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Most recent prescriptions for firm development in the garment industry have focused on methods of reducing labour costs, with less emphasis placed on targeting high margin niches. This paper examines how the early ready‐made womenswear industry in the UK moved from a wage‐cost containment strategy before the First World War to exploiting fashion‐sensitive demand in the inter‐war period. The economics of fashion‐sensitive demand meant that the most efficient structure for the industry was to have many small producers, specialised in sub‐processes, and all closely located. However, contemporaries failed to understand the efficiency properties of the ‘industrial district’ type of local economy which emerged in London's East End in the first half of this century, a failure which eventually contributed to the dispersion of industrial activities and to the eventual decline of the industry.

A newly compiled dataset allows us to trace the history of foreign direct investment in UK retailing since 1850. Our results suggest that the upsurge of cross‐border activity in the 1980s and early 1990s was exceptional in absolute terms. However, when compared to the most likely determinant of entry rates, consumer purchasing power, the recent upturn is best seen as a return, after several decades of relatively low entry rates, to the high level of FDI prevailing in the early twentieth century. Moreover, we conclude that cross‐border retailing will continue to increase, and to do so at a rate close to twice that of the growth in consumer purchasing power.

The sewing machine was the first mass produced and mass marketed complex consumer good and the first to diffuse throughout the world. This article presents the first estimates of this diffusion in eighteen nations, which collectively represent well over 90% of all global sales from invention to 1914. While diffusion levels were absolutely higher in the more advanced economies, the article goes on to investigate the relationship between sewing machine consumption and real income levels. Once per capita incomes are taken into account, the consumption of sewing machines was relatively high among the less developed rather than the advanced nations.

The purpose of this paper is to engage with the discourse on the assumed existence of an distinct “African management” model. It critically deconstructs the concepts and submits an alternative strategy to address the need to understand what is happening in management of business in Africa.

Qualitative critical text analysis is used to understand the discourse on the nature of “African management” from the extant literature. The identity theory informs the understanding of the references to “African” as fundamental to identify a distinct management model. This analysis is supplemented by empirical case study research into successful African business.

Scholars failed to conceptualise what is “African”, and subsequently also what constitutes “African management”. This conceptual void undermines the critical reconstruction of a single African management model. Empirical research into actual management practices emerge as fundamental to systematic progress in this discourse. This research points to diverse management traditions converging into pragmatic practices.

Only a limited number of case studies were conducted into management history in Africa. This paper argues for an extended research programme, but this is future work.

It suggests a research strategy for scholars in African business studies, business history and management history to collaborate towards making a solid contribution to the economic development of our continent.

This research has the potential of forging collaboration in business among all of the people in Africa.

A critical text analysis is used to expose the conceptual lacunae that undermines progress in the discourse. This paper contributes to the literature on “African management” by systematically deconstructing the concept of “African identity” as a prerequisite to the management discourse. By signalling ethnic nostalgia, the critical reconceptualisation of Africanness offers an intellectually creative strategy out of the stalled discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect back over his career as a management and business historian so far as to consider opportunities for the future of management and business history as a disciplinary area.

The paper consists of two segments – the first half is an auto-ethnographic personal reflection looking at the author’s research journey and how the discipline as experienced by the author has evolved over that time. The second half is a prescriptive look forward to consider how we should leverage the strengths as historians to progress the discipline forward.

The paper demonstrates opportunities for management and business history to encompass new agendas including the expansion of the topic into teaching, the possibility for the advancement of empirical contributions and opportunities for findings in new research areas, including the global south and public and project management history.

The paper demonstrates that historians should be more confident in the disciplinary capabilities, particularly their understandings of historic context, continuity, change and chronologies when making empirical and theoretical contributions.

Book review by William H. A. Johnson. Casson, Mark et al., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 9780199288984

To conduct an exploratory mixed-methods study of attitudes toward extramarital relationships in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease.

We present descriptive analyses of quantitative data from the National Social, Health, and Aging Project and of qualitative comments posted online by readers of newspaper articles that focus on extramarital relationships in the context of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease.

Analyses of the quantitative data indicate the Alzheimer’s caregivers report more negative attitudes toward extramarital sex in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease. However, this difference is driven by non-spousal caregivers’ attitudes; spousal caregivers have substantially less negative attitudes. Analyses of public comments suggest that those who are most negative are focused on traditional religious and family values. Those who express less negative attitudes espouse a compassionate pragmatism that makes allowances for caregiver needs in the context of managing the difficulties of the spouse-caregiver role.

Quantitative data are limited by the small number of Alzheimer’s caregivers; qualitative analyses are based on a convenience sample of online comments.

Findings can inform future research, educational initiatives for professionals, the media, and people living with Alzheimer’s disease and their family members.

The number of individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and spousal caregivers will increase as the Baby Boomer generation ages. Norms regarding extramarital relationships in the context of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease are evolving.

Little social scientific research examines attitudes toward extramarital relationships in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease.