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Begin New Search Political Geography Global Focus Author Charlie Harris

1. Volkswagen Since World War Two: Rebuilding the Corporate Reputation of the World’s Largest Car Manufacturer

Author:
Charlie Harris, Jamie Haworth, Scarlett Mansfield, and Christopher McKenna
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
The VW badge is a common sight around the world. Driven by millions across Europe and the Americas, Volkswagen automobiles are also familiar to consumers across Latin America, Africa and Asia. The German carmaker’s cultural resonance is hard to miss: most famously, the Volkswagen Beetle ‘Love Bug’ is romanticised in stories of the 1960s counterculture. Alongside the iconic Volkswagen Type 2 camper van, the Beetle came to symbolise freedom and adventure for many young people in the United States. Given this, it is perhaps easy to forget the company’s roots did not exactly emphasise peace and love. Volkswagen started out in late-1930s Germany as a Nazi-funded prestige project; Adolf Hitler took a personal interest in the early development of the Beetle, seeing it as the vehicle that would motorise the Third Reich and displace Ford’s Model T as the “People’s Car”. Burdened with one of the worst origin stories imaginable, Volkswagen needed to put distance between itself and Nazi Germany in the postwar period. To achieve this, it refocused its factory towards delivering the Volkswagen Beetle: a cheap, reliable product that it hoped would appeal to domestic and export markets alike. The iconic car came to be embraced by diverse communities from around the world over the following decades, transforming the German carmaker into a company with a global ubiquity by the 1980s. Its portfolio expanded to include sports cars and trucks, while its factories employed workers across the globe. Entering the new millennium full of ambition, Volkswagen strove for growth in new markets and dominance in long-standing car cultures; in the process, the crisis-prone company attracted a new set of risks to its corporate reputation.
Topic:
History, Business, Manufacturing, Automotive Industry, and Reputation
Political Geography:
Germany and Global Focus

2. The “A1” Reputation of the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping

Author:
Charlie Harris and Christopher McKenna
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
For over two hundred years, Lloyd’s Register has surveyed and classified ships. Founded in 1760 in a coffeehouse on London’s busy Lombard Street, the company then known as the Society for the Registry of Shipping, surveyed and classified the seaworthiness of ships. For the first time, underwriters and merchants could gain an idea of the condition of the vessels they insured and chartered while ship builders and shipowners could demonstrate seaworthiness. Lloyd’s classified the best as “A1.” This term would become the Register’s greatest contribution to the popular lexicon and, ever since, the phrase “A1 at Lloyd’s” connotes the highest quality. As the Second Industrial Revolution took hold in the nineteenth century, new concerns about standardization arose and, with them, battles to decide what organisations had the authority to dictate standards. Victory was generally determined by some combination of reputation, expertise, luck, timing, state sanction, and the quality of the standard proposed. Lloyd’s Register was able to set the standard for how ships should be built. While the Register technically only classified how ships should be insured, this financial motive (tied to safety and reliability) was a fitting starting point from which to define how maritime safety could be codified and guaranteed.
Topic:
History, Capitalism, Trade, Insurance, and Shipping
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and Global Focus