At Corn Products Refining (CPR), stockholders so disagreed with one another that they threatened to undermine the merger itself. Its predecessor, Corn Products (1902–1906), nearly failed, and so might have CPR. For several years, from its organization in 1906 to perhaps 1915, CPR’s owners weighed paying dividends against funding factories. Because paying dividends chanced syphoning off sums needed for plants, this might cause facilities to deteriorate and workers to face threats like factory fires that often set off explosions. CPR President E. T. Bedford managed this test and strove to upgrade facilities, which, by design or not, helped improve safety. His efforts almost came to naught given CPR’s anticompetitive tactics, yet the court’s antitrust decision—although highly critical—inadvertently gave the merger the chance to enhance profits and safety.
{"title":"Dividends, Efficiency, or Safety? Governance Choices at Corn Products Refining","authors":"S. Clarke","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.18","url":null,"abstract":"At Corn Products Refining (CPR), stockholders so disagreed with one another that they threatened to undermine the merger itself. Its predecessor, Corn Products (1902–1906), nearly failed, and so might have CPR. For several years, from its organization in 1906 to perhaps 1915, CPR’s owners weighed paying dividends against funding factories. Because paying dividends chanced syphoning off sums needed for plants, this might cause facilities to deteriorate and workers to face threats like factory fires that often set off explosions. CPR President E. T. Bedford managed this test and strove to upgrade facilities, which, by design or not, helped improve safety. His efforts almost came to naught given CPR’s anticompetitive tactics, yet the court’s antitrust decision—although highly critical—inadvertently gave the merger the chance to enhance profits and safety.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45729572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“The Other Kitchen Debate” places the history of the microwave oven in the context of Cold War anxieties and gender politics. Discrepancies between Soviet and U.S. safety standards, Soviet deployment of microwave espionage, and the prospect of nuclear war triggered fears about the possible dangers of kitchen appliances powered by low-level radiation. During the 1970s and early 1980s, politicians, government regulators, industry representatives, advertisers, home economists, media, and consumers engaged in lively debates over oven safety and the merits of microwave cookery. By the late eighties and early nineties, as East–West tensions waned and record numbers of American women entered the paid labor force, American media perceived fewer distinctions between the hazards posed by electronic ovens and those presented by their conventional counterparts. New definitions of safety redefined microwave ovens as purely domestic appliances, leaving questions about the potential risks of nonionizing radiation unresolved.
{"title":"The Other Kitchen Debate: Gender, Microwave Safety, and Household Labor in Late Cold War America","authors":"W. Gamber","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.20","url":null,"abstract":"“The Other Kitchen Debate” places the history of the microwave oven in the context of Cold War anxieties and gender politics. Discrepancies between Soviet and U.S. safety standards, Soviet deployment of microwave espionage, and the prospect of nuclear war triggered fears about the possible dangers of kitchen appliances powered by low-level radiation. During the 1970s and early 1980s, politicians, government regulators, industry representatives, advertisers, home economists, media, and consumers engaged in lively debates over oven safety and the merits of microwave cookery. By the late eighties and early nineties, as East–West tensions waned and record numbers of American women entered the paid labor force, American media perceived fewer distinctions between the hazards posed by electronic ovens and those presented by their conventional counterparts. New definitions of safety redefined microwave ovens as purely domestic appliances, leaving questions about the potential risks of nonionizing radiation unresolved.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45584085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The literature on early modern credit markets emphasizes both the social embeddedness of credit relationships and the role of notaries. To enhance our understanding of how credit markets functioned in a “less-developed” economy, we investigate the local lending activities of a merchant-banker family that operated at the intersection of formal and informal credit. A combination of economic rationality and social motivations in lending decisions emerges. The credit network of this family firm provides a portrait of the social structure of the local community, where the central position of a few trusted notaries and members of the business and political elite highlights the prevalence of relationships of power and favor over impersonal market exchange. The predominance of informal credit reveals a preference for loans made outside of notarial circuits. Nonetheless, notaries were crucial in lending to borrowers of lower social status and with weak ties, thus helping the liquidity of these merchants to “trickle down” into local society.
{"title":"Private Lending in an Alpine Region during the Eighteenth Century: A Family of Merchant-Bankers and Their Credit Network","authors":"Cinzia Lorandini, Francesca Odella","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.14","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on early modern credit markets emphasizes both the social embeddedness of credit relationships and the role of notaries. To enhance our understanding of how credit markets functioned in a “less-developed” economy, we investigate the local lending activities of a merchant-banker family that operated at the intersection of formal and informal credit. A combination of economic rationality and social motivations in lending decisions emerges. The credit network of this family firm provides a portrait of the social structure of the local community, where the central position of a few trusted notaries and members of the business and political elite highlights the prevalence of relationships of power and favor over impersonal market exchange. The predominance of informal credit reveals a preference for loans made outside of notarial circuits. Nonetheless, notaries were crucial in lending to borrowers of lower social status and with weak ties, thus helping the liquidity of these merchants to “trickle down” into local society.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44908268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. commodity futures exchanges have increasingly been the focus of tight government regulation, which resulted in strong control by a specific agency: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In Europe, the regulation of futures diverged from the U.S. model. No regulation at the communitarian level was implemented; at the national level, the United Kingdom emerged as a model of self-regulation of commodity markets. This article explores the historical causes behind this lack of regulation in Europe, placing it in the context of global commodity trading and arguing that the European regulation of futures trading was reshaped by a dialogue established between the European Commission and big players of commodity futures trading in the City of London. Since the mid-1960s, the City of London has become a pivotal global market venue for commodity futures, which has increasingly attracted players from abroad, thanks to its financial integrity and self-regulatory model. Both established London merchants and emerging players in the global trade of financial products cooperated to stave off any attempt at regulating the London futures exchanges. The inference here is that those attempts were instrumental in setting the conditions leading to the regulatory fragmentation that still characterizes futures trading in the global market.
{"title":"Futures of Europe: The City of London’s Commodity Exchanges, the European Economic Community, and the Global Regulation of Futures Trading (1960s–1980s)","authors":"Marco Bertilorenzi","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.8","url":null,"abstract":"Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. commodity futures exchanges have increasingly been the focus of tight government regulation, which resulted in strong control by a specific agency: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In Europe, the regulation of futures diverged from the U.S. model. No regulation at the communitarian level was implemented; at the national level, the United Kingdom emerged as a model of self-regulation of commodity markets. This article explores the historical causes behind this lack of regulation in Europe, placing it in the context of global commodity trading and arguing that the European regulation of futures trading was reshaped by a dialogue established between the European Commission and big players of commodity futures trading in the City of London. Since the mid-1960s, the City of London has become a pivotal global market venue for commodity futures, which has increasingly attracted players from abroad, thanks to its financial integrity and self-regulatory model. Both established London merchants and emerging players in the global trade of financial products cooperated to stave off any attempt at regulating the London futures exchanges. The inference here is that those attempts were instrumental in setting the conditions leading to the regulatory fragmentation that still characterizes futures trading in the global market.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44262501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Under the Influence of Commercial Values: Neoliberalized Business-Consumer Relations in the Swedish Certification Market, 1988–2018—ERRATUM","authors":"Klara Arnberg, M. Gustavsson, K. Hallström","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.15","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48428331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the 1950s, part-time work gradually became an element of labor policy to activate women to participate in the labor market that could be transferred from one country to another. Support of part-time employment in the Dutch labor market, however, was initially not endorsed as a solution to the problem of low female labor force participation but was the outcome of a more complex set of deliberations, in which the moral economy of employers’ organizations conflicted with broader demands for increased productivity. The article contrasts the initial concerns of Dutch employers about increasing women’s labor force participation with the country’s later international role in advocating part-time work for married women on an international scale. The Netherlands thereby serves as a case study of how employers’ organizations instrumentalized part-time employment for their own moral economy based in the breadwinner ideology.
{"title":"Part-Time Employment in the Breadwinner Era: Dutch Employers’ Initiatives to Control Female Labor Force Participation, 1945–1970","authors":"T. D. Groot, De Groot","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.12","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1950s, part-time work gradually became an element of labor policy to activate women to participate in the labor market that could be transferred from one country to another. Support of part-time employment in the Dutch labor market, however, was initially not endorsed as a solution to the problem of low female labor force participation but was the outcome of a more complex set of deliberations, in which the moral economy of employers’ organizations conflicted with broader demands for increased productivity. The article contrasts the initial concerns of Dutch employers about increasing women’s labor force participation with the country’s later international role in advocating part-time work for married women on an international scale. The Netherlands thereby serves as a case study of how employers’ organizations instrumentalized part-time employment for their own moral economy based in the breadwinner ideology.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42536709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recently, there has been increasing academic interest in the historical foundations of the pornography business. However, these studies tend to focus on individual national contexts rather than exploring the transnational relationships that exist, or have existed, between these countries. This article considers how a transnational approach can further understandings of entrepreneurship in the pornography business. It suggests the need for an interdisciplinary framework to examine transnational enterprise in the pornography business, combining ideas from enterprise alongside criminology and economic geography to frame the enterprise history of the Netherlands-based company Your Choice. Based in Amsterdam, but run by British entrepreneurs, Your Choice’s activities can be dated back to the 1970s, specializing in the transnational distribution of hardcore pornographic films to customers in Britain, where the sale of such material is legally problematic. Drawing on ethnohistorical research, which includes primary interviews, workplace observation, and archival and doctrinal research, I use Your Choice as a case study to show how transnational entrepreneurship in the pornography business can create opportunities as well as help to manipulate restrictive laws and regulations. I also suggest that negotiating such legalities carries risk, as does the need to respond and adapt to ongoing shifts in the market.
{"title":"Satisfaction Guaranteed: Your Choice and the Transnational Distribution of Hardcore Pornography Between the Netherlands and Britain","authors":"Oliver Carter","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.13","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, there has been increasing academic interest in the historical foundations of the pornography business. However, these studies tend to focus on individual national contexts rather than exploring the transnational relationships that exist, or have existed, between these countries. This article considers how a transnational approach can further understandings of entrepreneurship in the pornography business. It suggests the need for an interdisciplinary framework to examine transnational enterprise in the pornography business, combining ideas from enterprise alongside criminology and economic geography to frame the enterprise history of the Netherlands-based company Your Choice. Based in Amsterdam, but run by British entrepreneurs, Your Choice’s activities can be dated back to the 1970s, specializing in the transnational distribution of hardcore pornographic films to customers in Britain, where the sale of such material is legally problematic. Drawing on ethnohistorical research, which includes primary interviews, workplace observation, and archival and doctrinal research, I use Your Choice as a case study to show how transnational entrepreneurship in the pornography business can create opportunities as well as help to manipulate restrictive laws and regulations. I also suggest that negotiating such legalities carries risk, as does the need to respond and adapt to ongoing shifts in the market.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48626728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article challenges current interpretations of the rise of the Eurodollar market. It argues that rather than being the exclusive innovation of British banks, the Eurodollar market had also Italian origins. Foreign-currency lending in Italy in the 1950s was characterized by competitive behavior. I explain the accumulation of Eurodollar deposits by Italian banks as resulting from the fact that nonresident foreign-currency deposits were not subject to reserve requirements. Furthermore, I discuss the attitudes of the Bank of Italy regarding the financing of foreign-currency credits with nonresident dollar deposits (Eurodollars) and compare the Eurocurrency liabilities of Italian banks vis-à-vis those of the City of London. The comparison facilitates an approximate estimation of the size of the Eurocurrency market in the late 1950s and, even more importantly, a recalibration of the view that the City of London was the dominant Eurodollar player from the outset.
{"title":"Banking and Eurodollars in Italy in the 1950s","authors":"Ioan Achim Balaban","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.11","url":null,"abstract":"This article challenges current interpretations of the rise of the Eurodollar market. It argues that rather than being the exclusive innovation of British banks, the Eurodollar market had also Italian origins. Foreign-currency lending in Italy in the 1950s was characterized by competitive behavior. I explain the accumulation of Eurodollar deposits by Italian banks as resulting from the fact that nonresident foreign-currency deposits were not subject to reserve requirements. Furthermore, I discuss the attitudes of the Bank of Italy regarding the financing of foreign-currency credits with nonresident dollar deposits (Eurodollars) and compare the Eurocurrency liabilities of Italian banks vis-à-vis those of the City of London. The comparison facilitates an approximate estimation of the size of the Eurocurrency market in the late 1950s and, even more importantly, a recalibration of the view that the City of London was the dominant Eurodollar player from the outset.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48392471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Similarities between William Rowe’s Speaking of Profit and Peter Lavelle’s The Profits of Nature are not hard to find. Both are focused on the lives of elite men enmeshed in the political world of nineteenth-century China, explain and analyze their views of proper governance and their places in the intellectual milieu of the era, and cast an eye toward global comparisons. Both also feature the word “profit” in the title, and not by coincidence. However, their respective focuses lie on opposite ends of the momentous ruptures of China’s mid-nineteenth century, most notably the Opium (1839–1842) and Taiping (1850–1864) wars. Reading these two books together poses the provocative question of whether their similarities outweigh this considerable difference.
{"title":"Profit and Statecraft in Nineteenth-Century China","authors":"D. Knorr","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.9","url":null,"abstract":"Similarities between William Rowe’s Speaking of Profit and Peter Lavelle’s The Profits of Nature are not hard to find. Both are focused on the lives of elite men enmeshed in the political world of nineteenth-century China, explain and analyze their views of proper governance and their places in the intellectual milieu of the era, and cast an eye toward global comparisons. Both also feature the word “profit” in the title, and not by coincidence. However, their respective focuses lie on opposite ends of the momentous ruptures of China’s mid-nineteenth century, most notably the Opium (1839–1842) and Taiping (1850–1864) wars. Reading these two books together poses the provocative question of whether their similarities outweigh this considerable difference.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41501584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Klara Arnberg, M. Gustavsson, Kristina Tamm Hallström
Since the 1990s, a new model for market control organized through tripartite standards regimes (TSR), has expanded globally and affected most market exchanges through standard-setting, accreditation, and certification. This article investigates business-consumer relations under this regime, with a specific focus on the functions of accreditation and certification. In our case study of Sweden, a new picture of consumer protection under late capitalism evolves. Seeing it as a form of neoliberalization, the article uncovers a transition between two regimes of control; from one built on a potential conflict between consumer and business interests, to one based on the assumption that business interests are beneficial for all parties. Although business interest was formulated as pleasing the consumer—or the “customer”—by both certification firms and the Swedish Accreditation Authority, in practice consumer interest as something worth protecting was made abstract in the era of the TSR.
{"title":"Under the Influence of Commercial Values: Neoliberalized Business-Consumer Relations in the Swedish Certification Market, 1988–2018","authors":"Klara Arnberg, M. Gustavsson, Kristina Tamm Hallström","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.3","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 1990s, a new model for market control organized through tripartite standards regimes (TSR), has expanded globally and affected most market exchanges through standard-setting, accreditation, and certification. This article investigates business-consumer relations under this regime, with a specific focus on the functions of accreditation and certification. In our case study of Sweden, a new picture of consumer protection under late capitalism evolves. Seeing it as a form of neoliberalization, the article uncovers a transition between two regimes of control; from one built on a potential conflict between consumer and business interests, to one based on the assumption that business interests are beneficial for all parties. Although business interest was formulated as pleasing the consumer—or the “customer”—by both certification firms and the Swedish Accreditation Authority, in practice consumer interest as something worth protecting was made abstract in the era of the TSR.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46749474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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