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In the beginning of the twentieth century, as Americans erupted in righteous indignation over the flagrant abuses of monopoly utilities, utility executives responded by developing several strategies to improve public opinion, rein in regulation, and thwart public ownership. One of the most widely used and successful of these strategies was selling gas, electricity, and telephone company stock directly to customers. To reach these local customers, utility managers required their employees to peddle stock directly to their friends, family, and customers. Using this method, utilities reached a large number of Americans who would not normally have set up a brokerage account or been solicited by a securities sales agent. By farming these interstitial regions of America's financial landscape, utility executives harvested millions of dollars in capital, but as executives explicitly made clear, the goal of customer stock ownership was not to raise capital but to raise political support. By the crash of 1929, utilities directly sold stock to 20 percent of the total number of stockholding Americans directly through customer stock ownership programs and not through traditional brokerage firms. This article situates the development of customer stock ownership in the political economic context from which it emerged as an organizational response, reveals the social and organizational processes by which utility monopolies sold stock, and appraises the effect of customer stock ownership on antimonopoly sentiment in America.

Philips Australia, the Australian subsidiary of Dutch MNE Philips Electronics, experienced difficulties during 1942–1943, when it came close to being nationalized as enemy property. In response, the company set out to improve its reputation in the local radio parts and electronics industry and in Australian markets. Its strategy of embedding itself in Australian society served the purpose of improving company performance and influencing the government policies that guided the rapid development of Australia's postwar electronics industry. With this strategy, Philips Australia minimized the risks and maximized the commercial opportunities it faced. The firm localized senior management, maximized local procurement and local manufacturing, took a leading role in industry associations, engaged politically influential board members, and used marketing tools to build a strong brand and a positive public profile in Australia. However, the company became aware of the limitations of this strategy in 1973, when a new Labor government reduced trade protection. Increasing competition from Japanese electronics firms forced Philips Australia to restructure and downsize its production operations. Despite increasing reliance on imports from the parent company's regional supply centers and efforts to specialize production on high-value added products, the firm saw its profitability and market share in Australia decrease.

This article addresses two questions: Why do firms centralize, and what determines the success and failure of technology transfers? First, it argues that centralization decreases the costs of technology transfers, especially if knowledge is tacit, by reducing transaction costs. Second, it argues that an important factor for the success of a technology transfer is the capacity of a firm to mitigate agency problems. The English East India Company (EEIC) is mostly studied as a trading body. This article analyzes the company's attempt to become a producer of raw silk in Bengal. In order to improve the quality of Bengal raw silk and thus increase the silk's trading potential, it decided to apply Piedmontese reeling technologies that relied on a centralized system of production, which significantly decreased the transmission costs of the technology transfer and was thus the key for its success. However, because the EEIC's management system involved in silk manufacturing was not innovated, the transfer's effectiveness was diminished.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New York State trust companies were successful, grew quickly, and failed rarely. The few failures, however, played a leading role in shaping the rules that governed trust companies. Because trust company failures were consistently interpreted as isolated departures from the norm of conservative management, trust companies were able to continue to participate in the rule-making process. The institutions that evolved promoted financial stability by imposing the costs of failure on decision makers and discouraging risky behavior. These failures shed new light on the treatment of failure and the development of corporate governance and financial regulation in the United States

The cantilever chair is both a modern classic and a tradable commodity. Iconic designs, such as those by Marcel Breuer, are part of museum collections and are being produced for the contemporary furniture market. Moreover, there are countless other variations of the cantilever principle on the market. This article explains the emergence of the upmarket segment for iconic designs through historical sources. The focus is on the role of intellectual property rights and their interaction with management, branding, and pricing activities in the early 1930s. The article establishes that legal and perceived authenticity of cantilever designs were necessary but not sufficient to establish the upmarket segment. A substantial premium could only be charged once customers revealed that they had a high willingness to pay for authentic furniture that was chrome-plated.

This article considers how the joint-stock banks established trust within the local marketplace. We undertake a new investigation of pictures of senior bank management. Building on the expansion of the art market in the nineteenth century, joint-stock banks used portraits as a public and visual mechanism to commemorate their successes and accomplishments. Portraiture, as a well-established art form, provided enterprises with a historical legacy that for many did not, as yet, exist. Through the use of portraiture, banks attempted to solidify their identity and add to the sitter's social standing, as well as signal the new organization's reputation for high culture, prestige, and professionalism to those who viewed these artworks. These illustrations personified the company and gave a human face to the early joint-stock economy.