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Business historians have shown the importance of industrial research in the process of innovation. Most have focused on the industrial research departments themselves. Less attention has been paid to the position of these departments within research networks outside the firm. This article explores the story of networking at the Dutch company Philips & Co. during the interwar period. Gilles Hoist, director of Philips's Research Department at the time, became involved in an agricultural research network that comprised growers, university scientists, and the Dutch government. These networks were essential for Philips's success and provided an opportunity for the company's researchers to keep in touch with scientific circles.

The concept of path dependence is used to compare the evolution of the organizational forms of two groups of transportation and warehousing firms, the Dutchvemenand the Antwerpnaties, that operated in seaports between c.1500 and 1900 and beyond. Their adoption of cooperative forms reflected the corporative guild creed that prevailed in early modern European cities. After 1815, when their businesses were no longer regulated by local governments, the vemen and naties remained locked into the cooperative form of governance that had prevailed for so long. This organizational form gradually adapted to changing circumstances, but its egalitarian structure remained intact until the late nineteenth century (vemen), and even into the twentieth century (naties). The two groups of firms’ organizational forms evolved differently under the impact of the legacy of the early modern period and the weight of their own later distinctive experiences.

This article describes and explains three patterns in the entry of Indian entrepreneurs in large-scale industries in South Asia, 1850–1947. It begins with Marwari businessmen in the jute industry in Calcutta. Then I discuss the success of the Parsi community in the Bombay cotton industries, and, finally, Gujarati (mainly Hindu) industrialists in Ahmedabad. I focus on three variables that might explain the timing, degree, and social and cultural variations in the emergence of indigenous industrialists in these cities. These variables concern: first, the colonial attitude towards indigenous industrialists in this field; second, whether or not these men belonged to a (religious) middleman minority; and, finally, their social and, in particular, occupational background.

Since the early 1970s, as shipping has undergone a period of structural change, Swedish shipping has rapidly declined from a position of global importance. The Swedish-controlled fleet has dwindled, and the structure of the industry itself has changed. This article explores the influence of shipping markets, shipping regulations, company strategies, maritime know-how, and financial resources on the development of Swedish shipping from 1970 to 2010. A comparison is made between, on the one hand, the direction taken by two failing companies and, on the other, the courses followed by two companies that managed to grow despite difficult conditions. On a broader level, the article traces the development of expertise in a declining industry.

The impact of the strategies of multinational companies on the Dutch business system during the twentieth century is described in relation to two fi rms. The fi rst case examines the attitude of the Dutch (in this example, Anglo-Dutch) parent company Royal Dutch Shell toward its international subsidiaries. The second looks at the approach taken by the American company Sara Lee toward its Dutch subsidiary, Douwe Egberts. Until the 1980s, both companies were prepared to adjust their organizations to national traditions and ambitions. However, when these nationally based global fi rms came under pressure during that decade, both changed their organizational structures. Their actions can be seen both as responses to globalization and as attempts to advance that process by simultaneously building international institutions and changing elements of the national business system in the Netherlands.