| The third annual Cambridge-LSE Workshop on African economic history will take place on Zoom from 29-30 June 2021. In this exceptional year, this workshop will be one of a series of smaller meetings replacing the annual meeting of the African Economic History Network, which has been postponed. We are inviting submissions in all fields of African economic history, particularly from advanced PhD students and early career scholars. The workshop will be held over two half-days and the programme will focus on short presentation of pre-circulated papers. Please submit a CV and extended abstract of 300-500 words to l.a.gardner@lse.ac.uk by 4 June, 2021. Best wishes, Leigh Gardner, on behalf of the African Economic History Network |
Author: Steph
I am a professor at the University of Birmingham Business School specializing in organizational history and international strategy.
“The History of the Corporation” Virtual Workshop
The Yale Law School and CGCG are presenting a virtual workshop on ‘The History of the Corporation’ on 10 June 2021, beginning at 9:00 EDT. The program follows. All are welcome to register for the event by visiting the following website: https://bit.ly/2PeXhGL
Introduction
Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University)
Henry Hansmann (Yale Law School and ECGI)
Shareholder Democracy under Autocracy: Voting Rights and Corporate Performance in Imperial Russia
Amanda Gregg (Middlebury College), Steven Nafziger (Williams College)
Legal Origins of Corporate Governance: Choice of Company Law in Egypt, 1887-1913
Cihan Artunç (Middlebury College)
Legal Transplants and Local Custom in China: The Struggle over Apportioned Liability for External Debt of Partnerships
Madeleine Zelin (Columbia University)
Corporate Ownership and Control in the Gilded Age
Eric Hilt (Wellesley College)
Managerial Failure and Corporate Ownership in Edwardian Britain Revisited
Michael Aldous (Queen’s University, Belfast), Philip Fliers (Queen’s University, Belfast), John Turner (Queen’s University, Belfast)
General Discussion
Tim Guinnane (Yale University)
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci (University of Amsterdam)
Concluding Remarks
Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University)
Henry Hansmann (Yale Law School and ECGI)
PhD scholarships at University of Bristol
University of Bristol School of Management offers student-led PhD scholarships
The School of Management is pleased to be able to offer four competitively awarded scholarships to outstanding PhD candidates.
Applications are now invited with the deadline of Monday 10th June 2021, noon BST, to start in October 2021. The scholarships are open for any research topic broadly aligned with the school research themes.
Award amount
The scholarship covers the full tuition fee. It also offers a stipend of approx. £15,500 and teaching income of approximately £2,000 per annum (depending on the actual teaching undertaken). Training in teaching will also be provided through the University’s CREATE scheme and is mandatory for scholarship recipients.
Contacts
For further information please email the Postgraduate office and visit the University website.
CHRONOS Distinguished Online Lecture: Martin Kornberger (23 September)
The CHRONOS research centre at Royal Holloway University of London invites you to the ‘CHRONOS 2021 distinguished on-line lecture’ with Prof Martin Kornberger, 23 September 2021, 2-4pm UK time (via MS team).
About CHRONOS
CHRONOS is the Centre for Critical and Historical Research on Organization and Society. Our guiding purpose is to uncover the social and cultural dimensions and implications of any subject matter, interrogating and questioning mainstream approaches and practices as a way to make a positive difference for organisations, markets and society. We are based at the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, but we work with colleagues in other disciplines at Royal Holloway, especially History and Geography, and through partnerships with research groups at other institutions within and outside the UK. For more information visit our website.
Our main work streams are on:
- Bureaucracy, Accountability and Control;
- Critical Consumption and the Politics of Markets;
- Identity and working life;
- Silent Voices: Feminist and Subaltern Perspectives;
- Space and Time in Organizations.
Director of CHRONOS: Prof. Elena Giovannoni (Elena.giovannoni@rhul.ac.uk)
Prof. Martin Kornberger will be talking about:
THE EMERGENCE OF A SOCIAL ACTOR:
THE CASE OF THE VIENNA CITY ADMINISTRATION AT THE FIN THE SIÈCLE
Abstract
This manuscript reports results of a preliminary inquiry into the formation of the City of Vienna as collective social actor at the turn of the 20th century. We use computational text analysis of administrative reports from 1867 to 1913 and an archival case-study to explain drastic increases in administrative capacity and autonomy during the Fin de Siècle. In its most formative period, the city was recovering from an economic crash and bureaucratic rationality was challenged by intellectuals and illiberal politicians alike. These conditions are inconsistent with legal-rational and institutional theories that explain the formation of organizational actorhood in the contemporary era; our analysis shows that the city’s formation reflected neither expansionist ideology nor the ambitions of a political machine nor delegation from a crumbling Empire. Instead, we observe the formation of the city as a collective social actor as a process in which (1) the capacity to act of the city’s administrative apparatus develops hand in hand with (2) the city’s increasingly differentiated and complex vision of its environment. Our analysis of this feedback loop contributes to sociological theories of actorhood and the understanding of the progressive welfare model as driven by categorical differentiation.
Short bio
Martin Kornberger received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Vienna in 2002. Currently he holds a Chair in Strategy at the University of Edinburgh and is a visiting fellow at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on strategies for and organization of new forms of distributed and collective action. He can be reached at martin.kornberger@ed.ac.uk
To attend the lecture, please email: elena.giovannoni@rhul.ac.uk
How to Start an Early Modern Tax Haven (recorded webinar)
The recording for David Chan Smith (Wilfried Laurier) is now available at
A polite reminder that future events are available here:
Home Page: http://ow.ly/CLIt50ANMi3
Publications: http://ow.ly/Shdky
Check out the Hagley History Hangout
New episode is available in the Hagley History Hangout. In her book The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism, Jennifer A. Delton traces the history of the National Association of Manufacturers—NAM—from its origins in 1895 to today. She argues that NAM—an organization best known for fighting unions, promoting “free enterprise,” and defending corporate interests—was also surprisingly progressive. Delton shows how it encouraged companies to adopt innovations such as safety standards, workers’ comp, and affirmative action, and worked with the US government and international organizations to promote the free exchange of goods and services across national borders. While NAM’s modernizing and globalizing activities helped to make American industry the most profitable and productive in the world by midcentury, they also eventually led to deindustrialization, plant closings, and the decline of manufacturing jobs. The Industrialists is the story of a powerful organization that fought US manufacturing’s political battles, created its economic infrastructure, and expanded its global markets—only to contribute to the widespread collapse of US manufacturing by the close of the twentieth century. More information about the book is available here. Jennifer A. Delton is professor of history at Skidmore College. Her previous books include Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal; Racial Integration in Corporate America, 1940–1990; and Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. Interview available at https://www.hagley.org/research/history-hangout-4
Project Hindsight – Memory Decay
Please see the message below from Michael Weatherburn relating to his current work on “Project Hindsight”:
Hi everyone!
I hope my message finds you well.
Building on 2020’s successful ‘Memory Decay’ pilot, I’m getting in touch to let you know about Project Hindsight’s brand-new research.
We’d love to learn if and how one year of Covid-19 has changed how organisations work, function, and remember.
Click here to participate in our survey. Your valued input will be appreciated – thank you!
While I’m here, if you haven’t yet had a chance to watch Fieldwork’s A Short Film about Memory Decay (2020), featuring yours truly, you can do so here.
Speak soon,
Michael
—
Dr Michael Weatherburn
https://projecthindsight.co.uk/
Project Hindsight is a strategy consultancy which uses the past to clarify the future. Our current focus is on institutional memory and forecasting.
‘Many practical lessons’
-Singapore Straits Times
SI CfP BH: Business History of the Middle East & Northern Africa
Business History Special Issue Call for paper
Exploring Business History of the Middle East and North Africa Region
Special Issue Editors
Vijay Pereira, Khalifa University, UAE
vijay.pereira@port.ac.uk
Yama Temouri, Khalifa University, UAE and Aston University, UK
y.temouri1@aston.ac.uk
Shlomo Tarba, University of Birmingham, UK
s.tarba@bham.ac.uk
Behlül Üsdiken, Sabanci University and Özyeğin University, Turkey
behlul.usdiken@sabanciuniv.edu
Neveen Abdelrehim, Newcastle University, UK
neveen.abdelrehim@newcastle.ac.uk
Manuscript deadline
15 November 2021
Background:
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is currently growing and is seen to be one of the emerging business and economic regions of the world, with much happening recently. However, the MENA region has always been historically involved in global trade (Gelderblom and Trivellato, 2019, Aldous, 2019). In fact, before the Americas were discovered (end of the fifteenth century period), the Middle East region played an important role in world trade, and this included the famed West-East and East-West trade (Pereira and Malik, 2013; 2015; 2018). More specifically, the main West-East trade included the ‘Silk Road/Route’, that ran across the region from historical cities such as Aleppo to Baghdad, Rayy, Nishapur, Marv, and Samarkand, and through Kashgar to the T’ang capital, Chang’an (Xi’an) regions. Similarly, when it came to the East-West trade, items such as silk, porcelain, spices, dates, textiles, and horses moved in the opposite direction.
The slave trade also saw gold being traded from Sub-Saharan Africa and transported across the desert in exchange for textiles and salt. As a consequence, slaves were brought from East Africa to Egypt and to the Indian subcontinent in return for spices and textiles (Pereira and Malik, 2015; 2018). Other items such as food grain and salt were imported into Anatolia and further east from northern Europe. Dates also formed a major export to Europe from the Arab world, as was ivory and gold from sub-Saharan Africa.
Historically, cross border business involving this region dates back to the regime of the Ottoman Empire, which saw a significant trade between Western countries, and this was prevalent even during the wars. Thereafter, the Levant Company (founded in 1581, when agreements were enacted with France in 1569, when France took over from Venice as the leading trading nation in the Levant); the English East India Company (founded in 1600); and the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602), all traded with the MENA countries (Pereira and Malik, 2015; 2018).
Thematic areas of the special issue:
- Given the above background, not much has been researched or written on these historical aspects. This special issue call for papers thus solicits papers that delve into the historical aspects of business in the context of the region. We have put forth the following list of topics, derived from the extant historical literature that would be interesting and add to new knowledge. This list is not exhaustive and we solicit and encourage potential contributors to utilize this list as indicative.
- Historically, how have the similarities and differences in cultural, institutional, religious, economic and political histories shaped these MENA countries’ business landscapes, over the years (e.g. Chaudhuri, 1990; Decker et al., 2018)?
- How have previous historical conflicts, such as wars from the fourteenth century until World War II, shaped and impacted businesses in this region?
- To what extent have Western influences historically impacted on business activity in this region (Decker, 2018; Abdelrehim & Toms, 2017)? What was the extent of convergence, divergence or crossvergence of business practices in the MENA region when it comes to cross-border trade and organizations (e.g. Üsdiken, and Kieser, 2004)?
- What can we learn from unique and rare historical sources whilst investigating the historical landscape in the context of businesses in the MENA region (e.g. resources from the Ottoman archives) (e.g. Halil and Quataert, 1994)? Also, for example, what can be garnered from any local MENA economic historiographers and their accounts, like their Japanese, Chinese or Indian counterparts? Further, what can be unraveled from any Arabic and other indigenous archives to bring out historical facts that have not been previously researched and told?
- How can prior research, if any, on the traditional industries of the MENA region, such as agriculture, handicrafts, mining, indigenous manufacturing, and on regulating oil in Iran and India (Abdelrehim and Verma, 2019) be expanded further?
- What were the historical migration and importation of labour and its relevant trends in the above industries in the MENA region? For example, what were the historical trends of European immigration of Frenchmen, Italians and Spaniards as well as Asian migration of Indian (e.g. Verma and Abdelrehim, 2017; Abderehim et al. 2018), Chinese and African migrants from other than the MENA region?
- What were the effects of historical institutional changes and inventions such as for example, introduction of new transportation systems, such as steam navigation through rivers, land transport from the traditional camels and mules to motor/auto driven systems, building of roads, railways, telegraphs etc., on businesses in the MENA region?
- How was international business or trade in the MENA region affected by historical finance, capital, organized banking, loans, mortgages and export-import regimes and trends?
- How and to what extent was historical tribalism, indigenous culture and practices, landownership, etc., impacting and affecting businesses in the MENA region?
Looking to Publish your Research?
We aim to make publishing with Taylor & Francis a rewarding experience for all our authors. Please visit our Author Services website for more information and guidance, and do contact us if there is anything we can help with!
Submission Instructions
Review Process Timeline:
Call-for-papers announcement: February 10, 2021
Submission due date: November 15, 2021
First round decisions: March 1, 2022
A special issue conference and paper development workshop is proposed at NEOMA Business School, France: April, 2022.
Similar, proposed special issue conference and paper development workshop at Newcastle University Business School, UK: June 1-3, 2022
First revision due date: August 1, 2022
Second round decisions: November 1, 2022
Second revision due date: February 1, 2023
Third round decisions: April 1, 2023
Final editorial decisions: June 15, 2023
AHRC-funded studentship “Development in Postcolonial West Africa”
Applications are now open for the first of three 2021-22 AHRC- funded Collaborative PhD studentships.
These fully-funded studentships offer a unique and exciting opportunity for students to focus on diverse histories and records while completing a flexible project which can be shaped by the student’s own interests and experiences.
‘Development in Postcolonial West Africa: Building the Nation‘ is co-supervised by Juliette Desplat and Dan Gilfoyle at The National Archives, in collaboration with Iain Jackson and Patrick Zamarian at the University of Liverpool.
We want to encourage the widest range of potential students to apply for our CDP studentships and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds to apply. We particularly welcome applications from people from Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic backgrounds as they are currently underrepresented at this level in this area.
Hagley Library – Avon Archive event 7 May (Zoom)
AVON: AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON ITS ARCHIVE
Sponsored by the Hagley Library, Wilmington DE
Friday May 7, 9 am – 12 noon EST via Zoom
In the 20 years since Avon Products, Inc., deposited its records at Hagley Library they have become one of our most popular research collections. A virtual event on May 7 will bring attention to their contribution to history.
Avon Products, Inc., is one of the oldest direct selling companies in America. It traces its origins to 1886, when David H. McConnell bought the Union Publishing Company and started manufacturing perfumes to give away with his books. McConnell discovered that his customers were more interested in the fragrances than the books, so he decided to concentrate on selling perfumes. The business was renamed the California Perfume Company (CPC) in an effort to associate its products with the perceived beauty of the Golden State.
From the beginning, CPC sold directly to the consumer through a national network of sales representatives, primarily women, who were looking for economic opportunity and flexible part-time employment. In 1929, CPC introduced the Avon brand in an effort to modernize its image. The corporation was renamed Avon Products, Inc. in 1950. Avon rapidly expanded into the international market during the 1950s and 1960s, principally Latin America and Europe. By the early 1970s, Avon International operated in sixteen countries.
Speakers at the event will come from around the USA and Europe and discuss Avon’s activities in the United States, Brazil, and Italy, as well as its efforts to reach out to African American women and diversity its American salesforce. The event’s keynote will be offered by Katina Manko, who helped bring the Avon Collection to Hagley. Manko’s book, Ding Dong! Avon Calling!: The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated will be published in June. Full details of the forum at https://www.hagley.org/avon-international-forum-its-archive .
Katina Manko, Independent Scholar, “Ding Dong! Avon Calling!: The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated”
Jessica Burch, Denison University, “‘Soap and Hope’: Direct Sales and the Culture of Work and Capitalism in Postwar America”
Jessica Chelekis, Brunel Business School, “Avon in the Brazilian Amazon: Direct Sales and Consumption among Vulnerable Communities”
Lindsey Feitz, University of Denver, “Creating a Multicultural Soul: Avon, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Race in the 1970s”
Shawn Moura, Director of Research at NAIOP, “Exploring Avon’s Encounter with Gender, Race, and Class in Brazil, 1958-1975”
Emanuela Scarpellini, University of Milan, “Transnational Beauty: Avon International and the Case of Italy”
Advance registration is required to view the pre-circulated papers and to participate in the conference sessions; there is no fee to register. Register at https://www.hagley.org/research/conferences/avon-forum-conference-registration
Organizational History Network 