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The Nature of the Firm: Towards an Ecocultural History of Business

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2017

Christine Meisner Rosen  and
Christopher C. Sellers
Christine Meisner Rosen
Affiliation:
CHRISTINE MEISNER ROSEN is an associate professor of business and public policy at the Haas School of Business atthe University of California, Berkeley.
Christopher C. Sellers
Affiliation:
CHRISTOPHER SELLERS is an associate professor of history atthe State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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Abstract

Business history has never paid much attention to the environment. Brushing aside the firm's reliance and impact on the natural world, early business historians zeroed in on the role of the entrepreneur in big business's rise. They found it easy to truncate, marginalize or altogether ignore the physical processes by which the stuff of nature—“raw” materials—was carved or coaxed out of mountains, forests, and deserts, channeled into factories and squeezed and cajoled into commodities. They scarcely considered the ever-changing varieties of “waste” generated by businesses and customers, which so often infiltrated, polluted, and otherwise altered the world beyond factory and office. They devoted equally little attention to the effects of resource extraction and use on plants, animals, land, air, or water, much less entire ecosystems and climate.

Type
Introduction
Information
Business History Review , Volume 73 , Special Issue 4: Business and the Environment , Winter 1999 , pp. 577 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1999

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References

1 Much of this early work gave no attention to environmental problems even though it was highly critical of the industrialists who created big business. For example, Josephson's, Matthew The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901 (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, one of the early classics in American history, bitterly critiques the architects of American big business without specifically addressing their business's many harmful environmental impacts. This failure is particularly clear in books dealing with John D. Rockefeller and the development of the environmentally degrading oil industry. See for example, Tarbell, Ida M., History of the Standard Oil Company (New York, 1925)Google Scholar and Nevins, Allan, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist (New York, 1953).Google Scholar See also Jones, Peter D. A., ed., The Robber Barons Revisited (Boston, 1968).Google Scholar

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3 An exception is Pratt, Joseph A., “Growth of a Clean Environment? Responses to Petroleum-Related Pollution in the Gulf Coast Refining Region,” Business History Review 52(Spring 1978): 1–29.Google Scholar By the mid-1980s business historians were awakening to the importance of addressing environmental issues. See, for example, Tedlow, Richard S. and John, Richard R. Jr, eds., Managing Big Business: Essays from the Business History Review (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)Google Scholar, which included a section on “The Corporation, Technology, and the Environment.” But this section only reprinted Pratt's article alongside two others that confined their environmental attentions to energy issues—a telling indication of how little research of this sort had as yet been done. In this collection, see also Martin, Albro, “James J. Hill and the First Energy Revolution: A Study in Entrepreneurship, 1865–1878,” 88–106 (first appeared in Business History Review 50 [Summer 1976]: 179–197)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vietor, Richard H. K., “The Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program: Energy Politics in the Truman Era,” 299–328 (first appeared in Business History Review 54 [Spring 1980]. 1–34).Google Scholar

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10 Stine and Tarr, 622–623. A big exception is the recent book by Colten, Craig E. and Skinner, Peter N., The Road to Love Canal: Managing Industrial Waste before EPA (Austin, Tex., 1996)Google Scholar on the management of hazardous waste by the chemical industry. Far more typical is Hounshell, David and Smith, John Kenly Jr, Science and Corporate Strategy; Du Font R&D 1902–1980 (Cambridge, U.K., 1988)Google Scholar, which squeezes fine research into that firm's industrial toxicology into a tiny and anomalous corner of its narrative. Histories centered on a single firm deal with environmental questions in a similar vein, see Hochheiser, Sheldon, Rohm and Haas: History of A Chemical Company (Philadelphia, 1986)Google Scholar; Butrica, Andrew J., Out of Thin Air: A History of Air Products and Chemicals. Inc., 1940–1990 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; and Dyer, David and Sicilia, David B., Labors of a Modern Hercules: Evolution of a Chemical Company (Boston, 1990)Google Scholar; though see also Aftalion, Fred, A History of the International Chemical Industry, trans. Fenfey, Otto Theodor (Philadelphia, 1991).Google Scholar Meikle's, Jeffrey Plastic: A Cultural History (New Brunswick, N.J., 1996)Google Scholar carves out a more central place in its story for environmental anxieties about plastic, mostly in connection with cancer and biodegradability.

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14 Allenby, Braden R. and Richards, Deanna J., eds., The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems (Washington D.C., 1994)Google Scholar; Ayres, Robert, Industrial Ecology: Towards Closing the Materials Cycle (Cheltenham, UK, 1996)Google Scholar; Ehrenfeld, John R., “Industrial Ecology: A Strategic Framework for Product Policy and Other Sustainable Practices,” The Second International Conference and Workshop on Product-Oriented Policy, Stockholm (1994)Google Scholar; Gradel, T.E. and Allenby, B.R., Industrial Ecohgy (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1995)Google Scholar, Gradel, T.E. and Allenby, B.R., Design for Environment (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1996)Google Scholar; Jackson, Tim, Material Concerns, Pollution Profit and the Quality of Life (London, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lowe, E.A., Warren, J.L., and Moran, S.R., Discovering Industrial Ecology: An Executive Briefing and Source Book (Columbus, 1997)Google Scholar; Sokolow, Robert, Industrial Ecology and Global Change (Cambridge. U.K., 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Ronald, Profit Centers in Industrial Ecology: The Business Executive's Approach to the Enviromnent (Westport, Conn., 1998)Google Scholar; see also the Journal of Industrial Ecology, which began in 1997 out of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. A useful but already somewhat outdated reference book on this topic is Groenewegen, Peter, The Greening of Industry Resource Guide and Bibliography (Washington D.C., 1996).Google Scholar See also Business and the Environment.

15 Costanza, Robert, An Introduction to Ecological Economics (Boca Raton, Fla., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Faber, Malte Michael, Ecological Economics: Concepts and Methods (Cheltenham, U.K., 1996)Google Scholar; Jansen, A.-M., ed., Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability (Washington, D.C., 1994)Google Scholar; Costanza, Robert, ed., Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Prugh, Thomas et. al., Natural Capital and Human Economic Survival (Solomons, Md., 1995)Google Scholar; Daly, Herman, “On Economics as a Life Science,” Journal of Political Economy 76 (1968): 392–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These approaches mostly extend the resource economics developed by Hoteling, Harold (“The Economics of Exhaustible Resources,” Journal of Political Economy 39 [1939]: 137ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and others to a growing range of natural, heretofore unpriced entities defined by ecologists and other natural scientists. Economists interested in this endeavor founded the International Society for Ecological Economics in the early 1990s.

16 Kraft, Michael and Vig, Norman, “Environmental Policy from the 1970's to the 1990's,” in Kraft, and Vid, , eds., Environmental Policy in the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 1994)Google Scholar; Harnessing Market Forces to Protect Our Environment: Initiatives for the New President, A Public Policy Study Sponsored by Senator Timothy E. W, Colorado, and Senator John Heinz, Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C., 1988); see also the critical commentary by Hays, Samuel in “The Future of Environmental Regulation,” in Explorations in Environmental History (Pittsburgh, 1998), 109–114.Google Scholar

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18 Cronon's, William award winning Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991)Google Scholar marked the emergence of this new attitude. For evidence of its spread and growing influence, see Miller, Char and Rothman, Hal, eds., Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History (Pittsburgh, 1997)Google Scholar and Cronon, William, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

19 Scranton, Philip and Horowitz, Roger, “‘The Future of Business History’: An Introduction,” Business and Economic History 26 (1997): 3–4.Google Scholar

20 “Nature-culture” is from Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, U.K., 1993), 7, 96, 105–09.Google Scholar Other representatives of a vast emerging literature include, in science history, Teich, Mikolas, Porter, Roy, and Gustaffson, Bo, Nature and Society in Historical Context (Cambridge, U.K., 1997)Google Scholar; in anthropology, Seeland, Klaus, ed., Nature Is Culture: Indigenous Knowledge and Socio-Cultural Aspects of Trees and Forests in Non-European Cultures (London, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Descola, Philippe and Pálsson, G.ísli, eds., Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in sociology, Murphy, Raymond, Sociology and Nature: Social Action in Context, (Boulder, Colo., 1997)Google Scholar; and in cultural studies, Jagtenberg, Tom, Eco-impacts and the Greening of Fostmodernity: New Maps for Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, and Sociology (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1997).Google Scholar For environmental history, see Cronon, William, ed., Uncommon Ground: Fiethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

21 See Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, 1776)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ricardo, David, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, 1817)Google Scholar; Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1 (1872; edition used, New York, 1967), 177–98; Marshall, A., Principles of Economics (London, 1890)Google Scholar; Pigou, A.C., The Economics of Welfare (London, 1920).Google Scholar Thanks to Bradley Bateman for sharing his unpublished manuscript on “Supply” that sketches out this history.

22 For instance, Arrow, Kenneth, “Dynamic Aspects of Achieving Optimal Allocation of Resources,” Econometrica 20 (1952): 86Google Scholar; Idem., “The Future and the Present in Economic Life,” Economic Inquiry 16 (1978): 157ff.; Coase, R.H., “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1960): 1ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Solow, Robert, “On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources,” Scandanavian Journal of Economics 88 (1986): 141ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krutilla, John and Fischer, Anthony, The Economics of Natural Environments (Baltimore, 1975)Google Scholar; Portney, Paul and Haas, Ruth, eds., Current Issues in Natural Resource Policy (Washington, D.C., 1982)Google Scholar; Arrow, Kenneth, et al., Benefit-Cost Analysis in Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulation (Washington, D.C., 1996).Google ScholarPubMed

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24 Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48Google ScholarPubMed; quote comes from O'Riordan, T. and Turner, R.K., An Annotated Reader in Environmental Planning and Management (Oxford, U.K., 1983)Google Scholar; for the general “commons” literature, see Hardin, Garrett and Baden, John, eds., Managing the Commons (San Francisco, Calif., 1977)Google Scholar; Mcay, Bonnie J. and Aeheson, James, eds., The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources (Tucson, Ariz., 1987).Google Scholar The best-known explicit adaptation of this model to environmental history is by McEvoy, Arthur, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850–1980 (Cambridge, U.K., 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Soroos, Marvin, “The International Commons: A Historical Perspective,” Environmental Review 12 (1988): 1–22Google Scholar; Warren, Louis, The Hunter's Game; Poachers anil Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (New Haven, Conn., 1997).Google Scholar Much environmental history has been guided less explicitly by this model.

25 Rosen, Christine Meisner, “Businessmen Against Pollution in Late Nineteenth Century Chicago,” Business History Review 71 (Fall 1995): 351–397.Google Scholar See also critiques of the commons model such as those by McCav, Bonnie J. (“The Ocean Commons and Community” Dalhousie Review 74 ([1994–1995]: 311–338)Google Scholar, Arthur McEvoyk, and Louis Warren which call for “a more anthropological approach” (quote from McCav, 316).

26 Sellers, Christopher, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997).Google Scholar

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28 White, Richard, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

29 The following conceptualization of materials and energy flows is derived from work being done in the emerging field of “industrial ecology.” See citations at n. 14. For further discussion of the concept see: Frosch, Robert A. and Gallopoulos, Nicholas E., “Strategies for Manufacturing,” Readings from Scientific American: Managing Planet Earth (New York, 1990), 18–26Google Scholar; Graedel, T.E., Allenby, B.R., and Linhard, P.B., “Implementing Industrial Ecology,” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (Spring, 1993): 18–26Google Scholar; and Hardin Tibbs, “Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry,” Arthur D. Little, Inc. (1991). For further development of the ways in which the industrial ecology concept can be fruitfully applied in business history see Rosen, “Industrial Ecology and the Greening of Business History”

30 See for instance Arrow, Kenneth, “Informational Structure of the Firm,” American Economic Review 75 (1985): 303ff.Google Scholar; Idem., “Exposition of the Theory of Choice under Uncertainty,” Synthesc 16 (1966): 253ff.

31 Path-breaking varieties of this approach are Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve, laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1979)Google Scholar; and Shapin, Steve and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hohbes, Boyles, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985).Google Scholar For a sense of the range of approaches that then evolved in science studies, see Pickering, Andrew, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For culturalist perspectives on knowledges of special relevance to business history; see Power, Michael, ed., Accounting and Science; Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason (Cambridge, U.K., 1994).Google Scholar

32 For a critique of business historians' more recent neglect of “power” questions, see Galambos, Louis, “What Makes Us Think We Can Put Business Back into American History?” Business and Economic History 20 (1991): esp. 9–10.Google Scholar