Papers by Kenneth Lipartito
The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, 2012
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Why did America embrace right wing populism in the 2016 election? A look back at past moments of ... more Why did America embrace right wing populism in the 2016 election? A look back at past moments of economic transformation suggests that government policy of "producerism" mitigated the pain and fear among those losing jobs and opportunity in a changing economy. The abandonment of this policy after 1980 explains the resentment of the white working class toward established elites of both political parties and set the stage for the rise of a political outsider like Trump.
The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, 2012
On September 12, 1957, audiences at a Fort Lee, New Jersey, drive-in movie theater became the unw... more On September 12, 1957, audiences at a Fort Lee, New Jersey, drive-in movie theater became the unwitting subjects of a psychological experiment. James Vicary, a forty-two-year-old marketing consultant, convinced the theater owners to flicker images across the screen at one-three-thousandth of a second, faster than the eye could see. As patrons watched Kim Novak and William Holden cavorting in the film Picnic, the words “eat popcorn” and “drink Coca Cola” infiltrated their subconscious. When Vicary revealed the test to the public a few days later, he bragged that his hidden messages had induced a surge in popcorn and soft drink sales of 50 and 18 percent, respectively. In little more than a year, Vicary predicted, cinemas across the nation would be using this new, unorthodox selling technique.1 Subliminal advertising, a term not found in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature before 1957, rivaled reports of UFOs and communist spies for the top story of the year.2
Ssrn Electronic Journal, 2010
Once upon a time economic historians searched for industrial revolutions. Now they scout the past... more Once upon a time economic historians searched for industrial revolutions. Now they scout the past for information revolutions. They have found many: in Victorian England, eighteenth century Sicily, ancien régime Paris, the early modern Atlantic, the ancient world. 1 But what do we mean by information? Economics treats information as rational knowledge that guides action, a definition that goes back to the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, information lost many of these older Enlightenment connotations. In 1948 Bell Labs engineer Claude Shannon synthesized theories of information as any transmission that reduced uncertainty and resolved ambiguous states. 2 A letter,
Between 1905 and 1907, financier Clarence Mackay purchased some five percent of AT&T's outstandin... more Between 1905 and 1907, financier Clarence Mackay purchased some five percent of AT&T's outstanding shares, giving him four times as much stock as the next largest owner. 1 Such a large stake, Mackay argued, entitled him to representation on the company's board of directors. As Mackay wrote to AT&T president Frederick P. Fish, "[N]ot one of your eighteen Directors. .. owns over 2,000 shares of your stock in his own right. .. ." 2 Control rested in the hands of AT&T managers. Thirty-six percent of the stock was in the company treasury, voted by the AT&T directors through a trust agreement. Directors voted an even higher percentage when proxies were added in. 3 Mackay had pointedly raised the issue of control in a corporation composed of numerous stockholders. It was an issue that would grow enormously important in the coming decades with AT&T as one of the central firms in the debate over who had the right to control and manage big firms. After consulting with other AT&T directors, Fish penned a lengthy reply. Each director, he wrote, had an obligation to serve "each and all of the stockholders," and it was "unwise to have any stock interest specifically represented on the Board." This was somewhat disingenuous
The American Historical Review, 2016
HISTORIANS ARE EXAMINING THE ECONOMY once again. They are studying commodities, markets, corporat... more HISTORIANS ARE EXAMINING THE ECONOMY once again. They are studying commodities, markets, corporations, and banks. They are mapping trade patterns, dissecting marketing strategies, and deconstructing managerial ideologies. Graduate schools now offer courses on the history of finance, political economy, and the grandest topic of all, capitalism. Sensitive to cultural history's critique of simple materialism, the new scholarship in business and economic history offers the possibility of a synthesis of the material and the mental in the study of the past. Fifty years ago, history was anchored in what Geoff Eley and Keith Nield term a "sovereign materialism." 1 Even when studying culture and social relations, historians assumed that at base the past was shaped through material forces, notably systems of production, technology, property, and exchange. Much of the debate in the profession over the past half-century has been about establishing the authority of ideas, values, and identities independent of coarse materiality or narrow economic interests. That project was largely successful, but it isolated the study of economic matters from the mainstream of history. The return of the economic reflects a desire to take the material side of life seriously once again. Things, nature, technologies, labor, and commodities count, not just as cultural representations or referents in language, but in their own right. But things, their making and exchanging, cannot be separated from language and ideas. Understanding the interconnections between material and symbolic life is at the heart of the new literature. The best examples have found original and compelling ways to bring the economic back into the larger narratives of history. The projects of the new economic and business historians discussed here largely cover the past two hundred years. Most, though not all, concern the West, or examine other regions as they connect with or compare to the West. This is partly a matter of my own professional expertise, but also a reflection of where much of the new work has concentrated. Nonetheless, some of the topics have deep roots in the premodern I would like to thank
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
Once upon a time economic historians searched for industrial revolutions. Now they scout the past... more Once upon a time economic historians searched for industrial revolutions. Now they scout the past for information revolutions. They have found many: in Victorian England, eighteenth century Sicily, ancien régime Paris, the early modern Atlantic, the ancient world. 1 But what do we mean by information? Economics treats information as rational knowledge that guides action, a definition that goes back to the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, information lost many of these older Enlightenment connotations. In 1948 Bell Labs engineer Claude Shannon synthesized theories of information as any transmission that reduced uncertainty and resolved ambiguous states. 2 A letter,
Constructing Corporate America, 2004
Challenging assumptions about the history and performance of the business corporation in the Unit... more Challenging assumptions about the history and performance of the business corporation in the United States, this book seeks to explain more fully this crucial institution of capitalism. The authors draw on theoretical insights from economics, law, political science, and cultural studies to show the multiple ways in which corporations have shaped American society, culture, and politics over the past two centuries. They reject assertions that the corporation is dead and show that it in fact has survived, and even thrived by adapting to changes in its politics, social, and cultural environment. They call into question narrow economic theories of the firm, and show instead that the corporation must be treated as a more fully social institution, pointing the way to a new periodization of corporate history and a new set of questions for scholars to explore. Key issues engaged include the legal and political position of the corporations, ways in which the corporation has shaped and been sh...
Journal of Social History, 1989
Enterprise and Society, 2013
By taking note of new developments in economic theory and cultural theory, business historians ha... more By taking note of new developments in economic theory and cultural theory, business historians have the opportunity to lead a reintegration of mentality and materiality in the study of history. This task will require rethinking the field’s traditional approach to strategy, structure, organization, and culture. An emerging literature of practice theory and the shift from a linguistic to a practice based model of culture offer to business historians, and to all interested in the economic past, a way to conduct this integration. The new approach will complement but go beyond the economics of information, institutions and behavior. Though the task will require some new methods and approaches, the result will bring the study of business and economic history to the forefront of history.
Business History Review, 2005
The American Historical Review, 2013
History, Theory, Methods, 2013
Americanization and Its Limits, 2004
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Papers by Kenneth Lipartito