Red, White, and "Big Blue": IBM and the Business-Government Interface in the United States, 1956-2000

This article describes the evolution of IBM's effort to manageits relationships with the U.S. government from the time thatThomas Watson, Jr. became CEO. While the Watson family controlledthe firm, the family members served as the main bridges betweenIBM and the government. This personalized approach began togive way in the 1960s, as the intensity and scope of pressurefrom the firm's political environment grew beyond the capabilityof any individual to handle. During the 1970s and 1980s, IBMconstructed a managerial hierarchy, with a newly opened Washingtonoffice at its center, which could gather more detailed intelligenceand execute more sophisticated political strategies. The firm'scrisis in the early 1990s provoked a second major restructuringof the interface, as IBM became more of a Washington "specialinterest." Yet, some traces of the Watson imprint remained,even in the Gerstner era. Tracing IBM's evolution helps us tounderstand better the broader interactions between U.S. firmsand their environments in this period. These interactions entailedadaptation by firms to environmental change but also effortsby firms to exert control over external forces, including publicpolicy.     

Jason Scott Smith. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956

Jason Scott Smith's ambitious, some might say overly-ambitious,goal is to "construct a new narrative" of the New Deal's significanceby using the lens of political economy to examine and explainhow the policies initiated during that historical phase "revolutionizedthe priorities of the American state, radically transformingthe physical landscape, political system, and economy of theUnited States" (p. 1). Smith most certainly does not see NewDeal policies as failures that were incapable of getting theU.S.     

Thomas Metcalf. Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920

Here is an imperial connection: Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe(with an "e"), 4th Baronet, served as agent of the Governor-Generalof British India at the court of the Mughal Emperor BahadurShah. This was in the years immediately preceding the periodof this book by the nearly eponymous Thomas Metcalf (no "e"),Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Californiaat Berkeley. The similarity of names is a coincidence, but thetwo Toms share a     

J. Walter Thompson, the Good Neighbor Policy, and Lessons in Mexican Business Culture, 1920-1950

This article looks at the corporate history of J. Walter Thompsonto examine the nature of U.S.-Mexican relations in the aftermathof the Great Depression and World War II. It contends that localconditions, along with a cadre of "progressive" Good NeighborPolicy diplomats, forced American companies to adopt the roleof "commercial diplomats," altering the nature of what, up to1940, had been a tense and bitter binational relationship. Thearticle shows how Thompson's role as a commercial diplomat changedits previous "capitalist missionary" approach and how it complementedAmerican diplomacy, including national security measures todisplace German commercial influence in Mexico during Word WarII.     

Koo Yuen Kim, D.P.T.J, J.P

古润金,1959年出生于马来西亚吉隆坡,祖籍中国中山市,系马来西亚杰出华裔企业家,也是马、中两国颇具知名度的慈善家,现任马来西亚中山会馆联合会会长、广肇联合总会副会长、华人剧艺研究会副会长、华人艺人公会荣誉会长、中国香港中山社团联合会荣誉会长、中国中山侨资企业协会会长、中山市总商会副会长等多个华人社团领袖职务。     

Thomas C. Owen. Dilemmas of Russian Capitalism: Fedor Chizhov and Corporate Enterprise in the Railroad Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. xiv + 275 pp. ISBN 0-674-01549-5, $49.95.

Fedor Chizhov (1811–1877) has long been undervalued inthe history of Imperial Russia, despite his manifest importancein journalism, Slavophile ideology, the development of industry,railroads, banking, and economic thought. The reasons for thisneglect are twofold. From a practical point of view, the sourcethat most illuminates Chizhov and his context—the candidand detailed diary he kept from the age of fourteen—hasnot been available to western researchers until recently, andSoviet (and later Russian) researchers made little use of it.The reason     

The Suez Company's Concession in Egypt, 1854-1956: Modern Infrastructure and Local Economic Development

For over a century in Egypt, the Suez Canal Company reflectedthe role of the concession in European economic expansion overseas.Concession was a European business practice widespread in Egypt;it was an institution inherited from a system of privilegesfor Europeans since the Middle Ages. It promised a way for Egyptto adopt modern infrastructures and receive needed Europeanhelp for digging the canal. The results of the Suez Companyare indisputable: the desert of the Suez Isthmus became a livelyeconomic region with active ports, growing cities, and an expandinglabor force. And the region was linked to the rest of the countryby a new road network. At the same time, however, the concessionsystem denied Egypt full benefit of this infrastructure. Thecanal served the financial and strategic interests of the company,not the interests of the local economy. This outcome embodiedall the contradictions of the concession system: on the onehand, concessions were a necessity for modern infrastructuredevelopment in Egypt; on the other, they were a hindrance tofurther national economic development.     

Martin J. Iversen. GN Store Nord. A Company in Transition, 1939-1988

The history of the Great Northern Telegraph Company (GN), asa born multinational enterprise, an exception in Danish businesshistory, starts in 1869. International telegraphy had been itscore business for seventy years when the board of the companyin 1939, "made a historical decision" (p. 9) and supplementedtelegraphy activities by investments in the manufacturing industry.Although the year 1988     

Petrick,J.A. and Qulnn,J.F., Management Ethics: Integrity at Work

Teaching Business Ethics -     

Janelle S. Taylor, Linda L. Layne, and Danielle F. Wozniak, eds. Consuming Motherhood. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. ix + 323 pp. ISBN 0-8135-3429-1, $62.00 (cloth); 0-8135-3430-5, $22.95 (paper).

Motherhood imposes a birth of sorts for the women involved,according to the various authors in this exceptionally wellintegrated and provocative volume of essays. Women are rebornto a new status of ‘mother’ and simultaneously asa new kind of consumer of goods—goods in the form of services,consumer products, and even of babies. This volume weds thestudy of consumerism to the anthropological study of motherhoodand represents a genuine contribution to an array of fields,including     

Richard J. Orsi. Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xxii + 615 pp. ISBN 0-520-20019-5, $29.95.

This richly detailed labor of love by Richard J. Orsi attempts"a new approach to an important theme in the history of theAmerican Far West: the complex impact of a large, powerful businesscorporation on the process of settlement, economic development,and environmental change in a frontier region" (p. xiii). Itpays scant attention to traditional corporate history, withits emphasis on leaders, interline relations, politics, regulation,labor, freight, and passenger matters. Orsi dispatches