Pamela Walker Laird

Putting social capital to work

In arguing for social capital’s relevance to business activities, I once set aside day trading – along with outright gambling – as an exception. Day trading’s practitioners operate independently of social networks, it seemed. As it turns out, however, I dismissed social capital’s ubiquitous effects too soon. I have since learned that many day traders take up the practice precisely because they lack the social connections or connectability that other vocations require. In Japan, for instance, married women, college students and other populations unable as a rule to get gratifying jobs have found incomes and stimulating challenges in day trading. One astonishingly successful young woman declared in 2003: ‘Day-trading is great because everyone is equal, even housewives.’ Unable to engage in key social environments, or preferring not to, day traders operate in privacy, anonymity and freedom from organisational hierarchies. Nonetheless, social capital appeals even to these ‘outsiders’. They have begun to create a new ‘inside’, with gatherings both formal and informal for exchanging trading tips and sharing concerns (Fackler, 2006). Social capital touches everyone in some way. Some of those ways are not obvious, or even intuitive, and the articles in this issue bring new insights to light as they explore the workings of social capital in historical business settings. Business historians can approach thinking about social capital – assets based on personal connections and connectability – from many angles. For instance, why would firms or networks of any kind refuse opportunities to capable people, such as the young woman quoted above? Is it just greed, merely a reluctance to share power or profits? Conversely, why would anyone be willing to engage in business with people whose chief qualifications are their personal connections? Now, after decades of thinking about network dynamics, we understand that reluctance to share scarce resources with outsiders involves more than selfishness or narrow-mindedness, although they certainly play their parts. Why do networks matter in business? Economic transactions and operations require interactions with varying degrees of socialising, intimacy, loyalty, hierarchy and presumptions of reciprocity. Although interactions can themselves foster relationships that build networks, pre-existing networks contain the most likely contenders for consideration because connections within networks inform mutual expectations about reliability as well as sort out mutual obligations. This holds even for those who lack connections but who are connectable within the network. Thus, the extent to which people can lay claim to a network’s resources measures their social capital relative to it. Whenever such valuable resources as information, opportunity, protection, employment, influence, advice and

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and the Landscape of Marketing History

The consummate scholarship of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. has reinforced strong tendencies to focus on the histories of marketing practices of high-profile, high-volume firms and those working with them, such as advertising agencies. While Chandler’s work can inform all marketing historians’ work, it has major limitations and critics. Differing responses to and uses of Chandler’s work map out terrain of marketing history scholarship, including its divisions. One major divide falls between scholars whose academic efforts focus on marketing techniques and strategies and those whose primary focus specializes in historical analysis. Richard Tedlow, whose work owes much to Chandler, successfully employs both methodologies. Scholars on both sides of the divide could benefit by learning more of each other’s expertise.

How business historians can save the world – from the fallacy of self-made success

Abstract Narratives about ‘self-made’ success form a pillar of Anglo-American lore, but the concept’s meanings and applications no longer reflect either its origins or how people actually succeed. Ideological competition has reshaped the Calvinists’ admiration for community-serving self-improvement into a Social Darwinian glorification of individual ambition and wealth. American and British business and political leaders now invoke this newer narrative to assail progressive policies and to advocate the funnelling of resources and authority toward the wealthy – purportedly worthy – few. Because business historians understand the contexts and mechanisms behind business success, they are well situated to balance competing stories about prosperity’s sources and obligations.

Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry (review)

505 actually included communists, then how does that knowledge transform our understanding of how Levittowners reacted to the arrival of the Myers? Connecting these two narratives would provide even more fruitful material for exploration of the significance of race. Even so, the combination of Myers and Sugrue goes a long way toward placing race squarely in the middle of this lily-white suburb. Perhaps the biggest drawback of Second Suburb is that the post-Levitt focus of the work serves to obscure the pre-Levitt residents of the area. These folk make some cameo appearances, but a volume that so lovingly explores the class, race, gender, ethnic, and environmental concerns of the new residents virtually ignores those who lived there before. This oversight reinforces one of the most glaring deficiencies in recent suburban studies, namely the focus on suburbia as disjunctive, with “subdivisions” created de novo by developers and culture by the new homebuyers. While it is true that the new suburban space indeed helped to create (and was created by) a culture that replaced what had gone before it, we cannot forget that there is an actual, physical space at the center of this story, and it is the actual, physical location of and changes to that space that form the core of the suburban quandary. Overall, however, the multifaceted approach works remarkably well to underline the multiple experiences that make up this “second suburb’s” history. The result is a deeper understanding of the ins and outs of Levittown, Pennsylvania, in which the multiplicity of voices come together to produce a valuable addition to the studies of locations that have proliferated in recent literature on suburban growth in the post-1945 era.

The Business of Consumer Culture History: Systems, Interactions, and Modernization

Asingle business might be a firm or simply the activity by which someone makes a living. Business., however, encompasses the collectivity of systems, by which people and institutions interact within most modern economies. And, although there are many ways people can acquire the economic means with which to make claims on resources, there is only one way to purchase. resources, and that is by interacting with businesses. Business history resides, therefore, at the core of consumer culture history, which itself has reflected and energized the processes of modernization. As scholars have wrestled with explaining consumer cultures, early work mainly examined single factors—manufacturers, advertising agents, urbanization, consumers, law makers, regulators, retailers, social and cultural meanings, and so on. Building on these achievements, historians have begun to move toward more complex and integrative interactive. and system.-based approaches for tackling historical questions about consumer cultures. Such approaches are particularly apropos because commerce’s growth within the larger context of modernization rewarded participants who developed new systems for engagement—between people conducting business in different regions and sectors; between consumers, retailers, and producers; and between different components of the polity, just to name a few. Although business historians once tended to study their subjects as if they functioned as distinct and isolated entities within narrow and closed systems, their work increasingly recognizes that neither businesspeople nor consumers, and certainly not the actions that connected them, ever operated in isolation.

Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse

In the seven decades from its establishment in 1775 to the commercialization of the electric telegraph in 1844, the American postal system spurred a communications revolution no less far-reaching than the subsequent revolutions associated with the telegraph, telephone, and computer. This book tells the story of that revolution and the challenge it posed for American business, politics, and cultural life.During the early republic, the postal system was widely hailed as one of the most important institutions of the day. No other institution had the capacity to transmit such a large volume of information on a regular basis over such an enormous geographical expanse. The stagecoaches and postriders who conveyed the mail were virtually synonymous with speed.In the United States, the unimpeded transmission of information has long been hailed as a positive good. In few other countries has informational mobility been such a cherished ideal. Richard John shows how postal policy can help explain this state of affairs. He discusses its influence on the development of such information-intensive institutions as the national market, the voluntary association, and the mass party. He traces its consequences for ordinary Americans, including women, blacks, and the poor. In a broader sense, he shows how the postal system worked to create a national society out of a loose union of confederated states. This exploration of the role of the postal system in American public life provides a fresh perspective not only on an important but neglected chapter in American history, but also on the origins of some of the most distinctive features of American life today.

100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture

Vividly illustrated, this lively book presents the first in-depth study of the traveling salesman, illuminating his role in American culture from 1830 to 1920. Drawing on letters, diaries, and autobiographies, as well as on literary works by Crane, Dreiser, Lewis, and Miller, Spears examines the impact of the commercial traveler both on the national market economy and on American imagination.

New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America

The all-consuming century - the making of the American emporium the great Coca Cola wars - Coke versus Pepsi putting American on wheels - Ford versus General Motors stocking American pantries - the rise and fall of A bringing the mass market home - Sears, Montgomery Ward and their newer rivals secrets of success - modern marketing in historical perspective. Appendices: a comparison of chain and independent grocery operations excerpts from Michael J. Cullens letter to the President of Kroger.