BUSINESS ENTERPRISE AND AMERICAN CULTURE

 

 

            This two-quarter graduate research seminar asks how culture has mattered to the history and historiography of American business and how business has mattered to the evolution of American culture. The First Quarter lays the building blocks for understanding  the interplay between business and culture over time.  Part I situates the origins of business history in the contending disciplines of history, economics and sociology   in order to explain how and why some intellectual traditions prevailed over others and to explore the consequences for the study of business and American history.  Part II points the way toward a new, more culturally centered, socially-embedded  business history.   Exposure to some of the best and worst of the new business histories lays the intellectual groundwork for the development of specific research projects.  Part III situates several case studies of firms and entrepreneurs in the context of evolving cultures of competition and cooperation.  The course closes by pushing the boundaries of enterprise beyond the United States into the international economy, where national and international firms  compete on the basis of continually changing branded identities that fuel the “expressive revolutions” of  global business cultures.   A five page historiography paper, due mid-term,  and a fifteen page prospectus with bibliography submitted Week IX,  power the transition into research and writing during the second quarter.

 

Books for Purchase at the UCLA Bookstore* and Books and Articles on  Reserve, URL**  (List of Reserve Books)

 

SCHEDULE OF WEEKLY MEETINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

 

PART I.

 

 

Week I.   “Mental Models and their Significance for Understanding the Relationship between Cultural Values and Economic Change”

 

Lipartito, Kenneth.  “Culture and the Practice of Business History,”  v. 24, n. 2(Winter 1995), 1-41*

 

*Hofstede, Geert.  Ch.1, “Levels of Culture,” in  CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS:  SOFTWARE OF THE MIND, 3-19.  McGraw-Hill, 1997

 

Week II. A Cultural Path Not Taken:   Miriam Beard and A HISTORY OF THE BUSINESS MAN

 

Miriam Beard, A HISTORY OF THE BUSINESSMAN, Chapters assigned.

 

 

Week III. Looking Backward to Firms, Markets, and Technology

 

John, Richard.  “Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents:  Alfred D.Chandler, Jr’s, THE VISIBLE HAND AFTER TWENTY YEARS,” business history review 71(Summer 1997):151-200.

-600.

 

Mary Yeager, General Introduction, and “Will There Ever Be A Feminist Business History?” in WOMEN IN BUSINESS, Vol. 1 (to be handed out)

 

 

PART II. 

 

 

Week IV.  Looking Forward:  Incorporating Others and Diversifying Business Cultures

 

**Kwolek-Folland, Angel.  INCORPORATING WOMEN;  A HISTORY OF WOMEN and BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES.  (Twayne, 1998)

 

Olegario, Rowena,  ‘That Mysterious People;:  Jewish Merchants, Transparency, and Community in Mid-Nineteenth Century America,” BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW 73 (Summer 1999): 161-89.

 

Yeager, H-Net, Review of AKF, to be handed out

 

Week V.  Minority Enterprise

 

Either:

 

**Walker, Juliette.  THE HISTORY OF BLACK BUSINESS IN AMERICA:  Capitalism, Race, Entrerpenruship.  New York:  Macmillan/Prentice Hall International, 1998.

 

Or:

 

**Weems, Robert. Weems, Robert E.  DESEGREGATING THE DOLLAR;  AFRICAN AMERICAN CONSUMERISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.  New York:  New York University Press, 1998.

 

And:

 

Olegario, Rowena,  ‘That Mysterious People;:  Jewish Merchants, Transparency, and Community in Mid-Nineteenth Century America,” BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW 73 (Summer 1999): 161-89.

 

 

 Week VI.   Changing Entrepreneurial Cultures and Property Systems

 

Bruton, Henri, Ch. 1, “Economics and Economic Development,” Ch. 2, “The Search for Well-Being,” and Ch. 6, “Entrepreneurship,” in ON THE SEARCH FOR WELL-BEING,  Ann Arbor, Michigan:  University of Michigan, 1997

 

--Hughes, Jonathan R.T.  “Arthur Cole and Entrepreneurial History,” BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC HISTORY, 2^nd Series, vol. 12 (1983), 133-44

 

Temin, Peter.  “Entrepreneurs and Managers, “  in FAVORITES OF FORTUNE;  TECHNOLOGY, GROWTH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, pp. 339-355

 

Hernando de Soto, “The Mystery of Capital,”   “The Missing Lessons of  U..S.History,” and “The Mystery of Legal Failure,” in THE MYSTERY OF CAPITAL;  WHY CAPITLISM TRIUMPHS IN THE WEST AND FAILS EVERYWHERE ELSE (Basic, Perseus, 2000)

 

 

PART III.

 

 

Week VII.  Laboratories of Learning:  Family firms and Giant Corporations

 

Thomas K. McCraw, AMERICAN BUSINESS, 1920-2000:  How It Worked

 

 

Week VIII.  Organization Men and Women: Who Decides What? How? With what cultural and economic consequences?

 

Either:

 

**Zunz, Olivier, MAKING AMERICA CORPORATE, 1870-1920. Chicago 1990.

 

Or:

 

Kanner, Rosa Beth Moss.  MEN AND WOMEN OF THE CORPORATION

 

Or:

 

**Peiss, Kathy.  HOPE IN A JAR: THE MAKING OF AMERICA’s BEAUTY CULTURE.  New York, 1998.

 

 

Week IX. Cultures of Competition and Cooperation

 

Edith Penrose, THEORY OF THE GROWTH OF THE FIRM

 

Michael Best, THE NEW COMPETITION

 

 

Week X.   “Is Succeeding at Capitalism a Cultural Thing?” :  Wondering about Brands that Wander

 

Either:

 

Robert Frank, *CONQUEST OF COOL (amazon.com)

 

Or

 

Naomi  Klein, *NO LOGO(amazon.com)