Good news for those who missed the application deadline for the Second World Congress of Business History (WCBH) at Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan (September 10th -12th, 2020).
The program committee decided to extend the deadline for panel and paper proposals to January 29 (Wednesday), 2020.
WCBH 2020 is a world-wide congress jointly organized by EBHA and BHSJ, and it is positioned as the 24th Congress of the European Business History Association, and also as a specially organized international conference by BHSJ. Please visit: http://bhs.ssoj.info/WCBH2020/index.html
The local organizers have secured funds for partial travel support for Young Scholars (PhD students are prioritized, but other young scholars eligible) and for participants from regions that do not usually have the chance to attend academic conferences in Japan. The exact amount of support is not yet determined, but the organizers hope to be able to offer between $300 to $1000 according to region. Applicants from the above categories whose papers have been selected for the Congress will be approached individually to apply for travel support. More details will follow, but in the meantime we encourage applications from the above categories.
The January issue of JMS features a really interesting piece by Andrew Smith and Miriam Kaminishi about the historical origins of the concept of the ‘Confucian entrepreneur’. As anyone who has taught on the basis of international business textbooks can attest, the way in which Confucianism in drawn upon to explain phenomena in China’s political economy is often quite odd and uncomfortable. Below is the reference and abstract. Happy reading!
Confucian Entrepreneurship: Towards a Genealogy of a Conceptual Tool
The concept of the ‘Confucian Entrepreneur’ is now used by many scholars to understand entrepreneurship in China and other East Asian countries. This paper traces the development of this concept from its roots in the writings of nineteenth‐century Western authors to its use in modern management journals. We show that while this conceptual tool has been adapted over time, the claims associated with it have remained largely similar. Use of the term Confucian entrepreneur implies belief that Confucian ideas induce Chinese entrepreneurs to behave differently than their Western counterparts, a claim for which the empirical foundations are weak. We do not go so far as to say that those who research Chinese entrepreneurship should discard the concept of the Confucian entrepreneur simply because of its historical origins in colonialism. However, we do call on researchers to reflect on the historical origins of their conceptual tools. By historicising our theories of entrepreneurship, this paper should encourage greater scholarly reflexivity and thus the development of entrepreneurship and management theory with greater predictive power.
Thomas Cook Head Office, Peterborough. Image courtesy and copyright BAC.
An archive of business and travel history with national and international significance is to be preserved and secured for the future in the county, after the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland was selected as the new permanent home of the Thomas Cook archive collection.
The Record Office, which is run by Leicestershire County Council in partnership with Leicester City Council and Rutland County Council, was awarded the honour of housing the internationally significant collection following a bidding process organised by the Business Archives Council and Crisis Management Team for business archives in liaison with the Official Receiver.
The entire Thomas Cook archive, which encompasses records from the earliest days of package travel right up to the modern day, is now being transferred to the Record Office in Wigston.
The Thomas Cook Archive in its new home at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland. Image courtesy and copyright Leicestershire County Council.
The huge collection is made up of thousands of individual items, including minute books and staff records, posters, travel guides and timetables. It also features 60,000 photographic images and souvenirs from Thomas Cook’s 178-year history, including glass and china, uniforms through the ages and even a model of a Nile steamer.
The archive will be the single largest collection at the Record Office, which has six miles of shelving representing 1,000 years of the history of Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland.
The Thomas Cook collection will be thoroughly catalogued by Record Office staff, before being made available to the public.
Senior Archivist at Leicestershire County Council, Robin Jenkins, said: “This is an internationally significant archive relating to a company which began in Leicester and was operated from there in its formative years. We already house an important Thomas Cook collection relating to both the man and his business.
“We see the collection as ‘coming home’ to Leicestershire and we will be delighted to look after it here and promote its use. The collection also fits closely with other local businesses which often originated during the 19th century and have an international reputation – such as Wolsey, Symington and Ladybird Books.”
Leicestershire County Council Leader, Nick Rushton, said: “I am delighted that the Record Office has been chosen as the permanent home for this important collection. The bid was a success because of the strong local links with Thomas Cook, as well as because the Record Office has an excellent reputation for innovative outreach work and the promotion of its collections.
“The fact that the Thomas Cook archive will be housed at the Record Office will preserve it for future generations, as well as providing a valuable resource to the people of Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland.”
Leicester City Mayor Peter Soulsby added: “Thomas Cook is one of Leicester’s best-known sons, and his pioneering work, which essentially invented the package holiday, means his name became known worldwide. It’s very fitting that this fascinating archive of the company’s history is housed in Leicestershire, so close to where his ground-breaking work in the holiday industry took place.”
Vice President of the Business Archives Council, Alison Turton, said: “‘The deposit of the Thomas Cook archive with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland is a landmark achievement. It demonstrates the vital importance of archivists and academics working together with insolvency practitioners to ensure the survival and accessibility of business archives of national importance.”
Professor in History and Strategy at the University of Bristol, Stephanie Decker, who was the independent academic advisor on the selection panel, said: “It’s fantastic news that the Thomas Cook archive has been saved and will be housed in the region where the company began. The archive has local to global relevance and is highly important to anyone interested in the history of travel and leisure.”
Items from the Thomas Cook Archive. Images courtesy and copyright of Leicestershire County Council.
Notes:
Thomas Cook founded his travel company in Leicester and ran his first excursion from there to Loughborough in 1841. The company grew rapidly and by 1855 was running continental tours, opening a London office in 1865. Thomas Cook is credited with inventing the package tour and bringing affordable travel to ordinary people. In 1878, Cook himself retired to Leicester, where he died in 1892. The company he founded became a household name with global reach. It finally ceased trading in September 2019 and a permanent home was sought for its archive.
The bidding for the Thomas Cook archive was supported by Leicestershire County, Leicester City and Rutland County Councils, Leicester and DeMontfort Universities, the East Midlands Oral History Archive and the Media Archive for Central England.
The 45th Annual Economic and Business History Society (EBHS) Conference will be held at the Sheraton in downtown Atlanta between May 28 and May 30 2020.
Our general theme is Economic and Business History at the Crossroads. Here we would encourage reflections on ‘crossroads’, as sign of cultural and commercial interchange, geographic meeting places, exchanges and entrepots, and temporal and historical moments of divergence and contingency. However, individual proposals for presentations on any aspect of economic, business, or financial history are welcome, as are proposals for whole panels. We also encourage submissions from graduate students and non-academic affiliates.If you have any queries, please get in touch with either myself or Craig McMahon (Program Chair): craig.mcmahon@villanova.edu
And this is it for another year! We leave you with an interesting read from the BBC which draws on some local business history (well local to me at least!)
Is it possible to make some clients pay a premium for goods and sell them cheaply to a mass market? Josiah Wedgwood pioneered marketing practices that still annoy customers today:
Building on the success of the first “Re-thinking Female Entrepreneurship” Conference which took place in June 2018, this two-day conference will continue to challenge the gendered discourse of entrepreneurship and to explore further the diversity of female entrepreneurs and their journeys.
The conference will bring together academics, entrepreneurs, consultants as well as community leaders and not for profit organisations. The conference will cover a broad range of topics including the intersectionality of gender and; age, race, class, sexuality and disability. The conference will also critically discuss the persistence of gender inequality, the challenges facing female entrepreneurs in male dominated industries, the agency of female entrepreneurs as well as the rhetoric of entrepreneurship as being a source of empowerment. In addition, the conference will present a case study on how academic can engage with non-academics to promote female entrepreneurship.
The conference is free of charge with lunch and refreshments included.
The conference is generously funded by the British Academy as part of Rising Star Engagement Award (BARSEA).
The conference aims to support Early Career Researchers who are interested in researching gender and entrepreneurship.
We will able to cover the travel and the accommodation expenses of Early Career Researchers. However, the fund will be limited to a certain number of applicants and will be offered on first come first served basis.
Due to the calibre of the speakers a high level of demand for conference places is expected so please book as soon as you can by sending an email to mmno@st-andrews.ac.uk and hd48@st-andrews.ac.uk
The Conference keynote speakers will be:
Dr Hannah Dean; Lecturer of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity – University of St Andrews
Prof. Jackie Ford; Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies – Durham University
Dr Sally Jones; Reader in Entrepreneurship and Gender Studies – Metropolitan Manchester University
Ms Sara Hawthorn; Managing Director – InFusion Comms
Dr Gretchen Larsen; Associate Professor of Marketing – Faculty Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – Durham University
Prof. Claire Leitch; Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership – Lancaster University
Prof. Susan Marlow; (holder of the Queen Award for Enterprise) – Professor of Entrepreneurship – University of Birmingham
Ms Anne Meikle; Policy Manager – Women’s Enterprise Scotland (CIC)
Prof. Kiran Trehan; Professor of Leadership and Enterprise Development – Director of WE LEAD [Women’s Entrepreneurship, Leadership Economy and Diversity] – Head of Group – Entrepreneurship and Local Economy- University of Birmingham
Prof. Fiona Wilson; Professor of Organisational Behaviour – University of Glasgow
Ms Terry Wragg; Director – Leeds Animation Workshop
Details of the presentations together with a brief bio of the speakers will be available very soon on the following link;
this is to inform you that the Application form of the VIU Summer School on Responsible Capitalism: Micro and Macro-institutional Conditions of Transformation (June 16-20, 2020) is now open and available at the VIU dedicated web-page:
Students of VIU member universities: € 200 incl. VAT.
Students of other universities: € 300 incl. VAT.
The costs of accommodation on campus in shared multiple rooms (triple or quadruple) with other participants is 240,00 euro for 5 nights incl. taxes (check in June 15 – check out June 20).
The Management History (MH) Division invites PDW, symposium, and paper submissions for the 80th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from 7 – 11 August 2020. You may send us your submissions through the AOM Submission Center until it closes on Tuesday, 14 January 2020 at 5:00 PM ET (NY Time). The Submission Center opens in early December 2019.
Conference Theme: This year’s conference theme is “20/20: Broadening our Sight” and encourages us to widen our view when examining our domain, practice and organizational phenomena. We encourage you to make connections to the theme wherever possible in preparing your submission.
Our Domain: The Management History (MH) Division is a wide-ranging network of scholars interested in the antecedents of modern business practice and thought. We invite submissions of empirical and conceptual papers, as well as proposals for symposia (including panel discussions, debates, and roundtables), for consideration for inclusion in the division’s scholarly program. We encourage submissions from all members of the academy interested in devoting or sharing their work in management history broadly defined.
As there is an element of history within every division in the Academy, the division is open to a variety of methodological approaches and themes ranging from historical events in management practice (empirical focus) to studies that engage with historiography, philosophies of history, and the history of ideas and management thought (theoretical orientation). In this spirit, the MH Division welcomes scholarly contributions that generate meaningful and original contributions in history from across all AOM divisions’ interest groups. Submissions for sessions sponsored jointly with other Academy divisions are regarded as particularly attractive, and highly encouraged. The MH Division encourages submissions from doctoral students. Papers with a PhD student as the first or sole author should be clearly identified when submitted to allow identification of possible winners of the Best Graduate Student Paper.
Organizational History Network 