For much of the twentieth century, the prevalence of dictatorial regimes has left business, especially multinational firms, with a series of complex and for the most part unwelcome choices. This volume, which includes essays by noted American and European scholars such as Mira Wilkins, Gerald Feldman, Peter Hayes, and Wilfried Feldenkirchen, sets business activity in its political and social context and describes some of the strategic and tactical responses of firms investing from or into Europe to a myriad of opportunities and risks posed by host or home country authoritarian governments during the interwar period. Although principally a work of history, it puts into perspective some commercial dilemmas with which practitioners and business theorists must still unfortunately grapple.
Spis treści
Introduction
Chapter 1. Business, Political Risk, and Historians
Christopher Kobrak, Per H. Hansen and Christopher Kopper
Chapter 2. Multinationals and Dictatorship
Mira Wilkins
Chapter 3. The Axis Multinational Insurers
Gerald D. Feldman
Chapter 4. Market Assessment and Domestic Political Risk
Peter Hayes
Chapter 5. German Pharmaceutical Companies in South America
Jana Wüstenhagen
Chapter 6. Multinational Jewish Business
Martin Dean
Chapter 7. Siemens’ Investments in Eastern Europe
Wilfred Feldenkirchen
Chapter 8. IBM and its German Subsidiary, 1910-1945
Lars Heide
Chapter 9. The Great Northern Telegraph Company
Kurt Jacobsen
Chapter 10. Managing Risk in the Third Reich
Neil Forbes
Chapter 11. Under the Threat of Nazi Occupation
Eduard Kubù, Jiøi Novotný and Jiøi Šouša
Notes on Contributors
Index
O autorze
Christopher Kobrak (1950-2017) was a Professor of Finance at ESCP-EAP, European School of Management. He received a BA in Philosophy from Rutgers University and MA, Ph D degrees in European History from Columbia University, from which he also held an MBA in Finance and Accounting. A CPA with ten years of work experience in the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia, his teaching and research interests included international finance and business history.