Management in government differs fundamentally from private sector management, the more so in defense, which differs from other US government missions in that very large sums are spent on high-technology systems and equipment to meet the unknowable contingencies of an uncertain future. Because of technological complexity, the difficulties of program selection, contracting, and oversight exceed those in other parts of government. An underappreciated set of problems aggravates these difficulties, notably a lack of metrics for assessing the performance of military systems. In the absence of such metrics, and given the elastic meanings attached to national security, civilian officials have been unable to exercise effective oversight of defense acquisition, leaving discretionary choices by military leaders largely unchecked. For such reasons, common prescriptions for acquisition reform, such as adoption of “proven business practices,” are unrealistic. Meaningful reform would begin by increasing the influence of civilian officials over acquisition decisions and reducing that of the armed forces.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, British society experienced a rise in real incomes and a change in its composition, with the expansion of the middle classes. These two factors led to a consumer revolution, with a growing, but still segmented, demand for household goods that could express status and aspiration. At the same time technological changes and new ways of marketing and selling goods made these goods more affordable. This paper analyzes these themes and the process of mediation that took place between producers, retailers, and consumers, by looking at the most culturally symbolic of nineteenth century consumer goods, the piano.

During the interwar period, Lysol Disinfectant was sold throughout Canada and the United States as a contraceptive douche for women. In fact, Lysol became the leading over-the-counter contraceptive sold on the euphemistically termed “feminine hygiene” market. Though the sale of contraceptives were illegal in both Canada and the United States since the latter part of the nineteenth century, by the 1920s, astute manufacturers were selling goods with supposedly contraceptive properties, including vaginal jellies, foaming tablets, and as was the case with Lysol, vaginal douches. As contemporaries argued, advertising played a central role in the success of the feminine hygiene industry. This article investigates Lysol's interwar advertising campaign to determine how the company attempted to communicate the purpose of its product to white, literate, married, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class female consumers while evading legal ramifications. It argues that North American Lysol advertisements were designed using euphemistic language and emergent modern advertising techniques that appealed to consumers' emotions (as opposed to their sense of reason as had previously been the case) to capitalize upon contextually specific trends, including women's fear of premature aging and loss of sexual attractiveness, the danger of maternal morbidity and mortality, as well as the threat of marital disunity, to convey the intended purpose of the product. This work also demonstrates the central importance of considering the historical context of companies' intended consumers when analyzing historical advertising and marketing campaigns.

In the 1920s, the German government secretly supported private business activities across the German-Polish border due to revisionist political aims. Based on these aims, the (in-) famous industrialist Friedrich Flick was able to attract financial support for otherwise uneconomical activities in Upper Silesia to which the government provided “insurance.” Not even considering the possibility of moral hazard and holdup, the German government was captured in its secret cooperation with Flick, who could effectively exploit this “insurance.” Until 1931, Flick was able to gain high subsidies and to use them efficiently building up an industrial empire that comprehended the German, Polish, and Austrian iron and steel industry. The interplay of German foreign policy and private business activities in the inter-war years is analyzed as an agency problem in a specific “public-private partnership” that allowed for blackmailing the Government.

This article presents a balance of the most significant research carried out in Spain on the public policies and business strategies that guided the implementation of different forms of forced labor under Francoism, during both the war and the dictatorship. It deals with the logic and economic impact of this type of punishment, attending to two main aspects. In the first place, the legal organization of forced labor is explained, and emphasis is placed on the role it played in mitigating the shortage of labor power in some sectors. In the second place, the article analyses the profit margins produced by this kind of labor in comparison with free labor, related to productivity levels. In this respect, important differences can be appreciated between work during the war and in the postwar period, as well as between work depending on the army and that of private companies.