This article examines how a German firm in the Malay Peninsula—Behn, Meyer & Co.—capitalized on its knowledge management to overcome political risks during the period from 1840 until 1959. During the two world wars, all assets and properties of the Behn Meyer firm were systematically expropriated because of the introduction of the Alien Enemies (Winding Up) Act of 1914 and the subsequent imposition of a ten-year ban by the British colonial administration in the Malay Peninsula. However, Behn Meyer’s resilience and flexible outlook, as demonstrated by its management of political risks during these tumultuous periods, enabled it to rebuild its business interests and reestablish a foothold in postcolonial Malaysia and the region. This article argues that Behn Meyer displayed an exemplary business strategy, utilized its understanding of the geopolitics of the area, and leveraged its local and international networks to ensure its survival and longevity in the most tumultuous period in the history of the world.

This article concerns the rise of young entrepreneurship education programs in 1980s Sweden, which entered schools surprisingly early and quickly, backed by organized Swedish business. The increased popularity of entrepreneurship education toward the end of the twentieth century in many European welfare states is usually associated with a shift toward neoliberal, market-oriented, policies. It is argued here that an important reason for young entrepreneurship’s success was its ability to connect with the Swedish tradition of cooperation and democratic decision making, in combination with values such as individualism and competition. A case in point is the surprising compatibility between progressive pedagogical ideas and “neoliberal” entrepreneurialism. The article is based on a study of Ung Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurship, henceforth UF), the Swedish version of the American organization Junior Achievement, and the ambition of the consumer cooperative movement’s think tank, Koopi, to offer a different kind of entrepreneurship education. In the analysis, the concept of “the entrepreneurial self” is applied to these two different programs, and the results show how they clashed, but also overlapped, in ways that help explain the success of UF. The article is a contribution to our understanding of how entrepreneurship discourse emerged and manifested itself in everyday environments in the late twentieth century, and as such also contributes to the history of Nordic neoliberalism.

What is it to wear a uniform? Some occupations involve enforced adoption of a uniform, the police and armed services most obviously. Yet other occupations—such as management consultants—adopt styles or codes of dress that, while not enforced, have a currency and coherence such that we might think of them as a tacit uniform. Why—and to what effect—do some occupational groups voluntarily adopt tacit dress codes? This essay will explore those questions in relation to depictions of English traveling salesmen from the start of the nineteenth century to the eve of World War II. Representations of English traveling salesmen (“commercial travelers” in British parlance, the usage that will be adopted hereafter) frequently highlighted their physical appearance and in particular their modes of dress, showing remarkable continuity, certainly across the greater part of the period covered here.

Amidst other major changes to the food system, America witnessed an extensive transformation of marketing within the postwar era. Specifically, the concept of convenience quickly became a favorite of corporations across the food chain. However, despite the favorable market conditions and an outwardly receptive customer base, companies quickly found that they needed to negotiate with public perceptions of food, cultural ideals, and social realities. Using primarily corporate sources, this paper explores the development and use of convenience by food marketers. It investigates how processors sought to exploit postwar tensions between labor and gender. The project also examines how companies grappled with customer expectations of product quality. Ultimately, companies that successfully leveraged their ability to offer quick, quality meals further embedded themselves into consumer choices and lifestyles. By cultivating and marketing a specific message, corporations used convenience to make themselves appear indispensable to living and eating well in the postwar era.

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.

At the turn of the twentieth century, American and Chinese millers were locked in a fiercely contested battle for control of China’s flour market. Imported American flour had dominated Chinese urban markets since the early 1880s, but the founding of a modern native milling industry in 1900 had initiated a commercial war that pitted the great flour corporations of the Pacific Coast against the independent mill owners near Shanghai. Although the anti-American boycott of 1905 had boosted sales for Chinese mills and sparked growth in the native industry, the period between 1905 and 1909 severely tested the ability of the young industry to survive foreign competition. A high silver/gold rate, low transpacific shipping rates, and bumper wheat harvests in the Pacific Northwest lowered the relative cost and enhanced the market appeal of American flour to Chinese brokers. Conversely, severe flooding in China’s wheat-producing regions forced curtailment or even cessation of production for some native mills. Facing catastrophic reductions in their wheat supplies and markets saturated with American flour, Chinese millers devised alternative business strategies and implemented collaborative measures to ensure the solvency of their mills.

The Good Consumer offers a historical account of consumer credit reporting in the United States, from its nineteenth-century antecedents in commercial credit reporting through its professionalization and transformation into a key communication infrastructure during the first half of the twentieth century. While describing the technical and institutional development of the modern credit bureau, The Good Consumer draws special attention to one of the most consequential effects of credit reporting: the invention of financial identity. Formalized systems of credit evaluation produced their own categories of social reality and fostered new forms of economic objectification. The title refers to the “goodness” of credit consumers in several contexts: as prompt paying customers, trustworthy and morally upright citizens, profitable target markets, and collectively as a vital force behind the growth of the twentiethcentury American economy.

The first two articles in this issue of Enterprise & Society shed new light on the performance of the postwar Italian economy, an intriguing paradox for economic and business historians. Italy has been notorious for its political instability, inflation, massive public debt, and clientelism. Its political and economic institutions are often derided and labeled dysfunctional. Yet, in historical perspective, the country has frequently performed better than its more stable and “efficient” European neighbors and other developed economies. Between 1950 and 1973, for example, Italy’s Gross National Product grew at 6.8 percent per annum and its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at a rate of 4.8 percent (matching Germany and second only to Japan). Even more remarkably, since 1973 its GDP, manufacturing output, exports, and productivity have all grown faster than that of any other major European economy.

Why is there no SEAT Barcelona? Barcelona is a well-named place brand, but SEAT consciously has disassociated itself from its geographic origins. This seems rather strange decision if one takes into account the increasing importance of the place-of-origin effect in automotive industry. This article describes how SEAT has constructed its Spanish identity and hidden its Catalan-Barcelona origins, and discusses SEAT’s own growing “denationalization” because of the acquisition by Volkswagen Group by using banal nationalism to gain the loyalty of the country’s nationalist consumers and to fashion a corporate image in line with Spain’s Marca España, or national brand. Through this decision, SEAT has lost the opportunity to associate itself with Marca Barcelona, a successful urban brand.

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. is one of the world’s largest chemical corporations, and its operations are of interest to business historians. This article explores the early history of the firm within the context of early republic political economy in order to show how it came to a place of prominence in the American gunpowder market by the early 1820s. The article utilizes the archival and printed records of DuPont, associated firms, government correspondence, and early War Department and trade statistics to show how the company, unlike other powder mills of that time, had access to both large reserves of foreign capital and the halls of power in the federal government. These resources helped DuPont become a principal supplier of gunpowder to the army, the navy, and a major exporter during the War of 1812 era.

Today, in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, there is a foreboding sense that it is too easy for Americans to borrow. Living beyond our means on our cards and our mortgages, Americans borrowed at an unsustainable pace, and what put us here, the logic goes, was the unfortunate collision of lenders' greed and borrower's cupidity. Yet free-for-all borrowing defined another moment's economy as well, but without the ill consequences: the postwar period. After World War II, cheap credit underpinned the suburban prosperity, through government-insured loans, auto financing, and even department store Charga-Plates.

The Alcoa Building (1953) and Fiberglas Tower (1969) exemplify “architecture parlante”, literally buildings that speak of their function and meaning. They said—in steel, aluminum and (fiber)glass—this is who we are; this is what we do; this is how we do it. They provided prestige, visibility, and a sense of collective identity. Alcoa and Owens-Corning intended their signature buildings as larger than life advertisements for their signature products. The executives who commissioned them also expected the buildings themselves to reflect, and reinforce, new management styles. In the early 1990s, Alcoa and Owen-Corning commissioned new headquarters buildings that reflected a new management style thought to be appropirate for an emerging era of the flat organization and the ‘networked corporation’. Like their predecessors, these buildings sent an unmistakable message about management priorities. The buildings – outside and in – helped bring the organization, and the organizational chart, to life, both symbolically and pragmatically. Read carefully, a signature building can be a revealing corporate memoir.

Since the 1970s, a stretch of Broadway Avenue in Wichita, Kansas, has seen the growth of both Latino and Asian businesses. Using mapping, data analysis, and historical research, this study compares the growth of ethnic entrepreneurship between both populations. The results not only reveal similarities but also illustrate the degree to which ethnic entrepreneurship varies, depending on a population’s situation in a given location.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the three largest life insurance companies had a presence in more than forty countries. In the 1880s they turned their attention to the Australian colonies, in which life insurance markets were expanding. The venture, however, was met with unexpected market resistance, and the expectations of the Big Three were never fully met. An eclectic paradigm provides an explanatory tool, which is applied to an investigation of the experiences of American companies. These companies were not able to realize the ownership and location, or internalize the advantages, needed to build a sustainable presence in the Australian life insurance market.

Despite the widely held notion that U.S. government assistance to African American entrepreneurs commenced in the late 1960s, the evidence indicates that government interest in promoting black business actually began in the 1920s. Beginning with the appointment of James A. Jackson in November 1927, the U.S. Commerce Department’s agenda, until the mid-1950s, included “Negro Affairs.” Jackson’s actions did not generate the direct financial assistance to black entrepreneurs associated with such later government initiatives as Richard Nixon’s “Black Capitalism.” Nevertheless, Jackson’s pioneering efforts, to provide black businesspeople with useful information, helped to positively reshape contemporary African American entrepreneurs’ beliefs about the role of government in their lives.

This article contributes to literature on the role of “firms” in the early modern English economy by exploring contracts for works between the Crown, the City of London, and large construction firms that built the Greenwich Hospital, City churches, and St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1670 to 1712. Primary sources show varying arrangements to pricing, mitigating risk, and securing finance occurred without the costs of intermediaries. Clients pushed financial and operating risks onto contractors through complex contracting systems that enabled and supported a number of coordination mechanisms in the market. The article argues that contracts rather than firms should be the unit of analysis for those wishing to examine productivity and changes in early modern business.

During 1870–1914, business actors were concerned about the increasing uncertainty and occasional cheating in commercial relationships. In such situations, economic actors seek to improve the information they have, so as to benefit from strong comparative advantages over their competitors. This essay analyzes the acquisition and circulation of information and the actors and rules involved between 1870 and 1914, through a comparative approach (France and Italy). It considers individual trading firms, professional associations, information intermediating agencies, and state offices. We argue that these agencies (and therefore markets and institutions) acted much less as rivals than as complements in this era. Indeed, product information is different from information on the reputation of economic actors, the latter generating further distinctions between reputation for payment, respect of deadlines, and fidelity to the terms and objects of the contract. In turn, such kinds of situated micro-information differ from general statistics on market evolution and prices. We show that most economic actors were much more interested in the former (specifics) than in the latter kinds of information. To demonstrate this point, we compare the way traders, their associations, and private and state agencies intervened in the gathering, circulation, and interpretation of economic information in two countries, Italy and France, between 1870 and 1914. We argue that their opposite outcomes were not simply the result of different “mentalities” or attitudes to risk (as exogenously given), but rather can be traced to the different institutional settings and economic segmentation of the market for information in these two countries. In fact, unlike the Italian government, French ministries refused to provide their traders with micro-information on potential overseas correspondents and product characteristics. That is to say, “attitude to risk” and “animal spirits” are not exogenous and cannot be studied outside a given historical and institutional context.

The geometric pattern of Amsterdam's canals was iconic of its nineteenth-century social order. The spider's web of canals fanned out along the Amstel river in concentric rings, its barge traffic linking the city to its hinterland, the province of Holland, and to the wider Netherlands of which it is the nominal capital. These canals divided the “Venice of the North” into ninety islands linked by more than a thousand bridges. Imposing aristocratic and merchant houses stretched along the innermost canal ring, the Golden Curve of the Gentleman's Canal. At the center of the web lay de Dam, the 200 m long market square built on the first medieval dike protecting the city from the encroaching sea. The three pillars of the Dutch state framed the market square: the Royal Palace of the Merchant King, the Dutch Reformed New Church, and in the nineteenth century, the Amsterdam stock market, the world's oldest exchange.