In 2007, Mother Nature saved Tampax. An advertising campaign, featuring nature personified as a middle-aged woman, played a decisive role in helping the tampon brand overcome a challenging period. Five years earlier, the owners, Procter & Gamble (P&G) had developed their own plastic, as opposed to cardboard, tampon applicator in the form of Tampax Pearl, and were promptly sued for patent infringement by the original plastic applicator inventor Playtex (Hanes Brands), a fight P&G lost. On other fronts, the menstrual product industry was battling against an aging population and menstruation-suppressing hormonal birth control, resulting in an annual 1 percent market share drop for the previously globally best-selling brand. A team of women at the Leo Burnett advertising agency came up with a new Tampax branding strategy in response, and as a result the international Mother Nature campaign ran in Europe and North America from 2007 till 2009. This article surveys the issues facing Tampax in the 2000s, and the campaign that stabilized it at the top of the sector by the 2010s.

This paper discusses how a Norwegian entrepreneurial state has performed over more than seventy years, based on an analysis of state involvement in Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk/the Kongsberg Group from 1945 and to 2015. Mariana Mazzucato has argued that bold technological investments by the state has long-term beneficial effects. The development of the Kongsberg companies adds nuance to this picture. On the one hand, the defense company Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk failed as a company in 1987 and was unbundled into a number of new companies independent of one another. On the other hand, some of the successor companies have been very successful, both in the oil and gas sector and within defense. Taking the defense and oil and gas company the Kongsberg Group as a case, this paper argues that a new style of entrepreneurial state developed in the 1990s and that it proved very successful. The old entrepreneurial state was heavy-handed, bold, and very long-term in its aims; the new entrepreneurial state was cautious, many-headed, and worked through the management of the company. The new entrepreneurial state combined state ownership, stock listing, and procurement considerations and was supported by both the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Defense. This new governance structure facilitated a stable corporation that over time integrated other Norwegian maritime electronics companies, which themselves had a checkered history under the old entrepreneurial state. A new corporate governance regime emerged and managed both to protect old and established product lines and to facilitate innovation both in defense and maritime electronics.

This paper traces the history of the Chinese fire insurance industry and Tai Ping Insurance, one of the most successful Chinese insurance companies in the early twentieth century. It provides a case study on the “indigenization” of fire insurance in China by retracing how a fledgling firm mastered selling a foreign financial product and managed to win market share in an ostensibly adverse environment. This paper argues that while Tai Ping benefited from the growing embrace of insurance by the Chinese public, its success was ultimately driven by the company’s economies of scale, cross-selling synergies, and tight connections to banking. This paper also explores the broader context in which fire insurance operated by examining how the indigenization of insurance in China unfolded, with Chinese insurers like Tai Ping mediating the introduction of a new financial product, the transfer of new institutions, and the diffusion of new knowledge regarding risk. More generally, the history of Tai Ping and the Chinese fire insurance industry addresses a research lacuna in the history of insurance beyond the developed markets in Western Europe and North America, which has typically focused more on the experiences of British and American multinational enterprises and less on that of native companies. By highlighting the degree of institutional convergence and divergence between the Chinese insurance industry and its global counterparts, this paper contributes to a more inclusive history of the internationalization of insurance.

This article examines the formation in 1890 of the United Alkali Company in order to explore new perspectives on the transition to a corporate economy. Its starting point is the process of transition itself, highlighting the role played by networks. This perspective promotes an emphasis on institutional environments and on patterns of relationships and behavior, as opposed to those of formal structure. Thus, the archives of the company are probed for evidence of how key agents conceived of the firm. Finally, governance systems are seen as interacting in a dynamic fashion with the institutional environment, and in particular with the balance of internal and external economies.

This article presents a balance of the most significant research carried out in Spain on the public policies and business strategies that guided the implementation of different forms of forced labor under Francoism, during both the war and the dictatorship. It deals with the logic and economic impact of this type of punishment, attending to two main aspects. In the first place, the legal organization of forced labor is explained, and emphasis is placed on the role it played in mitigating the shortage of labor power in some sectors. In the second place, the article analyses the profit margins produced by this kind of labor in comparison with free labor, related to productivity levels. In this respect, important differences can be appreciated between work during the war and in the postwar period, as well as between work depending on the army and that of private companies.

This article explores the ways that oral history can help business historians to better understand how employees experience and make sense of their life at the company in relation to a company’s identity. The research is based on two case studies. The first concentrates on Heineken. Specifically, it focuses on the closing of the Heineken brewery in Amsterdam in 1988. The second case was a commissioned project to write a book for the eightieth anniversary of the Amsterdam-based consultancy firm Van de Bunt Adviseurs. This project was concluded in 2016 with a publication that, like the research itself, was inspired by a cultural history approach and thus paid attention to founder narratives, sensemaking, and corporate identity construction. The article shows that oral history can broaden knowledge, especially of how employees experienced life at the company and how they made sense of it while referring to the (changing) company’s identity. Through the oral history method, employees were given a voice that showed how the same events were (differently) experienced. Moreover, the oral histories made the personal impact of abstract developments more concrete, notably issues such as internationalization, mergers and acquisitions, changing workings conditions, scaling up or down, or closure. Stories about the founders and the ample use of the family metaphor, which stood out in both cases, expressed employees’ feelings of being part of a company with a specific identity, as well as a longing for it. The article concludes with several suggestions that should be taken into account when conducting oral history research.

The London Assurance (LA) was incorporated in 1720, marking a significant innovation in the marine insurance industry. Contemporaries anticipated joint-stock firms such as the LA would rapidly outcompete private underwriters, yet this outcome did not occur. The success of the private underwriters has been ascribed to their organizational form. This paper reassesses these explanations and finds that, rather than an a priori worse business model, various corporate governance challenges limited the LA’s capacity to compete. This provides a more complete explanation for the relative failure of the joint-stock marine insurance companies and has implications for understanding the evolution of the corporate form in the eighteenth century.

Despite significant developments in understanding the role of women in early-modern business, more is needed to fully understand women’s impact on eighteenth-century trading networks. Further, much less is known about the role of wider family members, especially children, in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy. The formal documentation that is privileged in business histories does not tell the whole story, and it frequently represents mercantile activity as a pursuit dominated by a patriarch at the center of a trading network. This article explores eighteenth-century familial commercial networks through extensive use of the personal family correspondence of three merchant families who lived and traded within different locales of the northern Atlantic: Hugh Hall, a merchant and vice judge of the admiralty in Barbados; the Black family, who were wine merchants in Bordeaux; and Joseph Symson, a mercer and shopkeeper from Kendal, England. This article will show that women appear as autonomous players with the power and ability to make informed and independent decisions that directed the business interests of their families. Moreover, it includes an assessment of the ways in which merchants cultivated the expertise of their extended families to enhance their commercial networks and advance their business pursuits. Focusing on children who supported or enhanced the prosperity of the family firm, this article emphasizes that their participation was intentional, not incidental. This article asks questions about the emotional consequences of such activity—which have rarely been considered in any detail—as well as the financial benefit of operating in this manner.

The battle for dominance of the global aviation marketplace after 1945 was largely an Anglo-American competition, yet to date historians have overlooked the important role diplomacy played in shaping its outcome. Divisions over the proper regulation of strategically vital aircraft and aviation technology seriously impeded aircraft manufacturers, British producers especially. This article traces the impact of Anglo-American diplomacy upon British aviation manufacturers during the first half of the Cold War, from 1946 until the Sino-American rapprochement of the early 1970s. It explores three periods in particular: the initial postwar years, highlighted by disputed British jet engine sales to the Soviet Union; the early 1950s, when British jetliner exports seemed a genuine strategic threat in Washington; and the early 1960s, when Whitehall authorized covert transfers of American-licensed aviation equipment to complete the first British aircraft sales to the People’s Republic of China. These examples demonstrate not only the effect of strategic balancing by governments on the marketplace, but also diplomacy’s impact on business.

As the public discussion of all cancers, and of breast cancer in particular, expanded after World War II, capitalist ventures emerged to meet the demands of those affected by the disease. For women who had mastectomies this meant a greater choice of breast prostheses but also a clearer message that the scars from surgery should be hidden from public view. This work analyzes the breast prosthesis industry as a beauty business. Considering the use of breast prostheses as a contested part of cancer recovery, the article traces the evolution and expansion of the breast prosthesis industry from 1945 to 2000 and examines how the industry has responded to consumer demand, created a niche for itself within the “healing process,“ and capitalized on notions of feminine beauty.

Business history forces historians and economists to take a wider view of individuals' actions as economic agents. The risk-managing strategies of Lord Londonderry (also known as “the Money Pitt”) during the financial boom and bust of the South Sea Bubble illustrate this theme well. He dealt in staggering sums for the time but hedged his bets along at least three dimensions: the pecuniary, the personal, and the political. His skills, however, remain unappreciated because he could not manage the ultimate uncertainty always present in human affairs—when will fate bring down the final curtain on one's partners, family and friends, patrons, or one's own person?

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.

Just months after the outbreak of World War I, rumors spread throughout the Russian Empire that Singer Manufacturing Company’s wholly owned Russian subsidiary, Kompaniia Zinger, was a German company that was actively engaged in espionage on behalf of the German military. Even though these rumors were untrue, they unleashed a wave of actions against the company that Singer’s officials were unable to stop, ultimately leading to tremendous losses for the firm. The central argument of this article is that the power of the accusations of Singer’s German ties rested far more on the nature of the company’s business model than on the national affiliation of its personnel or evidence of espionage. In the context of World War I–era Russia, many Russians took Singer’s operations not as those of an international capitalist enterprise, but rather as evidence of the company’s questionable foreign character. This perspective helps us to understand why Singer’s management had such difficulty shaking the accusations of its German ties; if what was suspicious about the company was the very foundation of its business model, then its continued operation meant that it necessarily exhibited characteristics that reinforced the basis for said suspicion. These findings have implications for international business history, the history of late-Tsarist Russia, and the history of capitalism.

Hail insurance in Britain emerged as a product by and for farming communities, expanding as wheat production rose in the mid-nineteenth century before declining in the latter decades of the century amidst wide-scale conversion from arable to livestock farming. Drawing on detailed research conducted in the remaining archives of the three major hail insurers in this period, we demonstrate the challenges of establishing a new insurance product for farmers. We argue that to make hail insurance effective, the insurance company’s central office collated and circulated information, rules, and paperwork to enable it to govern farmers, agents, and valuers at a distance. Such networks were fragile and required continual maintenance, whether to enhance reputation, manage farmers’ requests for new products, enforce rules, or tinker with rates in response to perceived risks and competitive pressures. Conceptualizing this emerging insurance business as a fragile network is a useful device demonstrating that paperwork, the governing of actors, and personal rivalries are as important as broader economic changes in explaining the development of a novel insurance product in this period.

This article examines the evolution of cryptology as a business trait and a distinct state-controlled and -regulated profession in sixteenth-century Venice. It begins by briefly discussing the systematic development of cryptology in the Renaissance. Following an examination of the amateur use of codes and ciphers by members of the Venetian merchant and ruling classes, and subsequently by members of all layers of Venetian society, the article moves on to discuss the professionalization of cryptology in sixteenth-century Venice. This was premised on specialist skills formation, a shared professional identity, and an emerging professional ethos. The article explores a potential link between the amateur use of cryptology, especially as it had been instigated by merchants in the form of merchant-style codes, and its professional use by the Venetian authorities. It also adds the profession of the cifrista—the professional cipher secretary—to the list of more “conventional” early modern professions.

In his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned that the military-industrial complex (MIC) threatened to dominate American research, crowding out commercial innovation. Ironically, a number of analysts point to spin-off benefits of the 1950s' military effort as a crucial source of American high-tech competitiveness, often citing the key example of the relationship between military jet aircraft and the Boeing's 707. But the huge military investment in jet aviation had both benefits and costs for the commercial industry. This article compares the development of the Boeing 707 and its relationship to military projects like the KC-135 tanker to the contemporary development of commercial jet aircraft by other companies that were also integral parts of the military-industrial complex (MIC), including Douglas Aircraft and its commercial DC-8 and Convair and its commercial 880 and 990. Using evidence from archives, interviews with retired company executives, contemporary trade press, and academic studies, the article concludes that membership in the MIC did not offer firms a leg up in commercial markets. President Eisenhower was generally right about the costs of the military effort, but military spending remained low enough to allow commercial industry to thrive in parallel to the defense industry.

This article examines the financialization of the U.S. economy in the late twentieth century, with a focus on the role of industrial firms in the transition. This article explores how American industrial leaders’ reactions to the economic shocks of the 1970s influenced the rise of finance in the United States. Specifically, this article analyzes how the restrictive postwar financial regime gave way to a new liberal one, often represented by two vital shifts in the 1970s: the resurgence of global finance and the turn to austerity. It also demonstrates how leading industrialists’ preferences toward particular financial policies gave rise to different coalitions that affected policy orientation. It contributes to the financialization literature by clarifying the distinctive role of industrialists in American financialization. Furthermore, by situating financialization in the broader socioeconomic context, this article highlights the intersections of two important changes in the history of U.S. capitalism: financialization and the disintegration of the New Deal regime.