Papers presented by Christina Lubinski since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"Competing for Labor and the Public Good: Provident Funds in India, 1910s to 1950s"

Abstract:

Multinationals’ efforts to address social security concerns exhibit considerable diversity worldwide. While they are arguably motivated by “doing business in the public interest”, many of the concrete initiatives fall short of their lofty promises to combat inequalities. An examination of the historical development of such endeavours across various contexts sheds light on the mismatch between ambition and outcomes. This paper focuses on the transformation of “provident funds” (PFs) in India from World War I to the 1950s, capturing the colonial interwar period and the transition to Indian Independence in 1947. Provident funds first emerged in the 1910s as a safeguard for retirement, disability, and death. Initially, a handful of large private enterprises and public institutions spearheaded these efforts, framed by novel legislation since the 1920s. While similar to social insurance schemes in requiring member contributions, PFs differed by allocating benefits only based on individual member payments, complemented by employer contributions, effectively serving as compulsory savings accounts. This study draws upon an unexpected trove of documents compiled by a German manager at I.G.Farben in the 1930s, during the chemical company’s initial foray into establishing a PF in India. It scrutinizes the regulations and benefits of 15 different PFs in Indian, British, German, and U.S. firms, bolstered by correspondences pertaining to the establishment and operation of these funds. The paper shows how PFs not only became integral to discussions about labor and the public interest, but also influenced companies' competitiveness within the Indian market. Employees frequently implored firms to institute PFs, and skilled workers departed for competitors offering superior benefits. By 1935, 74 commercial enterprises in Bombay, constituting half of the Chamber of Commerce’s membership, had instituted PFs, each with distinct understandings of their contribution to a common good, their benefits and outcomes. Following contentious debates, the Indian government, post-independence, favored a contributory PF over a pension scheme.

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"Forgotten Foundations: Alternative Visions of the Good of Management and Enterprise at the Cusp of Management Science 1908-1928"

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Conventional histories of business present a view whereby the foundations of management science were revealed by thinkers like Frederick Taylor and Henry Gantt: men whose backgrounds in mechanical engineering were well suited to advancing the subject. In this view, the good of management – the end that management theory, practice and education sought to serve – was efficiency: the best financial ratio of outputs over inputs, or profit maximization; and the fundamental intellectual foundation the science of economics. By the 1930s, Luther Gulick could survey the field with confidence and state that “whether public or private, the basic ‘good’ is efficiency”. Presenting, or assuming, these beliefs to be universal or inevitable has discouraged alternative visions in the present and for the future. In this paper we examine three networks that developed alternative views of the good of enterprise and management. The work of Louis Brandeis, Mary Follett, and their associates in Boston; German business economists Heinrich Nicklisch and Eugen Schmalenbach and a circle of other influential graduates from the Leipzig College of Commerce; and the thinking of Henri Fayol and his supporters in France. Operating at the cusp of the formation, solidification and formalization of the subject of management, these networks put a great deal of effort and their extensive intellects into creating, in their own ways, visions of the subject, enterprises, and educational institutions that viewed: organizations as social beings; a management education not based on economics; conservation, social association or fraternity, and maximizing civic and community well-being as the goods of the fledgling field. We conclude by exploring the re-inventive power for business history, education and practice that recovering these forgotten foundations could enable today.

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

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2022 Mexico City

"Mental Maps of Nationalism: Indo-German Business Relations and the Challenge of Political Transition"

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India’s transition to independence created a host of challenges for business. Multinational companies of many origins set out to engage with the new political regime, often by showcasing their contributions to India’s development agenda. To that end, German firms did not only offer their technology and products but also elevated the non-colonial character of their endeavors. At the firm level, this required sensible political strategizing. In this process, German businesspeople were guided by their “mental map of nationalism” that foregrounded joint aspirations and the historical relationship between India and Germany. This paper explores the role of this mental map and argues that mental maps, defined as “spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world,” (Lewis & Wigen 1997: ix) reduced the mass of information on nationalisms and distilled them to a guiding vision. Based on archival sources from the electrical company Siemens, the chemical firm Bayer, and the steel manufacturer Krupp, I explore how mental maps were used to navigate the political transition in India. Yet, these maps did not replicate the world of nations, they distilled and packaged the various experiences with nationalism into useful shortcuts. As such, they were deeply ideological and changed over time. Tracing the evolvement of the mental map of nationalism from the 1940s to the 1970s, I explore a fundamental change that occurred in the way that businesspeople interpreted the Indo-German relationship and India’s role in the world. As actors perceived the world in new ways, the older mental map of Germany’s non-colonial contribution to Indian development was being given a new spin. What emerged was a new understanding of the global economy, now shaped by Cold War considerations, that foregrounded India’s stage of growth and its seemingly inevitable development path.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"Contested Femininity and Entrepreneurial Imagination: Ruth Handler"

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Business historians have widely discussed female entrepreneurship and the role of gender in the evolution of capitalism. However, few contributions have so far directly connected this rich scholarship with mainstream entrepreneurship research. In this paper, we analyze the case of the serial entrepreneur Ruth Handler to criticize and expand Tina Seelig (2015)’s Invention Cycle, an entrepreneurship framework coming out of the Stanford Design Thinking tradition. We use archival material from Handler’s personal collection at the Schlesinger Library to study the progression of Handler’s entrepreneurial process and her experience of engaging with gender and femininity in her ventures. Ruth Handler founded the toy company Mattel with her husband Elliot, and together they transformed it into a global multinational after launching the iconic doll Barbie through the 1960s. In the 1970s, she faced a period of crisis, undergoing a mastectomy to cure her breast cancer and a white-collar scandal that forced her and Elliot out of Mattel. At age 50, she managed to rehabilitate her image, by reinventing herself in a new venture, Nearly Me, supplying prostheses to breast cancer survivors. Based on the empirical analysis, we develop a more historical and gendered perspective of Seelig’s framework, which we criticize as decontextualized and void of historical sensitivity. Moreover, the analysis stresses how different perspectives on femininity shaped and influences the entrepreneur’s self-understanding and her entrepreneurial journey. Handler’s ability to collaborate helped revolutionize the toy-making and breast-prosthesis industries, creating products tailored to women’s and girls’ needs. Yet, her story also shows the complexity of being a woman executive, as well as “selling femininity” through her products. Despite her success, the ventures demonstrated that femininity was often contested, and required constant reinvention to match women’s changing role in society.

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