|
Books > History > History of specific subjects > History of specific institutions
Emerging from what was a somewhat staid sub-discipline, there is
currently a battle for the soul of Management and Organizational
History (MOH), at the centre of which is a widespread concern that
much recent work has been more about how one should or might do
history rather than actually doing historical work. If ever there
was a time for a new volume on MOH, this is certainly it. This
Handbook affords space to both these perspectives, as well as
uncovering unorthodox and unconventional topics and approaches to
more familiar territory with an emphasis on new and revisionist
viewpoints. MOH researchers, doctoral and other students and
instructors working in this sub-discipline will discover
cutting-edge work with novel treatments of familiar terrain in the
Handbook. Contributors include: A. Barros, F. Bastien, A. Booth, T.
Bridgman, K. Bruce, D. Coraiola, N. Cornelius, S. Cummings, G.
Durepos, W.M. Foster, A.G. Gillett, M. Maclean, R. Marens, P.G.
McLaren, A.J. Mills, J.H. Mills, J. Muldoon, E.S. O Connor, E.
Pezet, R. Pistol, C. Quinn-Trank, H.L. Schachter, G. Shaw, K.D.
Tennent, S. Wanderley, K.S. Williams, M. Witzel, T. Yu, Y. Zoller
For the first time the complete financial history of Berkshire
Hathaway is available under one cover in chronological format.
Beginning at the origins of the predecessor companies in the
textile industry, the reader can examine the development of the
modern-day conglomerate year-by-year and decade-by-decade, watching
as the struggling textile company morphs into what it has become
today. This comprehensive analysis distils over 10,000 pages of
research material, including Buffett's Chairman's letters,
Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and SEC filings, annual meeting
transcripts, subsidiary financials, and more. The analysis of each
year is supplemented with Buffett's own commentary where relevant,
and examines all important acquisitions, investments, and other
capital allocation decisions. The appendices contain balance
sheets, income statements, statements of cash flows, and key ratios
dating back to the 1930s, materials brought together for the first
time. The structure of the book allows the new student to follow
the logic, reasoning, and capital allocation decisions made by
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger from the very beginning. Existing
Berkshire shareholders and long-time observers will find new
information and refreshing analysis, and a convenient reference
guide to the decades of financial moves that built the modern-day
respected enterprise that is Berkshire Hathaway.
A remarkable fifteen Nordic family businesses are among the 500
biggest companies in the world and the Nordic countries have more
dynasties than most others per capita and in GDP terms. The
willingness, often reluctant, of both the political system and
labour movement to accept asset accumulation has helped these
Nordic businesses survive. The top 1% of Swedes own close to 25% of
the country's wealth, as opposed to 16.5% of Spaniards, where
dynasties are also abundant. The pattern has held a firm grip on
the Nordic countries since the Industrial Revolution and emergence
of free enterprise. The trend is particularly pronounced in
comparison with the Anglo-Saxon countries - somewhat less so
relative to places like Italy, Japan, Germany and South-Asian
countries. This book describes the factors and dynamics behind the
ability of Nordic businesses to grow and thrive from one generation
to the next in the process of becoming dynasties. Far from being
commercial enterprises, they are a venue for power, philanthropy,
passion, conflict, freedom and captivity. Like many other
dynasties, the Nordic ones are a witch's brew of Machiavelli's
Prince, Marx's belief in the potential of the meritocracy and
Smith's baker who works to sustain his family. Topped by a spoonful
of Weber's Protestant Ethic. This book will be key readings for
students and scholars of entrepreneurship, corporate governance,
business history, Scandinavian history, family business and
enterprises and the related disciplines.
From Victoria Glendinning, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, the
James Tait Black Prize and (twice) the Whitbread Prize for
Biography. 'It's Succession in tailcoats and spats ... This is a
vivid and eye-opening group biography, backgrounded by the rise of
supermarket moguls from humble beginnings' Sunday Times Who was
John Lewis? What story lies behind the retail empire that bears his
name? Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishing,
this book reveals the family that founded the shops in all their
eccentricities, and whose relationships became blighted by
conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed. Born into
poverty, John Lewis was orphaned at the age of seven when his
father died in a Somerset workhouse. Dreaming of a better life, the
young man travelled to London at the start of what would become a
retail revolution. From early years as a draper's apprentice, we
see how Lewis's first pokey little business opened on Oxford Street
in 1864, and expanded as an emerging middle class embraced the
department stores as a recreational experience. Prize-winning
biographer Victoria Glendinning has had full access to the company
and family archives to write this eye-opening story. She captures
the toxic relationships that unfolded between Lewis and his two
sons, Spedan and Oswald, as they collided over the future of their
retail empire - their worst moments including emotional blackmail,
face-slapping and a kidnapping - and much litigation between father
and both sons. Yet the family never broke up and Spedan's vision of
a Partnership model to act as an ethical corrective and foster a
community of happier, more productive workers was eventually
realised and survives to this day. With riveting personal detail,
this brilliant group biography captures a rags-to-riches story and
a tempestuous family saga, all unfolding against the dramatic
social and political worlds of nineteenth-century London. The book
concludes with an assessment of the position John Lewis holds in
British sensibilities, and whether John Lewis and institutions like
it have a place in our future.
In June 2017, Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, was ousted in a
boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation
giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world, yet for
many came to symbolise everything wrong with Silicon Valley. In the
tradition of Brad Stone's Everything Store and John Carreyrou's Bad
Blood, award-winning investigative reporter Mike Isaac's Super
Pumped delivers a gripping account of Uber's rapid rise, its
pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company's toxic
internal culture and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to
overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. Based on hundreds of
interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with
previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning
story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth and bad behaviour,
that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation
culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in
American corporate history.
This shortform book presents key peer-reviewed research selected by
expert series editors and contextualised by new analysis from each
author on how the specific field addressed has evolved. The book
features contributions on the history of government-business
relations, regional and local business relationships, the
development and formation of Silicon Valley, and the rise and fall
of the US machine tool industry after the Second World. Of interest
to business and economic historians, this shortform book also
provides analysis that will be valuable reading across the social
sciences.
"An engrossing story of audacious entrepreneurism and big-industry
disruption, [this] is a tale for our times." -- Charles Duhigg,
author of Smarter Faster Better An investigative look into a
beloved, disruptive, notorious start-up This is the remarkable
behind-the-scenes story of the creation and growth of Airbnb, the
online lodging platform that is now the largest provider of
accommodations in the world. At first just the wacky idea of
cofounders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb
has become indispensable to millions of hosts and travelers around
the world. Fortune editor Leigh Gallagher presents the first
nuanced, in-depth look at the Airbnb phenomenon -- the successes
and controversies alike -- and takes us behind the scenes as the
company's young CEO steers into increasingly uncharted waters. "A
fast-paced, fun dive into one of the seminal firms of our time;
through the tale of Airbnb, Leigh Gallagher shows us how the
sharing economy can be a force for emotional connection -- as well
as for social and business disruption." -- Rana Foroohar, Financial
Times columnist and CNN global economic analyst
The service sector occupies a dominant position in the Japanese
economy, yet few studies have looked at the way the industry
developed. This book, first published in 1992, focuses on the
growth and development of a major world security and communications
corporation, SECOM. The success of the company has been rooted in
the management strategies of Makoto Iida, who has shaped the
company from a small localized business to an international
industry at the forefront of innovation. The book first looks at
the background of Makoto Iida, offering an insight into the nature
of an entrepreneur and the issues this raises within the context of
Japanese management styles. It then follows the company development
stage by stage, assessing the importance of individual creativity
in adapting and implementing traditional management techniques. It
shows how strategies for human resources, service quality, new
technology, globalization and corporate restructuring evolve within
the context of a growing organization, and includes an analysis of
the innovative marketing techniques and product development
processes needed to sell security services to one of the world's
safest countries.
'A fascinating page-turner... An indispensable guide to modern
innovation and entrepreneurship.' Walter Isaacson, no. 1
bestselling author of Steve Jobs Perfect for readers of Elon Musk
by Ashlee Vance and Zero to One by Peter Theil Out of PayPal's
ranks have come household names like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max
Levchin and Reid Hoffman. Since leaving Paypal, they have formed,
funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including
Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn,
among many others. Yet for all their influence, the incredible
story of where they started has gone largely untold. In The
Founders, award-winning author Jimmy Soni narrates how a
once-in-a-generation collaboration turned a scrappy start-up into
one of the most successful businesses of all time. Facing bruising
competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online
fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s, their success
was anything but certain. But they would go on to change our world
forever. Informed by hundreds of interviews and unprecedented
access to thousands of pages of internal material, The Founders
explores how the seeds of so much of what drives the internet today
were planted two decades ago.
Originally published in 1989 this study examines some new facets in
the development of the iron industry in the USA between 1839 and
1921 through the study of an individaul form, namely the Thoms Iron
Company, one of the leading merchant furnace companies. It charts
the end of the anthracite iron age and the changes which brought
about the advent of open-hearth steel and integrated steel works.
The book discusses the problems the managers of the firm faced with
the appearance of industrial innovations which tended to undermine
their firm's very existence and provided a new set of optimal
conditions necessary for the survival of the firm. It provides a
clear understanding of the destructive forces of industrial
innovation and the place of creative entrepreneurship in the
survival of the firm.
Changes in the dynamics of economic activities since the last
decades of the 20th century have yielded major changes in the
composition of industries and the division of labor and production
across different regions of the world. Despite these shifts in the
global economy, some industries have remained competitive even
without relocating their operations overseas. Industries and Global
Competition examines how and why the specificities of certain
industries and firms determined their choice of location and
competitiveness. This volume identifies the major drivers of this
process and explains why some firms and industries moved to other
parts of world while others did not. Relocation was not the sole
determinant of the success or failure of firms and industries.
Indeed some were able to reinvent themselves at their original
location and build new competitive advantages. The path that each
industry or firm took varied. This book argues that the specific
characteristics of each industry defined the conditions of
competitiveness and provide a wide range of cases as illustrations.
Aimed at scholars, researchers and acadmeics in the fields of
business history, international business and related disciplines
Industries and Global Competition exmaines the unique questions;
How and why did the specificities of certain industries and firms
determine their choice of location and competitiveness?
The Making of Shareholder Welfare Society traces and accounts for
the debates and discussions between law and economics scholars and
mainstream legal scholars, management theorists, and economic
sociologists. This is done in detail to demonstrate that the
shareholder welfare society was built from the bottom up, beginning
with theoretical propositions regarding alleged market efficiencies
and leading all the way to the idea that a society characterized by
economic freedom and efficiency maximization pave the way for
uncompromised shareholder welfare, in turn being good for everyone.
This book is of relevance for a variety of readers, including
graduate students, management scholars, policy-makers, and
management consultants, as well as those that are concerned about
how the economic system of competitive capitalism is now in a
position where it is riddled by doubts and concern, not the least
as the levels of economic inequality is soaring. It addresses the
topics with regard to corporate governance, accounting and society
and will be of interest to researchers, academics, students, and
members of the general public that are concerned about the economic
system of competitive capitalism.
Drawing on an extensive array of sources – written, oral and visual – this richly illustrated volume provides a rounded social, intellectual, educational, cultural and political history of one of Africa’s foremost universities during the first phase of apartheid.
It puts a spotlight on its leaders, lecturers and learners, but its wide focus takes in many other dimensions of this heterogeneous institution’s history too – teaching and research, social, cultural and
sporting life and its chequered relationship with the apartheid state, ranging from formal opposition and protest and students’ growing defiance culminating in the sit-in of 1968, to ambivalence and willing collaboration. All of these it weaves together into a many-sided whole to produce an elegant, accessible and nuanced study of the operation of UCT as apartheid began to be imposed on South Africa.
Howard Phillips gives us a pioneering and definitive history of the period. And one which will occupy pride of place on the bookshelves of the academics and the thousands of alumni who helped shape this history and the many ordinary Capetonians touched by Varsity.
The nostalgic and heart-warming account of the fortunes of G. C.
Fox & Co, a Cornish family shipping business through eight
generations. Peppered with anecdotes, On the Brink is a rich and
personal insight into the life and times of the Fox family, whose
success in Cornwall and beyond spanned across three centuries.
Colourful stories from the author's own experience of working
within the business, along with historical reference, portray an
intricate account of the contribution the Foxes made to the history
of Falmouth. On the Brink is a diverse and winding collection of
accounts and tales which brings alive the activities of the Foxes
and the character of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century
Falmouth. `It is a book', as one of the Falmouth pilots has opined,
`which had to be written'. From its beginnings in Fowey in the
seventeenth century by members of the Quaker Fox family, G. C. Fox
and Company earned an international reputation, which began with
the merchant trade and diversified into the fishing industry and
the ship agency business. Over a period of 200 years they became
vice or honorary consuls for 36 different countries and were also
active within the timber and mining industries, with several
members of the family becoming eminent scientists.
From Victoria Glendinning, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, the
James Tait Black Prize and (twice) the Whitbread Prize for
Biography. 'It's Succession in tailcoats and spats ... This is a
vivid and eye-opening group biography, backgrounded by the rise of
supermarket moguls from humble beginnings' Sunday Times Who was
John Lewis? What story lies behind the retail empire that bears his
name? Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishing,
this book reveals the family that founded the shops in all their
eccentricities, and whose relationships became blighted by
conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed. Born into
poverty, John Lewis was orphaned at the age of seven when his
father died in a Somerset workhouse. Dreaming of a better life, the
young man travelled to London at the start of what would become a
retail revolution. From early years as a draper's apprentice, we
see how Lewis's first pokey little business opened on Oxford Street
in 1864, and expanded as an emerging middle class embraced the
department stores as a recreational experience. Prize-winning
biographer Victoria Glendinning has had full access to the company
and family archives to write this eye-opening story. She captures
the toxic relationships that unfolded between Lewis and his two
sons, Spedan and Oswald, as they collided over the future of their
retail empire - their worst moments including emotional blackmail,
face-slapping and a kidnapping - and much litigation between father
and both sons. Yet the family never broke up and Spedan's vision of
a Partnership model to act as an ethical corrective and foster a
community of happier, more productive workers was eventually
realised and survives to this day. With riveting personal detail,
this brilliant group biography captures a rags-to-riches story and
a tempestuous family saga, all unfolding against the dramatic
social and political worlds of nineteenth-century London. The book
concludes with an assessment of the position John Lewis holds in
British sensibilities, and whether John Lewis and institutions like
it have a place in our future.
This book, first published in 1989, is a valuable addition to the
literature on the study of American business history. Most previous
historians, however, have studied the management of business in a
vacuum, separating the internal affairs of particular companies
from the social and political environments in which corporations
existed. From 1799 to 1842 the Manhattan Company had three distinct
divisions: a water works, a main bank in New York City, and bank
branches in upstate New York. To successfully manage this
complicated and decentralised business, the Manhattan Company's
directors had to be particularly sensitive the social and political
environments. This book traces the history of banking in New York,
an examination of the nature and significance of the Company's
charter, and a detailed analysis of the Company's three divisions.
In 1867, less than three years after the Civil War left the city in
ruins, Hungarian Jewish immigrant Morris Rich opened a small dry
goods store on what is now Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.
Over time, his brothers Emanuel and Daniel joined the business;
within a century, it became a retailing dynasty. Join historian
Jeff Clemmons as he traces Rich's 137-year history. For the first
time, learn the true stories behind Penelope Penn, Fashionata, The
Great Tree, the Pink Pig, Rich's famous coconut cake and much more,
including how events at the downtown Atlanta store helped John F.
Kennedy become America's thirty-fifth president. With an eye for
accuracy and exacting detail, Clemmons recounts the complete
history of this treasured southern institution.
Inspired by the fortunes and misfortunes of the Getty family, whose
most extraordinary and troubled episode - the kidnap and ransom of
grandson Paul Getty - is now a major motion picture, directed by
Ridley Scott, from a screenplay written by David Scarpa and
starring Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg.
|
|