The Industrial Organization of Hong Kong's Progression Toward a Cashless Economy (1960s-2000s)

A dramatic change occurred in retail banking technology in Hong Kong between 1960 and 2000. Initially, the relevant technologies were installed and managed within the boundaries of large banks, such as HSBC. Over the course of this period, however, the industrial organization of the relevant technologies transformed to include provisions outsourced to nonbank institutions. This article seeks to account for this shift in the organization of computer technology. Specifically, the authors compare the adoption of computers at HSBC in the 1960s and 1970s with the Octopus micropayment system, which was developed in the 1990s by a consortium that excluded financial firms, thanks to the development (both in terms of depth and breadth) of an epistemic community of computer professionals and computer-literate managers in Hong Kong

The Changing Industrial Organization of Epistemic Communities During Hong Kong’s Progression Towards a Cashless Society (1960s-2000s)

The period from the 1960s to c. 2000 saw a dramatic change in retail banking technology in Hong Kong. Initially the relevant technologies were installed and managed within the boundaries of large banks (such as HSBC). But over the course of the period covered by this article, the industrial organization of the relevant technologies transformed to include provision outsourced to non-bank institutions. This paper seeks to account for this shift in the organization of computer technology. Specifically, the paper compares the adoption of computers at HSBC in the 1960s and 1970s with a micro-payments solution called �Octopus�, which was developed in the 1990s by a consortium that excluded financial firms thanks to the development in depth and breadth of an epistemic community of computer professionals and computer-literate managers in Hong Kong. Our thinking in doing this comparison was influenced by the theory of the firm as epistemic communit

In Digital We Trust: The Computerisation of Retail Finance in Western Europe and North America

This paper tells of the contents of a forthcoming volume, which offers a new and original approach to the study of technological change in retail finance. Most business history studies of businesses for the last 50 years note the emergence of computers and computer applications, but they do not analyze their role in shaping business practices and organizations. In this book we look directly at the processes of mechanisation and computerisation of retail financial services, throughout the 20th Century while articulating an international comparison. We bring together young, well established and independent historians, who come from different traditions (that is, economic, business, accounting, geography and political histories as well as historians of technology). Contributors look at stand alone and comparative case studies from different parts of the world (namely Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Mexico and the USA). The outcome is a rich survey of the broad literature examining different aspects of the technological and business histories of retail financial markets from a variety of perspectives

Solid intentions:an archival ethnography of corporate architecture and organizational remembering

Research on organizational spaces has not considered the importance of collective memory for the process of investing meaning in corporate architecture. Employing an archival ethnography approach, practices of organizational remembering emerge as a way to shape the meanings associated with architectural designs. While the role of monuments and museums are well established in studies of collective memory, this research extends the concept of spatiality to the practices of organizational remembering that focus on a wider selection of corporate architecture. By analyzing the historical shift from colonial to modernist architecture for banks and retailers in Ghana and Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s on the basis of documents and photographs from three different companies, this article shows how archival sources can be used to untangle the ways in which companies seek to ascribe meaning to their architectural output. Buildings allude to the past and the future in a range of complex ways that can be interpreted more fully by reference to the archival sources and the historical context of their creation. Social remembering has the potential to explain why and how buildings have meaning, while archival ethnography offers a new research approach to investigate changing organizational practices