ABSTRACT
Industrial firms played a key role in the rapid industrialization that transformed economies and societies across the world from the nineteenth century. In contrast to earlier business organizations, industrial firms grew to enormous size and complexity. What is especially noteworthy about this new institution is that it appeared in several countries within a relatively short period of time and then developed along parallel lines suggesting similar factors at work in its creation and continuity. This happened against the background of the nineteenth-century revolution in transportation and communication which went hand in hand with a revolution in the processes of production and distribution in capitalist economies.
