Search results

1 – 10 of over 98000
Book part
Publication date: 20 June 2008

Mira Wilkins

The history of international business has generated a growing literature. Over the AIB's fifty years, scholars associated with AIB have contributed to this literature but it has…

Abstract

The history of international business has generated a growing literature. Over the AIB's fifty years, scholars associated with AIB have contributed to this literature but it has been a far broader one. This chapter surveys a sample of the wide variety of works on the history of multinational enterprise, published from the 1950s onward. The works are not only in business history but also in diplomatic and legal history. The literature makes it clear that the multinational enterprise has a long history and is far from a post-World War II or post-1989 phenomenon. The chapter shows the variety in the accumulation of studies in business history directly related to international business as well as the forums where business historians present their findings. It considers why and how international-business history matters for international-business research.

Details

International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1470-6

Article
Publication date: 26 June 2009

Alfred D. Chandler

This piece is a republished autobiography of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

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Abstract

Purpose

This piece is a republished autobiography of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

Design/methodology/approach

Chandler reflects on his life and career as a management historian.

Findings

Chandler reflects on his life and career, in particular how he came to write Strategy and Structure and its impact on him as a historian. He also discusses his life at Harvard Business School, the editing of the Roosevelt letters, and the writing of The Visible Hand.

Originality/value

This is excellent background material for the other papers in the issue, as well as a valuable personal insight into Chandler's own thinking.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 15 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 April 2011

Andrea Colli

This paper seeks to provide a brief overview of what is business history as an academic discipline, with some reflection about its evolutionary patterns and heuristic value in…

2755

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to provide a brief overview of what is business history as an academic discipline, with some reflection about its evolutionary patterns and heuristic value in other fields, as for instance, management studies. A peculiar and increasingly practised subfield of business history is that of family business studies, which is thus a promising crossroads and meeting point for both business historians, practitioners and scholars in management studies.

Design/methodology/approach

Through an extensive analysis of the literature on family business studies in business history, this article highlights some potential areas of collaboration and suggests some reflections about the way in which the research methods of historians can be beneficial for management scholars.

Findings

Business history has in fact a high potential in providing, through its longitudinal and comparative approach, evidence for building new theories and challenging the existing ones.

Originality/value

This article tries to move a step beyond from the consideration of history as a repository of interesting evidence, to a new role for the discipline as an heuristic tool, and new chances of cooperation between historians and management scholars.

Details

Journal of Family Business Management, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2043-6238

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 October 2020

Kevin Daniel Tennent

The purpose of this paper is to reflect back over his career as a management and business historian so far as to consider opportunities for the future of management and business

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reflect back over his career as a management and business historian so far as to consider opportunities for the future of management and business history as a disciplinary area.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper consists of two segments – the first half is an auto-ethnographic personal reflection looking at the author’s research journey and how the discipline as experienced by the author has evolved over that time. The second half is a prescriptive look forward to consider how we should leverage the strengths as historians to progress the discipline forward.

Findings

The paper demonstrates opportunities for management and business history to encompass new agendas including the expansion of the topic into teaching, the possibility for the advancement of empirical contributions and opportunities for findings in new research areas, including the global south and public and project management history.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates that historians should be more confident in the disciplinary capabilities, particularly their understandings of historic context, continuity, change and chronologies when making empirical and theoretical contributions.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 27 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 August 2013

Anna Blombäck and Olof Brunninge

This paper seeks to uncover why and how the combination of family and company history in family businesses implies idiosyncratic opportunities in the process to uncover, activate…

2637

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to uncover why and how the combination of family and company history in family businesses implies idiosyncratic opportunities in the process to uncover, activate, and nurture heritage‐based corporate identities and brands.

Design/methodology/approach

The discussion is specifically informed by the literatures on brand heritage, family business, and the notion of hybrid identities. To illustrate this typology of history communication in family businesses the paper relies on web site observations in Sweden and German‐based family businesses.

Findings

Based on the construct of brand heritage, the paper clarifies why the entwinement of family and business provides fertile ground for brand heritage. The presentation of a typology of ways to communicate family, business and family business history respectively further reveals the varying openings and practices of family businesses in this area.

Research limitations/implications

The paper primarily takes an external marketing orientation and is conceptual.

Practical implications

The distinction of two sources of brand heritage in family businesses and the typology of approaches to reflect history in corporate communications should be of interest for practitioners. The findings can serve as an eye‐opener and instrument in the planning of strategic marketing.

Originality/value

The paper focuses on brand heritage and heritage branding from a family business perspective. Being hybrid identity organizations, characterized by entwinement of family and company history, family businesses offer particular perspectives to the heritage brand discussion.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 18 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 14 March 2022

Mira Wilkins

Business history can cast light on current topics in international business. With that in mind, the author asked herself how she as a business historian might contribute an

Abstract

Business history can cast light on current topics in international business. With that in mind, the author asked herself how she as a business historian might contribute an invited brief essay to a volume on international business in times of crisis. What were the relevant methods of business historians, including archival research? After discussing such methods, the author turns to a current crisis. News from India in May–June 2021 (as the author was writing this chapter) told of the devastating destruction caused by the virus, Covid-19. How, the author asked herself, was it that an Indian company, reported to be the largest producer of vaccines in the world, was unable to meet its home country’s demand in this crisis? The company is Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd., a multinational enterprise founded in 1966 by Indian entrepreneur Cyrus Poonawalla. Was its inability to meet India’s needs a case of failed Indian state policies, or, did the difficulty lie in failed corporate strategy? Was the answer more nuanced? Probably. What did the research methods of business historians contribute? What could be learned by following a path suggested by this international business historian? The application of a business history approach puts the Indian story in an international context. The chapter is an experiment. Ideas and questions are posed without being pursued. Background information of this business historian is added. The chapter does not give answers to the questions that arose from preliminary investigations. It pushes the reader to research more thoroughly the business history of this particular multinational enterprise and to consider the complexities in decision making as viewed from what turn out to be different home and host perspectives. Business is perceived as a separate actor, a constrained decision maker. The chapter draws on the existing fragmentary but related knowledge of this business historian and indicates possible routes for others to uncover answers to the many unanswered questions generated by preliminary investigations. The answers (to be provided by others) will hopefully generate informed policy making.

Details

International Business in Times of Crisis: Tribute Volume to Geoffrey Jones
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-164-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2021

Rene Arseneault, Nicholous M. Deal and Jean Helms Mills

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of where the course of the collective efforts in historical research on business and organizations has taken this discipline…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of where the course of the collective efforts in historical research on business and organizations has taken this discipline. By raising two key contributions that have sought to reshape the contours of management and organizational history, the authors trace the work of their field since their inception and, in doing so, critique the utility of these typologies as representative of diverse historical knowledge in management and organization studies (MOS).

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on elements of an integrative review that seeks to critically appraise the foundation of knowledge built in a scholarly field, the authors interrogate the historical knowledge that has been (and is being) produced in three leading management and organizational history journals by synthesizing the posture history takes as an object and subject of study in MOS. Over 400 articles were closely examined and categorized using Rowlinson et al.’s (2014) research strategies in organizational history and Maclean et al.’s (2016) four conceptions of history. Then, this research was used to examine the integrity of these two typologies and their practice by management historians.

Findings

The bulk of the work our field has produced mirrors an analytically structured history feel – where “doing history” straddles careful divide between data analysis and narrative construction. Narrating as a conception of history used in organization studies research remains the most subscribed representation of the past. It was found that while some work may fit within these typologies, others especially those considered peripheral of mainstream history are difficult to confine to any one strategy or conception. The authors’ examination also found some potential for a creative synthesis between the two typologies.

Research limitations/implications

Because only three management history journals are used in this analysis, bracketed by the choice of the periodization (between 2016 and 2019 inclusive), this study must not be viewed as being wholly representative of all historical research on business and organizations writ-large.

Practical implications

This research attempts to demonstrate the recent direction management and organizational historians have taken in crafting history. The authors embrace the opportunity to allow for this paper to act as a tool to familiarize a much broader audience to understand what has been constituted as historical research in MOS to-date and is especially useful to those who are already contributing to the field (e.g. doctoral students and junior scholars who have demonstrable interest in taking up historically inspired dissertations, articles, chapters and conference activities).

Originality/value

The research conducted in this article contributes to the debates that have sought to define the scholastic character of management and organizational history. The authors build on recent calls to take part in creating dialogue between and among each other, building on the collective efforts that advance history in both theory and practice.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 November 2018

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the contributions of the so-called “Historic Turn” in Organization Studies through the attempt by Cummings et al. (2016) to offer a new…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the contributions of the so-called “Historic Turn” in Organization Studies through the attempt by Cummings et al. (2016) to offer a new and alternative approach to teaching and researching the history of management ideas. A New History of Management is intended to be a provocation rather than a practical plan, and by their own admission, Cummings et al. (2016) prefer controversy to detailed analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper offers a comment and reinterpretation of a single contribution to highlight deficiencies which are symptomatic of the post-modernist research agenda around the “Historic Turn” in Organization Studies. The argument develops through a critical reading of Cummings et al. (2016) to determine whether theirs is a thoughtful and serious piece of work.

Findings

Cummings et al. (2016) invite us to revise and re-evaluate the genesis of management ideas available across textbooks. This by questioning some of the beliefs regarding the origins of management thought within textbooks aimed at both general management and the history of management thought. The premise of Cummings and colleagues is a timely and welcomed suggestion. So is their attempt to broaden the debate to alternative epistemological positions. They can potentially help to improve the emergence of conceptual and theoretical understandings of the history of managers’, business and management thought. Although far from being exhaustive, the paper points to the large number of inconsistencies and poor historiography in Cummings et al. (2016). This is in line with other contributions to the so-called “Historic Turn” in Organization Studies. The central argument presented by this paper is the myopic and technically poor approach of the “Historic Turn”. It is the case that Cummings et al. (2016) fail in their attempt to offer an alternative to established textbooks or explain the development of different approaches to construct systematic studies that, over time, consider the evolution of management, managers and those who have conceptualized their performance.

Research limitations/implications

This paper does not present new (archival) historical evidence.

Originality/value

The central contribution/ambition of this paper is to incentivize an advance of the current understanding of the origins and evolution of systematic thinking on management, managers and business organizations. The ambition of this paper is in line with Cummings et al. (2016) aim to incentivize research into how textbooks address the origins of management and management thought. Textbooks in both general management and the history of management thought, and the story told in them are important tools that speak directly to the ability of historical research to help advance the different disciplines that form general studies in business and management.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 25 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1961

A.W. COATS

Within the past few years a small but vigorous and expanding group of scholars has demonstrated a growing interest in business records, and within the next decade or so they and…

Abstract

Within the past few years a small but vigorous and expanding group of scholars has demonstrated a growing interest in business records, and within the next decade or so they and their disciples will present librarians and archivists with some unfamiliar problems. Even if the record keepers resist the demand that they should venture forth to convert the businessmen and gather in the archival harvest, they must necessarily acquaint themselves with the current and prospective uses of these materials. As the main demands will undoubtedly come from business historians, I shall begin by outlining the present status and future prospects of this discipline.

Details

Aslib Proceedings, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0001-253X

Book part
Publication date: 23 June 2022

Carlos Dávila Ladrón de Guevara, Araceli Almaraz Alvarado and Mario Cerutti

Taking as reference a sample of around a hundred biographical materials on entrepreneurs in Mexico and Colombia, the purpose of this chapter is dual. Both to show the relevance…

Abstract

Taking as reference a sample of around a hundred biographical materials on entrepreneurs in Mexico and Colombia, the purpose of this chapter is dual. Both to show the relevance and varied modalities that the biographical approach has enjoyed in business history research since the 1990s, and to display the intrinsic potential this modality of scholarship entails for entrepreneurship endeavors. In particular, it discusses the prospects to incorporate this body of empirical works into the large Latin American audience attending undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs in business, economic history and related fields. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first two are devoted to illustrate relevant patterns in the entrepreneurial trajectory of individuals and entrepreneurial families studied in each of the two countries under consideration. The last section identifies some conceptual issues that may impact current debates on Latin American business development as exemplified in recent business and economic history journal venues and scholarly conferences.

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Latin America
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-955-2

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 98000