Written in nontechnical terms, this book explains how the dynamics of big business have influenced national and international economies. A path-breaking study, it provides the first systematic treatment of big business in advanced, emerging, and centrally-planned economies from the late nineteenth century, when big businesses first appeared, to the present. Large industrial enterprises play a vital role in developing new technologies and commercializing new products in all of the major countries. How such firms emerged and evolved in different economic, political, and social settings...

Written in nontechnical terms, this book explains how the dynamics of big business have influenced national and international economies. A path-breaking study, it provides the first systematic treatment of big business in advanced, emerging, and centrally-planned economies from the late nineteenth century, when big businesses first appeared, to the present. Large industrial enterprises play a vital role in developing new technologies and commercializing new products in all of the major countries. How such firms emerged and evolved in different economic, political, and social settings...

This book examines the rise and fall in the twentieth-century Western world of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), a chief instrument of state economic intervention. The authors offer historical perspectives on the origins and purpose of SOEs, their performance, and the reasons for their precipitate decline. The volume explores the theory of state business as well as the permutations and future prospects of the institution in practice. The contributors present studies of the development of state-owned enterprises in seven Western European countries and the United States.

This book offers the first in-depth international survey of current research and debates in business history. Great advances have been made in the history of business enterprise and business systems over the last two decades. Historians are documenting and analyzing the evolution of a wide range of important companies--their patterns of innovation, production and distribution, financial affairs, political activities and their social impact. The volume is a reference work of value to historians, economists, management researchers and others concerned in accessing the latest perspectives on the...