The Business series dates from 1968 to 1984 and contains two films that discuss better business techniques, “Putting the One Minute Manager to Work” and “Up the Organization”. Another film, “The Plutocrats: Rich, Super Rich, Texas Rich” documents the lives of several Texas multimillionaires.

Clinton H. Blackburn (1916-1993) was a mechanical engineer with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Blackburn's papers are a sample of work-related materials he retained upon retirement.

Edwin A. Gee (1920-2013) was trained as a chemical engineer and worked as a metallurgist for the United States Bureau of Mines before joining the DuPont Company in 1948. The papers of Edwin A. Gee are incomplete and represent only a small portion of his work in the Development Department and as a member of the Executive Committee. The surviving records have been arranged in two series that document Gee's involvement in important phases of the company's history: Patent documentation and Diversification and research and development strategy.

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (alternatively referred to as the DuPont Company, or simply DuPont) was reincorporated on February 26, 1902, as successor to the partnership Eleuthère Irénée "E.I." du Pont (1771-1834) and his father Pierre Samuel "P.S." du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) had organized in 1801 for the purpose of manufacturing gunpowder in the United States. During the twentieth century, the company diversified beyond gunpowder and explosives into the broader chemicals industry. The twentieth-century records (dating up to 1972) of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. document the transformation of the company into a modern, centrally administered industrial giant. The collection, however, is not comprehensive for the period, and any company collections received after 1972 were accessioned and processed separately by Hagley Museum and Library.

The papers of James Carnes not only explain activities at the David Sarnoff Research Center (DSRC) affecting the original mission of the company as it evolved in the 1980s, but also alludes to the sale of RCA to General Electric, and the subsequent break up of RCA's various operations. The DSRC was donated to SRI International and had to adjust to competing with other research companies for contracts.

James Carnes led the David Sarnoff Research Center into the twenty-first century. His past focus on television as a scientist bode well for the DSRC as he helped develop high definition television and worked to produce wide screen technology. Carnes's papers allude to how the labs retooled to accommodate the company's new focus.

The photographic portion of this collection contains 35mm color slides as well as a few black and white photographs. These show presentation material about digital video interactive technology (DVI), CD Rom and AC-TV, as well as material from various units including the Consumer Electronics and Information Sciences Division, the Manufacturing and Materials Research Division, and the Consumer Software and Software Technology Research Groups.

Twelve of his lab notebooks (1966-1986) can be found in Record group 26.

James Porter Baughman (1936-) was a professor of business history at the Harvard Business School and later served as director of Crotonville, The General Electric Company's management development institute in Ossining, New York. His academic research was in the study of management strategy and structure, and following his tenure at Harvard, his position at General Electric gave him the opportunity to implement various business management concepts that he developed during his teaching years. The collection consists of news clippings and original documents amassed by Baughman for his studies of strategic planning and management structure at General Electric.

James Porter Baughman (1936-) was a professor of business history at the Harvard Business School and later served as director of Crotonville, The General Electric Company's management development institute in Ossining, New York. He also consulted for numerous private and public firms. His papers describe the successful career of a renowned business manager, lecturer, consultant, and world wide resource for developing future business management practices in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

James Porter Baughman (1936-) was a professor of business history at the Harvard Business School and later served as director of Crotonville, The General Electric Company's management development institute in Ossining, New York. This collection of Baughman's personal and professional papers documents some of his teaching career at Harvard Business School. However, the bulk of the collection is papers generated during his consulting and teaching work at General Electric.

John M. Barineau (1950-) worked at the DuPont Company for more than forty-five years, serving in a variety of capacities, including operations, product and process development, quality management, product management, capital project management, process safety management, Six Sigma improvements of supply chains, and purchasing, as well as with customers and suppliers working at or visiting approximately seventy DuPont Company sites and contract operations in sixteen countries. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. This small collection of Barineau's papers provides insight into product development. The materials are public information associated with operations that have been sold or terminated or are outdated. These documents show a "behind-the-scenes" view of what was happening within DuPont. The collection has been arranged into five series: Engineering Polymers/Nylon Resins files, Engineering Polymers/Hytrel Polyester Elastomer files, Engineering Polymers improvement initiatives files, DuPont corporate improvement initiatives files, and General files.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. These records provide nearly comprehensive coverage of corporate matters for the entire time span and reasonably complete coverage of the functional departments from 1920 to 1950, with less coverage from 1893 to 1920 and from 1950 to 1968.

Pierre A. Gentieu (1842-1930) was a photographer and a long-term employee of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. Gentieu's papers include correspondence with du Pont family members and coworkers, an account book of powder packed at the Hagley Yard (1858-1902), a record book with lists of explosions (1882-1909), time work sheets of powdermen during the 1890s, and a list of the principal events in the powder yards from 1882 to 1911.

'Sponsored film' defines a variety of motion picture productions funded by businesses, organizations, or governments that dictate the film's point of view, audience, and intent. Industrial or business films are a subgenre of sponsored films with content that markets products and ideas, touts a particular company or industry, trains employees, and explains manufacturing or transactional processes around creating and selling products and ideas. The Sponsored and Industrial Motion Picture Film Collection at Hagley is an artificial collection compiled by curators that includes single motion picture films or small sets of films acquired via purchase or donation.