Merchants formed an important component of British foreign direct investment before 1945. Locating in parts of Asia, Latin America and other developing economies, they often diversified into non-trading activities, including the ownership of plantations. This article examines three such British firms active initially in Asia, though with operations also in North America, Europe, and Africa. Often regarded as handicapped by managerial failings, especially from the early twentieth century, the authors cast these firms as more entrepreneurial and possessing greater managerial competencies than has been suggested. The article argues that their business strategies continued to evolve in the interwar years and that, when viewed as business groups, their organizational forms were robust, though considerable diversity in the performance of the three British firms can be observed. This evidence is shown to have implications for wider debates about the competencies of British management as a whole.

In the recent debate over minority contract set-asides, many policy-makers have forgotten this program's origins. Richard Nixon, moved by philosophical, practical, and political considerations, made minority business enterprise a theme of his 1968 presidential campaign and his first administration. By using set-asides, the Nixon administration overcame its meager funding of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) and encouraged minority entrepreneurship. Nixon's actions influenced federal policy toward minority owned businesses for two decades.

The steel industry has been criticized for unnecessarily provoking the lengthy 1959 strike that allowed steel imports to penetrate the United States market. The industry demanded from the union the revision of a collective bargaining clause that protected local working practices. Historians have viewed the clause as inconsequential and the industry's demand for revision unnecessary. This article explores the US Steel Corporation's history of cost reductions and modernization during the 1950s in relation to this contract clause. It argues that the corporation's 1959 bargaining stance, although tactically flawed, made strategic sense given US Steel's decision to cut costs through crew reductions and incremental technological changes at its older mills.