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The membership is assessed in detail for the earliest chambers in terms of their geographical reach, sector structure, balance of company structures, trading markets, overlap with other networks, and links to protests and religious dissent. Banking appears to have been a leading sector within chambers. Modern developments have interrelated with changes in industrial district structures, expansion of the incorporated business form, evolving networks, changes in international trade, and the expansion of small firms. A remarkable finding is the market penetration of chamber membership has stayed stable over 200 years. Pressures from the world wars and economic slumps have been relatively short-lived. Econometric analysis shows service development as the main feature associated with stronger market penetration. The only major changes to this stability have come from the 1990s, and appear to relate to the mixed signals from acting as partners with government.

Examines the more recent developments of European big business, from the 1960s to the late 1980s, which can be seen as the golden age of the industries of the second industrial revolution. The number of large as well as giant (with a workforce of 100,000 or more) companies increased significantly, and greater convergence in the size and sectoral distribution of the largest companies can be observed.

This chapter shows how the resources underpinning the early chambers predominantly came from subscriptions, but shifted progressively to user fees, and after the 1970s were supplemented by government contracts. This has changed the relation between members and the chambers, but analysis of management practices demonstrates that subscriptions were, and remain, a critical influence on member decisions. The governance of chambers has evolved from purely voluntary elected officers to a professional staff of contract managers. The tensions in this shift are analysed, together with possible influences on ‘management sorting’. Analysis of committee structures shows a broadening to encompass wider interests and sector structures, and to respond to government threats.

The potential of using computers has been evident in how the prices of information processing has experienced a sharp decline, and in how computing power has undergone rapid development and expansion. As such, several governments and companies have opted to invest on IT, emphasizing how these organizations tend to be optimistic about future gains and possible payoffs. However, certain doubts have been expressed, such as the ‘Solow paradox’ which question the role of IT in improving productivity. As can be observed in the data of Finland' nonresidential business sector, productivity has not exhibited rapid growth through investing on computer use. This chapter looks into the economic impacts of computer technology in Finland and investigates the underlying policy issues for such large-scale efforts.

This chapter presents an overview of market capitalism and the business sector in Japan. It explores the network of alliances among the major corporations that make up the Japanese economy, and provides a schematic representation of strategic alliances and intermarket keiretsu. The chapter also suggests that the proliferation of complex new forms of strategic alliances elsewhere has raised the issue of how different Japanese patterns of intercorporate relations really are. The analysis indicates that intercorporate alliance structures are a core feature of Japanese market capitalism and that they also represent a form of rational economic organization.

This chapter, which explores the relationships between business strategies and climate change, presents a brief summary of the history of business action toward climate change. It then explores the current business sector reactions to climate change and investigates the reports and databases that survey initiatives from the business sector. The chapter also discusses the three sets of corporate responses, which include: The business sector investment in clean energy and low-emission technologies; actions taken toward carbon accounting, trading, and reporting; and political action and membership in associations or alliances active in dealing with the climate change issue. The chapter concludes by examining the numerous intricate and sometimes contradicting corporate responses to the current challenges in climate change.

This chapter examines the role of suburbs in enhancing the competitiveness of cities in Great Britain, focusing on the city of Manchester, England. It provides a brief overview of the changing employment patterns within the city, and explores the financial and business-services sector and the experiences of people working within it. The chapter also analyses the role of prosperous neighbourhoods in attracting a skilled workforce to urban areas, and also the impact and implications of city development upon prosperous suburbs.

This chapter explicates the business sector's influence on the definition and distribution of white-collar crime within specific regulatory contexts. It argues that business sectors influence the distribution of white-collar crime not only through their influence on the enactment and administration of law, but also through their relative abilities to define what regulatory law is, how it is violated, and enforced. The chapter weaves a model of regulatory authority and its effect on regulatory policy and practice around the context of deal making in the securities industry.

This chapter introduces the concept of “free innovation,” which entails innovations developed and given away by consumers as a “free good,” with resulting improvements in social welfare. It illustrates how free innovation works within the broader scope of national economic development and how free innovation works vis-à-vis the traditional producer innovation paradigm. The chapter compares and contrasts free innovation and the producer innovation paradigm, in the process illustrating how the creation of a free innovation paradigm can both challenge and complement the traditional producer innovation paradigm. The free innovation paradigm here is meant to guide emerging research into free innovation practices and policies through the use of an underlying unified structure. The chapter then closes with a summary of the free innovation paradigm theory as well as some related concepts.

This chapter presents evidence that free innovation is a very substantial phenomenon with respect to the development of products consumed within the household sector. Today, tens of millions of consumers annually spend tens of billions of dollars creating and modifying products to better serve their own needs. In fact, aggregate household sector product development expenditures rival the scale of business sector expenditures by producers developing products for consumers. The chapter then shows how more than 90 percent of the developers of product innovations in the household sector meet both of the criteria for free innovation specified in the previous chapter. Finally, the chapter explores the nature of transaction-free self-rewards central to the viability of free innovation, and discusses why it can make economic sense for free innovators to reveal their innovations for free.

This chapter discusses the factors, especially changing beliefs, that led to redemocratization and the subsequent institutional changes during the years 1985–1993. After the military government, the middle class demanded more inclusion in the political arena. To a certain extent, this happened with multiple parties, and only one claiming to be a right-wing party. Unexpectedly, the franchise was given to illiterates seemingly because the belief in social inclusion warranted it; the illiterates were not in the streets clamoring for the vote. The granting of the franchise to illiterates had few short-term, but many long-run, consequences. Moreover, the business sector was less open than the political sector, with the initial maintenance of import substitution programs. Business was still in the hands of elites with lots of regulations as well as ways to avoid regulations—for a price.

This chapter discusses the military government and the belief in “developmentalism” which motivated the institutions put in place by the regime. Developmentalism rested on top-down technocratic planning and was a coalition between the military and the business community, both domestic and foreign. Import substitution policies along with state-led industrialization brought economic growth in the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s. But, the Brazilian miracle of the late 1960s and early 1970s began to sputter out, and, moreover, political rights became more constrained. The years of censorship and a closed political system sowed the seeds for a more open political order. Above all, the failure of the expansionist strategy of growth through import substitution accompanied by inflation and external debt became self-evident. Citizens also began to blame the government for not reducing economic and social inequality. The dominant belief that economic growth should precede social inclusion started losing political support.

This chapter discusses the advantages of collective action. Collective action allows dealing with the wider context of corruption risks by assembling competitors and other stakeholders to come to agreement on ways to reduce corruption and the risks. Collective action has the additional advantage that it enables an entire business sector to manage expectations: in its talks with regulators and the wider public, it can indicate what it considers reasonable. The chapter poses the question: Why collective action? It defines collective action, and discusses its traditional use to illustrate aspects of the so-called “prisoner’s dilemma.” The chapter ends by posing the question: Is collective action really necessary?