I’ll be giving a talk at the 2011 APEE conference in April. My title is “Cameron Hawley, Henry Kitchell Webster, and Populist Capitalism in Literature.” Here is the abstract:
In the early and middle part of the twentieth-century, Hawley and Webster were strong-selling authors of novels that dramatized themes of business ethics and political economy. 
Webster was the author of A King in Khaki and co-author (with Samuel Merwin) of Calumet “K.” Hawley is most known for his two books, Executive Suite and Cash McCall, which were developed for television and the big screen. While both authors are generally pro-business-as moral-and-capitalism-as-good, their writings also show ambivalence and occasional suspicion about the emerging innovative, high-tech aspects of capitalism such as corporate raiders, financial instruments on Wall Street, and arbitrage. In this paper, I discuss briefly the two novelists’ plots and themes and explore the ongoing issue of understanding and communicating effectively the economic and ethical value of innovations in business and free markets.
My talk is part of the “Philosophy of Business” session on the program.