This study analyzes the changing role of pre-industrial family and bureaucratic traditions in the development of Germany's leading electrical manufacturing firm. The Siemens company developed a decentralized, multi-divisional structure ten to twenty years before duPont and General Motors pioneered a similar organization in the United States. The pre-industrial bureaucratic traditions, considered in a multi-national context, facilitated the development of efficient modern management in Germany and help explain the relative success of German industry in the two decades before World War I.

Professor Blomquist describes and analyzes various forms of business association in an important northern Italian city during the period of economic growth in the thirteenth century. These included two basic forms of partnerships, as well as an early version of limited liability association.

Hardware wholesalers organized trade associations in the late nineteenth century in an effort to achieve stability and uniformity in prices and profit margins. These organizations, like those of manufacturers in the same industry, met with some success.

Professor Whitten estimates capitalization, production and returns, and profits for a Louisiana sugar plantation owned and operated by Andrew Durnford, a black planter.