The pioneering journal in its field, Business History Review, began publication in 1926 as the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society. BHR seeks to publish articles based on rigorous primary research that address major topics of debate, offer comparative perspectives, and broaden consideration of the subject. We are interested in the history of entrepreneurs, firms, and business systems, and in the subjects of innovation, globalization, and regulation. We also explore the relation of businesses to political regimes and to the environment.
Editorial
Editors' Note Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 1 – 1 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000033 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Research Articles
A Short History of the Norwegian Oil Industry: From Protected National Champions to Internationally Competitive Multinationals Helge Ryggvik Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 3 – 41 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000045 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015 This study explores how Norway, as a latecomer to oil production, was able to develop both effective oil companies and an internationally competitive oil service industry. The article focuses on two rather distinct phases: the protectionist phase, in which a strong focus on local content fostered skilled Norwegian oil companies as well as a national oil service industry, and the phase of liberalization or financialization, where new forms of contact and openness to foreign ownership laid the basis for internationally oriented Norwegian oil companies and oil supply and service firms.
Building the “World's Pharmacy”: The Rise of the German Pharmaceutical Industry, 1871–1914 Tobias Cramer Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 43 – 73 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000057 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015 The German pharmaceutical industry dominated global drug creation from the late nineteenth century to World War I. Most of the industry's products were based on extensive scientific research. However, the research intensity of products varied across companies and intensified over time. A main contribution of this article is thus to identify different groups of firms within the industry and provide an analysis of their product portfolios before 1914. This essay embeds scientific developments in a coevolutionary framework of science, firms, and institutions and shows that the industry's research capabilities were complemented by other important factors for corporate success.
Transatlantic Influence in the Shaping of Business Education: The Origins of IMD, 1946–1990 Thomas David, Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 75 – 97 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000069 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015 The history of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), one of the most prestigious business schools in the world, highlights the role of multinationals in establishing business education in Europe and the problem of legitimacy. The creation of IMD's predecessors CEI and IMEDE by Alcan and Nestlé also illuminates the role of Harvard Business School in their development and the reciprocal influences of American and European management education after World War II.
Managers and Ministers: Instilling Christian Free Enterprise in the Postwar Workplace Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Ken Fones-Wolf Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 99 – 124 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000070 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015 This article examines the early industrial chaplain movement. In the midst of a postwar religious revival, companies, primarily in the South, hired Protestant ministers to care for their workers' spiritual needs. Many were motivated by both religious convictions and the desire to build a productive, loyal workforce. The opposition of unions and liberal Protestantism slowed the movement's growth, although over the last three decades thousands of employers have rediscovered the benefits of faith-based workplace programs. This article illuminates important postwar trends such as the persistence of paternalism and the importance of religion in managerial strategies.
Announcement
Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 125 – 127 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000082 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Review Essay
Prophet of Perspective: Thomas K. McCraw Richard R. John Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 129 – 153 doi: 10.1017/S0007680514001020 (About doi) Published Online on 06th February 2015 Thomas K. McCraw is justly admired as a consummate prose stylist, a talented editor, a perceptive historian of the United States, and an inspiring teacher whose mastery of the biographical form led to a string of elegantly written prize-winning publications that are widely read and often taught. The publication one month before McCraw's death in November 2012 of his last book, The Founders and Finance, provides the occasion for this essay, which contends that McCraw also deserves to be remembered as a founder of two thriving academic subfields—policy history and the history of capitalism—despite the fact that he trained relatively few history PhD students, and rarely appeared in public during the final years of his life as the result of a debilitating illness that greatly limited his mobility.
Book Reviews
Reimagining Business History. By Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. x + 260 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $24.95. ISBN: cloth, 978-1-4214-0861-3; paper, 978-1-4214-0862-0. Noam Maggor Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 155 – 157 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000094 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Reinventing State Capitalism: Leviathan in Business, Brazil and Beyond. By Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. viii + 347 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $55.00. ISBN: 978-0-674-72968-1. Robert Millward Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 158 – 160 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000100 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Food Co-ops in America: Communities, Consumption, and Economic Democracy. By Anne Meis Knupfer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. xi + 273 pp. Photographs, appendix, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-8014-5114-0. Michael A. Haedicke Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 160 – 162 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000112 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America. By Kara W. Swanson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. 333 pp. Illustrations, photographs, notes, index. Cloth, $35.00. ISBN: 978-0-674-28143-1. Marc Stern Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 162 – 165 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000124 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism. Edited by Rebecca Kobrin. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012. viii + 311 pp. Photographs, illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $70.00; paper, $26.95. ISBN: cloth, 978-0-8135-5307-8; paper, 978-0-8135-5308-5. Peter Eisenstadt Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 165 – 168 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000136 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Dangerously Sleepy: Overworked Americans and the Cult of Manly Wakefulness. By Alan Derickson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. xiii + 224 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $49.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4553-0. Patricia A. Reeve Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 168 – 170 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000148 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century. By Robert E. Gallamore and John R. Meyer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. xiii + 506 pp. Tables, maps, notes, index. Cloth, $55.00. ISBN: 978-0-674-72564-5. Albert J. Churella Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 170 – 173 doi: 10.1017/S000768051500015X (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
The Garage: Automobility and Building Innovation in America's Early Auto Age. By John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. xvii + 263 pp. Illustrations, photographs, maps, figures, notes, index. Paper, $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-57233-958-3. Howard R. Stanger Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 173 – 175 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000161 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
The Origins, History, and Future of the Federal Reserve: A Return to Jekyll Island. Edited by Michael D. Bordo and William Roberds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xix + 431 pp. Figures, tables, references, index. Cloth, $99.00. ISBN: 978-1-107-01372-8. Wyatt Wells Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 175 – 177 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000173 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
The Role of Central Banks in Financial Stability: How Has It Changed? Edited by Douglas D. Evanoff, Cornelia Holthausen, George G. Kaufman, and Manfred Kremer. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2014. xi + 455 pp. Figures, tables. Cloth, $138.00. ISBN: 978-981-4449-91-5. Forrest Capie Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 178 – 179 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000185 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Les Banques centrales à l'échelle du monde [Central Banks at World Scale]. Edited by Olivier Feiertag and Michel Margairaz. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2012. 288 pp. Figures, illustrations, tables, references. Paper, €33.00. ISBN: 978-2-7246-1178-6. Martin Horn Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 179 – 181 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000197 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
The World's First Stock Exchange. By Lodewijk Petram. Translated by Lynne Richards. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. vi + 296 pp. Tables, figures, maps, illustrations, glossary, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-231-16378-1. Jeroen Puttevils Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 181 – 184 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000203 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain. By Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013. xv + 294 pp. Illustrations, photographs, notes, index. Cloth, $40.00. ISBN: 978-0-262-01903-3. Steven Wilf Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 184 – 186 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000215 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947. By Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xiv + 256 pp. Tables, bibliography, index. Cloth, $85.00; paper, $29.99. ISBN: cloth, 978-1-107-03364-1; paper, 978-1-107-65783-0. David Hochfelder Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 187 – 189 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000227 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England. By David Koistinen. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. xii + 331 pp. Figures, tables, appendix, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $74.95. ISBN: 978-0-8130-4907-6. Tami J. Friedman Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 189 – 192 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000239 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Lo sviluppo sospeso: Il Mezzogiorno e l'impresa pubblica, 1948–1973 [Suspended Development: The Italian South and Public Enterprises, 1948–1973]. By Augusto De Benedetti. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2013. 265 pp. Index. Paper, €17.00. ISBN: 978-88-498-3692-9. Fabio Lavista Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 192 – 194 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000240 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
“Rattraper et dépasser la Suisse”: Histoire de l'industrie horlogère japonaise de 1850 à nos jours [“Catch Up and Surpass Switzerland”: History of the Japanese Watch Industry from 1850 to the Present Day]. By Pierre-Yves Donzé. Neuchâtel: Éditions Alphil-Presses universitaires suisses, 2014. 504 pp. Tables, notes, index. Cloth, CHF 39.00. ISBN: 978-2-940489-98-5. Eric Godelier Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 194 – 197 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000252 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942. By G. Roger Knight. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2013. xi + 291 pp. Photographs, map, appendix, bibliography, index. Cloth, $146.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-25051-2. Ulbe Bosma Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 197 – 200 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000264 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Stones of Contention: A History of Africa's Diamonds. By Todd Cleveland. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014. xii + 225 pp. Illustrations, photographs, maps, figures, tables, notes, index. Paper, $26.95. ISBN: 978-0-8214-2100-0. Andrew Cohen Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 200 – 202 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000276 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015
Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism. By Leigh A. Gardner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xvi + 271 pp. Figures, tables, maps, references, index. Cloth, $110.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-966152-7. Morten Jerven Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 01 , March 2015 pp 202 – 204 doi: 10.1017/S0007680515000288 (About doi) Published Online on 15th April 2015