Although Norway's information-technology (IT) industry has never been an international success, it has been a critical factor in the country's economy over the past thirty years. Several IT companies came close to reaching a global scale, but escalating costs finally prevented them from doing so. In addition, the IT firms became sidetracked by the domestic sales opportunities that accompanied the expansion of the Norwegian oil sector, as they chose to design specialized products for national markets instead of targeting the international market-place. Although their decision resulted in organizational continuity, the firms themselves have experienced turbulence, bankruptcy, and change, making the development of the sector a messy and problematic affair.

The early patterns of finance in a twentieth-century transportation industry are examined by Professor Rae. His analysis is especially illustrative of the problems of companies manufacturing a product to highly exacting technical standards and for sale to a limited number of customers.

The sale of luxury goods during the 1930s represents an incongruous aspect of American business that has been largely ignored by historians. This essay focuses on the efforts of one manufacturer of high-quality, elegant glassware, A. H. Heisey & Company of Newark, Ohio, to survive the Great Depression. Heisey created successful new sales strategies and product designs to meet the changing tastes of its customers. Although difficult to gauge with precision, Heisey's business also benefited from the overlapping influence of several New Deal measures: the Beer–Wine Revenue Act, the National Recovery Act, and the National Housing Act. Paradoxically, Heisey was most hampered by President Roosevelt's adoption of fiscal restraint in 1937, a policy that the company's Republican executives strongly advocated.

The taxonomy and utility of early American checks are suggested by Dr. Redlich and an example of their use by the customers of Stephen Girard's Bank, 1812–1834, is supplied by Mr. Christman. Readers are encouraged to comment on or supplement this first attempt at the history of an important business instrument.

In the second of two articles, Professors Aduddell and Cain take the story of the application of antitrust law to the large meatpackers from the 1920 consent decree to Judge Julius Hoffman's 1956 decision not to lift the decree. Despite fundamental changes in the technology and structure of the food distribution industry, and strong indications that the packers' proposed plan to sell at retail was no longer good business, Hoffman refused to remove the obstacle to forward integration. The decision, in the authors' opinion, does not bear scrutiny on economic grounds. The episode supports two important generalizations about antitrust prosecution as a tool for economic planning: that constant change in a dynamic society often renders antitrust decisions meaningless; and that regulation frequently deprives society of rational structural change.

This article establishes the contributions of a pioneer American thinker to the theory of administration, scientific management, and the theory (and practice) of human relations. Barksdale did not publish his ideas widely, and his contributions are best known through the men he trained and his own managerial success at Du Pont and General Motors.

This article examines the 1968 decision by the French mineral water company Vittel to use PVC packaging for its main product. This was the first time this type of packaging had been used for a mainstream consumer product. By examining the causes, manifestations, and consequences of this business decision, it aims to show how this model has spread and contributed to the creation of an environmentally damaging waste regime by abandoning deposit systems. The article also seeks to show, through this case, the importance of identifying social and institutional contexts to understand the trajectory of consumer products.

A content analysis of two major rail journal leads the author to conclude that too many historians have overestimated the radicalism of state regulation and have also operated on the questionable assumption that rail managers wanted the elimination of patchwork state controls in favor of uniform national regulation. Further, he maintains that the Transportation Act of 1920 was more a reversal than a continuation or logical culmination of Progressive regulation.

Prompted by a 1974 article by Professor Klaus H. Wolff in the Business History Review, Dr. Gittins considers the economic factors that influenced the introduction of technical changes in textile bleaching.

An analysis of the aircraft industry's public relations campaign suggests that individuals' thoughts and feelings about airplanes and atomic weapons, domestic politics, and international events had greater influence on public opinion and political action than the PR program. However, the industry's public relations program did bring together many groups interested in air power. By linking these groups and capitalizing on the domestic and international situation, the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton of New York helped to create a climate in which air power was an acceptable solution to national defense and budgetary problems.

Where virtuoso talents were required by the courts, great and small, of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, the protectionist system of guilds was suspended, according to Dr. Stürmer. In a society where status had to be attested to by conspicuous consumption, of which the sovereign himself was the most avid practitioner, the finest artisans in the fields of interior decoration and furnishings often attained the status of “court artisans,” in which they enjoyed many of the freedoms of laissez-faire that members of the guilds denied themselves as well as their competitors. In the end, however, the Revolution that swept away the guild economy also destroyed this expedient whereby excellence and entrepreneurship had been fostered.

This study of the history of a large group of merchants directing Anglo-American commerce from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century analyzes major long-run changes in the organization and functions of mercantile institutions in that important period.

As Latin American businessmen assess their historical experience, how do they characterize their progress and future?

Reform spokesmen, believing that fundamental issues of social control were involved, hailed the refusal of the judiciary to intervene in the 1880's against state regulation of corporate power. The progressive triumph was short-lived. Reversing the earlier trend, the courts retreated into economic conservatism, but in so doing generated the fierce pressures that were later to explode into new outbursts of legal and social revolt.

As the twentieth century opened, numbers of American businessmen, spurred in part by the forceful persuasions of American diplomats, hoped to profit from the legendary China market by taking on Chinese partners. At the same time, groups of Chinese entrepreneurs, struck by the success and wealth of the United States, hoped to take advantage of American capital by launching joint ventures with the Americans. Such enterprises generally proved difficult to form, however, and once organized, tended to see the Americans predominate and the Chinese relegated to distinctly secondary roles. But there were exceptions, as Professor Pugach points out in this essay on the Chinese-American Bank of Commerce. While the founding of this firm provides ample proof that joint Sino-American companies had to overcome large hurdles to come into being, the formation of the bank suggests that mutual self-interest, ideal circumstances, and perhaps good luck could overcome the problems inherent in creating joint ventures in which both sides could share roughly equal positions.

As Secretary of the Interior and Petroleum Administrator for War, Harold Ickes played a significant, albeit hitherto largely overlooked, role in the formulation of United States foreign petroleum policy planning during World War II. As Petroleum Administrator for War, Ickes worked closely with oil company personnel who shared his commitment to planning and government-industry cooperation. In addition, as a firm believer in the need for a coherent national petroleum policy, Ickes played a major role in broadening the mandate of the ill-fated Petroleum Reserves Corporation. While business groups generally opposed this broadened mandate, business opposition was by no means monolithic and was, in fact, reinforced by considerable opposition from within the government itself.