Power, Pages, and Industrial Modernity: The Role of Literature and Corporate Media in the Global Expansion of Czechoslovak Shoe Company Baťa

• In Event: The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist

Abstract

This paper explores how the Czechoslovak shoe company Baťa leveraged literature and corporate media during its global expansion from the late 1920s to the 1960s to disseminate its business model and shape worker and community identities. Through an analysis of newspapers, books, and promotional materials, it demonstrates how Baťa’s corporate philosophy of the “new industrial man” served as a form of soft power that extended its influence beyond economics to shape modernity and transnational cultural narratives.

Author

• Barbora Svobodová, U libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)