Relationship marketing has received little attention from business historians who have favored the study of branding, associational advertising, market research, and the role of marketing agencies, particularly in relation to modern consumer manufacturing. Although the term relationship marketing is of recent origin, we analyze its practice under a different guise, “connections,” over several centuries: we draw on the extensive archival evidence of a rural business services industry in Australia and New Zealand. Relationship marketing's emphasis upon close and enduring individual customer relationships mitigated uncertainty of performance and behaviour, on both sides of the transaction, created by a long and geographically extended supply chain. The success of these relationships contributed to the primary industry-led economic development of both nations.

The literature on early industrializing Japan characterizes the business–government relationship in antithetical terms of “cooperation” or “independence.” The first position advances that interaction between these actors is largely covert and mutually beneficial and the second characterizes business as ever chary of government interference. These positions have been brought under the framework of “Reciprocal Consent” where government accords business control of industry while retaining its jurisdictional remit. It is argued that this arrangement observed in Japan's energy industry emerged because government was not a financial stakeholder. By contrast, in the iron and steel industry under study here, government was the primary stakeholder. The Shingikai or Councils of Deliberation records show that in the early development of this industry, economics played a central role in shaping the business–government relationship and setting the limits of “reciprocity”.

First I describe my background in American historical scholarship. Thereafter, I assess the efforts of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama and their senior advisors to stabilize American financial institutions during the period 2008–2009. My fundamental contention is that state actors such as Bush and Obama structured financial industries and markets. Despite the ubiquitous presence of these state actors, however, American business and political leaders maintained the fiction that state and business were, and properly ought to remain, separate entities. In Part III, I return to my scholarly background and to a proposed scaffolding for historical scholarship focused on the political economy of U.S. financial institutions since 1970.

Why do the United States and France, both capitalist economies that were dominated by private railways in the 19th and early 20th centuries, have very different transport systems today? After World War II France developed 200 mph high speed trains, while railways in the United States declined to near irrelevance. This paper argues that cross-national divergence was caused by private and public actions that structured capitalmarkets and controlled planning. In the United States private financial institutions used capital markets to shape rail development. In France, by way of contrast, the state directly intervened in financial markets and controlled planning. Both systems thrived until World War I. But, then, faced with growing competition from cars, buses and trucks and burdened by excessive debt, they declined towards bankruptcy. The Great Depression became a defining moment as a Socialist-dominated government in France nationalized railways while in the United States, President Roosevelt's New Deal failed to enact policies to ensure the competitive viability of rail in relation to motorized transport. Rarely used archival sources provide much of the evidence for this argument.

The history of modern brands depends to a significant degree on the history of trademark law, but there are reasons to doubt how comprehensive standard versions of the latter history are. Business, economic, and even legal historians tend to accentuate the importance of the Anglo-Saxon common-law tradition and assume that the continental, civil law tradition followed in its wake. Yet the historical sequence of events suggests that almost exactly the opposite is true. Not only did the French have robust trademark law long before Great Britain and the United States, but the latter two countries only adopted trademark law after signing trademark clauses in diplomatic treaties with France. Drawing on newspaper accounts, public debates, specialist and general newspapers, as well as court cases and diplomatic negotiations, this paper argues that, to a certain degree, Anglo-Saxon trademark law was international before it was national. The evidence suggests that some of the easy verities on which arguments about modern brands, the “second industrial revolution,” and institutional economics are based may be more complex than is generally assumed.

From an international perspective, the Dutch system of old age provisions stands out for its wide coverage, fixed benefits, and an overall actuarial soundness that seem to make this system more shock proof to demographic shifts and economic adversities than those in other “Western” countries. Its actual foundation is a compulsory old age insurance for all citizens, enforced by law and implemented by the state; this insurance is supplemented by fully funded pension schemes for workers and employees, operating under legal control; and finally there is a variety of additional and noncompulsory pension benefits and individual insurance arrangements. The main impetus to the genesis of this system came from employers who, with different agendas, created various pension funds; eventually it was the state, which set a decisive example with a funded pension fund for its civil servants. This became the standard to all corporate pension schemes and provoked innovations like branch funds. These initiatives were supported and regulated by legislation that made these arrangements compulsory and guaranteed their juridical independence and actuarial soundness. Only after this legally promoted maturation of private funds, the state set out to create public arrangements on a “pay-as-you-go” basis for all citizens. This delicate interplay between private and public pension arrangements is highly characteristic of the Dutch variety of capitalism in a broader context. In the polarity between liberal and coordinated market economies, as developed by Soskice and Hall, the Dutch system of old age provisions has played a prominent role in ranking this country more firmly into the latter category. However, within this range of countries the Dutch system of old age provisions is also a bit atypical: private corporate and branch arrangements were encouraged and at the same time embedded in a legal framework. The role of the state was also remarkable: a supervisor of the private funds, a collector and distributor in a universal insurance system, and an employer with an exemplary pension scheme.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a market in the personal debt of corporate and government employees was thriving in New York City and other major urban centers in the Northeastern andMidwestern United States. A set of shadowy entrepreneurs, colloquially known as “loan sharks,” offered short-term, high-rate advances that they called salary loans. Despite operating in violation of the law, primarily the prohibition against usury, the operations of these intermediaries had by 1912 reached an imposing scale. At least eighty-one such offices operated in Manhattan and Brooklyn alone, with millions of dollars in loans outstanding. Of these eighty-one offices, thirty-four belonged to interstate chains, the largest ofwhich stretched over sixtythree cities in the United States and Canada.

The devastating conditions of the Great Depression forced manufacturers to rethink their approach to workplace control, economic policy, and production practices. Although we know a great deal about how industries responded to the depression, we know very little about the changes implemented by firms. This is unfortunate as firms in the same industry face quite different problems, possess dissimilar work cultures, construct an array of production formats, and have access to a range of financial resources. Based on a literature that documents the variety of strategies devised by industries and firms, this paper shows how four Canadian textile firms—two cotton and two hosiery and knitting—reacted to the economic crisis of the Great Depression. In the face of a different array of conditions, each firm devised different restructuring strategies. The large cotton corporations responded by combining mechanization, product line change, and a new division of labor. The smaller, more competitive hosiery and knitting firms, on the other hand, imposed either a harsh regime of scientific management or conservative, piecemeal changes. In the midst of restructuring the workplace, manufacturers reasserted their prerogatives of managerial authority, selectively took advantage of the opportunities opened up by economic crisis, and created a new regime of industrial-state regulations.

As Mira Wilkins has argued, there is a curious disconnect between business and financial history (Wilkins 2004). Whereas business history literature has rediscovered the importance of family business in many countries and in many sectors of contemporary commercial life, for example, little has been written about family banking as an alternative to joint-stock, management-run financial institutions. This lacuna is odd for many reasons. First, family banking is one of the best-known examples of family business in history. Second, family banks once played a much greater role in international investment banking than it does today. Third, some family financial institutions are still active (dominant) in certain market segments and countries. This paper will focus on how, when and why family banking lost its position in international (multinational) banking during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Although political upheaval and a widespread movement to reduce the power of private financial institutions undermined their businesses, family banks suffered, too, from America's maturing as a financial center. I will argue that this shift is connected with the increased importance of American markets and financial regulations, which, in the 1930s, deliberately steered financial transactions away from private dealings and toward transparent impersonal exchanges and capital markets with new forms of aggregated capital and individual investors, in which private banks were ill-suited to manage or at the least for which they had no special competitive edge. Using concepts drawn from an earlier paper on family businesses and relying mostly on secondary sources, this paper will further argue that in markets or market segments, such as Leveraged Buyouts, where uncertainty forms a greater part of the transactional environment, family banking still plays a significant role.

This research focuses on luxury and fashion industries, especially artificial flower making. This sector of small businesses was often described as totally unregulated but efficient. A very successful union (in terms of membership), nevertheless, was created in 1858. I investigate the motives of its founders and the reality of its economic influence. It acted as a service firm, allowing small businesses to lower transaction costs, and as a conciliation board. However, to understand its creation, success, and limits, other factors must be taken into account, such as political opportunities and the founders' organizational repertoire.

My dissertation is a study of standardization in four communications networks: AT&T's monopoly telephone network, the Internet, digital cellular telephone networks, and the World Wide Web. A history of these networks that highlights standardization shows how engineers in industry committees replaced managers in monopoly hierarchies as the stewards of standards for communication networks. By the end of the twentieth century, the new networks—and the new institutions devised to sustain the standardization process—formed the technological and ideological infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution.

Throughout its history, the free market system has been held back, not so much by its own economic deficiencies as Marxists would have it, but because of its reliance on political goodwill for its infrastructure.

This article discusses a chapter of the interwar history of the Ford Motor Company in Europe rather neglected by historians, namely its unsuccessful attempt to erect a solid base of operations in Italy. Expansion onto the Italian market had been part of the post-WWI Ford's strategy of internationalization. It seemed to go well beyond the exploitation of an additional demand as its most interesting and promising aspect was the utilization of the Italian branch as a bridgehead into the Balkans, the East Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and North-East Africa. At the beginning this strategy turned out successful. But when in the late 1920s the Company tried to strenghten its position in the country—either setting up its own assembly plant or establishing a joint venture with an Italian firm—its attempt was blocked. To date scholars have focused exclusively on the political and economic barriers to entry erected by the fascist regime, urged by the powerful Fiat lobby. This was certainly the main cause. Yet, this study shows that on several occasions Ford hesitated and even hung back from acting. Therefor a few chances were missed: the most glamorous being an agreement with Fiat itself, so far ignored by historiography.

In this paper we examine shoppers' reactions to the development of early supermarket retailing in post-war Britain. Positioning our discussion in relation to multi-disciplinary contributions on the role of consumers in innovation, we argue that more attention needs to be given to the shopper's input in the debate on retail innovation, including the supermarket. New oral history data drawn from a nationwide survey is presented in support of our arguments. Shoppers' contributions to the supermarket innovation are shown to be multi-faceted in nature, incorporating processes of co-production and value creation; processes that were altered in the transition from counter-service to self-service retail environments. Shoppers' discussions of such alterations were frequently structured around four aspects of interaction; with the physical environment of the store, with the goods for sale, with other shoppers and with shop staff. Whilst increasingly part of ‘ordinary consumption’ routines, the data highlights that in the switch to the supermarket, shopping became a more reflective activity and one that resulted in a variety of experiences and emotions.

The 1960 establishment of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) represented a watershed to Norwegian consumer goods industry. Since the end of World War II domestic manufacturers had been thriving on a small but lucrative home market characterized by an unparalleled demand, effectively protected from foreign competition by strict import regulations and tariffs barriers. The onset of international free trade would dramatically change this market situation, allowing cheap foreign products access to the Norwegian market while at the same time offering export opportunities to an industry traditionally geared to the domestic market. Operating in an industry where appearance is anything but superficial, the crockery manufacturer Figgjo Fajanse realized that product design would be a crucial tool in the reorganization of its operations when adapting to this ‘brave, new world’ of international free trade. Devising a flexible basis for a rational product differentiation, Figgjo made severe cuts in an oversized product portfolio and developed a small range of new models that could accommodate a wide range of decorative patterns of highly different styles. This strategy required elaborate and creative negotiations on the part of the company's designers, creating a ‘third way’—a moderate modern design carved out in the space demarcated by the industrially rational, the commercially viable, and the aesthetically ethical.

Historians of the nineteenth-century American Middle West typically pay scant attention to the financial and regulatory role that smaller cities played in forging a regional railroad network. This article, however, explores railroading in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to demonstrate that politicians and boosters in such cities often took advantage of municipal power to shape the course of railroads in unexpected ways. In 1853, 1864, and 1876, for example, local boosters convinced city aldermen to fund railways and help forge commercial links to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, and other markets in the East and West. The city's influence over railroading did not start and stop with public investment. Beginning in 1883, after state lawmakers had amended the city's charter and given municipal officials new police powers, aldermen forced railroad executives to clear city streets, prevent damage to private property, and guarantee the personal safety of local residents. Moreover, even when La Crossers lost a fight with railroads, as they did when they waged a holy war over the location of a Mississippi River bridge in the 1860s and 1870s, they forced railroadmen to pay attention to their concerns. In the end, the case of La Crosse suggests that historians need to pay much greater mind to people and governments in small, hinterland cities before they can fully grasp the rich history of railroading, and of capitalism more generally, in the nineteenth-century Middle West.

Pharmaceutical Networks describes how American drug firms,biomedical researchers, physicians, and Congressional reformers shaped the research, regulatory, and policy environments for prescription drugs in the three decades after World War II. In these decades, pharmaceutical reformers in Congress sought to secure passage of legislation that would increase the government's control over drug development, distribution, and practice. They proposed these reforms as a way of curbing the high cost of prescription drugs and putting a break on the escalating health care costs. To defend itself against this reform movement, the American drug industry built alliances with research universities, medical schools, and professional medical societies by offering to the medical and academic communities solutions to their shared problems. These problems included a shortage of biomedical workers and the increasing authority of the government over medical practice.

During the first third of the twentieth century, U. S. railroad executives offered local collection and delivery trucking operations. Railroad managers claimed, with justification, that these services were necessary to reduce congestion at urban freight terminals, and to increase the operating efficiency. Yet, executives also employed collection and delivery practices to discriminate against shippers and communities, and to draw business away from rival carriers, in violation of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act, the 1903 Elkins Act, and the Transportation Act of 1920. During the 1920s, as competition from independent truckers became more intense, railroad managers used their inherent advantage in line-haul service to cross-subsidize local delivery services, to the detriment of independent motor carriers—an issue of considerable concern to Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) commissioners, following the passage of the 1935 Motor Carrier Act. The railroads' emphasis on the productive efficiency associated with local trucking operations conflicted with the allocative efficiency advocated by federal courts and by the ICC. Commissioner Joseph B. Eastman, in particular, emphasized both the potential benefits and the potential dangers associated with coordinated rail-truck service. More broadly, the status of that service, as one of the few forms of transportation that lay beyond the ICC's authority, stemmed from a complex interaction, over several decades, between all three branches of the federal government. By 1938, the ICC commissioners had concluded that the railroads' local delivery operations occupied a nebulous region between rail and truck regulation. While lawful, they did not serve as a model for post-1945 efforts to achieve integrated, multi-modal transportation services.