As a personnel policy that would assure the country's rapidly expanding railroad system the best grade of employees, centralization of discharge data within a company and interchange of such data between companies struck some executives as a useful practice. Others disagreed and, as Professor Black shows, their wisdom prevailed. The problem centered upon reliability of such key operating employees as brakemen and conductors, and responded better to institution of controls that would minimize the two most important misfeasances: drinking on the job and petty embezzlement.

This composite portrait of a “community” of printers reveals the composition of their trade and the unique mixture of businessman and publicist they represented in early America.

The uncertainties of predicting and mitigating social reactions to business innovation are amusingly demonstrated in this study of an early public-relations crisis.

Although some scholars argue that the United States government's procurement policies in World War II resulted in greater industrial concentration, this study indicates that such was not the case in the aircraft industry.

Between 1974 and 1986, the intervention of various French governments on both the right and the left—in addition to corporate maneuvering and increased focus on competitiveness and lean production—resulted in foreign direct investment, mergers, plant closures, and bankruptcies among struggling French automotive suppliers. This article will explore why these efforts were unsuccessful by revisiting the first Japanese attempts to enter the European automobile industry. It does so not only through the case of Nissan in the United Kingdom in 1984 but also through the essentially unfamiliar and contemporaneous example of French automotive suppliers.