How the idea of the local ‘business climate’ was created in the 1950s to give companies leverage at the height of unions’ power.

Most states, cities and local authorities in the US are concerned with promoting and maintaining a favorable “business climate” in order to attract inward investment, jobs and other economic benefits. Using General Electric’s “Better Business Climate” program as a case study, Caroline Hanley finds that the concept was mobilized by a grassroots conservative political movement in the 1950s as a way of undermining the power of labor unions. The business climate concept, she writes, has since become a way for businesses to define their own interests as shared community interests.