Business history for three generations has focused almost exclusively on capitalist firms, their managers, and their relations with markets, states, and rivals. However, enterprises on all scales also operated within communist nations “building socialism” in the wake of World War II. This article represents a first-phase exploration of business practices in three Central European states as Stalinism gave way to cycles of reform and retrenchment in the 1960s. Focusing chiefly on industrial initiatives, the study asks: How did socialist enterprises work and change across the first postwar generation, given their distinctive principles and political/economic contexts, and implicitly, what contrasts with capitalist activities are worth considering.

This comment challenges two main points of Phil Scranton’s article: his periodization, and the adequacy of the utilized sources. His interpretation neglects the efforts of the de-Stalinization attempts in Eastern European socialist countries during the mid-1950s, though these measures established all subsequent reforms. He based his argumentation on contemporaneous articles from the 1950s and 1960s while an expanding fresh literature is available on socialist economies, thanks to the large-scale declassification of formerly top-secret documents. However, his article is an extremely important contribution to the business history of communism and a delightful point of departure for many kinds of future research in this field.

This comment, in response to Phil Scranton’s article, suggests that communist business practices differ from those adopted in the West along three dimensions: (1) the locus and degree of centralization of production decisions, (2) the mechanism for coordinating the producers’ actions, and (3) the use of state terror in shaping the workers’ and the managers’ incentives. My analysis focuses on the third dimension—state terror, which I define as workers and managers experiencing extreme penalties for failing to meet the state’s goals. I argue that business history and allied disciplines of management and economics would benefit from studying state terror as a management practice and outline several avenues for pursuing such research.

This comment attempts, first and foremost, to place Phil Scranton’s article within the overall trajectory of his career as a writer and historian. A common theme of that career has been complicating—or, as this comment puts it, “mucking up”—existing historical narratives. Finally, this comment suggests that Scranton’s role as complicator sometimes gives too little guidance for how his thoughts connect to existing literature, and it puts forward some possible avenues for future exploration that spring from Scranton’s examination of communist enterprise.

This text is the author’s reply to reactions to “Managing Communist Enterprises” from three colleagues, Lee Vinsel, Natalya Vinokurova, and Pál Germuska. It includes reflections on his work process in researching capitalist and noncapitalist firms and sectors and the practical and theoretical bases for that work. In the course of replying to particular suggestions and critiques, the rejoinder also offers some considerations about the current and future course of business history as a discipline.

The 1930s transformed American capitalism. This article interrogates the political economy of two business magazines created at the start of the Great Depression. I argue that Business Week’s and Fortune’s signature approaches to reporting articulated an ideal conception of the manager. The early century conception saw the manager as engineer of operational efficiency. The new ideal viewed the manager as a political economist coordinating firms with their external environment, notably an interventionist and scrutinizing state, volatile markets, and a critical public opinion.

This article documents the emergence, evolution, and acceptance of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) by bond investors in the United States between 1968 and 1987. Drawing on an analysis of trade publications, securities prospectuses, and business press, I argue that MBS issuers’ eventual success at convincing bond investors to accept their products is especially remarkable given that bond investors had rejected most types of MBS issued between 1970 and 1983. My analysis suggests that the acceptance of MBS as bonds was an outcome of two approaches employed by the MBS issuers: (1) changing the attributes of their products to make them more bond-like, and (2) changing the meaning of the bond category by opening its boundaries to products that incorporated mortgage features. These two approaches to changing investors’ beliefs to promote innovation acceptance may undergird the diffusion processes for other financial innovations. Understanding the process of innovation acceptance may be especially important because market participants have short memories. Forgetting the assumptions made during innovation–acceptance processes can bring unanticipated consequences of innovation adoption, such as financial crises.

By the mid-twentieth century in the United Kingdom, musical instrument manufacturing had become an increasingly mechanized activity. Craft skills had been displaced in many areas, yet remained a vital source of competitive advantage in local and international markets and were particularly valued by professional musicians. This article examines the contrasting experiences of two British musical instrument manufacturers, tracing the unfolding relationship between their pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities and capability development. Boosey & Hawkes, a large, well-established manufacturing and publishing company, was an early pioneer, while Paxman Bros., a small musical retailer, transformed itself into one of the world’s most respected specialist manufacturers. The narrative probes the factors that shaped decision making in these companies as they developed a series of design innovations for one of the more complex brass instruments: the French horn. It draws on relevant theoretical insights to examine how a dynamic interaction between opportunity and capability, coupled with unanticipated contingencies, contributed to divergent outcomes for each company.

This article explores how 800-service, or toll-free long-distance (In-WATS) lines, became an institutionalized part of direct marketing in the United States between the mid-1960s and early 1980s. Introduced by AT&T in 1967, 800-service attracted immediate attention in mail-order circles, where marketers saw it as means of automating long-distance selling and catering to an increasingly decentralized and credit-dependent populace. Although early initiatives, like that of catalog giant Aldens, fell flat, 800-service gained traction by the mid-1970s as a call-center industry developed and mail-order operations began using In-WATS lines in combination with bank-issued credit cards and private delivery services. By decade’s end, this trio of networks—long-distance telephony, credit/payment, and parcel delivery—were densely interwoven, forming the infrastructural basis for a new kind of “anywhere, anytime,” upscale shopping exemplified by the newly refashioned Spiegel. Ultimately, the article helps historicize the rise of electronic retailing and the marketization of telecommunications infrastructure.