Les chaînes de magasins d’alimentation et d’approvisionnement diffusent leurs succursales à partir de la fin du XIXe siècle dans les pays industrialisés. Leur avantage concurrentiel repose sur l’intégration de la fonction de grossiste. Fondée par Geoffroy Guichard à Saint-Étienne en 1898, Casino est la seule société succursaliste française à avoir conservé ses archives. L’histoire de l’entreprise permet d’identifier les dispositifs d’intégration de catégories de plus en plus diverses d’acheteurs au marché des biens de consommation : l’attachement à la marque-enseigne et aux marques propres, la professionnalisation de la vente. Les tensions peuvent se lire dans les archives entre la mise en application de principes fordistes de standardisation et la volonté de renforcer le lien de clientèle. Dès avant l’unification du marché français par une nouvelle génération d’opérateurs, les succursalistes entament un processus de fabrique du consommateur - un acteur détaché des relations de fidélités traditionnelles. En France, les chaînes succursalistes sont à l’origine du passage du comptoir, au libre-service et aux supermarchés - en 1960 chez Casino. Dans cette lutte séculaire entre deux principes théoriques antagoniques (le commerce et la distribution), l’État se présente en position d’arbitre, sommé d’engager la « réforme du commerce », un processus débouchant finalement sur le triomphe de la grande distribution. / Food and supply chains spread their branches since the end of the 19th century in industrialized countries. Their competitive advantage is based on the integration of the wholesaler function. Founded by Geoffroy Guichard in Saint-Étienne in 1898, Casino is the only French supply chain to have kept its archives. The company's history makes it possible to identify the tools used in order to integrate more and more categories of buyers, in the consumer goods market. For example, the attachment to the brand-name and the private labels, the emergence of marketing. Tensions can be read in the archives between the application of Fordist principles of standardization and the desire to strengthen the customer relationship. Even before the unification of the French market by a new generation of operators, the branch operators undertake the making of consumer - an actor detached from traditional loyalties. In France, chains open the way to self-service and the first supermarkets - in 1960 for Casino. Confined between two antagonistic theoretical principles (“commerce” and distribution), the state is in the position of arbiter, summoned to engage the « reform of the trade », a process finally leading to the triumph of mass retailing.

No início dos anos 2000 consolidou-se o quadro de significativas alterações e ajustes nas estratégias das organizações agrícolas. Destacam-se: a consolidação das organizações, a internacionalização dos sistemas de base agrícola, a inovação presente em processos e produtos e de natureza organizacional, a introdução da variável socioambiental, e a adoção de estratégias de transparência. A cooperação pode exigir investimentos especializados, e os incentivos para a sua realização dependem de mecanismos de controle de custos de transação. Com a presença de incerteza no ambiente econômico e nas transações, a flexibilidade planejada visa eventuais ajustes em face de eventos inesperados. Arranjos institucionais complexos (leia-se, contratos) são observados como forma de responder a necessidades apontadas. Além de confiança, reputação, e mecanismos relacionais, a evolução dos mecanismos sociais por trás dos contratos de sociedade é algo a ser desenvolvido. O presente estudo propõe que as cooperativas agrícolas podem desenvolver mecanismos de governança que geram uma competência adaptativa para enfrentar eventos inesperados. O presente estudo explorou uma visão retrospectiva de estratégias adotadas por cooperativas brasileiras. Assumiu-se aqui uma nova vertente analítica da \"História de Negócios\" e suas implicações voltadas ao sistema agroindustrial. Como diretriz de método, foram seguidas as etapas de identificação das principais estratégias relatadas nos estudos de casos escolhidos, sobre cooperativas, desenvolvidos entre 1991 e 2002. Na sequência compararam-se as estratégias com as diretrizes apresentadas no capítulo teórico. Admite-se que as estratégias que implicam em maiores investimentos em ativos específicos tendem a tornarem mais rígidos os arranjos e dificultam a plasticidade, ou adaptação, das cooperativas agrícolas - onde naturalmente as mudanças ocorrem de forma mais lenta - frente a choques ou eventos externos. / The early 2000s consolidated the framework of significant changes and adjustments in the strategies of organizations working in agribusiness systems. Of note are: the consolidation of the organizations themselves, the internationalization of agricultural-based systems, the innovation in processes and products, organizational innovations, environmental variables and the adoption of transparency strategies. Cooperative efforts may require specialized investments in the form of incentives that depend on transaction cost control mechanisms. The environmental and transactional uncertainties and the need for flexibility on the part of organizations are all considered in the relevant literature. Complex institutional arrangements (contracts) are seen as a means to meet these needs. In addition to trust, reputation and business relationships, the evolution of the social mechanisms behind the contracts of society is an area of study to be further developed. Farming cooperatives are good examples how unexpected events can be addressed and strategies of adaptation can be implemented. In this study, we presented a retrospective view of the strategies adopted by Brazilian cooperatives. We adopted a new analytical \"business history\" approach to agro-based systems. When researching this work, we noticed a lack of research into the history of agribusiness. As a guideline method, we followed the steps of identifying key strategies reported in chosen case studies of cooperatives published between 1991 and 2002. Subsequently, the strategies were compared with the guidelines presented in the work. We admit that strategies based on high levels of asset specificity become more inflexible the arrangements and difficult plasticity or adaptation of the agricultural cooperatives - where changes naturally occur slowly - in face of external shocks or events

The submitted doctoral thesis focuses on the development and transformation of the Czechoslovak pencil industry in the period after the onset of the planned economy. The major pencil manufacturer Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth was at the heart of the analysis. The annual reports, annual financial statements, business trip reports, and minutes of the director's and production meetings formed the source base. The correspondence with individual domestic institutions or foreign business partners, memories and a company magazine were also used. The preserved image archival documents - promotional leaflets and price lists - were not left out. The work is based on the methodological basis of the business history. The organization, operation and management strategies of the pencil industry in the historical background of economic changes and reforms have become the subject to examination. The national enterprises Centropen, Gama and Logarex, which were engaged in the production of office supplies, were also included into the research in terms of the comparison. The emphasis was placed on the role of individual managers conducting entrusted enterprises next to the analysis of turnover, production level and a number of employees. Advertising and promotional activities and their importance in the socialist economy was not left behind. In this context, the impact of extensive litigation regarding the trade mark and the name of Hardtmuth, which affected the export, production and advertising sectors, have not been overlooked. The interrelationship between the manufacturing enterprise and export organizations became one of the key topics.

This dissertation examines three generations of the Beeston family and its revolutionary impact on the developing world of seventeenth-century London theatre management. Like other early modern businesses, the Beeston enterprise thrived on commercial innovation, the strategic cultivation of patronage, and a capacity to perpetuate itself dynastically. England’s mid-century political crisis disrupted the family’s commercial supremacy but its management system would endure as the de facto standard structuring successful theatre business long after the Restoration. Following a critical introduction to the early history of theatrical management, the thesis’s four chapters chart the creation and institution of the Beeston management model. Chapter One examines the early career of Christopher Beeston, a minor stageplayer from Shakespeare’s company in the 1590s who set out ambitiously to reshape theatrical management at Drury Lane’s Cockpit playhouse in 1616. Chapter Two analyzes Beeston’s later career, particularly his unique appointment as “Governor” of a new royal company in 1637. New evidence suggests that the office was a reward for service to the aristocratic Herbert family and that traditional preferment was therefore as important as market competition to the creation of the Caroline paradigm of autocratic theatrical “governance.” Chapter Three explores the overlooked career of Elizabeth Beeston who, upon inheriting the Cockpit in 1638, became the first woman in English history to manage a purpose-built London theatre. New evidence concerning her subsequent husband, Sir Lewis Kirke, an adventurer to Canada, ship-money captain, and Royalist military governor, indicates political ideology motivated their joint effort to keep the Beeston playhouse open during the civil wars. Chapter Four addresses the question of why the larger Beeston enterprise eventually collapsed even as the management system it refined continued to support later theatrical entrepreneurs. During the Interregnum, contemporaries anticipated that William and George Beeston, Christopher’s son and grandson, would eventually dominate a renascent London stage; however, managers such as William Davenant and Thomas Betterton ultimately adapted the Beeston system more efficiently to the political environment after 1660. Thereafter, exhausted patronage, lost assets, and the abandonment of family tradition marked the end of the Beestons’ influential association with the London stage.

This dissertation examines three generations of the Beeston family and its revolutionary impact on the developing world of seventeenth-century London theatre management. Like other early modern businesses, the Beeston enterprise thrived on commercial innovation, the strategic cultivation of patronage, and a capacity to perpetuate itself dynastically. England’s mid-century political crisis disrupted the family’s commercial supremacy but its management system would endure as the de facto standard structuring successful theatre business long after the Restoration. Following a critical introduction to the early history of theatrical management, the thesis’s four chapters chart the creation and institution of the Beeston management model. Chapter One examines the early career of Christopher Beeston, a minor stageplayer from Shakespeare’s company in the 1590s who set out ambitiously to reshape theatrical management at Drury Lane’s Cockpit playhouse in 1616. Chapter Two analyzes Beeston’s later career, particularly his unique appointment as “Governor” of a new royal company in 1637. New evidence suggests that the office was a reward for service to the aristocratic Herbert family and that traditional preferment was therefore as important as market competition to the creation of the Caroline paradigm of autocratic theatrical “governance.” Chapter Three explores the overlooked career of Elizabeth Beeston who, upon inheriting the Cockpit in 1638, became the first woman in English history to manage a purpose-built London theatre. New evidence concerning her subsequent husband, Sir Lewis Kirke, an adventurer to Canada, ship-money captain, and Royalist military governor, indicates political ideology motivated their joint effort to keep the Beeston playhouse open during the civil wars. Chapter Four addresses the question of why the larger Beeston enterprise eventually collapsed even as the management system it refined continued to support later theatrical entrepreneurs. During the Interregnum, contemporaries anticipated that William and George Beeston, Christopher’s son and grandson, would eventually dominate a renascent London stage; however, managers such as William Davenant and Thomas Betterton ultimately adapted the Beeston system more efficiently to the political environment after 1660. Thereafter, exhausted patronage, lost assets, and the abandonment of family tradition marked the end of the Beestons’ influential association with the London stage.

The subject of this study is the business activities of an industrialist from county of Jämtland, Sven O Persson (S P), from the end of the 1910's to the end of the 1980's. The economic development of Jämtland during the last one hundred years has also been depicted and placed in relation to the national one, during periods of directional change and/or expansion. Of primary interest is the interplay between S P's business operations and the surrounding world.This research looks at S P's business activities both from a structural-analytical perspective and an entrepreneurial. Sven Persson's operations commenced in Jämtland at the end of the 1910's with horse dealing, and the first woodland properties were acquired in 1926. Early on (1932) he linked his operations to the development of the motor vehicle. Up until the middle of the I960's the transport sector was the foremost driving force behind his business expansion. Sven Persson's widespread net of personal contacts provided him with information of important sections of the county's economy, which made it easier for him to discover and capitalize on the business opportunities opened by the breakthrough of the trucking industry the timber boom and the regulated economy of the W W II. It is worth mentioning that his operations integrated Östersund's advantages with those of the countryside and business activity was thus largely independent of the geographical location of this agrarian county and the long distances to populated, affluent markets. After the founding of Persson Invest (PI) in 1968 business operations grew rapidly and principally outside the county, and the main product was then chipboard. The hardening competition in the economy had enabled the concern to acquire insolvent companies and/or firms whose assets were too small to meet future investment costs. In the first year of business of this concern the number of employees was around 500 and in 1976 it had risen to almost 1,750. The new areas included the manufacture of agricultural and forest machinery and snowmobiles and three breweries. By 1980, however, the number of employees had decreased to about 1,100. During the following ten-year period the downswing was broken and employment increased to some 1,300 by 1990. The downswing was mainly due to rationalizations, profitability problems and the sale of Pi's agricultural machinery division. The 1980's upturn was mainly due to new acquisitions within the chipboard industry and the purchase of a large Volvo dealership in Norway. With the sale of the breweries in 1989 the sphere of business was thus nearly the same as in 1968. In a structural-analytic context the concern's acquisitions 1968-1976 were not successful. Rationalization was already far advanced in several of the firms when the takeovers took place, and their operations were centered in stagnating and/or shrinking markets. Using Erik Dahmén's terminology, it was a matter of companies whose production was on the negative side of the developmental fence. The concern's manu­facture of chipboard, however, had great success. A central role in that development can be ascribed to low capital costs. Profits from the car dealerships, regional development grants and the acquisition of chipboard firms explain the low cost. Sven Persson's entrepreneurial talent was to discover opportunities offered by the market at an early stage and to capitalize them, as in the case of the car dealership and the chipboard manufacturing. Other charac­teristic traits was to make decisions based on informal conversations, intuition and personal evaluation, instead of formal decision-making, economic analyses and market research. / digitalisering@umu

Die detaillierte Aufarbeitung der Unternehmensgeschichte von Siemens bot zum einen Möglichkeiten die kontrafaktische Analyse exemplarisch anzuwenden. Zum anderen konnte im Rahmen der Untersuchung von Pfadabhängigkeiten und der Anwendung dieses Konzepts auf die Entwicklung des Unternehmens eine solche bezogen auf das Wachstum festgestellt werden. Im Falle Siemens führten demnach die Economies of Scale zu einem Wechsel an der Unternehmensspitze.

Kring en kärna av kompetens inom mekanisk verkstadsindustri har det ständigt tillverkats nya produkter vid AB Hägglund &amp; Söner med säte i Örnsköldsvik. Möbler, busskarosserier, flygplan, gruvlok, elektriska motorer, svetsmaskiner, fartygskranar och hydrauliska motorer är bara några exempel. Utvecklingen av nya produkter har skett i nära samarbete med kunder med vilka man haft långvariga affärsutbyten. Inom företaget har intresset och entusiasmen för nya produkter och konstruktioner varit en ständig drivkraft till ökad kunskap. Redan tidigt utvecklades en kultur och tradition av att gärna och med stor arbetsinsats ge sig in på svåra men utmanande och spännande projekt kring nya produkter. I denna empiriska del behandlas företagets omvandling under en period av sextio år. Med utgångspunkt från produkterna söker författaren beskriva förändring såväl i intern resursomvandling som externt i interaktion med kunder och leverantörer. Boken utgör den empiriska delen av "Ett industriföretags omvandling". / <p>Utgör jämte förf:s: "Ett industriföretags omvandling" diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk</p>

Kring en kärna av kompetens inom mekanisk verkstadsindustri har det ständigt tillverkats nya produkter vid AB Hägglund &amp; Söner med säte i Örnsköldsvik. Möbler, busskarosserier, flygplan, gruvlok, elektriska motorer, svetsmaskiner, fartygskranar och hydrauliska motorer är bara några exempel. Utvecklingen av nya produkter har skett i nära samarbete med kunder med vilka man haft långvariga affärsutbyten. Inom företaget har intresset och entusiasmen för nya produkter och konstruktioner varit en ständig drivkraft till ökad kunskap. Redan tidigt utvecklades en kultur och tradition av att gärna och med stor arbetsinsats ge sig in på svåra men utmanande och spännande projekt kring nya produkter. I denna empiriska del behandlas företagets omvandling under en period av sextio år. Med utgångspunkt från produkterna söker författaren beskriva förändring såväl i intern resursomvandling som externt i interaktion med kunder och leverantörer. Boken utgör den empiriska delen av "Ett industriföretags omvandling".

This study investigates entrepreneurial activity in New Zealand between 1880 and 1910. Economic indicators, population, import and export patterns, provincial differences, and industrial development are examined to understand entrepreneurship and its relationship to economic growth. In addition, a case analysis of 133 entrepreneurs is presented, which analyses the backgrounds, education, reasons for venture start-up, venture types, methods of growth, incidence of failure, and sources of capital for nineteenth-century New Zealand entrepreneurs. This study suggests that a range of structural characteristics present in the New Zealand economy at this time, such as rapid population growth, technological innovation, isolation of markets, business structures, public works investment, immigration, and fiscal policies, encouraged and fostered entrepreneurial activity. Common characteristics among those who undertook new ventures over this period are highlighted; these include skill, commercial experience, limited capital, partnership, networks and the propensity to undertake multiple business ventures. Overall, entrepreneurial activity by small and medium-sized enterprises emerged as an important mechanism by which the colonial economy expanded both in scale and scope.