Once viewed as a distinct era characterized by intense bigotry, nostalgia for simpler times and a revulsion against active government, the 1920s have been rediscovered by historians in recent decades as a time when Herbert Hoover and his allies worked to significantly reform economic policy. Mark Hendrickson both augments and amends this view by studying the origins and development of New Era policy expertise and knowledge. Policy-oriented social scientists in government, trade union, academic and nonprofit agencies showed how methods for achieving stable economic growth through increased productivity could both defang the dreaded business cycle and defuse the pattern of hostile class relations that Gilded Age depressions had helped to set as an American system of industrial relations.

During the tumultuous era of World War I and the years immediately following, the leadership of the United States had shifted from Wilson to Harding and the mood of the nation from pro-labor to pro-business. Colin Davis introduces readers to the 400,000 railroad shopmen and their working world and to the national government's dynamic influence on labor from 1917 to 1922. Davis's study provides a much-needed synthesis of shifting power relations among labor, capital, and the state, as well as a cogent interpretation of union structural experimentation and failure. It will be of interest to social, political, business, legal, and labor historians.

Redefining the way we view business success, Pamela Laird demolishes the popular American self-made story as she exposes the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital--all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty. In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Laird goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key--access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. She explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. She evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics--effort, innovation, talent--and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections. In contrasting how Americans have prospered--or not--with how we have talked about prospering, Laird offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.

Dow's Dictionary of Railway Quotations is an authoritative compendium of quotations about railways from 1608 to the present day. More than 3,400 entries are drawn from over 1,300 writers and speakers and a wide range of original sources both British and American—Acts of Parliament, poetry, songs, journals, advertisements, obituaries, novels, histories, plays, films, office memoranda, speeches, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, and private documents and conversations. Here Andrew Dow records remarkable, memorable words—from the well-known to the abstruse, from the commonplace to the vital. The selected quotations are arranged by subject matter and searchable by speaker, subject, and keyword. Dow's Dictionary will inform and captivate railway enthusiasts along with readers interested in railway architecture, engineering, geography, and history.

"A Mental Revolution includes eight original essays that analyze how the scientific management principles developed by legendary engineer Frederick W. Taylor have evolved and been applied since his death in 1915." "Taylor believed that a business or any other complex organization would operate more effectively if its practices were subjected to rigorous scientific study. His classic Principles of Scientific Management spread his ideas for organization, planning, and employee motivation throughout the industrialized world. But scientific management, because it required, in Taylor's words, "a complete mental revolution," was highly disruptive, and Taylor's famous time-motion studies, especially when applied piecemeal by many employers who did not adopt the entire system, helped make the movement enormously unpopular with the organized labor movement. Though its direct influence diminished by the 1930s, Taylorism has remained a force in American business and industry up to the present time." "The essays in this volume discuss some of the important people and organizations involved with Taylorism throughout this century, including Richard Feiss and Mary Barnett Gilson at Joseph & Feiss, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and Mary Van Kleeck, and explore the influence of scientific management at the Bedaux Company, the Link-Belt Company, and Du Pont. Chapters on the Taylor movement's influence on university business education and on Peter Drucker's theories round out the collection." "Written by some of the finest scholars of the scientific management movement, A Mental Revolution provides a balanced and comprehensive view of its principles, evolution, and influence on business, labor, management, and education."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved