Enterprise and Society - current issue

Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long Eighteenth Century

Riello, G. — 2008-06-10

In the eighteenth century subcontracting was an important way of organising production in sectors producing as different commodities as clocks, coaches, footwear, furniture and scientific instruments. This article argues that subcontracting was not simply a form of cost reduction in labour-intensive and technologically unsophisticated sectors. Subcontracting could be seen as a way to respond to profound changes in the way commodities were produced, exchanged and consumed in an eighteenth-century metropolis like London. The expansion in size and complexity of the metropolitan market, the appearance of new commodities classified as semi-luxuries and fashion items, and the consequent re-assessment of traditional social structures and norms of production, made subcontracting a tool of organisational flexibility.

Caveat Emptor: Abolishing Public Measurements, Standardizing Quantities, and Enhancing Market Transparency in the London Coal Trade c1830

Velkar, A. — 2008-06-10

This article evaluates efforts to standardize quantities in the London coal trade c1830, and traces the end of the public measurement system first introduced in the fourteenth century. Increasing traffic in coal, reduction of taxes on the commodity, inefficient public meters, etc., contributed to the demise of public measurements. This outcome was the result of extensive negotiations between merchants, the various levels of state bureaucracy, and the parliament. Switching measurement standards was difficult, if not costly, to coordinate. Abolishing public measurements and switching from volume to weight measurements was part of the efforts to strengthen governance along the commodity chain, secure property rights by making quantities predictable and alter a mechanism that powerful merchants considered had become inappropriate.

"Business Responsibilities in a Divided World": The Cold War Roots of the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement

Spector, B. — 2008-06-10

Both business executives and management scholars have, in recent years, focused a great deal of attention on the theme of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Calls for business leaders to expend resources on behalf of "social good" tend to downplay, if not ignore, what is fundamentally an ideological question: just what is a "good" society and who defines "goodness"? The ideological underpinnings of social responsibility and its relationship to the "good" society can be explored through an historical perspective. The roots of the CSR movement trace back to the early years of the Cold War. Led by Donald K David, Dean of the Harvard Business School and supported by other academics and executives given voice on the pages of the Harvard Business Review, advocates urged expanded business social responsibility as a means of aligning business interests with the defense of free-market capitalism against what was depicted as the clear-and-present danger of Soviet Communism. Today's enthusiastic calls for business to "do well by doing good" could benefit from a similar critical analysis not just of the goals of CSR but also the ideological assumptions, often unacknowledged, that underlie those goals.

"You know we are not an Employment Agency": Manpower, Government, and the Development of the Temporary Help Industry in Britain

Forde, C. — 2008-06-10

This article looks at the early development of the temporary help industry in Britain. It focuses on the activities of one of the largest suppliers of temporary workers, Manpower, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on material from The UK National Archives, the article examines Manpower's efforts to gain access as a genuine employer to the state employment exchange network to advertise their temporary vacancies. The article reveals the incremental changes in attitude within the government towards Manpower's activities and argues that this gave the company a competitive advantage over other employment agencies, facilitating their development of relations with the government and the trade unions in Britain over the 1970s and 1980s. The main conclusion of the article is that explicit attention needs to be paid to the actions and strategies of agencies themselves in order to develop an adequate understanding of the growth and development of the temporary help industry.

David G. Schwartz. Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

Childs, W. R. — 2008-06-10

Massimo Montanari. Food is Culture

Watts, S. — 2008-06-10

Espen Moe. Governance, Growth and Global Leadership: The Role of the State in Technological Progress, 1750-2000

Giannetti, R. — 2008-06-10

Robert Friedel. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

Sturdy, D. J. — 2008-06-10

Dario Gaggio. In Gold We Trust: Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns

Amatori, F. — 2008-06-10

Louise Hill Curth, ed. From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing

O'Reilly, D. — 2008-06-10

Richard A. Rajala. Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005

Prudham, S. — 2008-06-10

David L. Lightner. Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War

McKinney, G. B. — 2008-06-10

Robert Shogan. Backlash: The Killing of the New Deal

Dighe, R. S. — 2008-06-10

Jon C. Teaford. The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America

Johnson, M. S. — 2008-06-10

Paul Mason Fotsch. Watching the Traffic Go By: Transportation and Isolation in Urban America

Davidson, J. F. — 2008-06-10

James Hudnut-Beumler. In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism

Davis, M. L. — 2008-06-10

Susannah Walker. Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975

Weems, R. E. — 2008-06-10

Kathleen M. Barry. Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

Kimmel, J. — 2008-06-10

David R. Meyer. Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America

Pascoe, C. S. — 2008-06-10

Atsushi Akera. Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers during the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research

Roland, A. — 2008-06-10

Alan P. Rudy et al. Universities in the Age of Corporate Science: The UC Berkeley-Novartis Controversy

Hart, D. M. — 2008-06-10