detailed record linkage, revealing the households and domestic circumstances and responsibilities of female proprietors. Using both discourse and data to connect enterprise, proprietor and household, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship provides a multi-dimensional picture of the Victorian female proprietor and moves beyond the stereotypes. It argues that active business did not exclude women, although careful representation was vital and this has obscured the similarities of their businesses with those of many male business proprietors.
In this edited volume the editors highlight the relative importance of European actors in the globalization of technological change by documenting developments in France, Germany, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Developments in Europe sit side by side with those in Mexico and the USA.
