Colleen A. Dunlavy

Politics and Industrialization:  Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia (Princeton University Press, 1994).

• Co-winner of the Thomas Newcomen Award for the best book published in business history in the years 1992-1994.

• Explores the multifaceted ways in which two distinctive political structures -- federal, legislative in the U.S. and centralized, bureaucratic in Prussia -- shaped the contours of the early railroad industry.

• Argues, in a nutshell, that the political structure of the supposedly "weak" American state:

  • encouraged greater government intervention in early railroad development; 

  • encouraged greater technological diversity;

  • hindered efforts of American railroad men to organize their industry; and

  • ultimately disorganized and fragmented the American industry until the locus of regulatory power shifted to the national level in the 1880s.

•  The Prussian structure, in contrast: 

  • encouraged Prussian officials to take a  hands-off stance toward the industry;

  • encouraged greater technological uniformity from the outset; 

  • spurred Prussian railroads to organize themselves; 

  • thus enabling them to create a truly national railroad system much earlier.

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Shareholder Democracy:  The Forgotten History (under contract with Harvard University Press/Harvard Business School.  I hope to complete the book manuscript in 2005.

• Draws attention to corporate governance as a much-neglected area of research in business history.
• Uncovers surprisingly democratic traditions of corporate governance -- especially shareholder voting rights -- in the U.S. as well as in Britain, France, and the Germanies in the 1830s-1840s.  
• Contrasts the persistence of these traditions in Europe with their rapid demise in the U.S., where plutocratic voting rights prevailed by the 1880s -- thus making possible the Great Merger Movement at the turn of the century.
• The book manuscript is in preparation.  On a portion of the underlying research, click the link at left to "Corporations."

• Conceived as a brief, popular book to be issued in paperback and (I hope) as an electronic book.
• Takes the history recounted in Shareholder Democracy as a starting point for thinking about how small shareholders might participate more actively in corporate governance today.
• Considers ways in which the Internet might be used (and is being used) to enhance shareholder participation.  

• Explores everyday industrial policies (tariff, patent, antitrust, labor, taxation, etc.) in the U.S. and Germany and their impact on  strategic decision-making by American and German firms. 
• Assesses the consequences of those decisions (e.g., to form cartels or to engage in mergers) for the process of technological change (e.g., in steel or electrical manufacturing).
• As I was finishing the railroad book, I began the research for this one, then discovered that I needed to know much more about nineteenth-century corporate governance and that the literature was virtually non-existent.  When I finish the corporate governance books, I plan to return to this one.

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