Steph

Business History Conference Events & Dates

September 29, 2023September 21, 2023 Steph

Organized by BHC President Sharon Murphy, the 2024 conference is on the theme of “Doing Business in the Public Interest” and will be held in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 14^th – March 16^th. The call for papers, which was shared earlier this year, can be found here on the BHC website: https://thebhc.org/index.php/call-papers-bhc-2024

The deadline for receipt of all paper and session proposals for Providence is November 1, 2023.

In 2023 the BHC members elected four new trustees, and a new member of the nominating committee. Grace Ballor, Victoria Barnes, Chinmay Tumbe, and Paula Vedoveli will serve three-year terms as trustees through the 2026 meeting. Christy Chapin was elected to the nominating committee for a two-year term, 2023 to 2025. Members also picked Stephen Mihm as our president-elect. Leaving our board of trustees after three years of noteworthy service (and with many thanks) were Jennifer Black, Paula de la Cruz-Fernández, Eric Godelier, and Julia Yongue. Shennette Garrett-Scott also completed her two-year term on the nominating committee. Dan Wadhwani serves as past president, whilst Andrea Lluch became past president-on-board, having finished her term as past president, president, and president-elect. Our deep appreciation to all these officers and committee members who continue to volunteer their valuable time serving our scholarly organization.

To continue this cycle of leadership, elections will take place beginning in January 2024. To that end, the BHC Nominating Committee invites your nominations for BHC president-elect, trustees, and member of the nominating committee. If you are new to the organization and would like to know more about these roles and the structure of the BHC, I encourage you to look at https://thebhc.org/officers-current. Please send all nominations for these positions to committee chair, Dan Wadhwani, at dwadhwani@marshall.usc.edu by Wednesday, November 1, 2023.

Similarly, the BHC Grants and Prizes Committee invites nominations for the BHC Lifetime Achievement Award; the recipient will be announced at the Providence, R.I. meeting’s awards banquet. The criteria for this prestigious award are outlined here: https://thebhc.org/lifetime Please email the committee chair, Pamela Laird, pamela.laird@ucdenver.edu with any nominations by Monday, December 4, 2023.

I hope to see many of you at the 2023 mid-year virtual meeting held via Zoom on September 29th. More information about this meeting, titled “Doing Business History as Public History,” can be found at https://thebhc.org/index.php/2023-mid-year-meeting.

And finally, The Exchange, the BHC’s weblog, will now be sent as a monthly newsletter. You should have received the first issue on September 1^st (please check your Spam folder in case the notification went there). To post announcements in The Exchange, please contact Paula de la Cruz-Fernández (web-editor@thebhc.org). You may use this link to subscribe.

Management & Business History at British Academy of Management

September 25, 2023September 21, 2023 Steph

If you are a member of the MBH SIG at BAM, or if you are thinking of becoming one, please remember that elections are coming up. The below if

The following roles are open for election for this SIG, and we are now calling for candidates in the SIG leadership (Chair, Treasurer, Secretary). Only BAM and SIG members can either self-nominate or nominate another academic (with their prior agreement, of course) for election to one or more of these roles. The SIG and BAM are open to new members (https://www.bam.ac.uk/membership/create-an-account.html), and under the current leadership the SIG has gone from strength to strength. Elected candidates will serve for a 3-year term of office, and nominations need to be submitted before 28th September (Smart Survey Link HERE ).

You may contact the SIG Chair by email for an informal discussion of what the role entails.

The Elections will be held online in October – don’t forget to vote!

CfP: Affective Bonds, Intimate Exchanges: Family, Kinship, & Gender in Business History

September 8, 2023September 7, 2023 Steph

5 Biennial Richard Robinson Workshop on

Business History

Portland State University

May 23–25, 2024, Portland OR

The modern economy is often conceived as a realm of anonymity, where strangers, motivated by rational and individual objectives, exchange goods and services with “no other nexus between man and man than naked self- interest, than callous ‘cash payment’” (as famously described in The Communist Manifesto). Yet actual business practices, in both the past and present, reveal the “embeddedness” of economic actions in social relations (as Granovetter and others have shown), most glaringly, in the a!ective and familial ties that are inextricable from economic strategies. This conference will explore the enduring imbrication of commercial practices with family, kinship, gender (which structures family and household bonds), and women (whose appearance as a social category troubled the notion of the autonomous, genderless, individual). It seeks to bring together scholars working on a broad array of topics related to the intimate and familial aspects of economic life from various regions across the globe and various historical periods (modern, pre-modern, & others). Questions this conference will investigate include, but are not limited to: How have family and kinship networks fostered trust, provided for credit and investment, shielded economic actors from uncertainty, and been leveraged as collateral? How have intimate relations, both legal and extra-legal, acted to forge commercial alliances, transfer and create capital, and facilitate the circulation of commercial information? How have kinship, marriage, and intimate relations permitted business exchanges in colonial and diasporic contexts?

How have kinship and marital ties allowed for long-term investment and long-distance (e.g. transoceanic and transcontinental) trades? How have gender roles and gender performances in the familial context enabled or undermined business activities? For instance, how have economic actors mobilized masculinity and femininity in their business practices? And how have women, as key actors in intimate economies, leveraged their position to participate in commercial a!airs?

In envisioning this workshop, we take a broad view of the notion of family and kinship, defining both as an association of people who do not see each other as strangers and who thereby possess a!ective ties and

bonds of obligation and reciprocity. These kinds of family formations extend from nuclear families to extended and joint families, and to kinship networks that may not involve blood ties. We are interested in works that interrogate how the search for profit or gain are tied to, embedded in, relations of obligation, that for financial benefits to relations of duty, and that for economic privilege to relations of responsibility. Given the historically crucial role of gender in intimate economies, we are particularly interested in papers that explore the gendered dynamics of business operations. We seek papers that engage how women have participated in formal and informal economies and the relation of their participation to their position in the household. As we intend this workshop to be a global history of business, we especially welcome proposals dealing with sites in the non-West, the counter-colonial space of the Global South, and the emerging continental entity of Eurasia.

Topics of particular interest may touch on (but are not limited to):

Family and kinship as fostering trust and mitigating risk in economic networks
Marriage as economic strategy (capital transfer, commercial alliances, etc.)
Cross-generational and interfamilial capital transfer (inheritance, dowries, bride price) Economic aspects of intimate relations (information circulation, influence peddling) Performance of masculinity/femininity in business contexts
Women as business partners, shareholders, investors, property owners
Sex work and quasi- or non-monogamous marital ties (prostitution, courtesanship, concubinage)
Gender and intimacy in colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial commercial relations
Unmarried women, married women, and widows as economic actors
Kinship and diasporic businesses
Family as collateral: pawnship, debt collateral, and use of family reputation
Family as credit: family name and family reputation in finance, banking, and other credit-dispensing businesses

The Richard Robinson Business History Workshop has held small workshops on particular themes in business history since 2012. The keynote address of the fifth biennial Richard Robinson Workshop will be given by Professor Ritu Birla (University of Toronto) on the evening of Thursday, May 23. Papers selected for the workshop will be pre-circulated and discussed in plenary sessions on Friday, May 24 and Saturday, May 25.

Paper proposals, consisting of a one-page CV and a 500- word abstract, should be sent to the workshop organizers, Thomas Luckett (Portland State University), Chia Yin Hsu (Portland State University), and Erika Vause (St. John’s University), at psu.business.history.workshop@gmail.com (mailto:psu.business.history.workshop@gmail.com) by December 15, 2023. Accepted proposals will be notified by January 15, 2024.

Presentations will be in person at Portland State University. Presenters will receive lodging for three nights and meals, as well as air travel or other comparable travel to and from the Workshop. There will be no charge for conference registration.

BHC news

September 1, 2023August 30, 2023 Steph

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously stated that “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” Yet the historical record is full of businesses acting consciously or unconsciously in a public interest.

With this in mind, “Doing Business in the Public Interest” will be the theme for the 2024 BHC conference, which will meet from March 14-16, 2024, in the beautiful and historic city of Providence, RI.

Informed by the idea of doing business in the public interest, the BHC Program Committee invites sessions and papers that consider the relationship between businesses and public interest from a variety of different perspectives. (Full CFP and instructions for submission are here.)

And don’t forget to mark your calendars for our online mid-year conference “Doing Business History as Public History” from 9am-1pm ET on Friday, September 29, 2023 (announcement of program and registration information forthcoming.)

Hagley History Hangouts

August 21, 2023 Steph

The American tobacco oligopoly of five firms loomed large in the mid-twentieth century thanks to the addictive qualities of their products and the massive investment they made in broadcast marketing communications, influencing the media experience of millions of Americans and the wider landscape of American media for generations. Media historian Peter Kovacs is conducting research on the influence of American tobacco firms on broadcast media and argues that the tobacco company sponsorship of broadcast programs on radio and television profoundly shaped the form and content of both individual programs and the broadcast media industry at large. Using Hagley’s unrivalled collection of marketing and advertising archives, including the papers of ad agency giant BBD&O, Kovacs assembles a story of corporate competition over the airwaves from the first tobacco -sponsored radio program in 1924 to the banning of broadcast tobacco advertising in 1971.

Dr. Kovacs received support for his research from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library.

The audio only version of this program is available on our podcast.

The link to this Hagley History Hangout is https://www.hagley.org/research/history-hangout-peter-kovacs.

Recorded on Zoom and available anywhere once they are released, our History Hangouts include interviews with authors of books and other researchers who have use of our collections, and members of Hagley staff with their special knowledge of what we have in our stacks. We began the History Hangouts earlier this summer and now are releasing programs every two weeks on alternate Mondays. Our series is part of the Hagley from Home initiative by the Hagley Museum and Library. The schedule for upcoming episodes, as well as those already released, is available at https://www.hagley.org/hagley-history-hangout.

CBS tenure track & doctoral positions

August 14, 2023August 7, 2023 Steph

The Department of Business Humanities and Law at Copenhagen Business School invites applications for multiple vacant positions.

Tenured + tenure track positions (application deadline: November 1^st, 2023)

Assistant Professor (tenure track) in Leadership and Business Ethics

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/assistant-professor-tenure-track-in-leadership-and-business-ethics

Assistant Professor (tenure track) or Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science and Management

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/tenure-track-positionassociate-professor-in-philosophy-of-science-and-management

Associate Professorship in Governance

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/associate-professor-in-governance

PostDocs/PhDs (application deadline: November 1^st, 2023/January 15^th, 2024)

Postdoc in Entrepreneurship with a Focus on Learning and Impact

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/postdoc-in-entrepreneurship-with-a-focus-on-learning-and-impact

Postdocs in Humanistic Approaches to Entrepreneurship

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/postdocs-in-humanistic-approaches-to-entrepreneurship

PhD in Humanistic Approaches to Entrepreneurship

https://www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs/vacant-positions/phd-in-humanistic-approaches-to-entrepreneurship

Interested candidates are invited to send an expression of interest to Professor Christina Lubinski, cl.bhl@cbs.dk. Selected applicants will be contacted for a conversation during the Academy of Management meeting 2023 in Boston.

One of CBS’ strategic goals is the promotion of diversity, which is why every effort has been made to ensure a recruitment process that reduces potential bias. Applicants are therefore encouraged not to include a photo or unnecessary personal information in their expression of interest.

Research Environment

The Department of Business Humanities and Law is dedicated to an integrated approach to the contemporary challenges facing business and society drawing on the humanities, interdisciplinary social sciences, and law. It emphasizes problem-oriented research to understand those challenges and to build the lifelong capabilities necessary to address them. Faculty within the Department of Business Humanities and Law have diverse research backgrounds and research foci including but not limited to leadership, entrepreneurship, ethics, strategy, law, politics, economics, sociology, philosophy, history, anthropology, diversity, equity and inclusion, culture and leisure management. What unites faculty is an overriding concern for the organization of the human within its multiple environments and, by implication, a research interest in the interdisciplinary “conversation” between humanities and social sciences. Information about the department may be found at www.cbs.dk/bhl.

Application procedure

See individual adds (links provided above). All CBS openings can be consulted at www.cbs.dk/jobs.

Appointment

Appointment and salary will be in accordance with the Ministry of Finance’s agreement with the Central Academic Organization. Information about CBS as a workplace is available at www.cbs.dk/en/about-cbs/jobs-cbs.

For further information, please contact: Associate Professor Florence Villeseche, Vice-Head of Department for Research, fv.bhl@cbs.dk.

About CBS

WE TRANSFORM SOCIETY WITH BUSINESS

CBS is a globally recognised business school with deep roots in the Nordic socio-economic model. We have a broad focus on business and societal challenges of the 21st century. As such we have a full portfolio of high-quality disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and education that has equipped generations of professionals and leaders in the private sector and beyond.

Located at Frederiksberg, Denmark, the school has approx. 21.000 full and part-time students, 760 full-time faculty members, 210 PhD students and 680 administrative staff, and a full portfolio of Bachelor, Master’s, MBA/EMBA, PhD and Executive programmes delivered in English and Danish.

Our global profile carries the obligation to develop the transformational capabilities of students, graduates and business leaders via our educational activities and opportunities for lifelong learning. Complex challenges call for joint action, and therefore our strategy focuses on strengthening current and starting new partnerships with other sciences, the business community, authorities and civil society.

CBS is working continuously on becoming a diverse and inclusive organization, and we encourage all regardless of gender identity and expression, ethnicity, religious beliefs, LGBT+ status, cultural background etc. to apply.
Reach out to us if you need assistance in the application or recruitment process, if there is something we should know, or if as a person with disability you wish to make use of your preferential access.

Women in Accounting History

August 11, 2023August 7, 2023 Steph

SAGE Publications has established a new Editors’ Choice Collection for Accounting History on the theme “Women and Accounting’s Past”. The articles in this new collection are freely available for a limited period from 1^st July-30^th September 2023 and are found at the following link: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/ach/collections/editors-choice/women

This replaces a prior Editors’ Choice Collection on the same topic from 2015, which has been archived. That page can also be found at the end of the Editors’ Collection page.

There are now 20 Editors’ Choice Collections for Accounting History, with the series designed to cover key themes within the accounting history field. These are updated and refreshed from time to time. Details relating to the other Collections are available at the following link: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/ach/collections/editors-choice/index.

In order to receive journal Contents alerts, please click on the “Sign Up” button located in the “Connect with us” box on the journal home page found at: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ach

We hope that you find the newly-added collection, as well as the previous ones, to be helpful and enjoyable reading!

Best wishes.

Carolyn, Carolyn and Laura

Carolyn Cordery, Carolyn Fowler and Laura Maran

Editors, Accounting History

Langlois on The Corporation

August 7, 2023 Steph1 Comment

On Friday, September 29th from 12:30pm through 4 pm, the Penn Economic History Forum will host a symposium on Richard Langlois’s recent The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise (Princeton, 2023).

Pdf files of the opening and closing chapters of the book will be available not later than the end of the summer via the PEHF webpage

https://live-sas-www-history.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/calendar/penn-economic-history-forum

and will be sent directly to everyone on the seminar list-serv and everyone outside the university who identifies themselves via a note to the organizer as raff@wharton.upenn.edu. Copies of the book itself, which is lengthy because detailed, can be conveniently obtained directly from the Princeton University Press via its website or from Amazon. Use code LANG30 for 30% off the list price on the Princeton website. (Amazon is offering 10% on its US site as of this writing, though if you have Amazon Prime you would not have to pay for shipping.)

The plan on the day is for formal commentaries from Brian Cheffins (Cambridge University), Alexander Field (Santa Clara University), Patrick Fridenson (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale and Michigan), Laura Phillips Sawyer (Georgia), and, family obligations permitting, Mark Roe (Harvard), a brief response from the author, and then extended discussion from the audience.

The meeting will take place in the History Department Lounge (College Hall 209) on the Penn campus in Philadelphia. There will be a buffet lunch on offer from noon East Coast time and refreshments from time to time during the course of the event. All are welcome to attend (but please signal intent to raff@wharton.upenn.edu so that an accurate headcount for food [and chairs!] can be made). There will also be a Zoom link (but once again please signal intent so that sufficient capacity can be made available).

NEH-Hagley Fellowship on Business, Culture, and Society

July 10, 2023June 29, 2023 Steph

The NEH-Hagley Fellowship on Business, Culture, and Society supports residencies at the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware for junior and senior scholars whose projects make use of Hagley’s substantial research collections. Scholars must have completed all requirements for their doctoral degrees by the February 15 application deadline. In accordance with NEH requirements, these fellowships are restricted to United States citizens or to foreign nationals who have been living in the United States for at least three years. These fellowships are made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Fellowships may be four to twelve months in length and will provide a monthly stipend of $5,000 and complimentary lodging in housing on Hagley’s property. Hagley also will provide supplemental funds for local off-site accommodations to NEH fellowship recipients who can make a compelling case that special circumstance (e.g. disability or family needs) would make it impossible to make use of our scholar’s housing. Scholars receive office space, Internet access, Inter-Library Loan privileges, and the full benefits of visiting scholars, including special access to Hagley’s research collections. They are expected to be in regular and continuous residence and to participate in the Center’s scholarly programs. They must devote full time to their study and may not accept teaching assignments or undertake any other major activities during their residency. Fellows may hold other major fellowships or grants during fellowship tenure, in addition to sabbaticals and supplemental grants from their own institutions, but only those that do not interfere with their residency at Hagley. Other NEH-funded grants may be held serially, but not concurrently.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE FOR THE NEH-HAGLEY FELLOWSHIP ON BUSINESS, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Deadline: February 15, 2023

Requirements for application: (Apply online at https://www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships/funding-application ).

· Current curriculum vitae.

· A 3,000-word explanation of the project and its contributions to pertinent scholarship.

· A statement of no more than 500 words explaining how residency at Hagley would advance the project, particularly the relevance of our research collections.

· A statement indicating the preferred duration of the fellowship.

Applicants also should arrange for two letters of recommendation to arrive separately by the application deadline. These should be sent directly to Carol Lockman, clockman@Hagley.org. Questions regarding this fellowship may be sent to Carol Lockman as well. Potential applicants are encouraged to contact Roger Horowitz, Director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society in advance of submitting an application—rhorowitz@hagley.org.