Articles in this issue of Business History Review consider the effects of globalization, war, and geopolitics on business strategies. In their article on IBM Finland, “IBM's Tiny Peripheral: Finland and the Tensions of Transnationality,” Petri Paju and Thomas Haigh analyze the internal structure and culture of a truly global firm, IBM, in which the vast majority of employees work outside the home country. Joseba De la Torre and Maria del Mar Rubio-Varas look at the export of U.S. technology in “Learning by Doing: The First Spanish Nuclear Plant,” the story of the American nuclear industry's efforts to locate projects overseas—an effort that involved a mixture of businesses, including Westinghouse, Chase Manhattan, and the Spanish firm Tecnatom, as well as the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Lindsay Schakenbach Regele's article, “Industrial Manifest Destiny: American Firearms Manufacturing and Antebellum Expansion” traces the ways in which proponents of territorial expansion across the continent not only spurred tragic violence but also shaped the evolution of the U.S. arms industry, which grew to surpass that of Britain and France in the nineteenth century. Stefan Link's article, “The Charismatic Corporation: Finance, Administration, and Shop Floor Management under Henry Ford,” considers how Ford's strong personality helped to forge a mission-driven organization that was antithetical to bureaucratic organization and, at best, ambivalent to his eccentricities and prejudices.
Finally, James Cortada's “Change and Continuity at IBM” traces the many ways historians have made sense of this seminal firm and points to a wealth of historiographical resources for future scholars.
Also in this issue, Edward Balleisen reviews two books on white-collar crime, Capital Offenses: Business Crime and Punishment in America's Corporate Age by Samuel W. Buell and The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisenger.
