Common misperceptions notwithstanding, Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Europe has a long history. Such investment first penetrated European markets in the 1870s, and it has since evolved through a number of important historical phases. In quality, sectoral composition, location, motivation, and several other characteristics, Japanese FDI in Europe exhibited striking continuities during its first century of development. In more recent years, however, each of these characteristics has undergone substantial change as compared to earlier times.

Historians have recently tried to explain why the century-long work-reduction movement ended in the 1940s. A history of Kellogg's Six-Hour day program reveals that the loss of business and management support contributed to this demise. Mainstream corporations such as Kellogg's once thought that managed work reduction would save capitalism, and they developed a capitalist vision of freedom from work remarkably similar to recent socialist writings. But Kellogg's management reversed course and ultimately opposed the Six-Hour day. Instead they developed more conventional corporate views: that industrial progress is defined by more work for more people, that increasing the number of jobs is a primary economic goal (but not the responsibility of the individual firm), and that work can be perfected to become the most satisfying part of life.

Although the managerial function arises out of organizational needs imposed by market competition and technological development, managers' professional status has come in large part from legal conceptions that perceive the managerially run firm as an institutional bulwark for modern democracy. This article examines how the law, through its doctrines of trust and contract, has made and unmade management as a semi-public profession. The article explores the history of tender-offer regulation as a case study of this process.