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The leaders of business are a continued focus of interest in management research and in the broader society. Their attributes speak to social mobility, inequality, and who holds positions of power and influence in society. This article examines the attributes of the ten highest-ranked executives of the largest corporate enterprises in the United States—the Fortune 100—and compares how they have changed over the past 40 years, a period when many assumptions about businesses and the people who run them have changed. While there has been significant change in some areas, such as the increase in the proportion of women and foreign-born executives and the rise in outside hiring, there is no evidence of an increase in younger leaders who advance faster than their predecessors and spend an ever-shorter time with their employer. In fact, top executives now are as old as their peers were in the 1950s, and their tenure with their employer is rising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflectively applies measurement tools to gage whether a renowned financier and champion of shareholder capitalism, in 20th century business history, might be categorized as a corporate psychopath. The article examines aspects of the career of the outstanding financial investment manager, Bernie Madoff. Psychopaths and corporate psychopaths are defined as background to the article. Gauges of corporate psychopathy and psychopathy are outlined which could be modified by market research companies to identify corporate psychopathy in organisations as a way of aiding investment decisions into such organisations. The current article concludes that insolvencies such as those at Madoff's investment company, have been distinguished by CEOs being present who were simultaneously the lauded agents of financial market capitalism and who embodied the traits of the corporate psychopath. The examination of potential corporate psychopaths using this historical methodology helps inform ideas about what the effects of psychopathic leadership may be within economies and gives new insights into the reasons for the greed, risk taking, and unethical practices found in financial markets. Findings support the accepted view that corporate psychopaths can be discovered in senior roles in the financial services sector. This current paper provides new avenues for research offerings from market research companies. For example, business to business researchers could undertake research to identify firms more likely to be longitudinally viable, sustainable and less likely to collapse (i.e., non-psychopathic firms). Investment companies like pension funds could use such research to identify firms that are less risky, more ethical, better led, and therefore safer to invest in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses The Merchant of Venice from an economic and Biblical perspective in an attempt to corroborate the view that the work epitomizes the spirit of the early capitalism of Shakespeare's London. The main goal of the paper is to enrich mainstream interpretation by showing different, and more complex faces of the main characters of the play. Starting with the debate on usury in the late Middle Ages, the paper argues that the main ethical message conveyed by The Merchant of Venice is a criticism of the hypocrisy of the spirit of emerging capitalism at the time. Furthermore, the paper claims that in order to understand the core of this masterpiece, its Biblical references must be explored and reconsidered, as accurate interpretation of their context may shed new light on the play and on Shakespeare's general view of proto-capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business history research is needed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the development and dynamics of businesses over time. The aim of this research is to reveal the changes in business history using the bibliometric analysis method. Thus, while providing information about past and current situations, various predictions about the future are also presented. For this purpose, it is aimed to make inferences about the relevant literature through bibliometric analysis of public data of publications in the field of business history indexed in Web of Science (WoS). Due to their nature, bibliometric studies may produce different results in each period, even if they are carried out in the same field. Therefore, the data set prepared for the current period includes 1516 publications published between 1991-2023. Studies on the subject obtained from the WoS database were analyzed through the Biblioshiny program with R source code. Biblioshiny was preferred due to the fact that it is a publicly available program and the ease it provides in visualizing the relevant analysis outputs. In addition, content analysis, which was considered relatively difficult to perform on scientific studies in previous periods, can also be performed through this program. Content analyzes make it possible to get an idea about the essence of the facts, making bibliometric studies more than just a counting and listing task. After the data was obtained in accordance with various search criteria (language, publication type, field), manual control was carried out by the researchers. Manual control enabled the detection and elimination of studies that appeared to be related to the subject at the first search but had different fields. The outputs of the analyzes performed after compiling and sorting the data set are discussed in two parts. In the initial part of the findings, information about the authors of the works in the data set, their institutions, the journals in which they were published, their countries of origin, their subjects, and their relationships with each other were shared. As a result of bibliometric analysis, it was seen that the studies came mainly from the USA, England, and Australia. It has been observed that Harvard University leads among the institutions, but Scandinavian universities such as Copenhagen and Uppsala are also in the top twenty-five in terms of productivity. It has been found that British and American universities mostly cooperate with each other, and then mostly with European, Canadian, and Chinese universities. When the articles were examined in terms of their impact, it was seen that the academic journals with the highest impact level were Journal of Business Ethics, Business History, and Harvard Business Review. It has been determined that the authors acted pragmatically in choosing their topics, and that their topics focused on performance-related issues such as growth, capacity, impact and strategy, in addition to the historical context and even more dominantly in some periods. According to criteria such as the number of citations and publications received, it has been observed that the most influential authors in the field are Jones G., Maclean M., and Augier M. In the following sections content analyzes performed with the data set are included. Content analysis consists of word tree, word cloud, thematic evolution analysis, co-occurrence network, trending topics, and thematic mapping. There are two basic approaches to whether initial search terms should be used in these analyses. According to the first approach, these terms are to be removed from the data set because they will be predominantly included in the data set and will drag the results in a certain direction. According to the second approach, basic research results should remain in the data set in order to clearly reveal their relationship with other concepts. In this research, the latter one was adopted. The findings of the research indicate that the themes change periodically, but in recent years there has been a trend towards entrepreneurship, management, and growth. It is expected that the concepts of "social responsibility", "governance" and "socio-emotional wealth" will rise in the coming periods. Finally, it was observed that approximately 80 publications were produced annually. Considering that business history is a developing field of science both in Türkiye and abroad, it is possible that the mapping activity carried out on this field, which is expected to be studied further (development direction of the field, changing concepts, active actors, etc.), will contribute to researchers in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"'Where Do We Go from Here?': Histories of Long-term Black Business Ownership, Community, and Family in Los Angeles County" is an oral history project of African American business owners conducted by the UCLA Center for Oral History Research. This report describes the design and implementation of the project, the challenges of outreach, and the ways in which narrators participated and negotiated their own agendas and investments in the project. It also argues for the importance of business oral history as a means of documenting African American community and social history. As this project shows, business oral histories can record the daily particulars of small business's operations and the challenges business owners face, offer insight into the legacy of African American multi-generational businesses, demonstrate the on-going impact of racism and segregation on Black-owned businesses, and give evidence of how Black business owners conceive their relationship and responsibilities to the African American community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the history of Brother Industry Ltd. (BIL) to propose a new take on the conventional wisdom surrounding the internationalisation of Japanese companies – a common understanding that the key factor behind Japanese firms' successes in establishing an international competitive edge was how the companies' headquarters in Japan implemented a powerful combination of control and integration over their international distributors and moved up from low-end markets to high-end markets through unyielding technological development. By exploring the case of BIL, we locate a different path to growth where highly autonomous local subsidiaries sought to remain in low-end markets and thereby assisted their companies to develop into innovative global companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review in Business History has benefitted from the insights of over 550 expert reviewers over the past three years. In this editorial, we contextualise the journal's peer review process historically and in the available literature. We discuss some of the challenges of the double-blind review system, including securing reviewer engagement amidst time constraints and publication pressure, the dark sides of anonymisation, and the role of bias, values, and interdisciplinarity in research evaluations. Based on these reflections, we furnish some concrete guidance for reviewers on how to approach business historical research. We end by contemplating the future landscape of peer review and opening a conversation about review standards and reviewer education in the field of business history. Is peer review ripe for revision and resubmit? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We provide an historical essay synthesising the macro societal processes that affected Indigenous peoples' entrepreneurial and trade activities in Canada from pre-contact to 1920. Adopting Indigenous entrepreneurship and institutional theory lenses, we find that the evolution of legal, political, and socio-economic forces converged to undermine Indigenous peoples' entrepreneurial activity and well-being in Canada. Our narrative suggests a dynamic view of the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutions and the role of power. Whereas Baumol's view is that institutions shape entrepreneurship by determining the relative payoffs to productive or unproductive entrepreneurship, our narrative shows the ways in which unequal benefits to various entrepreneurs change institutions over time. This advances the field of entrepreneurship by historically situating entrepreneurial processes in settler society and exposing the role of power in the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutions in society over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender and feminism are often described as being marginal to the preoccupations that define the core of business history. Here we explore three possibilities that this framing suggests: first, that scholars of gender and feminism in business history are responsible for moving their work from margins to centre, becoming part of and perhaps changing the mainstream; second, that those working in the centre ought to expand their horizons to become more cognisant of feminism and gender; and third, the interpretation that we examine in detail here, that all working on historical analysis of business can rethink the distinction between the construction of core and periphery. This latter approach means actively challenging the maintenance of the centre/margin metaphor and its effects. We argue that this third approach would benefit all working in the field. Envisioning a more heterodox business history enables critical analysis of white, male, Anglocentric norms and values that have framed historical thinking in ways that exclude and produce partial, unsatisfactory, histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly conversations about business, gender, feminism, and history remain limited. In this afterword to the journal's special issue on how these themes intertwine, six experienced colleagues reflect on their work and working lives to shed light on why this is so: Jennifer Aston, Hannah Barker, Gabrielle Durepos, Shennette Garrett-Scott, Peter James Hudson, and Angel Kwolek-Folland. They each emphasise the importance of taking nothing for granted, empirically, methodologically, or theoretically, in their efforts to bring business history into dialogue with gender and race and feminism. In particular, the group recommends looking beyond 'big business history', recognising that business happens at home as well as outside it, and remembering always that all of us carry and embody gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his history of Unilever, Charles Wilson stated that cinema advertising was not part of the company's marketing strategy until the late 1930s. However, despite the paucity of surviving archival sources, recent research has proved that Lever Brothers was engaged with the new medium of cinematography from its earliest days and that the practice continued up to and after the formation of Unilever in 1930. William Lever is renowned for his innovative approach to advertising and marketing, and as a pioneer of creating brand identity, but he was also one of the first British businessmen to recognise the value of film as a marketing tool. This article will argue that Lever Brothers was active in the use of cinematography from the mid-1890s and that it played a significant role in the company's marketing campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to a special call of 'bringing gender and feminism from the periphery to the centre of business history', the authors undertake an in-depth appraisal of Business History's own record, as a key signifier of the field. The scope includes articles and reviews published between 2000 and 2020 and find 17 articles out of 918 (1.85%) and 99 reviews out of 2,217 (4.46%), with a downward trend from 2010 to 2020. To start, the authors engage with a critical question as to the definition of the field itself and explore what those internal to the journal have had to say about its definition. The authors then take a critical look at how women have been socially constructed as (a) historical actors, as (b) gendered roles and as (c) authors of history. To understand what has been included and neglected, the authors investigate and reveal clues as to the barriers and possible entry points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to address a significant gap in the understanding of entrepreneurship at the microfoundation level. It focuses on how individual entrepreneurs, specifically Hongbang entrepreneurs in China from 1896 to 1949, shape and transform their contexts. The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate entrepreneurial success. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a microhistorical approach, investigating the case of Hongbang entrepreneurs in China during 1896-1949. It involves an in-depth examination of historical records to explore the strategic interactions between these entrepreneurs and core stakeholders such as consumers, financial intermediaries, government regulators, and human resources. The research methodology emphasizes a process-oriented view, examining the evolution of personalized networks into extensive connections. Findings – The research reveals that Hongbang entrepreneurs successfully reshaped their unfavorable embedded contexts by strategically collaborating with key stakeholders. They influenced consumer tastes, allied with financial intermediaries, negotiated with governments on regulation policies, and developed human resource stocks. The transformation was facilitated by the evolution of their networks from personalized to extensive connections. These findings highlight the localized strategies such as cronyism in resource acquisition within China’s private property development industry. Originality/value – This study contributes to the field by offering insights into entrepreneurial contextualization and networking. It sheds light on the complex interplay between entrepreneurs and their contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of localized strategies in the Chinese context. The findings add value to the discourse on entrepreneurship by elucidating the strategic and processual acts through which entrepreneurs engage with stakeholders and reshape their environments.

In this response to the editorial, I consider the challenges currently faced by the peer review system. These challenges include both the state of the history profession, especially as it interacts with the economics of academic journal publishing. I also consider the impact of the transition to Open Access (OA) publishing. Finally, the issue of transparency in peer reviewing is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we address the evolution of the comb industry in Portugal from 1880 to 1970 with the aim of understanding the technological, economic and social impact of celluloid in the national context. We explain, from historical and statistical sources and chemical analysis of Portuguese combs with historical significance, from the collections of Sociedade Martins Sarmento and Casa da Memória de Guimarães, that the introduction of celluloid by the comb industry of Guimarães, in 1895, revolutionized the industrial context of Guimarães, transforming it into a center for the production of (semi)synthetic plastics from the 1950s onwards. Celluloid had impact on the tortoishell imitation market, sought by social classes with low economic power, and coexisted industrially and commercially with horn, the traditional material used in combmaking.

Commissioned by Queen Maria Pia (1847-1911) between 1864 and 1866, the star parure is one of the most famous pieces of jewellery of the Portuguese crown. The original commission did not include a tiara, which has led to misinterpretation by some historians, mainly because the most famous piece of jewellery in the parure is currently a tiara. To clarify this apparent contradiction, this article traces the path of this set, which has known different arrangements for decades. Equally contradictory is the notoriety enjoyed by its author, Estêvão de Sousa, although almost nothing is known about his history. In the search for answers to the history of the parure and its creator, this article uncovers a commercial and familial network that is paradigmatic of the commercial practices of liberalism, in which hereditary privilege and technical-artistic mastery were the variables of an equation in which the royal house’s choices were decisive.

Copyright of Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung is the property of Leipziger Universitaetsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research Summary: This article explores how technology adoption can shape innovative activity. We study this issue within the historical context of the introduction and expansion of airmail across the United States between 1918 and 1935 using archival material and a novel dataset of early 20th century patents. A joint qualitative and quantitative investigation indicates that local individual and corporate actors applied diverse pools of knowledge and intensified their work with aviation innovations following airmail entry into their county. Moreover, we find evidence that the co‐location of aircraft manufacturing and airmail operations was associated with more corporate innovations that facilitated economies of scale and corresponded to increased technological diversification of firms' aviation patent portfolios. Ultimately, this paper deepens our understanding of the antecedents, consequences, and organizational processes that underpin innovation. Managerial Summary: This research investigates how aviation innovation in the United States was influenced by the postal service's early 20th century introduction and expansion of airmail routes. Our results indicate that counties with an airmail route experienced increased aviation‐related patenting by individual and corporate inventors relative to similar counties that did not receive an airmail route. Moreover, we find that corporate inventors working in airmail counties that also contained aircraft manufacturers were particularly active in technological areas that enhanced aircraft economies of scale and patented in a wider range of aviation‐related domains. An implication of this work for managers and policymakers is that early access to nascent technology can be a driver of local innovation and that spillovers can benefit diverse economic actors working in close proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: We analyze how the evolution of the broad institutional environment influences the vertical integration strategy of a multinational corporation (MNC) leading a global value chain (GVC). We develop a history‐to‐theory study based on the evolution of the banana GVC between 1899 and 1991. We argue that when a MNC's bargaining power vis‐à‐vis the host government is strong, it will choose a governance structure that addresses contractual uncertainty. When the MNC's bargaining power declines because of changes in the institutional environment, it will prioritize a governance structure that protects its assets. We analyze the evolution of MNC's bargaining power as a result of the interaction of three levels of the institutional environment: global, home country, and host country. Managerial Summary: Our study examines vertical integration decisions in a global value chain (GVC) throughout its historical evolution. Using historical sources, we show that when MNC managers perceive their bargaining power to be sufficient to protect them from hostile government actions in host countries, their main concern is that of governing their activities as efficiently as possible by amongst others vertically integrating asset‐specific transactions. When their bargaining power declines, MNCs become more concerned with shielding their assets and rents from expropriations by host‐country governments, thus retreating from vertical integration. We illustrate that the bargaining power of MNCs changes as events at the global, home, and host country levels unfold. For example, MNCs' bargaining power declines in periods featuring economic nationalism, such as the 1960s–1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that almost none of the researchers from various disciplines who have worked in the field of business history have identified themselves as business historians. Perhaps the most noteworthy among these studies are the endeavors undertaken by economists with the aim of bringing economic theory and business history closer together. This study aims to assess the efforts of economist Joseph Schumpeter in establishing a connection between Business History and Economic History through his book titled Business Cycles. The study begins by first addressing the theoretical framework of the Concept of Economic Cycles. Subsequently, Schumpeter’s book İktisadi Devreler is examined, and the examples he provides from business history are evaluated in the contexts of cotton textiles, railways, steel, automobiles, electric power, factories, corporations, and the modern financial system. The study also explores the relationship between the methodology used by Schumpeter in his book and Business History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In January 1998, the British weekly The Economist called the British bank Lloyds a "money machine". Such an outcome was far from inevitable for a bank that had been one of the hardest hit victims of the 1982 sovereign debt crisis, when most developing countries found themselves unable to repay debts accumulated over the course of the 1970s. Having overextended itself in the developing world, it took Lloyds more than a decade to return to profitability. This result was the consequence of a complete transformation of the bank's business and management model. Branches and international loans were sidelined, as was the investment banking business, deciding to focus its activities on domestic banking. The article analyses the reasons behind the transformation of Lloyds Bank from a national bank to an international power in the 1970s and, therefore, the reverse process between the 1980s and 1990s following the sovereign debt crisis. Thanks to the examination of archival documents recently opened for consultation, the article sheds new light on various issues analysed from banking and business history, in particular on how risk is calculated, how innovative decisions are made in a context of crisis and on the role of managers in shaping and changing the culture of these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic policy agenda of the SED has often been described as extremely orthodox in nature and—with the exception of a short period in the 1960s—hostile to reform. It is often overlooked that the GDR entertained the largest private sector of any of the CMEA economies up till the early 1980s. Besides the official propaganda, the SED leadership at no point abolished private entrepreneurship completely in the GDR. In this article, I analyze the ambiguous relationship between the state party and private entrepreneurship. I focus particularly on the late 1980s and the role private entrepreneurs were supposed to play in reforming and saving socialism in East Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This work recovers the contribution of Fritz Redlich (1892-1978) to the economic thought. Redlich wrote important works in the disciplines of economic history, entrepreneurship and business history. Amongst Redlich’s main ideas on the entrepreneur there is his distinction among different types of entrepreneurs. Redlich was also one of the first authors to analyze the structural problems of entrepreneurial action, proposing the idea of “demonic entrepreneur”, in which the accumulation of power caused by the entrepreneurial activity destroys the innovative spirit of the system, turning the entrepreneur into an enemy of society.

Movements seeking to infuse markets with moral values often end up utilizing the market mechanism and support from mainstream actors to scale up, even if it comes at the cost of diluting their founding ethos. But this process can be particularly challenging for movements that are explicitly opposed to using a market mechanism as a means of scaling up. Our analysis of yoga between 1975 and 2016 reveals how a countercultural movement fundamentally opposed to a capitalist market economy but seeking to grow can paradoxically become syncretic with or infiltrated by concepts and beliefs that are core to the market system but incompatible with the movement's original ethos. We show how, before such a movement can be commodified, it must be de-essentialized, a process that requires stripping away key aspects of its history, context, and religious commitments and transforming collective goals into individual ones. This process involves not only external entrepreneurs looking to mine the movement but also movement leaders seeking wider enrollment of resource-rich actors to scale the movement up. We show how codes borrowed from parallel movements and templates borrowed from markets can be instrumental in driving such a movement's transformation. Through this extreme case of the yoga movement, we advance understandings of how movements can become syncretic with values and practices they fundamentally oppose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]