The following article combines an analysis of production techniques in the French automobile industry between the wars and a rich supply of photographs that visually document the course of innovation in the industry. The text and illustrations show that, though production managers at Citroën, Peugeot, and Renault were aware of the methods of Henry Ford and Frederick W. Taylor, they adapted them to specific situations within the French industry and within their own companies. By looking specifically at the work of Ernest Mattern, who held production responsibilities at both Peugeot and Citroën and observed Renault as well, the essay traces the incremental changes in the organization of automobile manufacturing in France before the Second World War.

When Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., assumed the presidency of General Motors, the corporation was little known beyond Wall Street, which recognized GM simply as the holding company that controlled several nearly autonomous automakers and their subsidiaries. The following article describes how Sloan used the imagination and advertising talent of Bruce Barton to create a corporate image for GM, not only in the mind of the public, but among GM's own headquarters staff and division executives as well. Through the metaphor of the corporate “family,” Sloan and Barton finessed a potential public relations liability—the corporation's immense size—into an image of efficient cooperation and internal cohesion.

This article examines the negotiating process between the Brazilian state and transnational auto companies. It argues against dichotomous frameworks that emphasize either economic or political variables in shaping foreign direct investment and in favor of a more complicated bargaining framework that takes into account the strategic objectives of state policy as well as the form and timing of firm investment. Using archival evidence and interviews, the article documents the implantation of the industry; it concludes that the process of firm entry into Brazil must be understood in light of the policies and institutions that made the threat of market closure and the deadlines credible and made it costly for firms not to participate on schedule.

Extant social contracts, deriving from communities of individuals, constitute a significant source of ethical norms in business. When found consistent with general ethical theories through the application of a filtering test, these real social contracts generate prima facie duties of compliance on the part of those who expressly or impliedly consent to the terms of the social contract, and also on the part of those who take advantage of the instrumental value of the social contracts. Businesspeople typically participate in multiple communities and, as a consequence, encounter conflicting ethical norms. Priority rules can be devised to resolve such conflicts. The framework of extant social contracts merges normative and theoretical research in business ethics and specifies a domain for empirical studies.