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This chapter discusses how the institutional developments at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce grew directly from the political and economic upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s and paved the way for effective pan-business lobbying in the years ahead. The tumultuous 1960s had altered the landscape of Congress and party politics, particularly through the rise of public interest liberalism and its demands for greater federal intervention with regard to employment equality, consumer and worker protection, and environmental stewardship. In this new political context, business leaders at the NAM and the Chamber refashioned their public image, refined their approaches to lobbying, and broadened their policy prescriptions.

This chapter traces the complex politics of inflation from the onset of wage-price controls in 1971 through the peak of America's inflationary experience during the Carter administration. During those years, the country's major business associations successfully mobilized a powerful lobbying operation by negotiating the new political terrain that inflation created. From the frustrating nadir, typified by the public spat between treasury secretary John Connally and Vice President Arch Booth, organized business leaders rebounded mightily, successfully engaging in both ideological debates and interest group politics to bolster their institutional unity and achieve clear policy victories. Historically, battles over price instability emerged along the class lines created by an industrial political economy—they pitted the interests of workers against those of employers, or labor against capital.

Inspired by the success of preschool in these states, advocates, foundation leaders, and business allies built a movement for universal preschool. Rather than continuing to push for the expansion of targeted programs like Head Start, they shifted to a universal strategy, believing that a program that served middle‐class families would ultimately build more enduring political support. The involvement of the Pew Charitable Trusts served as a catalyst, pouring funding into selected state campaigns, bringing together different constituencies across the country, and focusing unprecedented attention on pre‐kindergarten as a solution to educational and social problems. Support for expanding preschool relied on a strong research base that documented the promise of preschool for improving the life chances of disadvantaged children. But the movement's vision of providing “preschool for all” was challenged, both by those who preferred to target scarce resources to the neediest children, and by critics who feared increasing government's role in raising children in general.

This introductory chapter argues that the decline of liberal and progressive politics and the ascent of a business-oriented, neoliberal political culture did not emerge naturally from the exigencies of economic crisis or the inexorable logic of political traditions, but rather as the result of specific efforts by a diverse set of conservative activists. Although their organizational cohesion did not endure, organized American business leaders nonetheless established a vital legacy that continues to shape politics into the twenty-first century. Through their political mobilization, these workhorses of the industrial economy helped establish the political preconditions for the success of conservative politics, electorally and in policymaking. By successfully parlaying their economic clout into a broad-reaching movement, they cemented a conservative and market-oriented political vision whose legacy lingers today.

Business leaders are assumed to play an important role in the national leadership of liberal democracies, an idea supported by major political theories. Pluralists have focused on the often fragmented nature of business interests and point to the competing interests as they highlight the challenges of collective action that business leaders may have to confront in politics. This chapter discusses the capacity and power resources that business leaders bring to the task of exerting national influence or leadership and the impediments or constraints that these leaders have to deal in politics as well as the level of engagement they have with governments. As the chapter reveals answers to the inquiry, it also exposes how the operation of business influence and leadership in Australia is compromised by various institutional and ideological factors.

The pre‐1914 years were the formative years, the years of big business social and political apprenticeship, the period during which accumulated wealth translated into social status and political influence. Ch. 8 compares the socio‐political position reached by the British, French, and German business leaders at the beginning of the twentieth century. A specific configuration had already emerged, though it was still to evolve in the course of the century.

Chapter 14 introduces the The Four Rules for Maximizing Profits in Transparency Method and presents a series of step-by-step templates for evaluation and action plans that should be implemented by any business leader or investor who is seriously interested in extraordinary returns. Chapter 15 through 18 contain the operating instructions for implementation of the Four Rules and for using power nodes. These guidelines are illustrated with many specific examples that successful companies have used, as well as with lessons from avoidable mistakes.

Society has come to recognize the leaders of modern corporations, among many others, as heroes. In order to understand why some business leaders are being seen in larger-than-life contexts, this chapter examines the concept of hero as illustrated in mythology and folk literature. It argues that what business heroes have in common with the heroes of myth and religion is that they not only symbolize dreams and aspirations to their firms, and even to general society, but also are accomplishers of pragmatic goals. The chapter also presents how the heroic self-concepts of leaders in the latter part of their careers, tempered by the corporate settings, gives rise to distinctly different departure styles. Four categories are illustrated: monarch-like exits, general-like exits, ambassador-like exits, and governor-like exits. This chapter concludes by providing a brief outline of the book which includes an overview of the succeeding chapters, the book's goals, and the primary sources of data.

This chapter assesses how business schools have responded to periods of economic crisis—or have not. What is striking is how business schools seem to have been remarkably untroubled by any of the economic crises the nation has endured since business schools opened for business. Whether in the 1930s, in the 1970s, or at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a collective shrugging of the shoulders inside most business schools. That nonresponse helps one understand that many at business schools and the business leaders with whom they interacted defined “crisis” in a different way. For them, the crisis was one of public relations—how to make business look better when it had lost the confidence of so many Americans—not one of what business had done to lose that trust.

Writing Lewis, Beech and Rudkin into the “canon of business leaders” forces us to reconceptualize the 1930s-70s as a context for business entrepreneurship and leadership and also how we think about business success. All three founded, managed and sold their businesses during a time period when gender fundamentally shaped both their opportunities and threats, and thus their “nose” for business needed to be attuned to their gendered context. They needed to be able to navigate these gender-specific opportunities and threats along with those shaped by more general contextual factors in order to be successful. We need to consider this in order to understand women’s leadership during this period. Thus, adding Lewis, Beech and Rudkin and a gendered analysis of how they started successful big businesses in the mid-twentieth century delimits the story of entrepreneurship and makes it more useful to us today, in particular for women trying to learn how to navigate gender in business and other professional contexts in the twenty-first century.

This chapter focuses on the significant new developments after the war—developments that were the product of a catastrophic defeat attributable in part to the failure of Japanese technology. It explores the visions that established business leaders, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs, as well as ordinary Japanese people, developed during the formative years of the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). The chapter explains that during these early postwar years, Japanese businessmen and others began quite consciously to search for the keys to the immense prosperity of the United States—a prosperity which was all the more tantalizing given its contrast with life in a Japan prostrate from defeat. It notes that although these visions were diverse and often contested, key protagonists in this story focused on a few common themes which were to unlock, for them, the gates to prosperity.

One feature of the developments traced in the preceding chapters remains to be noticed: that is, the eventually fairly even spread across the political spectrum in the House of Commons of the cohorts of men of ‘non-élite’ social background. It is shown that in the age of the ‘financial revolution’, there was a good rapport between the country’s business leaders and the Whigs, but not one — or a less cordial one — between them and the Tories, and that this situation was even more true for the MPs of ‘non-élite’ background than for the House as a whole. They might also be taken as evidence of the essentially secondary position — not one seen as on equal terms — of the men of ‘non-élite’ classification who penetrated into the preserves of national politics. By comparison with the 1720s, the ‘non-élite’ MPs of the early 19th century were far less tied to the ‘establishment’ in the form of the king’s government, and by virtue of their numbers could play a role demanding more consideration from the government.

The first weeks of the Loray strike was crucial, in which the actions of local business and civic leaders helped to turn local citizens against the strikers and their union representatives. This, however, was one of the most important aspects of the strike, because it was through the early vilification of Dawson, Beal, and the other strike leaders, that local public opinion was so dramatically shaped against the striking workers. In addition to calling out the militia, the mill owners began an intense propaganda campaign attacking the union and its leaders.

This chapter explores the Japanese domestic market. It notes that as early as the turn of the 1950s, some visionary Japanese business leaders saw the production of an American-style middle-class society as crucial to Japanese prosperity, and explains that, in such a society, the consumer was vitally important. The chapter clarifies that in spite of the poverty which continued to haunt Japan, these businessmen set out to emulate their American counterparts and pioneer new markets—particularly a market for expensive electrical products.

This chapter addresses how the onset of World War I raised questions about if and how the United States should prepare itself for a military confrontation with a “foreign” enemy, and gave added implications to any talk of armed class conflict, especially if it involved immigrant workers. Americans everywhere increasingly championed the need to provide adequate defense against a potential attack from abroad. But this bulwark alone would not suffice. Dangers to national security also emanated from domestic sources, especially those deemed foreign or un-American. Millions of immigrants, already under scrutiny for their involvement in labor unrest, became potentially dangerous internal enemies. Business leaders would use this heightened tension to portray strikes, and the agitators who allegedly fostered them, as threats to national security. Alleged perpetrators became saboteurs and traitors. In pursuit of their eradication, what had been tacit connections between business interests and governmental agencies in the pursuit of labor tranquility became more direct and the results more draconian.