This issue of Business History Review focuses on the role of government in confronting and responding to an increasingly industrialized economy. Judge Glock's “The Rise and Fall of the First Government-Sponsored Enterprise: The Federal Land Banks, 1916–1932” describes how the Federal Land Banks served as a blueprint for future enterprises and were influential in shaping later financial reform. In “The Politics of Corporate Social Responsibility in American Health Care and Home Loans,” Christy Ford Chapin considers how companies, conversely, sought to stifle government involvement in their industries and how business leaders in the areas of health care and mortgage industries sought to justify profitmaking to the public.
Also in this issue is an article on innovation in the areas of managerial thought and business education. In “Executive Education and the Managerial Revolution: The Birth of Executive Education at Harvard Business School,” Rolv Petter Amdam examines how business schools sought to have a more practical impact on business managers and how Harvard Business School, in particular, created a global model for short-term management training.
Christopher McKenna, author of The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (2006), provides an introduction to a range of essays—by Samuel Franklin, Matthew Hoffarth, Kira Lussier, and Bretton Fosbrook—on trends in management theory in the post–World War II period. These essays address the ways that managerial experts tried to make sense of business culture and strategy in a time of increasing global competition and weakened labor unions. Pankaj Ghemawat updates a previous article, published in Business History Review in 2002, on the historical evolution of business strategy.
The issue also features a review essay by Angus Burgin on The Cambridge History of Capitalism.
