INTRODUCTION

With two exceptions, the chapters in this book were presented at a session of the International Economic History Association that was held in Milan in August 1994. The aim of the session, which was organised by Lee J.Alston, Richard N.Langlois and myself, was to present theoretical arguments and case studies on the relationship between organisational forms and the deployment of labour in modern capitalist economies. One of the main purposes of the session was to juxtapose views from different disciplines, including economics and sociology as well as economic history, in order to explore possible areas of agreement and dispute. Although such a broad terrain could hardly be adequately surveyed in only a few papers, the participants have provided thought-provoking discussions of several modern schools of organisational thought, along with a range of examples drawn from the history of Western Europe and the USA since the Industrial Revolution. Among the schools discussed are neo-classical, Marxist, evolutionary and transaction cost economics, the sociology of Anthony Giddens and Max Weber, and network analysis. Historical examples include factory-based labour in Britain during the Industrial Revolution, in the German chemical industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the American automobile industry in the inter-war period; agricultural labour in the American south after World War Two; and American medical specialists.