The introduction of comparative product testing in Germany reflected the rise of a mass consumer society within a rapidly changing market economy. The first proposal to establish a federally supported institute for product testing was made in 1957. Proponents wished to reduce the asymmetries of power and information between producers and consumers. Producers' initial opposition was overcome once federal legislation was passed and they recognized that the institute's work gave them an opportunity to use the test results in their corporate marketing and advertising strategies. By integrating state-regulated consumer protection into the social-market economy, the Stiftung Warentest, Germany's independent product-testing foundation, became an expression of both the emerging modern consumer society and the German corporatist model.

This article studies the genesis and early international expansion of the bank-issued credit card—an American innovation that quickly took hold in western Europe. Empirical evidence undermines the proposition of a single firm building a proprietary network. In fact, it was a constellation of participants that combined three characteristics, namely, a critical mass of both retail customers and retail merchants; the capacity to implement new technological solutions; and the ability to forge resilient collaborations across national borders. The evidence supports the value of collaboration in retail financial services as means of appropriating network externalities. Moreover, other conceptual and empirical studies, especially those based on two-sided markets, neglect the greater implications that initial conditions in this industry have on long-term success.

In the nuclear sector, turnkey projects can be considered an investment in obtaining information through “learning by doing” to capture rents from the next generation of reactors. As the first U.S. turnkey export project, the first Spanish nuclear power plant served that purpose and paved the way for the subsequent growth of the nuclear sector, for both Spanish and U.S. firms. Making use of archival material, we analyze the networks created by the government, experts, and business leaders, which sought to obtain, accumulate, and learn from the scarce and conflicting information about atomic technology that was available at the time. We also discern how firms on both sides of the Atlantic acquired and perfected the specific capabilities required to build a commercial nuclear reactor.

Door-to-door selling was a key factor behind the particularly rapid interwar diffusion of vacuum cleaners among British households, relative to other “high-ticket” labor-saving appliances. Yet the door-to-door system incurred both high distribution costs and considerable controversy—owing to widespread sharp practice. Employers enticed salesmen through grossly inflated claims regarding earnings, which were in fact insufficient for most salesmen to make an acceptable living. This led many salesmen to engage in their own sharp practices—which eventually brought this form of marketing into disrepute.

This wide-ranging discussion of the extent of entrepreneurship in colonial America surveys the recent historiography of the field and offers a reconceptualization. The article advances the view that a society “with pervasive entrepreneurial values” existed from the first years of English settlement in North America, and it examines the activities and goals of the primary occupational groups to demonstrate that thesis.

John Mackintosh, incorporated in 1899, emerged as one of Britain's major confectionery firms, gaining national prominence through the manufacture and marketing of distinct products. A number of interrelated factors marked its growth. Dominated by a single family, the motivations and contributions of its leading members were formative, and its history inevitably engages with debates on Britain's “personal capitalism” and its failings. Considering the importance of marketing to a consumer products manufacturer, capabilities in this critical function are entangled with issues of ownership and management. During the 1930s, the firm ended its reliance on toffee lines, replacing them with innovative, highly advertised brands that mixed toffee with chocolate. These product breakthroughs were fully exploited in the postwar consumer boom. The timing and nature of Mackintosh's achievements can be compared to those of its rival, Rowntree, but there were important differences in their implementation. The story of this firm is an important addition to the history of the British confectionery industry and its development, offering insights into the evolution of marketing techniques. The case of Mackintosh is additionally useful because it clearly reveals an unexplored theme. A long-term perspective on its growth highlights the distinction between “early” and “mature” markets and shows how changes in demand influenced, and then tested, the efficacy of marketing approaches.

Historians of various “schools” have seen quite different things in the United States’ long years of business activity in China. The “realists” as Professor Hunt calls them, deny that significant business opportunities existed for Americans and point to obstacles that the Chinese put in the way of trade; the “Wisconsin school,” he says, emphasizes the public rhetoric of officials and businessmen who saw China as an outlet for capitalist surpluses. Citing three case histories — kerosene, cigarettes, and textiles — Professor Hunt shows that generalization is dangerous; that success depended more on businessmen's own skill, resources, and control of their domestic industry than on help derived from an imperialistically minded government.

The early history of Silicon Valley is incomplete unless it is framed within the context of American foreign policy. The Federal Telegraph Company, the region's first major high-technology firm, received its first contract from the U.S. Navy in 1913. Its subsequent success relied not only on navy contracts but also on State Department support and access to Bureau of Standards technology. The company's contributions to America's military-industrial complex began a pattern that would fuel the region's development and growth for more than a half century.

Welfare capitalism has been perceived by many historians as succumbing to the stresses of the Depression. The work of recent scholars has contributed to an understanding of welfarism's continued existence through the 1930s and beyond, but little attention has been given to the process by which employers revitalized welfare work after the 1920s. In this article, Ms. Fones-Wolf explores the key role the Second World War played in helping to expand and legitimize corporate-sponsored welfarism, particularly in the area of recreational activity. With union resistance to welfare plans diminished, employers were able to extend their experimentation with this managerial device, thereby helping to defuse a postwar resurgence of militant unionism.

In the century since its founding, the Ford Motor Company of Canada has evolved from a relatively independent entity within the Ford empire, with a strong element of minority ownership and its own overseas subsidiaries, to a fully integrated and wholly owned part of Ford's North American operations. The unique emergence and transformation of Ford-Canada among Ford's foreign enterprises is explained by Canada's changing automotive trade policies, the personal relations of the Ford family with its Canadian offspring, and a corporate strategy pursued by Henry Ford's successors and the American Ford company, which sought to bring Ford-Canada more directly under Detroit's control.

No definitive comparison of factors contributing to success and failure in business is possible. Yet a look at some of those factors, operative in a number of similar circumstances, helps sharpen the customary vague generalizations. An examination of the elements of prudence, diligence, housekeeping habits, intelligence, foresight, use of agents, degree of control, and teamwork suggests that in commerce of the period luck was probably of less influence than commonly supposed. A by-product of this broad inquiry is a specific and highly illuminating comparative picture of mercantile business practice.

The role of “proto-factories” in the industrial development of eighteenth-century Europe is explored through comparison of three Bohemian examples.

The rise and fall of a “political” banker is traced here against the interaction of businessmen and machine politicians in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Illinois.

British, Dutch, French, and American oil companies set up a multinational consortium in 1928 with a view to dominating petroleum production in the Middle East. Development of the consortium's first oilfield in northern Iraq depended on the construction of a pipeline to the Mediterranean sea-board, but rival great-power ambitions in the region blocked selection of a suitable route. Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, devised a compromise that he successfully pressed on both the French government and the chairman of the consortium, Sir John Cadman. Using company records and state papers now available in France, this article explains how Teagle's intervention arose and why it was crucial to the resolution of the Anglo-French pipeline conflict.

This article considers the international retailing activities of Tiffany of New York between 1837 and 1914. Using data from the company archive alongside other sources, the findings indicate that five factors were determinants of sustainable international retailing: a centralized organizational structure, a stable ownership structure, existing international engagement, a strong brand identity, and a relevant international retail format. Placing Tiffany's activities in its wider commercial and consumer context, the findings illustrate the organizational changes and asset combination required to support the development of early international retail operations. The article contributes to theoretical understanding of the dynamics of retail internationalization.

The factors responsible for Latin American economic “dependency” have long been debated by economic historians. In this article, Professor Guy considers the example of Argentine industrialization between 1870 and 1940. Argentine reliance upon foreign capital, she concludes, was due much more to local Argentine institutions — the commercial law, the stock market, and the government inspection bureau — than to any pressures from abroad. She adds that, though dependency theory has its limits, by focusing attention on local institutions, it remains a valuable tool for understanding Third World development.

In the literature on British economic decline entrepreneurship is typically assessed by its outcome. By contrast, this paper argues that the soundness of entrepreneurship is best tested by viewing it ex ante. In other words, it is the process, and not the product, of entrepreneurship that is important in determining its quality. When this is accepted, competence, rather than infallibility, becomes the criterion by which entrepreneurship is best judged. In the latter half of the article, this approach is applied to the British paper industry's search for a new source of cellulose in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Although East Asia's silk trade with the West stretched far back into antiquity, the middle and later years of the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable growth in the European and American demand for silk. This imparted a tremendous impetus to the Chinese and Japanese industries. For some eighty years, from the 1850s through the 1930s, trade flourished until the coming of synthetic fibers and world war curtailed its growth. The rise of so large an international business obviously had a significant impact on these countries, one that was particularly profound in the case of Japan. When the upsurge in trade began, both China and Japan were at roughly comparable stages in their economic development, but when the trade ended with the onset of war, it was Japan, not China, which had emerged as one of the leading industrial nations of the world. While few would contend that silk alone, however important, accounted for this differing course of national development, the dissimilar paths followed by the Chinese and Japanese silk industries not only reflected many themes characteristic of business enterprise in those countries but also typified their divergent national experience during this dramatic era of economic growth.

Although the growth of inexpensive, widely distributed magazines that began in the United States in the 1890s has been noted, the role played by magazines directed specifically toward female readers has received little scholarly attention. The following article examines contents, personnel, and readership and advertising, pricing, production, and distribution techniques to demonstrate that the women's magazines were pioneers in many of these areas.