Business around the World

Business around the World
Business around the World
Business around the World

While many history departments of American universities prefer to keep business as a separate discipline, HBS entrepreneurship professor Geoffrey Jones encourages the examination of history as a way to better understand contemporary management issues.

To that end, Jones and Franco Amatori, a professor at Bocconi University in Milan, co-edited Business History around the World (Cambridge University Press 2004), a report on the current state of business history worldwide. Recently Jones took time to explain the importance of this new book, to which he also contributed chapters.

Cynthia Churchwell: What inspired your work analyzing the study of business history around the world?

Geoffrey Jones: There were two main factors driving our desire to bring together this survey of the current state of business history worldwide.

First, there has been an explosive growth of research over the last decade. Ten years ago our knowledge of the history of business was heavily concentrated on the cases of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Since then there has been exciting new research on the business history of other European countries, especially Italy and Spain, on many Latin American countries, especially Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, and on Chinese-speaking communities. Much of the best research is only available in local languages.

Business historians have also widened their research agendas. Understanding the evolution of the strategies and structures of large manufacturing corporations remains important, but a new generation of researchers has explored business networks, the family firm, knowledge creation and transfer, public policy and business, and a host of other topics. We wanted to bring together this new literature and perspectives and make it accessible, in English, to a broader audience.

Additionally, we felt that the moment was opportune for such a survey because the discipline of business history is at a crossroads. There are some researchers who wish the subject to be embedded firmly within the discipline of history, and to address the primary concerns of that discipline. In the United States, many history departments are currently heavily concerned with topics relating to culture, ethnicity, and gender. There is often an unwillingness to relate these important topics to business. Other scholars, including myself, perceive of business history as playing a central role in enhancing our understanding of key issues in contemporary management and business administration. The book provides a position statement of where we are now, which we hope will enrich the debate about the future direction and research agenda of the discipline.

Q: How does this new work differ from your previous research on multinationals?

A: This new book reflects my longstanding interest in the diversity of the business past. Much of my own research has been concerned with the historical evolution of multinationals. However, although research on this topic has often focused on high technology manufacturing companies, I have written extensively on the service sector, on business groups and alliances rather than hierarchical corporations, and on the different ways the entrepreneurs and firms of different countries have pursued strategies and organized their businesses. The contributors to this new book bring out this rich diversity on a much broader canvass.

Q: What have you learned about the success and impact of businesses around the world?

A: This book shows how entrepreneurs and firms have occupied center stage in driving the wealth of nations. It also demonstrates that there has never been a single model for successful or unsuccessful capitalism.

To give only one example, business and economic historians have often taken a skeptical view of the merits of family-owned and -managed firms. Harvard Business School's Alfred Chandler, the doyen of business historians, famously ascribed Britain's relative economic decline to the United States from the late nineteenth century to that country's proclivity towards family or "personal capitalism." This was contrasted with the separation of ownership and control and the growth of professional management seen in the United States. That debate continues. But this book does report compelling research that shows that, historically, family ownership and management in many countries has been a dynamic force. Leading firms such as Michelin in France, Heineken in the Netherlands, or Cargill or Mars in the United States are the tip of a huge iceberg of successful and long-lived family firms worldwide. Even today around a third of Fortune 500 companies are family controlled.