Construction, Collaboration and Collectiveness: The Business of Labor and Public-Private Partnerships in Modern Business History

Collaboration between governments and private, non-government entities has been a long-standing yet under-examined aspect of modern business history. While today it is formalized through official designations and terminologies such as ‘Public-private partnerships’, the concept has long roots. Through examining specific historical cases, these papers will demonstrate how governments, non-governmental organizations, workers and labor unions collaborated to facilitate both the development of infrastructure at home and the provision of aid abroad in a time of national emergency. Through the combination of the private and public sector, many substantial changes were achieved in the development of infrastructure, economic growth and improved international trade and political relations in modern business history. Through using three specific case studies, these papers illustrate how the development of public-private partnerships in modern business history influenced the ideas around the business of labor. First, through the collaboration between town councils and merchants to build roads in colonial America, this initiative helped expand the transportation network. It facilitated the movement of goods from farms to be sold on both the national and (through improving access to ports) international markets. Second, the role of trade unions and voluntary organizations in Britain during the Second World War by organizing fundraising events and boycotts on Japanese goods also pressured the government to intervene and assist the people of China in the aftermath of the Japanese invasion. It demonstrated how boycotts could be used to exert pressure on the government to take a stronger diplomatic stance against aggressors. Here, labor, voluntary action, and government intervention combined to achieve financial assistance for the Chinese (through the formation of new businesses such as local cooperatives) and the support needed to combat the advances of Japanese aggression. Finally, the wider study of Public-Private partnerships in business, its historical development, and how this has evolved in Finland will contextualize the findings of the other papers to demonstrate how this construct in modern business history has developed and become a major feature of the business of labor in contemporary business.