Browse

The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms which have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us. This book provides an authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today' s global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty, and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and its association with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world. Today globalization is changing the beauty industry again; its impact can be seen in a range of competing strategies. Global brands have swept into China, Russia, and India, but at the same time, these brands are having to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets are opened up worldwide.

AB InBev is today’s uncontested world leader of the beer market. It represents over 20 per cent of global beer sales, with more than 450 million hectolitres a year flowing all around the world. Its Belgian predecessor, Interbrew, was a success story stemming from the 1971 secret merger of the country’s two leading brewers: Artois and Piedboeuf. Based on first-hand material originating from company and private archives as well as interviews with managers and key family actors, this is the first study to explore the history of the company through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The story starts in the mid-nineteenth century with the scientific breakthroughs that revolutionized the beer industry and allowed both Artois and Piedboeuf to prosper in a local environment. Instrumental in this respect were the respective families and their successive heirs in stabilizing and developing their firms. Despite the intense difficulties of two world wars in the decades to follow, they emerged stronger than ever and through the 1960s became undisputed leaders in the national market. Then, in an unprecedented move, Artois and Piedboeuf secretly merged their shareholding in 1971, though keeping their operations separate until 1987 when they openly and operationally merged to become Interbrew. Throughout their histories Artois, Piedboeuf, and their successor companies have kept a controlling family ownership. This book provides a unique insight into both the complex history of these three family breweries and their path to becoming a prominent global company, and the growth and consolidation of the beer market through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The book is a rich account and analysis of the John Lewis Partnership. The JLP is well-known, revered, and admired, enjoying an enviable reputation for commercial success and principled business practice. And yet, among the public, commentators, and government, it is not known well at all. This book offers a deeper, more analytical understanding, revealing the tensions and dilemmas that characterize even this most well-intentioned of organizations. The US/UK model of the firm, emphasizing shareholder value and openness to the market, is prone to a number of problematic consequences, for employees, suppliers, and sometimes shareholders. JLP represents a contrast to this model—one with implications beyond the small niche of mutually-owned firms. JLP has lessons for organizations that are unlikely to move towards the Partnership’s distinctive shared ownership; this book identifies these lessons. Key questions addressed include: how does JLP work in practice? What is the link between co-ownership, the JLP employment model, and the performance of the businesses? What is the role of management in the success of John Lewis and Waitrose? Are mutuality, co-ownership, and business performance at odds? What is the significance of democracy within JLP? And probably most significantly: what are the implications for policy-makers, managers, and economic agents of the JLP? This book is based on detailed knowledge of the JLP and its constituent business gathered by the authors over a fifteen-year period. They conclude that JLP is more complex, more impressive, and more interesting than its admirers realize.

Britain's leading railway historian provides a critical examination of the Blair government's involvement in the rail industry from 1997 as they tried to deal with the UK's fragmented, privatized railways.

This is the first study of the entire British banking system from its origins in the late seventeenth century until the present. It analyses what made the British banking system the most resilient and trusted in the world and how it was able to maintain that for so long. It describes a process of continuous adaptation and innovation as the system responded to the challenges and opportunities that arose over three centuries, provides an explanation for the calamity that overtook the British banking system in 2007/8, and the insight required to restore it to the position it once occupied. To achieve that insight requires an understanding of the entire banking system, not a subset of banks. Banks are key components of a complex financial system continually interacting with each other, and constantly changing over time. This makes the conventional distinctions drawn between different types of banks inappropriate for any long-term analysis. These distinctions were neither absolute nor permanent but relative and temporary. Banks were also central to both the payments system and the money market without which no modern economy could function. Only with such an understanding is it possible to appreciate what the British banking system achieved and then maintained from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, why it was lost in such a short space of time, and what needs to be done to return it to the position it once occupied. Without such an understanding the mistakes of the recent past are destined to be repeated.

This book looks at the British motor industry. Why are there now no major car manufacturers in Britain? This book considers this and the surrounding issues, making valuable comparisons with overseas manufacturers operating both in the UK and abroad, which provides additional interest and insight. Based upon careful use of company archives, this book covers in particular the issues of product development, quality, design, and range.

Britain's privatized railways continue to provoke debate about the organization, financing, and development of the railway system. This important book provides an authoritative account of the progress made by British Rail prior to privatization, and a unique insight into its difficult role in the government's privatization planning from 1989. Based on free access to the British Railway Board's archives, the book provides an analysis of the main themes: a process of continuous organizational change; the existence of a persistent government audit; perennial investment restraints; the directive to reduce operating costs and improve productivity; a concern with financial performance, technological change, service quality, and the management of industrial relations; and the Board's ambiguous position as the Conservative government pressed home its privatization programme. The introduction of sector management from 1982 and the ‘Organizing for Quality’ initiative of the early 1990s, the Serpell Report on railway finances of 1983, the sale of the subsidiary businesses, the large-scale investment in the Channel Tunnel, and the obsession with safety which followed the Clapham accident of 1988, are all examined. In the conclusion, the book reviews the successes and failures of the public sector, rehearses the arguments for and against integration in the railway industry, and contrasts what many have termed ‘the golden age’ of the mid-late 1980s, when the British Rail-government relationship was arguably at its most effective, with what has happened since 1994.

This volume aims to explore the long-term evolution of different varieties of large enterprises in today’s developed economies. It focuses on the economic institution of business groups and attempts to comprehend the factors behind their rise, growth, struggle, and resilience; their behavioral and organizational characteristics; and their roles in national economic development. The volume seeks to enhance the scholarly and policy-oriented understanding of business groups in developed economies by bringing together state-of-the-art research on the characteristics and contributions of large enterprises in an evolutionary perspective. While business groups are a dominant and critical organization model in contemporary emerging economies and have lately attracted much attention in academic circles and business presses, their counterparts in developed economies have not been systematically examined. This book aims to fill this gap in the literature and is the first scholarly attempt to explore the evolutional paths and contemporary roles of business groups in developed economies from an internationally comparative perspective. In doing so, it argues that business groups actually rose to function as a critical factor of industrial dynamics in the context of the Second Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century. They have adapted their characteristic roles and transformed to fit to the changing market and institutional settings. As they flexibly co-evolve with the environment, the volume shows that business groups can remain as a viable organization model in the world’s most advanced economies today.

This book brings together chapters from the leading historians of British business. The contributors were asked to consider the renaissance in the British economy during the closing decades of the 20th century. In doing so they were also asked to reconsider the debates and assertions relating to relative economic decline in Britain since the end of the 19th century. Chapters range across the economy, from banking, retail, high technology and staple industries, transport, to sports and leisure industries. In addition, key themes such as foreign investment, government policy, managerial characteristics, marketing, business, ethics, and so on have their own chapters. What emerges is a picture of complexity and reappraisal bringing into question the accuracy or applicability of much of the writing and axioms surrounding British business in the 20th century. Both the nature of economic recovery, the depth and periodization of relative decline clearly do not stand up to scrutiny. If nothing else the book disposes with the notion that a simple re-injection of market forces ideology in the 1980s changed and modernised the British economy. The book has identified both a need for a broad reappraisal to take into account the complexity underlying ideas of renaissance in the late 20th century, in addition to a need to reject unicausal explanations for the fate and possibilities of the British economy in the 21st century.

The Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance, better known as the Cadbury Committee, was set up in May 1991 to address the concerns increasingly voiced at that time about how UK companies dealt with financial reporting and accountability and the wider implications of this. The Committee was sponsored by the London Stock Exchange, the Financial Reporting Council and the accountancy profession. It published its final report and recommendations in December 1992. Central to these was a Code of Best Practice and the requirement for companies to comply with it or to explain to their shareholders why they had not done so. The recommendations and the Code provided the foundation for the current system of corporate governance in the UK and have proved very influential in corporate governance developments throughout the world. While academics and practitioners have explored and discussed the developments in corporate governance since 1992, little attention has been paid to the processes of code and policy development. This book explores the origins of the Committee, provides rich insights in to the way in which it worked and documents the reaction to the publication of the Committee’s report. The issues which the Committee addressed are still of great concern: the complex relationships through which corporations are held to account have profound effects on all our lives. The Committee provided a framework for thinking about these issues and established a process through which such thinking could be articulated and continue to evolve. This book represents a major contribution to the history of the development of UK corporate governance in the late twentieth century: the why, how, what and when of corporate governance development.

Every nation likes to believe myths about itself. Americans' belief in the superiority of their managerial know-how seemed to be among those most solidly based in reality. Yet, the author argues, despite its universal claims, American managerialism has never been more than a cultural peculiarity, one moreover whose claims to superiority had not been proved but assumed, on the premise that the best economy must have the best management. That premise, moreover, has not served American managerialism particularly well, for in the 1970s a gap opened up between the mystique of American management and the reality of a mediocre American managerial performance. The ‘mystique’ collapsed and those looking for best practice began to look elsewhere. The author provides a thorough examination of alternative forms of management that grew up in West Germany and Japan during the past decades. He argues that these alternative management forms have done a better job managing capitalist economies since the 1970s than has American managerialism. In fact, he asserts that American managerialism has become so dysfunctional that it threatens to undermine the prosperity of the American people, and America's role in the future world order. In the final chapter the author suggests ways that American management can follow in order to fulfil its original promise. Looking forward, he urges American management to unlearn much of the received wisdom and learn from the successes of others in order for the nation to enter the 21st century with a management equal to the social and economic challenges.

Challenging assumptions about the history and performance of the business corporation in the United States, this book seeks to explain more fully this crucial institution of capitalism. The authors draw on theoretical insights from economics, law, political science, and cultural studies to show the multiple ways in which corporations have shaped American society, culture, and politics over the past two centuries. They reject assertions that the corporation is dead and show that it in fact has survived, and even thrived by adapting to changes in its politics, social, and cultural environment. They call into question narrow economic theories of the firm, and show instead that the corporation must be treated as a more fully social institution, pointing the way to a new periodization of corporate history and a new set of questions for scholars to explore. Key issues engaged include the legal and political position of the corporations, ways in which the corporation has shaped and been shaped by American culture, controversies over corporate regulation and corporate power, and the efforts of minority and disadvantaged groups to gain access to corporate resources and opportunities.

Throughout history humans have commonly organized to prevent or mitigate risks, or to compensate for losses caused by risk events. Given the infinite variety of risks that existed, it is unsurprising that insurance—the primary modern risk mitigation industry—developed through a wide range of organizational forms. Yet we know little about why different forms of organization were chosen in the past, or why they survived or disappeared. This book represents the first attempt to explore the foundation, co-existence, and performance of multiple organizational forms in the history of insurance, to situate these forms in an international comparative context, and to relate the results of historical analysis to modern organizational theory. Fourteen leading scholars examine the development, performance, regulation, and governance of different insurance organizations in eight major markets around the world from the eighteenth century to the present. Their findings indicate how the history of insurance requires organizational theory to be supplemented or corrected in important ways. The book highlights the role of political and cultural preferences, regulatory intervention, technological change, and historical contingency in shaping the organizational structures of insurance markets. It points to the importance of a culture of mutualism and the role of entrepreneurship in driving the early growth of insurance in uncertain risk environments such as settler or frontier societies. It presents evidence for the historical efficiency of mutual life insurers. Agency theory alone cannot explain the complexity and great variety of organizational forms co-existing in different political, legal, and economic contexts in the past.

Creativity is at the vanguard of contemporary capitalism, valorized as a form of capital in its own right. It is the centrepiece of the vaunted ‘creative economy’, and within the latter, the creative industries. But what is economic about creativity? How can creative labour become the basis for a distinctive global industry? And how has the solitary artist, a figment of Romantic thought, become the creative entrepreneur of twenty-first-century economic imagining? Such questions have long provoked scholars interested in economics, sociology, management and law. This book offers a fresh approach to the theoretical problems of cultural economy, through a focus on intellectual property (IP) within the creative industries. IP and its associated rights (IPR) are followed as they journey through the creative economy, creating a hybrid IP/IPR that shapes creative products and configures the economic agency of creative producers. The book argues that IP/IPR is the central mechanism in organizing the market for creative goods, helping to manage risk, settle what is valuable, extract revenues, and protect future profits.. Most importantly, IP/IPR is crucial in the dialectic between symbolic and economic value on which the creative industries depend: IP/IPR hold the creative industries together. The book is based on a detailed empirical study of creative producers in the UK, extending sociological studies of markets to an analysis of the UK’s creative industries. It makes an important, empirically grounded contribution to debates around creativity, entrepreneurship, and precarity in creative industries and will be of interest to scholars and policymakers alike.

As the world's political and economic leaders struggle with the aftermath of the Financial Debacle of 2008, this book asks the question: have financial crises presented opportunities to rebuild the financial system? Examining eight global financial crises since the late 19th century, this historical study offers insights into how the financial landscape — banks, governance, regulation, international cooperation, and balance of power — has been (or failed to be) reshaped after a systemic shock. It includes careful consideration of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the only experience of comparable moment to the recession of the early 21st century, yet also marked in its differences. Taking into account not only the economic and business aspects of financial crises, but also their political and socio-cultural dimensions, the book highlights both their idiosyncrasies and common features, and assesses their impact in the broader context of long-term historical development.

This is a history of how over a dozen American industries have used computers and been affected by them in the financial, telecommunications, media, and entertainment industries since 1950. It explores the role this technology played, how it changed the work done, and the effects on companies, industries, and the American economy. It argues that what was done within industries fundamentally changed as a result of the massive use of all manner of information technologies and telecommunications. By the end of the 20th century this created a new digital style of working. It is based on extensive research and is organized by chapters describing what happened, one industry after another. This is a business history, not a history of technology.

This book chronicles how sixteen American industries in the manufacturing, transportation, wholesale, and retail sectors have used computers since 1950. It explores the role this technology played, how it changed the work done, and the effects on companies, industries, and the American economy. It argues that what was done within industries was fundamentally changed by the massive use of all manner of information technologies and telecommunications, creating a new digital style of working by the end of the 20th century. The book's findings are based on extensive research and it is organized by chapters describing what happened, one industry after another. This is a business history, not a history of technology.

This book, the third of three volumes, completes the sweeping survey of the effect of computers on American industry began in the first volume and continued in the second volume. It turns finally to the public sector, examining how computers have fundamentally changed the nature of work in government and education. This book goes far beyond generalizations about the Information Age to the specifics of how industries have functioned, now function, and will function in the years to come. The book provides a broad overview of computing's and telecommunications' role in the entire public sector, including federal, state, and local governments, and in K-12 and higher education. Beginning in 1950, when commercial applications of digital technology began to appear, the book examines the unique ways different public sector industries adopted new technologies, showcasing the manner in which their innovative applications influenced other industries, as well as the US economy as a whole. The book builds on the surveys presented in the first volume, which examined sixteen manufacturing, process, transportation, wholesale and retail industries, and the second volume, which examined over a dozen financial, telecommunications, media, and entertainment industries. This book completes the trilogy and provides a picture of what the infrastructure of the Information Age really looks like and how we got there.

Throughout the 1980s Mrs. Thatcher dominated political life in the UK and Thatcherism became the shorthand for a series of political initiatives all over the world. Most accounts of these years have concentrated on the economics of free markets and privatisation. This book takes a different stance through a detailed analysis of the responses of The National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) members, activists, leaders, and officials to the government’s public sector reform and restructuring programme. Employees in health, local government, and education faced cuts in funding, compulsory competitive tendering, internal markets, and new management practices associated with human resource management (HRM) and total quality management (TQM). Others in the gas, water, electricity, and transport industries faced wholesale privatisation.