Papers presented by Teresa da Silva Lopes since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

"Multinationals and Whitewashing: An Historical Perspective"

Abstract:

This study examines the historical evolution of whitewashing in business, analysing how corporations have manipulated their public image to obscure unethical practices. It traces the concept of whitewashing from its early associations with purity and safety to its modern function in corporate reputation management. Focusing on the first half of the twentieth century, it analyses the case study of Standard Oil and related companies. The study argues that while whitewashing may serve as a short-term tactic to deflect scrutiny, history demonstrates that it often backfires over time. Companies engaging persistently on whitewashing strategies have been forced to develop alternative and more sophisticated whitewashing strategies. In the medium to long term, such approaches have led to public distrust, regulatory intervention, and industry shifts. The findings highlight the need for genuine accountability over symbolic gestures, reinforcing the intricate relationship between corporate power and ethical responsibility.

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"The Impact of Deglobalization and Trade Wars on Industry Dynamics: Norwegian Cod Fish and Portuguese Port Wine in a Bilateral Context, 1920-1940"

Abstract:

After several decades of increasing globalization in the last part of the 19th century, in the 1920s and 1930s the world economy experienced a new period of deglobalization characterized by economic crises and the introduction of bilateral agreements to replace multilateral principles. One of the results of this change was new trade wars between countries. This paper examines the effect of the trade war between Portugal and Norway from 1921 to 1923 and the impact it had on the industry dynamics of the Portuguese port wine and the Norwegian bacalhau – or salted and dried cod-fish. In the beginning of the 20th century, Portugal had gained the position as the largest consumer market for Norwegian bacalhau fish, and Norway was one of the most important markets for port wine. This study looks at these two countries and two industries and the impact that a series of bilateral trade agreements between the two countries had on the short and long-term dynamics of these two industries and their firms. The introduction of the bilateral principles for regulating the trade on wine and fish even led to a trade war for one and a half year from 1921 where no bacalhau fish was exported from Norway to Portugal and no port wine was exported to Norway. The study draws on a variety of firm, industry, and diplomatic archives and a wealth of secondary sources in particular from Norway and Portugal and examines how firms and business associations in Portugal and Norway maneuverer in this situation. By restructuring the supply chain, forming new alliances, and connecting to diplomatic processes between the two countries, the industries managed to change the outcome of the trade war from a situation of desperate losses of market share to gaining a stronger position than ever in the two foreign markets.

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"Economic Development in South America, 1870s-1914s: Does the Lens of Trademark Registrations Provide any New Insights?"

Abstract:

It is well established that South America has fallen behind in terms of economic development since the late nineteenth century, but why and when exactly this occurred is still an ongoing debate. There are several competing views explaining the level of economic development of the region, drawing on a wide variety of indicators. However, the use of intellectual property rights data relying on trademark registrations has been absent from such debates. This study analyses and compares the evolution of intellectual property regimes in South America during the first global economy, from the 1870s to 1914, and assesses the branding and trademark protection strategies of local companies and multinational enterprises operating in the region. This is a period when several South American countries developed for the first-time new industries in consumer goods, which became key for the countries’ economies. This study focuses on the cases of Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources. An original database with all the trademark registrations for each of these countries was collected for the first time. Corporate archives when available, as well as import and export statistics, and foreign direct investment data were also used. The study addresses the following questions: Is it possible to identify patterns in terms of trademark registrations indicative of spillovers and learning by local entrepreneurs and businesses, resulting from different modes of entry into those markets by multinational enterprises? How significant are entrepreneurial diasporas in explaining the creation of industries, and the long-term competitiveness of those industries in global branded consumer goods industries? What new insights does the lens of trademark registrations provide on explanations of economic development in South America during the first globalization wave?

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2022 Mexico City

"Merchant Marks in Renaissance Italy and the Mediterranean: The Case of the Medici Wool Trade"

Abstract:

Today’s brands are intangible assets of enormous value. They convey reputation, differentiate products, and attract consumer loyalty. They are drivers of modern capitalism. The story of these brands usually begins in the period of mass-production and mass-marketing that followed the Industrial Revolution, when the international registration and protection of brands became a pressing issue for nation states. Yet trademarks already played an important role in the often dangerous and highly uncertain global commerce of the premodern Mediterranean. The marks of medieval Italian merchants were also protected, by governments and guilds, and perhaps even understood by civil lawyers as a species of intangible property. They were sold, negotiated over in partnership agreements, and, as an indication of quality and trust, played key roles in reputation building (and “brand” building), in differentiation and the competitiveness of firms, and possibly innovation. The business- and legal-historical study of trademarks has hitherto chiefly focused on a set of discrete contexts: the nineteenth-century and later, (relatively) liberal political, economic, and legal regimes, especially the Anglo-American common law; large firms relying on economies of scale for competitive advantage, disparate distribution chains. This paper, instead, focuses on marks in the radically different contexts of the premodern Mediterranean: the mid-14th to mid-sixteenth centuries, small-scale family firms, inside proto-mercantilist regimes with powerful craft and merchant guilds, in an entirely different legal tradition of guild rules, local legislation, the rules of merchant courts, and the logics of Roman law. Were marks in the Renaissance Mediterranean already “intellectual property”? Were they robust tools for competitiveness, and hedges against the uncertainty of long-distance trade? Or did they serve other purposes? This paper will begin to answer these questions by examining the writings of jurists, legislation, and the extraordinary business records of Medici-family manufacturing firms that sold woolen cloth on the Ottoman market in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

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2022 Mexico City

"The British East India Company as a “Hydra Brand”: The Case of Madeira Wine"

Abstract:

In 1756 Port wine was only the third product, after Chianti and Tokaji, to receive certification and a denomination of origin, an important endorsement and protective measure that helped to create the product’s reputation in an era of rampant adulteration, imitation and fraud. Yet Portugal’s other great fortified wine, Madeira, produced on the eponymous archipelago off the coast of Africa, was not protected until the late twentieth century. Why? This paper, based on a wide range of archival and print sources from Portugal and Britain, suggests a possible answer. An oligopoly of British merchants controlled the trade in Madeira and resisted the Portuguese crown’s attempt to protect the wine. We argue that the East India Company, with a long connection to Madeira, which was once occupied by Britain, acted as an alternative to certification, by directly branding and indirectly endorsing Madeira wine for sale on the increasingly important Asian market. A multifaceted endorser with interests in a wide range of products and commodities, the East India Company acted as what we call a “Hydra Brand”. Using a mythological metaphor, we suggest that the Company rivalled the power of the state as certifier and endorser just as the Hydra of Greek myth, for a time, rivalled Hercules. The East India Company’s “brand”—understood in expansive terms—came to be applied in many ways, by the Company itself and by other merchants, helping to build a global beverage brand without certification and denomination of original protections, a brand that remains alive to this day in the marketing imaginary surrounding Madeira wine.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"Brands and the Organization of Industries"

Abstract:

Research on the evolution of industries tends to focus on technological innovation and also business models and organizational innovation (Nelson and Winder, 1982; Rosenberg, 1982; Levin, Cohen and Mowery, 1985, among others). This paper focuses on brands, the soft side of innovation, to explain how important they have been in explaining the dynamic evolution of industries. Drawing on a business historical approach, based on in-depth archival research and on different levels of institutional analysis (ranging from nation, to industry, firm and brand/product) it argues that brands have been increasingly important in explaining the dynamics of several industries (even those that are technology based); brand innovations can produce great disruptions in industries just like technological innovations, by changing industry structures and performance, the boundaries of firms and the ‘rules of the game’; and that brands can be central in explaining globalization and deglobalization of industries, impacting on global value chains, and also politically, economically and socially in different parts of the world.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"Brands, Trademarks, and the Law in Medieval and Renaissance Business"

Abstract:

The marks of artisans, manufacturers, and merchants are likely as old as organized commerce in the West, but the history of the trademark and its role in branding usually begins in the nineteenth century, when marks were registered in France, Britain, and the United States and when “modern” trademark law emerged. Yet trademarks already played an important role in the often dangerous and highly uncertain global commerce of the medieval Mediterranean. The marks of contemporary Italian merchants were protected, by governments and guilds, and even understood by lawyers as a species of intangible property. They were sold, negotiated about in partnership agreements, and, as an indication of quality and trust, played key roles in reputation building (and “brand” building), in the differentiation and the competitiveness of firms, and possibly innovation. The business- and legal-historical study of trademarks has hitherto chiefly focused on a set of discrete contexts: the mid-nineteenth century and later, (relatively) liberal political, economic, and legal regimes, especially the Anglo-American common law; large firms relying on economies of scale for competitive advantage, disparate distribution chains. This paper, instead, focuses on marks in the radically different contexts of the premodern Mediterranean: the mid-14th to mid-sixteenth centuries, small-scale family firms, inside proto-mercantilist regimes with powerful craft and merchant guilds, in an entirely different legal tradition. But were marks in the premodern mediterranean already understood as “intellectual property” and was there, indeed, already a theory of the brand ? This paper will begin to answer these questions by examining the writings of medieval and Renaissance merchants and jurists.

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