------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (January 2006)  
  
Franco Amatori and Geoffrey Jones, editors, _Business History around   
the World_. Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 425   
pp. $55.90 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521- 82107-x.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by William H. Becker, Department of History and   
Department of Strategic Management and Public Policy, George   
Washington University.  
  
  
Together, the essays in this book produce a mosaic picture of the   
study of business history at the end of the twentieth and the   
beginning of the twenty-first centuries. It is an essential reference   
work for students in any number of disciplines -- history, economics,   
management, finance, sociology -- interested in the history of   
business. The essays are drawn from papers presented at a colloquium   
on the future of business history at Bocconi University in Milan in   
October 1998. Many of the papers were substantially rewritten for   
this volume. The editors divide the work into three parts, and they   
introduce the book with a perceptive essay of their own. The essay   
goes further than providing an overview of the contents of the volume   
by highlighting the historic and recurrent tensions over what in fact   
constitutes the study of business history.  
  
Part I of the book is devoted to essays focused on methodological and   
theoretical issues. These essays demonstrate the towering influence   
of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. on the field. Critics of his work have not   
succeeded in producing a powerful alternative synthesis. But the   
ongoing critique of Chandler's analysis has stimulated work on   
business history, especially in the United States, as scholars   
continue to debate subjects such as the field's orientation to   
economic theory and how to accommodate business history to new   
directions in historical studies. Louis Galambos leads off the first   
section with a piece on the field's identity and boundaries. He   
provides a trenchant overview of the development of the field and   
examines Chandler's influence as business historians -- and others --   
continue to come to terms with his legacy. Galambos also examines the   
interplay between economics and business history by a discussion of   
Oliver Williamson's use of Chandler in his own work on the   
neoclassical theory of the firm. He discusses the important efforts   
of Peter Temin, Daniel M.G. Raff, and Naomi R. Lamoreaux, under the   
auspices of the NBER, to increase the collaboration between economics   
and business history in the building of a neoclassical paradigm of   
firm behavior. Galambos also addresses the work of evolutionary   
economists, such as Richard Nelson and Sidney G. Winter. In the next   
essay William Lazonick, writing on "understanding innovative   
enterprise," reviews his well-known criticisms of neoclassical   
economics for ignoring the dynamics of firm development and for   
slighting the issue of innovation. Lazonick's critique of Chandler is   
that he did not conceptualize the large industrial firm fully enough   
as a social institution. This point is taken up and broadened   
considerably in the essay by Jonathan Zeitlin on what has been called   
the "historical alternative" approach to business history. In this   
wide-ranging essay, Zeitlin argues that focusing on the firm too much   
narrows the field and that business historians must situate economic   
activity more broadly to account for ideology, individual   
personality, social structure, geographical location, resource   
endowments, and politics and government. These essays point up the   
broad methodological bases of business history, none of which   
dominates the field at the beginning of a new century.  
  
The second part of the book is devoted to essays on "area patterns"   
in the study of business history. It starts off with a useful   
overview of the field in the United States by William J. Hausman. The   
following essays consider the scholarship on business history in a   
number of countries and/or regions. Britain, the Netherlands, the   
German-speaking areas, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and   
Scandinavia are all covered. While Canada and Australia do not   
receive treatment, countries such as China and regions like Latin   
America are discussed. These essays range widely, as might be   
expected. While Chandler's influence has been felt in the work on   
business history in many of these places, it looms less large overall   
than in the United States. In many of these countries, family   
business has played a much larger role than in the United States, and   
the professionally managed hierarchically organized firm is less   
common. Government has also played a larger role in business and   
economic development in many of the countries discussed in the second   
part of the book than in the United States, although one can argue   
that the influence of government has not received the attention it   
deserves among U.S. business historians. Ultimately, the essays in   
Part II of the book provide a useful perspective on the role that   
different national histories and systems of higher education play in   
framing the issues to which scholars devote themselves. In   
Scandinavia, Spain, and Greece business is firmly tied to the study   
of economic history. Business historians in Britain, Japan, France,   
and Italy often find themselves teaching in departments or schools of   
management and business studies. Commissioned corporate histories are   
an important source of work in business history in Britain, the   
Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Japan. Outside of the United States,   
the influence of postmodern theorizing has been less pronounced in   
the history profession although Galambos sees its influence growing   
as, for example, studies of consumer culture appear for countries   
other than the United States.  
  
The final part of the book provides essays on comparative business   
history. This is a particularly promising area of work, although not   
entirely new to the field, since some of the earliest work in   
comparative business history appeared decades ago. Nevertheless,   
increasing globalization makes comparative perspectives more   
attractive than ever. The essays in this section cover family firms   
in comparative perspective, the history of multinational   
corporations, and business-government relations over time. Each essay   
discusses the relevant literature, but also suggests new subjects for   
study. The third part of the book ends the entire volume with an   
essay by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. on current opportunities for   
research in the field. Chandler briefly reviews the development of   
the fields of business and economic history, and then turns to a plea   
for business historians to study more intensively the   
electronic-based industries: consumer electronics, computers, and   
information technology. Like the industries of the second industrial   
revolution that transformed the world economy in the late nineteenth   
and early twentieth centuries, these are the industries that   
profoundly altered life at the end of the twentieth and the beginning   
of the twenty-first centuries. Chandler, who did so much to focus   
business history on the large-scale firm, emphasizes here the   
importance of the study of firms in the context of the development of   
their industries. This latter point adds another dimension to the   
rich panoply of material about empirical studies and methodological   
and theoretical issues that the editors have put together in this   
wide-ranging, indispensable book.  
  
  
William Becker's recent publications include _Voice of the   
Marketplace: A History of the National Petroleum Council_ (with   
Joseph A. Pratt and William M. McClenahan) and _The Market, the   
State, and the Export-Import Bank of the United States, 1934-2001_   
(with William M. McClenahan). He is currently writing _Shaping   
Corporate America: Big Business and the Twentieth Century Experience_.  
  
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