Business and Management

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.

This is a book about shareholders — who they are, what they own, how their composition and character has changed, and with it their relationship with the companies they own. It is also a book about shareholder rights and responsibilities. The book explores the key current corporate governance issues — company law and reporting, chief executive pay, regulatory and accountability requirements — against the background of an ever-changing business environment: an environment in which private investors may have grown in number, but in which shareholders influence has dwindled as institutions have become the dominant shareholding group. Throughout the book provides numerous examples and anecdotes illustrating the evolution of the joint stock company from the South Sea Company of the 18th century to the giants and cause celebres on the corporate stage in the 1980s and 1990s.

As interest in financial markets intensifies, stimulated by the financial crisis of the early twenty-first century, this book aims to enrich understanding of the workings and history of financial centres in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the determinants of their success and failure. The book brings together leading authorities in the field to examine the direction of international capital flows historically in light of the nature of the banking system, market organization, the regulatory framework, and contextual political and diplomatic factors. Chapters discuss competition, collaboration, withdrawal, and re-emergence of financial centres in Europe, America, and Asia over the past two centuries. Written from a historical perspective but taking full account of recent studies in financial economics, the book provides new research and approaches to a highly topical issue and sheds light on the recent financial crisis and its aftermath.

George Washington ranks as one of the great military leaders in history. The character traits he exemplified, and the leadership skills he employed, enabled him to defeat what was then the world's most powerful nation. This book shows today's managers how they can learn from Washington's career—both his triumphs and setbacks—to succeed as leaders in their chosen field. The book paints vivid portraits of some of the crucial moments in Washington's military career, from the early debacle on Long Island Heights to the masterstroke at Trenton. There Washington, aided by his use of intelligence and disinformation, and by his great fortitude in the face of truly daunting conditions, routed the Hessians. The book uses these stirring military encounters to underscore Washington's managerial genius: to persuade and inspire, to open up the decision-making process, to seize opportunities when they arise, to persevere when setbacks occurred, and to learn from his mistakes. Indeed, the book's true value lies in its ability to link military and business strategy, revealing that successful corporate leaders must possess many of the same traits that Washington did. Using examples from the NFL, Cadillac, Coke, Samsung, Embraer, IBM and others, the book shows how business leaders can apply Washington's principles for success.

During the 1880s, the tobacco manufacturing industries of Britain and America were revolutionized by the introduction of mechanized cigarette production. The development of this novel, image-laden product constituted a triumph for the methods of mass production and mass distribution in this most traditional of consumer goods industries. This book charts the way in which these innovations in manufacturing and marketing methods led to the formation in 1902 of the British American Tobacco Co. as an Anglo-American multinational joint venture designed to promote cigarettes in international markets. Based on archive materials from a wide variety of sources, including the company's own internal records, this book provides the first authoritative account of BAT's evolution and growth up until the Second World War. In particular, it shows the way in which the company developed a vast array of international operating subsidiaries, explores how it managed these enterprises in different political and cultural contexts — notably in China and India — and analyses the way in which the company, as a mature multinational enterprise, coped with the severe international economic dislocations of the 1930s. In the era of globalization, this account of the operational and organizational arrangements of a prefigurative ‘global’ company will shed light on current debates on alliances, joint ventures, and international business.

This book is the first scholarly and systematic history of chambers of commerce. It challenges academic commentary on the early chambers by showing they were more numerous, persistent, and active than previously recognized. It demonstrates common origins in protest leading to a reform agenda, with diffusion down the size spectrum of cities, eventually reaching all towns and communities. Chamber voice increasingly linked lobbying with supplying a ‘bundle’ of business services. Using multiple theoretical frameworks, overlapping in time, the book traces for the first time the importance of commercial arbitration, coffee and reading rooms, and information and consultancy services as critical parts of the chambers' unique market position. For later developments it demonstrates the challenges arising from increasing partnerships with government, and competition with rival sector bodies. The book gives a critical overview of the key lobbies against the Corn Laws, over tariff reform and free trade, municipal socialism, and regulatory burden. A systematic analysis of members shows their links with early protest campaigns and religious dissent; in modern chambers it demonstrates the forces that underpin joining and lapsing decisions: exit, voice, and loyalty. The chambers investigated are those in the UK, Ireland, and the early USA and Canada, because this grouping has common origins and retains the unifying characteristics of being formed under common law as independent voluntary bodies. The book seeks to be definitive and exhaustive, covering all local chambers, in order to provide to other researchers, and current chamber managers, a firm foundation of assessment and long-term aligned local data.

The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of management as a scientific and systematic activity rather than the rule‐of‐thumb approach to decision‐making all too prevalent in Britain. He was greatly influenced by his experiences in the First World War and at Rowntree's, before becoming Director of the International Management Institute (IMI) between 1928–33 and then forming a very influential management consultancy, Urwick Orr and Partners (UOP), which he chaired for the rest of his career. He was also deeply involved with almost all the institutional developments in British management up to the 1960s, including the Management Research Groups (MRGs), the Institute of Industrial Administration (IIA), the British Institute of Management (BIM), the Administrative Staff College (ASC), and the management education side of the Anglo‐American Council on Productivity (AACP). In pursuit of what he called his ‘mission at large’, he gave hundreds of talks in his lucid and charismatic style, many of which were published as articles or booklets. These talks were not only in Britain but in Australia as well after his emigration there in 1961, in America, where he became the best‐recognized foreign exponent of management, and in a range of countries around the world. But he will probably be best remembered for his writings, not only on organization theory, where he is recognized as a great synthesizer and leader in the classical school, but also on a wide range of other topics, including the history of management, leadership, marketing, and management education and development. Truly he was a man of many parts.

Asbestos was once known as the ‘magic mineral’ because of its ability to withstand flames. Yet since the 1970s, it has become a notorious and feared ‘killer dust’ that is responsible for thousands of deaths and an epidemic that continues into the new millennium. This book gives an account of the UK asbestos health problem, providing an in-depth look at the occupational health experience of one of the world's leading asbestos companies — British asbestos giant, Turner & Newall. Based on a company archive recently released in American litigation, it gives an insight into all aspects of the asbestos hazard — dust control, workmen's compensation, government regulation, and the development of medical knowledge. In particular, the book looks at the role of industrialists, doctors, factory inspectors, and trade unionists, highlighting the failures in regulation that allowed the commercial development of a material that has been known to be lethal since at least 1900.