Industrial organization and strategy

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

Panel proposal for BHC 2025 in Atlanta, GA
Business and labor in 20th century multinationals: international regulation, internal organization

Electronics and the electricity that powers them have come to define the international and domestic political economy of the United States in recent years. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, we lack histories of these things that focus on their production. When Alfred D. Chandler heralded the dawn of the “Electronic Century,” he focused on invention. This panel takes a different approach, exposing the labor, materials, and technics integral to its making.

Brewing is one of the oldest and largest industrial enterprises in the United States. Major firms like Anheuser-Busch and Miller have been in business since the 1850s and today there are more American breweries than ever. The large international conglomerates and the smaller independent craft firms represented a market worth nearly $120 billion in 2023. Despite the long history and important economic impacts of brewing, industry histories generally tend to focus on the largest firms and most colorful company presidents, leaving much to be explored by business historians.

Oil was the most important commodity of the twentieth century. It fundamentally changed societies, markets, and the relationship between states and companies. No company was more influential in the early history of the oil industry than Standard Oil. From the late 1880s and onwards, this US enterprise dominated not only its domestic sphere, but also the international oil markets. The papers in this session analyze how the company was able to achieve this dominance, and the effect that it had on different parts of the world.

The role of information technology in extending the reach of institutions over large geographical territories has been a foundational important theme in business and economic history (Chandler, 1977). This panel continues this work, exploring the co-constitutive nature of technological and institutional forms in both economic governance and business enterprise. Each paper attends to the rapid circulation of information, ideas, and know-how across changing geographies.

Recent scholarship, in business history and beyond, has decentered and pluralized the normative Anglo-American model of the corporation, from its origins in relation to the early modern state to its organizational mutations during the Industrial Revolution to the introduction of limited liability and the emergence of agency theory in the late 20th century. The rich ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature and numerous critical legal and sociological studies of the corporate form around the world have encouraged the examination of alternatives to this normative model.

"In the second half of the twentieth century, the occupational landscape of the United States transformed many times over. This panel examines three such shifts: the acceleration of capital mobility and the role of “site selection” consulting firms in expediting it; the rise of tribal enterprises and their role in facilitating regional economic development and job creation; and the debate over automation and the civil rights struggle for apprenticeship training that it provoked.