Aufsätze (Articels)

Paul Windolf, The German-Jewish Economic Elite (1900 to 1930), S. 135-162.

Peter Heyman, Belgian Catholics entrepreneurs’ organizations, 1880 to 1940. A dialogue on social responsibility, S. 163- 86.

Veit Damm/Ulrike Schulze/Swen Steinberg/Sylvia Wölfel, Ostdeutsche Unternehmen im Transformationsprozess 1935 bis 1995. Ein neues Forschungsfeld der modernen Unternehmensgeschichte, S. 187-205.

Valerio Cerretano, European Cartels an Technology Transfer: the experience of the rayon industry, 1920 to 1940, S. 206-224.

ABSTRACTS

Paul Windolf
The German-Jewish Economic Elite (1900 to1930)
In the early 20th century, a dense corporate network was created among large German corporations, with about 16 percent of the members of this corporate network of Jewish background. At the centre of the network (big linkers) about 25 percent were Jewish. The percentage of Jews in the general population was less than one percent in 1914. What comparative advantages did the Jewish minority enjoy that enabled them to succeed in the competition for leading positions in the German economy? Three hypotheses are tested: (1) The Jewish minority was integrated in a dense network of solidarity, which provided it with comparative advantages in competing with non-Jewish entrepreneurs (hypothesis: embeddedness); (2) The Jewish minority had a high level of education that enabled it to gain access to positions of leadership in big companies during a period in which science and tech¬no¬logy became very important for industrial production (hypothesis: human capital); (3) The Jewish minority possessed experience in banking and the financing of large projects since the Middle Ages which gave Jewish bankers comparative advantages in entrepreneurial financing (hypothesis: Jewish private bankers). Our data do not support any of these hypotheses. The observed correlation between Jewish background and network centrality cannot be explained by a higher level of education, a higher level of social capital, or a higher proportion of Jewish managers engaged in (private) banking.

Peter Heyrman
Belgian Catholic entrepreneurs' organizations,1880 to 1940. A dialogue on social responsibility
During the last decades of the 19th century and the interwar period the Belgian Catholic Church entered into an intense dialogue with the entrepreneurial milieu. Building on older networks several Catholic entrepreneurs' organizations were created. These structures developed intricate discourses, confronting business men with their social responsibility, shaping and affirming their identity and worldview in contrast to that of their liberal counterparts. Belgian Catholic entrepreneurs associations radiated a particular organizational culture, exuding a genteel atmosphere of a socio-religious debating club. But they also advocated a clear Christian identity, in line with Catholic social teachings and neo-scholastic philosophy. Only a (re)Christianization of the business world, so they argued, would provide a durable solution to existing social tensions. The bon patron catholique had to become an instrument of moral regeneration and social renovation. Members were urged to highlight the Catholic identity of their company, to guide and monitor the families that worked for them and to offer clear and regular support to social works. The discourse of the Belgian Catholic entrepreneurial organizations on the social responsibility of their members would only slowly move away from its paternalist roots. Nonetheless in the interwar period a more structural vision on social relations arose, resulting into a closer collaboration with the Christian workers movement. This prepared the Belgian Catholic entrepreneurs’ organizations for their leading role in the post-war welfare state and its systems of interest mediation and collective bargaining.

Veit Damm/Ulrike Schulz/Swen Steinberg/Sylvia Wölfel
East German companies in the process of transformation from 1935 to 1995. A new research area of modern business history
The history of companies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) has been neglected until very recently. Historical research on the East German economy continues to explain the economic decline of the GDR with the structural deficits rooted in the planned economy. Based on the assumption that under those conditions companies neither had much freedom of movement nor much economic influence, their role and history is considered marginal at best, irrelevant at worst. The present article challenges this assumption. Its authors argue that businesses played an important role in keeping alive and stabilizing the East German economy, and that without them the GDR as a political system could not have survived for forty years. To investigate the economic and political relevance of companies in the history of the GDR, an overarching research program is necessary, one that allows for a methodologically refined, empirically anchored analysis of East German business history. The authors offer a suggestion for such a research program called Business History as Transformation History. Arguing that the procedural dimension of business history needs to be taken into consideration more systematically, they challenge the political caesurae of 1945 and 1989, which are traditionally employed in historical research on the GDR, and call for historical studies that investigate the time between 1935 and 1995 in order to do justice to the economic, structural, and local conditions and constraints under which the companies operated. Similarly, the far-reaching transformations businesses experienced in the 70s, a phenomenon that has been discussed with regard to Western Europe recently, should receive due attention. Finally, the authors argue that the economic performance of East German companies should be analyzed not in isolation but in the context of national and international trade relations, both within and outside of COMECON.The article begins with an outline of the research program Business History as transformation history. It then presents three case studies to exemplify the research agenda, each of them analyzing different phases of transformation.

Valerio Cerretano
European Cartels and Technology Transfer: the experience of the rayon industry, 1920 to 1940
Business historians generally agree that European cartels, while proliferating after 1918, favoured the international spread of technology. Moving along similar lines, economist Baumol has argued that big firms sell proprietary technology and cooperate on the technological front with the double fold aim to make a profit and to internalise knowledge spillovers. This article qualifies both claims suggesting a less optimistic view about the effects of the visible hand of international cartels. The history of the rayon industry, a high-tech sector until 1940, shows that cartels tended to inflate the price of borrowed technology and to influence the direction of technology flows. Another important conclusion is that the successful adoption of technology did not necessarily translate into expansion for the receptor firms, for the cartel leaders, i.e. the licensors, tended either to retain vital information or to check the growth of the licensees by attaching certain commercial limitations to the sale of know-how.
Buchbesprechungen

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