Christopher McKenna. The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century

In this engrossing study of management consulting, ChristopherMcKenna seeks to understand the prominence of consulting withinAmerican business. Focusing on a small set of elite consultingfirms, but frequently discussing others, McKenna argues thatthe legitimacy and knowledge sold by consultants to their clientswere rooted in the growing complexity and internationalizationof the American economy (the forces conventionally invoked toexplain consulting's rise), as well as changes in federal regulationsin the 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s.     

Keetie E. Sluyterman. Dutch Enterprise in the Twentieth Century: Business strategies in a Small Open Economy

Keetie Sluyterman's book is a prominent synthesis of the twentieth-centuryeconomic history of the Netherlands from a business historyperspective with a main focus on the varying business strategiesapplied by Dutch businesses. Sluyterman demonstrates how businesshistory can add the essential elements to our understanding. Sluyterman organizes the book chronologically in four periods.The first period covers the years from 1895 to 1914, where theworld economy     

Mark H. Rose, Bruce E. Seely, and Paul F. Barrett. The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century

As the mammoth title of this book suggests, the three authors,Mark Rose, Bruce Seely and the late Paul Barrett, cover publicpolicy matters that relate to the core forms of commercial transportationin the United States during the past century. In the process,they first examine railroads, indicating that progressive-erapoliticians brought about harsh statutes that damaged the earningspowers of these quasi-public corporations. Following the periodof federalization     

Sally H. Clarke. Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market

Buying a car, the old adage tells us, is "the most importantpurchase you will ever make, after your home." Sally Clarkehas written an extremely important and insightful book thatexplores the never-ending tug-of-war between companies, consumers,and the state to define the parameters of America's most importantmarket. At the core of this broad, longitudinal study, is thesimple yet elegant notion that the marketplace, and the relationshipbetween consumers and firms, shapes not only the organization     

Is It Who You Know? Entrepreneurs and Bankers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This article examines the trust-producing mechanisms investorsand financiers used in São Paulo, Brazil, to determinewhere to invest their money in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. The coffee boom that began in the 1880sspurred bursts of new domestic business development that transformedSão Paulo into Brazil's industrial leader. Using shareholderand director data from an array of business sectors, this articledemonstrates that early development (1856–1905) of theinstitutions that provided business finance was accompaniedby highly personal relationships between financier and entrepreneur.By the early twentieth century (1906–1920), rapid economicgrowth and business diversification rendered these personalconnections inadequate and hence less important to businessfinance. Investors and directors concentrated their energiesand their money, abandoning the practice of forming broad connectionsin general—and connections to a bank in particular—andturned to the stock market instead. By providing an alternativeto personal forms of trust production, the rise of impersonalintermediation promoted the significantly broadened market forcorporate business formation that underwrote São Paulo'seconomic transformation.     

Uncertainty,Power, and Organizational Decision Making: A Constructive Replication and Some Extensions

This study examines the effect of uncertainty on the use of power and various decision criteria in resource-allocation decision making. Using a methodology similar to that of Pfeffer et al (1976), the study explores how power affected decisions in the allocation of research funds in four major scientific fields. Consistent with our hypothesis and that of Pfeffer et al, it was found that as uncertainty increases, power differences (using measures similar to those of Pfeffer et al) become more important in influencing decision making outcomes. The moderating effects of scarce and visible resource-allocation decisions were also examined. The data suggests that scarce and highly visible allocations tend to be influenced more by measures indicating power differences, with a concomitant increase in the influence of objective decision criteria. Lastly, the power of a sub-unit was also measured and its effect on resource allocation examined. Sub-unit power was found to be more critical in influencing decision making when uncertainty was high. Résumé Cette étude examine les effets de l'incertitude sur l'usage du pouvoir et les critères de décisions en matière d'allocation des ressources. Cette étude, qui utilise une méthodologie semblable à celle de Pfeffer et al (1976), explore comment le pouvoir influence la prise de décision relative à l'allocation de fonds de recherche dans quatre domaines scientifiques importants. En concordance avec notre hypothèse, ainsi que celle de Pfeffer et al, l'étude indique qu'à mesure qu'augmente l'incertitude, les différences de pouvoir (les méthodes étant semblables à celles de Pfeffer et al) influencent davantage la prise de décision. Les effets modérateurs de décisions relatives à l'allocation de ressources rares mais visibles ont également été examinées. Les données suggèrent que des allocations rares mais très visibles sont davantage influencées par des facteurs indiquant les différences de pouvoir accompagnées d'une augmentation correspondante des critères décisionnels objectifs. En dernier lieu, le pouvoir des sous-unités a également été mesuré et les effets sur l'allocation des ressources ont été examinés. Selon les résultats de l'étude, l'influence du pouvoir sur la sous-unité se fait plus forte lorsque le niveau d'incertitude est plus élevé.     

JoAnne Yates. Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2005. x + 351 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8086-6, $49.95.

Structuring the Information Age delineates the incorporationof the computer into the life insurance bureaucracy and howlife insurance affected the rise of computers. The life insuranceindustry is an excellent choice for a study of how informationtechnology ‘revolutions’ actually are incrementallyappropriated by enterprises and society. Insurance as a financialintermediary depends on information for its existence. Changesin information manipulation fundamentally affect managementpractice. Moreover, it was a large market for producers of businessmachines. The industry     

David L. Lightner. Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War

David L. Lightner has written a valuable analysis of the comingof the American Civil War. Working under the assumption thatcontroversies surrounding slavery were the primary causes ofthe conflict, he offers new interpretive insights about thosedisputes. In particular, he asserts that the power of the Federalgovernment to regulate commerce was a potential weapon thatcould have been used to regulate or even abolish the interstatetrade in slaves. Observing that most previous scholars have     

Atsushi Akera. Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers during the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research

This ambitious book retells a familiar story by introducingnew evidence and new perspectives. The story is the originsof American computer development in the middle decades of thetwentieth century. The new evidence includes archival sourcesfrom academia and industry. The new perspective is constructivistand postconstructivist theory. The results are simultaneouslypredictable and illuminating. Akera's book is not so much a revised narrative as it is a successionof case studies, some familiar and some original. Conventional     

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. ix + 366 pp. ISBN 0-674-01720-x, $29.95 (Hardcover).

This book is a companion to Alfred Chandler’s previousbook, Inventing the Electronic Century, and provides a broadhistory of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries roughlyfrom the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentiethcentury. The history of the chemical and pharmaceutical industriesis remarkable because they are old industries, emerging after1880, and because a small number of companies quickly dominatedthem and have continued to do     

Lisa Jacobson. Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. xvi + 299 pp. ISBN 0-231-11388-9, $35.00 (cloth).

Ever since the publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theoryof the Leisure Class (1899), economists and other social scientistshave studied the importance of consumption to the economy ofthe United States. There are numerous studies of patterns ofconsumption, but, Jacobson argues, the role of children hasbeen seriously neglected. The children Jacobson studies werenot just miniature shoppers; they were "cultural icons" whohelped to establish the legitimacy of consumption in Americansociety (p. 2). Early in the twentieth century