Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., observed that under managerial capitalism, salaried managers tended to pursue policies that promoted the long-term stability and growth of their enterprises. The U.S. cable television industry provides a case study of how managers responded when stability and growth were mutually consistent objectives, and when they were mutually exclusive. From the late 1950s through the early 1980s, agent-led newspaper publishers and television broadcasters invested aggressively in the cable business. Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, investing in cable implied a tradeoff between stability and growth objectives. As a wave of mergers swept the cable industry, agent-led companies avoided acquisitions that might dilute earnings and depress stock prices. Confronting an increasingly turbulent competitive environment during the first half of the 1990s, agent-led companies were much more likely to divest cable assets than owner-managed firms. In agent-led companies, managers believed that their cable units would require massive capital investments, and they were reluctant to “bet the company” on a business facing so much competitive, technological, and regulatory uncertainty. Owner-managers, emotionally attached to the cable industry and to the firms they had built, and often harboring dynastic ambitions, were more reluctant to sell: they were willing to gamble on growth.

The Cuba Company was the largest single foreign investment in Cuba during the first two decades of the twentieth century and remained one of the largest corporations. This article presents a detailed history of the commercial networks forged between political officials and North American and Cuban businessmen through the development of the company. These networks proved crucial to the success of the Cuba Company and subsequently shaped the development of the new Cuban Republic.

This article examines the relationship between J.P. Morgan & Co. and France during the First World War. It argues that the dealings between the French government and the partners of J.P. Morgan & Co. from 1914 to 1918 were characterized by personal difficulties between successive French representatives and the partners of J.P. Morgan & Co. Contributing to a strained relationship was the place of Morgan, Harjes, the French affiliate of J.P. Morgan & Co., within the House of Morgan. Herman Harjes, the senior partner in Morgan, Harjes, though a proponent of Franco-American amity, became disenchanted with his New York partners as the war continued. The feeling was shared by those in New York, who reevaluated the role of Morgan, Harjes within the House of Morgan—until the French affiliate's eventual disappearance in 1926. While sympathetic to France, and instrumental in sustaining French credit during the war, the partners of J.P. Morgan & Co. conceived of the Allied cause as the British cause, a perspective that led them to rebuff calls for greater Franco-American financial cooperation.