147 Posts Found

An important American thinker in the early part of the twentieth century, James Burnham saw owners and managers in a perpetual struggle for power. In important respects, his ideas still resonate.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, History, People

Business historian Tedlow (Harvard Business Sch.) presents seven magnates in a historical context that reflects the growth of the United States as an economic power from the mid-1800s to the latter part of the 20th century. Presenting biographical essays divided chronologically into three sections, he first discusses Andrew Carnegie (U.S. Steel), George Eastman (Kodak), and Henry Ford (automobiles) and their contributions to the emergence of … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Richard S. Tedlow | Subjects: History, People

In the U.S. in 1906, the prominent private bank Kuhn Loeb – prompted by the scandal of the Armstrong Investigation – withdrew from the boards of all non-bank corporations. This historical announcement changed the course of corporate governance, and ultimately prevented private banks from being activist shareholders in the United States. In the paper “The Value of Private Banks in Corporate Governance: Evidence From the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Miguel Cantillo | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Finance, History | Industry: Finance / Banking

A study of history yields important clues about what helps economies enjoy sustained economic growth.

Content: Article | Authors: George David Smith, Richard Sylla, Robert E. Wright | Source: STERNbusiness (NYU) | Subjects: Economics, History

Professor, author and prominent economic advisor Silber chronicles an era when the U.S.’s reliance on the gold standard was leading it head-on into its first major financial crisis. The outbreak of WWI in 1914 yielded the biggest gold outflow in a generation, jeopardizing America’s reputation with creditor nations and sending the world market value of the dollar into a tailspin. Enter Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: William L. Silber | Subjects: Finance, History | Industry: Finance / Banking

When we think about technology, we immediately think about invention and innovation and the future, and not about how things come into use. We’re always so enthusiastic about what’s going to happen in five or 10 years’ time. But we lack an explicit history of technology, by which I mean a history of the vast number of products that are in use at any particular … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: History, IT / Technology / E-Business

A new book argues that the origins of American financial dominance can be traced to a bold decision to close the New York Stock Exchange for more than four months.

Content: Article | Author: William Silber | Source: STERNbusiness (NYU) | Subject: History | Industry: Finance / Banking

“Any study of the history of Silicon Valley should start with a magazine article by perhaps the greatest literary journalist of our time, Tom Wolfe. In this 1983 Esquire piece, Wolfe offers a highly engaging profile of the charismatic founder of Intel and tells the story of the founding of the computer chip business. It’s a terrific tale: A group of young geniuses, many still … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tom Wolfe | Source: Esquire | Subjects: History, Industry Specific | Industry: Semiconductor

Celebrated by Peter Drucker as a key influence, Walther Rathenau deserves to be remembered as a major figure in pre-War Germany.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: History, People

Three cheers for “exuberant, foolish, mad overinvestment!” Slate columnist Gross takes a counterintuitive look at economic bubbles-those once-in-a-generation crazes that everyone knows can’t last, and don’t. With each one, we lament having gotten in too late, and then not having gotten out soon enough, and finally shake our heads at the inevitable bankruptcies and lost jobs and general financial wreckage. The pattern is all too … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Daniel Gross | Subjects: Economics, History

n this shrewd piece of intellectual history, former Boston Globe columnist Warsh shows how two contradictory concepts of Adam Smith-the invisible hand and the division of labor (famously, at a pin factory)-took on lives of their own after their 1776 publication in The Wealth of Nations, and then finally converged in the work of late 20th century economist Paul Romer. In the first half of … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: David Warsh | Subjects: Economics, History

n 2004, The American Finance Association Board approved a project to record aspects of the History of Finance. Stephen Buser was appointed Historian with the mission to produce video interviews with important contributors to financial economic knowledge. Links to streaming videos of edited versions of interviews with Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Paul Samuelson and Robert Merton are posted below. Transcripts of the full texts of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: American Finance Association (AFA) | Subjects: Finance, History

This article attempts to trace the development and summarise the current state of strategic thinking and “strategy theory” in business.

Editor’s Note: dont’ let the introductory text and use of word “survey” fool you – this article is a great short history of the development of the various major approaches to strategy analysis.

Content: Article | Author: Gert Bruche | Source: Berlin School of Economics (FHW-Berlin) | Subjects: History, Strategy

This article provides an overview on the rise and fall of cartels since the late 19th century when the modern cartel movement properly arrived with the rise of big business based on scale and scope. The general narrative about cartels may not be a story of rise and fall, but rise, boom, collapse, revitalization, gradual decline, and then criminalization. Yet, until the 1980s, the global … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Fear | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: History

An original thinker and a pioneer of the theory of harmonisation, Polish born Karol Adamiecki deserves to regain his place as one of Europe’s foremost management gurus.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: History, People

He turned a family-run gunpowder factory into a giant corporation, and rebuilt a faltering General Motors. Pierre du Pont proves that even the most moribund company can be rescued with the right management skills.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: History, People

A book about the history of the shipping container? At first, one has to wonder why. (An eventuality not lost on the author, who muses “What is it about the container that is so important? Surely not the thing itself…the standard container has all the romance of a tin can.”) The catch, though, is that Levinson, an economist, “treats containerization not as shipping news, but … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Marc Levinson | Subjects: Economics, History

For the past five centuries, the political genius of Niccoló Machiavelli has been overshadowed by his reputation as a cold supporter of corrupt ruling. Only recently have his true beliefs come to light.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: History, People

Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a scholarly but highly readable trip through the history of financial crises from the Mississippi and South-Sea bubbles to the June, 1974, failures of the Herstatt Bank of Cologne and the Franklin Bank of New York. Kindleberger’s goal is to illustrate the causes and consequences of mania (a bubble in asset prices driven by an irrational excitement about business possibilities), … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Charles P. Kindleberger | Subjects: Finance, History | Industry: Finance / Banking

In a 30-year career equally divided between academics (University of Chicago) and Wall Street, Black contributed seminal papers in almost every area of finance and many areas of economics, but few were published in major peer-reviewed journals and many were never published at all. He spent most of his time alone in a room thinking and writing, was uncomfortable in large groups, an undistinguished lecturer … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Perry Mehrling | Subjects: Finance, History