History of Business
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General Business History Resources
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Premodern Economies
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Theories of Capitalism
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Marxism/Communism (Selected Resources)
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Other Socialist/Communist Authors
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Some Later-Marxist Critique
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Other Authors on Capitalism
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The Industrial Revolution(s)
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General Resources
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Early Writings on Industrialism
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Specific Figures and Topics
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Modern Business From the Late 19th-Century to c. 1960
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General Resources
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Scientific Management
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Early "Human Resource" Management
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Early Quality Control
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The Fifties and the "Organization Man"
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Early Multinational Corporations
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Labor History
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Evolution of White-Collar Work (see White Collars)
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"Postindustrial" Business
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The Japanese
Model, Including History of Japanese Business (on Postindustrial Business Principles page)
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History of Individual Companies
=
More Info (see policy on "more
info" links)
- Business History
- Business History Archives (K. Austin Kerr, Ohio State U.)
- Business History at Ohio State U. |
Links for Business Historians
- Business History Society of Japan (in English & Japanese) (Takau Yoneyama, Kyoto
Sangyo U.)
- Centre for International Business History (U. Reading) | Business
History Links
- The Evolution of Management (slide lecture from course on management and organizational
behavior) (Eric Hoppenfeld, San Francisco State U.)
- Charles R. Geisst, Wall Street: A History (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)
- John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History (Duke U. Special Collections
Library)
- The History Factory ("an organization of archivists, professional historians and commmunication specialists
working for the competitive advantage of business. We help corporations use their past to cultivate their present and create their future"; provides
companies with exhibit design, anniversary programming, archival management, editorial, video, and living-history services)
- Journal of the Business History Conference
- Museum of American Financial History (New York, NY) ("chronicling the history of America's capital markets")
- Richard Roberts and David Kynaston, ed., The Bank of England: Money, Power and Influence, 1694-1994 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)
- Subject Guide to Business History (U. Maryland at College Park Libraries)
- World History Archives: History of the World Economy (Haines Brown)
- Selected Resources:
- World Trade
- Corporations
- International Finance Capital
- WWW Virtual Library: Labour and Business History (The International Institute of Social History / The Netherlands
Economic History Archive)
- Marxism/Communism (Selected
Resources)
- Marx & Engels
- Other Socialist/Communist
Authors
- Some Later-Marxist
Critique
- Other Authors on
Capitalism
- Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 20th
Anniversary Edition (BasicBooks / HarperCollins, 1996) (1st ed., 1976)
- Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the
Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992)
- Joseph A. Schumpeter
- Mark Frost, "The
Schumpeterian Prophecy (in a Nutshell)" (introduction to
Schumpeter's thought)
- Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis
of the Capitalist Process (1939; rpt. abridged, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1964; rpt. Philadelphia: Porcupine, 1989)
- Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,
3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950)
- The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits,
Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle, trans. Redvers
Opie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1934)
- Thorsten Veblen
- Max Weber
- Brief
Intro to Weber (Larry R. Ridener, Baylor U.)
- Yonatan Reshef (U. Alberta), Weber:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (brief explanation
of Weber)
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans.
Talcott Parsons (1905; rpt. London: Routledge, 1992) (originally pub.
in German, 1904-1905)
- Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology,
3 vols., ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (1922; New York: Bedminster
Press, 1968)
- General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight (1923; Glencoe,
Ill.: Free Press, 1927)
- Characteristics
of Bureaucracy (from Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft) (Larry
R. Ridener, Baylor U.)
- Weber
on Power and Bureaucracy (from the point of view of business culture)
(Business Open Learning Archive)
- General Resources
- James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1986), pp. 122-287
- John Cook, Materials from Lecture on
"The Rise of the Industrial Designer" (images on the site are inaccessible to
outsiders)
- The Industrial Revolution
- Industrial Design
- Industrial Revolution Timeline (brief chronology) (Randal Angiel, SUNY New
Paltz)
- Industrial Revolution Page
- The Industrial Revolution (Rocky)
- The Industrial Revolution (series of presentation slides on the topic)
(K. Austin Kerr, Ohio State U.)
- The Industrial Revolution: The Rise of Industrial Capitalism (St. Edwards C., Texas)
- The Life of the Industrial Worker in 19th-Century England (material from a 1930 history textbook) (Laura
Del Col)
- Patrick O'Brien and Roland Quinault, eds., The Industrial Revolution and British Society (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993)
- James Frederick Rees, A Social and Industrial History of England, 1815-1918 (New York: Dutton, 1920)
- Science, Religion and Early Victorian Culture, 1780-1859 (Bibliography) (Graham Smith)
- From The Victorian Web (George P. Landow, Brown U., et al.)
- Ages of Technology
- Jonathan F. Scott and Alexander Baltzly,
The Life of the Industrial Worker in 19th-Century England (excerpts from 1830 textbook titled Readings in
European History Since 1814) (Laura Del Col)
- Victorian Economics: An Overview
- The Crystal Palace, or The Great Exhibition of 1851: An Overview
- Early Writings on Industrialism
- Jérôme Adolphe Blanqui, History of Political Economy in Europe, trans. Emily J. Leonard (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1880)
- Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884) (Terry L. Taylor,
Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, Natchitoches, Louisiana)
- John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes (London: E. Wilson, 1833) (3rd ed. 1835)
- Specific Figures and Topics
- General Resources
- James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic
Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1986), esp. pp. 1-27, 291-436 (expansive, widely-informed book
on the "control crisis" created in modernizing societies when
the speed of machinery, transport, and other facets of industrialization
outstripped older modes of mechanical, informational, organizational,
and social control; perceives the information revolution to be continuous
with the "control revolution" that ensued)
- Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand:
The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap / Harvard Univ. Press, 1977)
- John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (1967; rpt.
Boston: Signet / Houghton Mifflin, 1968)
- Charles R. Geisst, Wall Street: A History (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1997)
- Larry Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization: Work and Technology in a
Postindustrial Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) (studies the evolution
of mechanical engineering principles and machine/worker relations to provide
a history of industrial automation based on such fundamental machinic
principles as "constraint," "flexibility," and "feedback";
uses the case of the accident at the Three Mile nuclear plant to argue
that postindustrial production has evolved beyond the inflexible control
and constraint parameters of earlier mechanization; closes with first-hand
research into newer "sociotechnical" organizations oriented
around team-work, "developmental learning," and other flexible
approaches to integrating workers and complex technical environments)
- D.F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of
Corporate Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)
- Richard Roberts and David Kynaston, ed., The Bank of England: Money,
Power and Influence, 1694-1994 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)
- J. Yates, Control Through Communications: The Rise of System in American
Management (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989)
- Scientific Management
- Frederick Winslow Taylor
- Yonatan Reshef (U. Alberta), Taylor:
Scientific Management (brief explanation of Taylorism)
- The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1911)
- Scientific Management, Comprising "Shop Management,"
"The Principles of Scientific Management," "Testimony
Before the Special House Committee (1947; rpt. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood, 1972) (compilation of three of crucial texts)
- The Frederick
W. Taylor Project (project that is "preserving and disseminating
the F. W. Taylor Collection at the Stevens Institute of Technology
by establishing the on-line Taylor archive")
- Hugh Aitken, Taylorism at the Watertown Arsenal: Scientific Management
in Action, 1908-1915 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960)
- Martha Banta, Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age
of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1993) (work by literary scholar that "takes a close look at texts
ranging from mail-order catalogs and popular romances to the works
of Henry Adams and Nathaniel West to trace the effects of the efficiency
craze on the full fabric of American culture")
- Sudhir Kakar, Frederick Taylor: A Study in Personality and Innovation
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970)
- Judith A. Merkle, Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International
Scientific Management Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of
California Press, 1980)
- William Henry Leffingwell
- Office Management (Chicago and New York: A.W. Shaw Co., 1925)
- and Edwin Marshall Robinson, Textbook of Office Management,
2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1943)
- Fordism
- Ray Batchelor, Henry Ford: Mass Production, Modernism and Design
(Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1994)
- Keith Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford (1948; rpt. New York: Russell
& Russell, 1968)
- Early "Human Resource"
Management (see also: Contemporary
Human Resources Management)
- Elton Mayo
- The Human Problems of Industrial Civilization (1933; rpt.
New York: Viking, 1960)
- The Social Problems of Industrial Civilization (Boston: Division
of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard Univ.,
1945)
- Early Quality Control
(see also: Contemporary
Quality Movement)
- George S. Radford, The Control of Quality in Manufacturing (New
York: Ronald, 1922)
- Walter A. Shewhart, Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product
(New York: Van Nostrand, 1931)
- The Fifties and the
"Organization Man"
- C. Wright Mills
- The Power Elite (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956)
- White Collar (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1951)
- William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1956)
- Early Multinational Corporation
(see
also: Contemporary Business Globalism / Multinationalism)
- Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: AmericanBusiness
Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1970)
- Labor History (see
also: Contemporary Labor Relations, Statistics)
- Evolution of White-Collar Work (see White
Collars)
(The following is a short selection of influential general works on business in the era of postindustrialism, which is commonly dated from the 1970's on.
For more resources on specific aspects or theory of contemporary business, see Postindustrial Business Principles)
- Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973)
- Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000: The Revolution Reshaping American Business (New York: Plume / Penguin,
1992)
- Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols. (Malden, Mass. / Oxford:
Blackwell, 1996-98) (monumental trilogy that studies the information revolution in the context of global economic and social-political history; particularly
focussed on the international sweep of postindustrial "networked" economies and the antithetical rise of communitarian or fundamentalist religious,
ethnic, territorial, national identities among world populations marginalized by the new economy)
- I. The Rise of Network Society (1996)
- II. The Power of Identity (1997)
- III. End of Millennium
- William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century (New York:
HarperBusiness, 1992)
- Peter Drucker
- "The Coming of the New Organization," Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb. 1988: 46
- Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row, 1973)
- Post-Capitalist Society (New York: HarperBusiness / HarperCollins, 1993)
- Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997)
(study of the "Creative Revolution" in advertising in the '60s that prefigured such later business philosophies as decentralization)
- Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (New York: HaerperBusiness, 1993)
- Larry Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization: Work and Technology in a Postindustrial Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) (studies the evolution of
mechanical engineering principles and machine/worker relations to provide a history of industrial automation based on such fundamental machinic principles as "constraint,"
"flexibility," and "feedback"; uses the case of the accident at the Three Mile nuclear plant to argue that postindustrial production has
evolved beyond the inflexible control and constraint parameters of earlier mechanization; closes with first-hand research into newer "sociotechnical"
organizations oriented around team-work, "developmental learning," and other flexible approaches to integrating workers and complex technical
environments)
- Martin Kenney and Richard Florida, Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the United States (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1993)
- Yoneji Masuda, The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society (Tokyo: Institute for the Information Society, 1980 / Washington, D.C.: World
Future Society, 1981)
- Excerpt from The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society: "Parameters of the Post-Industrial Society: Computopia," in
Forester (1985), pp. 620-34
- Tom Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992)
- Robert Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism (New York: Vintage / Random House, 1992)
- Howard Rosenbrock, et al., "A New Industrial Revolution?" in Forester (1985), pp. 635-47
- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990)
- Roy C. Smith and Ingo Walter, Global Banking (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996)
- Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow, 1971)
- Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society (New York: Random House, 1971)
- Robert M. Tomasko, Downsizing: Reshaping the Corporation for the Future, rev. ed. (New York: American Management Assoc., 1990)
History
of Individual Companies