The articles in this issue delve into several of the journal’s core themes, including business leadership and governance. Robin Adams, Michael Aldous, Philip Fliers, and John Turner trace the evolution of British corporate leadership by analyzing the biographies of twentieth-century CEOs. Their study challenges the notion that social elites dominated corporate leadership in the early twentieth century, and argues that the trend toward professional management was slower to take hold in British corporations than in those of other nations. David Green, Douglas Brown, Harry Smith, Joe Chick, and Natasha Preger examine how state bureaucracies, like large business enterprises, sought to manage their labor forces. They focus on the Metropolitan Police in late 19th-century London, showing how workforce health and pensions were managed to attract and retain experienced civil servants.
This issue also explores how gender roles and assumptions have influenced corporate strategies. Takashi Hirano, Ken Sakai, and Pierre-Yves Donzé challenge the conventional view that only male engineers and large corporations fueled Japan’s post-war economic growth. They highlight the active role of Japanese housewives in product innovation and consumer feedback in the electrical appliance industry through the medium of women’s magazines. Similarly, David Foord investigates how Canadian power companies’ advertisements portrayed electricity as a labor-saving tool and a promoter of leisure, reframing leisure as a form of work for women in the post-World War II period.
Rolv Amdam and Andrea Lluch turn their attention to business-labor relations in Argentina during the late 1950s and early 1960s. They examine the International Labour Organization’s management development programs, which combined manager professionalization and productivity-driven approaches, but were hindered by unstable collaboration among the government, businesses, and unions.
Finally, Robert Fredona and Sophus Reinert provide a review of Quinn Slobodian’s book, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. They assess Slobodian’s argument that special economic zones around the globe have become a key neoliberal strategy for bypassing the challenges posed by democracy.
