Between the firm and the market: An international comparison of the commercial structures of the cotton industry (1820–1939)

This article describes the ways in which cotton goods were commercialised during the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. Several national cases are analysed: Britain as the Workshop of the World; France, Germany, Switzerland and the US as core economies; Italy and Spain as countries on the European periphery; and Japan as a successful export latecomer. The main question that we address is why some cotton industries vertically integrated their production and selling processes, but others did not. We present a model that combines industrial district size and product differentiation to explain why vertical integration was present in most cases and why there was vertical specialisation of production and selling in Lancashire, Lowell and Japan.     

Therapy

Aptly known as the “talking cure,” therapy typically involves a client reflecting on their personal challenges and a provider guiding the conversation with feedback, questions, and non-verbal cues. How did this rare medical treatment of the early twentieth century evolve into a pervasive cultural trope and marketplace icon – and why? To answer these questions, this article offers three different histories of therapy: (1) an academic history of the schools of therapy, from psychoanalysis to positive psychology, (2) an economic history of the growth of therapy, from rare treatment to mainstream health-care, and (3) a cultural history of the diffusion of therapy, from health-care service to Hollywood movies, television serials, news programs, talk shows, reality TV, pop music, and everyday conversation.     

IMC: Has anything really changed? A new perspective on an old definition

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) has emerged as a new concept in marketing in the twenty-first century. IMC is mostly thought of, taught and written about as simply the integration of advertising and promotional activities. However, this paper proposes IMC as a broader concept. It is more than a process or activity within an organisation: it is a system of belief or engagement, embedded in an organisation's culture, underpinned by communication and driven by technology and senior management. We identify seven major tenets of the integrated view of marketing communication within the IMC literature, and argue that early marketing concepts of the twentieth century are no longer valid. IMC can be seen as a new paradigm in marketing, equipped with central concepts that apply to many business environments.     

Consuming desires: Performing gender in Virginia Woolf's Orlando,Neil Jordan's the crying game and sally potter's Orlando

This essays examines how twentieth century queer practices— such as queer literature, queer theory, and queer film— attempt to resist and reconfigure the historical legacy of compulsory homosexuality and the commodification of gender. I begin by tracing the ways in which the eighteenth century discourse on masquerade offered resistance to the limited, culturally sanctioned array of gendered subject positions of the time in order to evaluate the effectiveness of postmodern modes of resisting and reconfiguring gender construction and consumption at the close of the twentieth century. I argue that the postmodern discourse on gender performance improves upon the eighteenth century discourse on masquerade as a strategy for reconceiving resistance to the hegemonic legitimation of compulsory homosexuality, and that by queering our conception of gender construction in this way we may consummate our desire for a wider array of social/ sexual desiring positions without reinscribing them within an unself‐critical consumerism.     

Kraft's acquisition of Cadbury

The case of Kraft Foods attempting to, and eventually succeeding in, acquiring Cadbury, the UK chocolate maker, is replete with the drama and complexity of corporate takeovers. Governments, politicians, unions, customers, and other interest groups all chime in with their version of what is good for their particular interest group. The clash of food giants makes for excellent reading, and trying to determine how successful the combined company will be is a natural question to consider. The strengths of the case lie in the way the context is established, with the history of Cadbury, its culture, and the “soft” power achieved by the founding family explained.     

“The Unbearable Lightness of Cleaning”: Representations of Domestic Practice and Products in Good Housekeeping Magazine (UK): 1951–2001

In this paper we begin to open the black box that constitutes the organisation of domestic cleaning and consumption in the latter half of the twentieth century. We focus specifically on change and continuity in the manner in which cleaning practices and cleaning products are represented in the UK woman's magazine Good Housekeeping, in the late modern period. After a discussion of the modern history of cleanliness, we proceed with a rationale for why this magazine was chosen for our analysis, followed by a summary of our methodology. We then argue that three phases of representation may be delineated in the time period we investigated. The first phase, which is apparent in the 1951 and 1961 issues, we have named “pride in domestic practice” and it covers a period when, what we call “the women's lobby”, speaks in a uniform voice about the tasks of the housewife and the purpose of domestic cleaning. The second phase, manifest in the 1971 and 1981 issues, is termed “domestic dreaming”, and it heralds a period when Good Housekeeping calls its readership to dream about the potentials of a transformed consumer culture. The third phase, which is evident in some respects in 1981, but which is more clearly present in 1991 and 2001, we have called “modern advising in a late modern world”. During this period, Good Housekeeping settles into a new role as a modern advisor of cleaning products and practices within the context of a world that poses significant complexities. Our discussion also focuses on how three values of cleanliness; that associated with germs, aesthetics and efficiency/ease are present in the magazine. Our analysis is contextualised in relation to the cultural silencing of cleanliness in this period and related to social and cultural changes associated with feminism and consumer culture.     

Demystifying Fair Trade in France: The History of an Ambiguous Project

In France, Fair Trade arrived on the scene in the late twentieth century, and since then has passed through several experimental phases before becoming an enduring “realistic” economic alternative. To understand the transformation, this article defines Fair Trade as a social construct issues and tensions of which change depending on the point of entry. By conducting a secondary analysis of several data sets from varied sources, including documentary material, interviews, and observations, the authors trace the history of Fair Trade in France, define its introduction as a system, describe its institutionalization, and contribute to a greater understanding of how its ideals have changed and become more professional over time. The analyses reveal that the term “Fair Trade” has become ambiguous, spanning divergent and conflicting ideas and projects, including opening and closing conventional market systems and alter-globalization and anti-globalization.     

The East India Company's maritime service, 1746–1834: masters of the Eastern Seas

The histories we give to production and consumption affect our present and future business understandings. We question recent works that have ascribed a relatively short history to consumption ethics. Drawing on writers, across a number of academic disciplines, we conclude evidence exists to make the case against understanding consumption ethics as new to the twenty-first century. We argue that acknowledging a long history for consumption ethics challenges contemporary economic stereotypes of consumers as self-interested maximisers. It also modifies our understanding of the relationship between corporate and consumer social responsibility.     

Resistance to Inequality as a Competitive Strategy? – The Cases of the Finnish consumer Co-ops Elanto and HOK 1905–2015

Abstract

We examine the common pattern of success-failure-success displayed by many western consumer co-operatives in the twentieth century. We concentrate on the biggest Finnish regional co-ops, Elanto and HOK, and compare their successes and failures as well as those of British co-ops with the help of the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS). The BOS argues that companies can succeed if they produce surplus value for their clients and if those surpluses simultaneously reduce costs.

We suggest that resistance to inequality was the biggest success factor for co-ops in the twentieth century.     

发达国家支持发展有机食品产业的措施及对我国的启示

作为20世纪末期蓬勃发展起来的一个新兴食品产业,有机食品产业以其绿色、环保的优势具有广阔的发展前景。本文探讨了发达国家支持有机食品产业发展的做法,在此基础上,提出了我国加快发展有机食品产业应采取的措施。     

浅论近现代出版集团小说期刊广告经营

19世纪末20世纪初,小说繁荣的一个突出表现是为数众多的小说期刊的出现,而具有相当实力的近现代出版集团常常是这些小说期刊编辑出版和发行的主体。近现代出版集团办刊具有的资金、人才、稿源和组织结构等诸多方面的优势,有力保证了小说期刊定时和高质量的出版;广告文本和小说文本内容和形式上的有机联系,大大提升了广告效果。广告效果的提升反过来又促进了小说期刊广告收入的增加,近现代出版集团小说期刊的广告经营有效促进了小说的传播与发展。     

FOCUS: Investment

'Although the empirical and conceptual underpinnings of New Finance have been rigorously tested, its ethical underpinnings have not been explored.'These are seen to derive from the social remoteness of late twentieth century individualism, which needs to be countered by sensitivity to the social context of finance and to the developmental nature of ethical behaviour. The author is Fellow in Finance at Templeton College, Oxford.     

Product development of branded, packaged household goods in Britain, 1870-1914: Colman's, Reckitt's, and Lever Brothers

The three companies whose history forms the subject of thisarticle became leaders in a sector of the British economy—consumergoods—generally regarded as one of the most successfulin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Productinnovation and development, achieved internally or through acquisition,enabled these firms to become market leaders. We therefore analyzethe processes of product development within the three firms,using a systematic framework that allows us to offer generalizationsabout the process of product innovation and development in theconsumer goods sector in Britain. We conclude that gradual modification,rather than revolutionary innovation, was characteristic ofproduct development in the household goods trade, and that technologywas less important for success than marketing skill.     

Jonathan A. Grant. Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

Jonathan Grant approaches his topic of the late nineteenth-centuryarms races with a frank admission that he believes such developmentsare best understood through the particularity of the events,rather than through some theoretical construct. As a consequenceof this orientation, he proceeds to study arms races and thearms trade through the examination of a truly impressive arrayof specific international arms deals from the 1860s throughthe first decade of the twentieth century.     

Focus groups: history,epistemology and non-individualistic consumer research

This paper provides an overview of the development and application of focus groups. It rethinks the conventional history associated with this approach in at least four ways. We reinsert a forgotten pioneer of focus groups, Herta Herzog, into our narrative. Secondly, we trace the emergence of group-based research to the work of applied psychologists in the early twentieth century and argue that the conditions of possibility for the uptake of this method were contingent on the asking of “why” questions. We follow the thread of “why” questions from the applied psychologists through to motivation research and the promotion of focus groups by Herzog to practitioners. Exploring the literature on motivation research unearths a further novel contribution: we excavate the use of “interpretative focus groups” by this community of practice. In addition, our close reading of motivation research and focus groups permits us to problematise the distinctions made by Calder [1977. “Focus Groups and the Nature of Qualitative Marketing Research.” Journal of Marketing Research 14: 353–364]. We subsequently trace the uptake of this methodology in the tobacco industry as a means of making an epistemological and political argument for the greater use of focus groups. Initially, we do so by charting the rise of social constructionism and non-individualistic consumer research. This enables us to navigate the highways and byways of discursive psychology, interpretive research, Consumer Culture Theory and on to feminist and Critical Marketing Studies. The engagement with focus groups with respect to the latter traditions is woefully underdeveloped. Our political argument is that focus group methodology can speak to the interests of many constituents in marketing theory and practice. It is not wedded to any specific social or political agenda. This means that its potential contribution to the study of consumption, markets and culture is multi-faceted.     

How modern banking originated: The London goldsmith-bankers' institutionalisation of trust

London goldsmith-bankers' development of paper credit-money in the seventeenth century ushered in the era of modern banking. This essay argues that this innovation of paper credit-money by goldsmith-bankers was the institutionalisation of the double-ownership scheme known as trust. This trust scheme was at the centre of the custom or morality that underlay the political struggle between the Crown, landowners, and the bourgeoisie in early modern England, the struggle from which goldsmith-banking and, later, joint-stock banking developed. This double ownership remains a central feature of the present banking system. Also during the financial boom of the late twentieth century, which ended in the present world financial crisis, the trust scheme was used extensively by many financial firms, such as mutual funds, pension funds, and asset-securitisation trusts.     

Contextualizing Corporate Political Responsibilities: Neoliberal CSR in Historical Perspective

This article provides a historical contextualization of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its political role. CSR, we propose, is one form of business–society interactions reflecting a unique ideological framing. To make that argument, we compare contemporary CSR with two historical ideal-types. We explore in turn paternalism in nineteenth century Europe and managerial trusteeship in early twentieth century US. We outline how the political responsibilities of business were constructed, negotiated, and practiced in both cases. This historical contextualization shows that the frontier between economy and polity has always been blurry and shifting and that firms have played a political role for a very long time. It also allows us to show how the nature, extent, and impact of that political role changed through history and co-evolved in particular with shifts in dominant ideologies. Globalization, in that context, is not the driver of the political role of the firm but a moderating phenomenon contributing significantly to the dynamics of this shift. The comparison between paternalism, trusteeship, and contemporary CSR points to what can be seen as functional equivalents—alternative patterns of business–society interactions that each correspond, historically, to unique and distinct ideological frames. We conclude by drawing implications for future theorizing on (political) CSR and stakeholder democracy.     

论20世纪上半叶中国经济思想史研究——基于学术论文的考察

本文从20世纪上半叶发表的中国经济思想史学术论文入手，按不同标准对其进行了分类分析，揭示了该时期中国经济思想史的研究特点及其所具有的历史意义和理论价值。     

Railway Imperialism: The Example of the Pereires' Paris–Saint-Germain Company, 1835–1846

Trade marks are, and have been since the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, vital business assets. The paper argues that they (along with brand names, trade names, and company names) have been of crucial importance to the rise of the modern corporation. US law and the courts have protected these property rights at the same time as the value of these assets to the modern firm has increased. The paper explains the significant role of trade marks in the evolution of the modern enterprise; provides historical data on US laws and court rulings; compares the trade mark and the patent; and indicates how, over time, the trade mark has contributed to efficiency gains in the modern firm.     

Early retailing: London's shopping exchanges, 1550–1700

Location is an important aspect of retailing, and London entrepreneurs recognized it as early as the 1560s in building exchanges to house a collection of shops, taking them off the street. These shopping centres created a special shopping environment: shelter, safety, and shop agglomeration. Soon shoppers put on their own social display there, a further shopping attraction. Up to five of these centres existed in late seventeenth-century London, capturing about half of all shops. But the reputation of these facilities declined over time, the institution of shopping ‘mall’ apparently not continued or emulated again until the twentieth century.