Mavericks and Mavens of Business History: Miriam Beard and Henrietta Larson

This is the story of two women with differing visions aboutbusiness who have largely been forgotten. Miriam Beard, themaverick daughter of Progressive reformers Charles and MaryBeard, wrote the first international cultural history of thebusinessman in 1938. Henrietta M. Larson was Harvard BusinessSchool's first lady, the first female faculty member and thefirst woman to be tenured there. The two women never met orinteracted. Yet their lives and histories were entangled whenone woman, Henrietta, wrote a critical review about the contributionsof the other. This article uses their untold story to tracethe contentious process of professionalization that sidelinedone maverick outsider and kept a maven insider on the marginsof a fledgling discipline she had helped to create. Its significanceis to make gender central to the reintegration of business andculture and of women's roles in the historiography of business.     

Towards a measure of financial fragility

The paper proposes a measure of financial fragility that is based on economic welfare in a general equilibrium model calibrated against UK data. The model comprises a household sector, three active heterogeneous banks, a central bank/regulator, incomplete markets, and endogenous default. We address the impact of monetary and regulatory policy, credit and capital shocks in the real and financial sectors and how the response of the economy to shocks relates to our measure of financial fragility. Finally we use panel VAR techniques to investigate the relationships between the factors that characterise financial fragility in our model, i.e. banks’ probabilities of default and banks’ profits – to a proxy of welfare.      

Manufacturing Industries in the UK: Was there Convergence during the 1968–1992 Period?

This paper uses detailed industry level time-series data for the UK regions which suggests that convergence (at least in terms of output-per-employee) was not occurring during the period 1968–92. Based on testing for unit roots, it is found that in a majority of industries and regions growth was divergent, and consequently there is little empirical support for the neoclassical 'long‐run catch up' model.     

Paternalism, Limited Paternalism and the Pontius Pilate Plight When Researching Children

Recognizing the immense purchasing power of children, marketing researchers often gather information from them. Given the vulnerability of these children as research subjects, this paper explores the different ethical standards that marketing researchers could adopt in their research efforts. The Paternalistic Ethical Standard and the Limited Paternalistic Ethical Standard are discussed and the ethical quandary known as the Pontius Pilate Plight is identified in the context of the latter standard. An enhanced version of the Limited Paternalistic Standard is suggested as an ethical guide for marketing researchers. Based on interviews with professional marketing researchers to gauge the applicability of the proposed standard, managerial implications are identified.