Category: Resources

Reminder to contribute to online bibliography on Business & Power in business history

Steph

Dear colleagues, 

I write to request your collaboration in creating a bibliography on Business and Power. Professor Neil Rollings #BHC2021online Presidential Address generated a vivid conversation/chat among business historians on the definitions of power and the vast literature available to expand this discussion. The BHC seeks to document such debate and contribute to developing scholarship on the topic by creating an open bibliography on Business and Power. Please contribute your reference suggestions by adding full citations (and DOI numbers and URLs if possible) to https://docs.google.com/document/d/104PG0gku_SuaQJAqxk0HAp_zs9OvfYs2ZxGvshThCr0/edit?usp=sharing. Once this list is reasonably complete, we will curate it and transfer it to Zotero, and later open it for membership and public suggestions. 

Please add your references to the document or create sections such as Feminist Theory, Definitions of Power in Political Thought, or Business and Power.  

How to Start an Early Modern Tax Haven (recorded webinar)

Steph

The recording for David Chan Smith (Wilfried Laurier) is now available at

A polite reminder that future events are available here:

Click to access bizhiscol-2021-1.pdf

Home Page: http://ow.ly/CLIt50ANMi3

Publications: http://ow.ly/Shdky

Check out the Hagley History Hangout

Steph

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

DALE: Strictly on the Download now on YouTube

Steph

It was a great pleasure to be invited to talk about our AHRC project and user perspectives on digital archives with the Digital Archives Learning Exchange (DALE), hosted by The National Archives (TNA). The event focused on how to integrate digital archives into existing archival practice and featured talks by Rosie Vizor (The Garden Museum), David Underdown (TNA) and me (Stephanie Decker, University of Bristol). The recording can found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHD9mAkzx3M

Update from the Contextualising Email Archives Research Project

Steph

As part of our AHRC-funded collaborative research project on “Historicising the dot.com boom and contextualising email archives”, we have recorded an introduction to our project and its aims. In case you are interested, you can find the presentation here.

Recording of Peter Buckley’s distinguished lecture on “The Structural Reshaping of Globalization”

Steph

I am pleased to share the recording of the distinguished lecture with Peter Buckley, Professor of International Business at Leeds University Business School, who talked on The Structural Reshaping of Globalization. Alain Verbeke, Professor of International Business Strategy at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary served as a discussant. The lecture took place November 20, 2020; you can find the recording here:  https://dan.uwo.ca/news/2020/dl_buckley_verbeke.html

This talk examines the role of theory, specifically internalization theory, in examining the structural reshaping of globalization. Four empirical changes in the global economy are identified.

  1. The fracture in the global economy between the USA and China, including “the splinternet”. 
  2. “Systemic Competition” and its consequences. 
  3. Rising VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) and corporate responses. 
  4. Innovation. The theoretical response is presented by nested theories of internalization, relying on common principles and concepts.

For more information about Professor Peter Buckley, you can refer to https://business.leeds.ac.uk/divisions-international-business/staff/248/peter-j-buckley-

For more information about Professor Alain Verbeke, you can refer to https://www.ucalgary.ca/verbeke/

New Digital Humanities journal

Steph

As part of our little series of resources in digital history, I wanted to make you aware of a new journal: Digital Humanities in the BeNeLux, which is open access here. The first issue has an interesting introduction on “Integrating Digital Humanities”, but many of the examples are obviously not in our area of expertise. Nevertheless, the introduction by Julie Birkholz and Gerben Zaagsma, is useful in outlining important features of the field that are not necessarily obvious to anyone not engaged directly with these questions:

“Much ink has been spent, and occasionally spilled, trying to define the Digital Humanities and its place among the academic disciplines. Yet whether it is seen as a field of its own, a sub- or inter-discipline, or a set of practices, most proponents agree on some basic characteristics, with interdisciplinarity probably topping the list. As early as two decades ago, Willard McCarty was among the first to assert that DH constituted an interdiscipline, due to its “common ground of method [which] makes it possible to teach applied computing to a class of humanists from widely varying disciplines” (McCarty 1999). At the same time, DH challenges existing and ingrained research practices (perhaps sometimes more imagined than real), according to which humanities research questions must always derive from domain knowledge, by proposing new data- and method-driven approaches to research in the humanities. [my emphasis]

In practice, Digital Humanities projects typically involve, and bring together, a variety of practitioners from different backgrounds: academics from various fields and disciplines, librarians, archivists and museum experts. [my emphasis] All of this could easily be construed as providing evidence of the existence of some sort of shared field; yet the influence of the digital on the various phases of our research practice (whether information gathering, processing, analysis and dissemination) comes in many forms: sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it is tacit and implicit, and sometimes aspirational. …”

For organizational history, this raises a number of questions, for example, what new data- and method-driven approaches could be relevant for us, and how we could collaborate more with organizational archivists going forward. So far these debates are very much in their infancy in our field, but are likely to become more important in the years to come.

Crowdsourcing digitisation in archives

Steph

In another instalment of our digital history series, I wanted to highlight that there is increasingly work being done involving crowdsourcing. Many of you may have read the media reports that during the lock down, a crowdsourcing project to digitise rainfall records has barrelled ahead as people enthusiastically engaged. The project is now complete. Does make you wonder what other archival resources may benefit from such an approach.

The National Archives UK has been exploring this recently as well and the potential for expanding this is really not something that was on my radar at all until recently. An interesting insight into what is happening is provided by a chapter by Alexandra Everleigh, ‘Crowding out the Archivist?’ in an edited volume on Crowdsourcing our Heritage. I am not aware that there are any organization or business-focused crowdsourcing projects underway, but may just be my ignorance. Do let us know if this is something that is being explored or ongoing in an archive near you!

Call for EBHA doctoral summer school

Steph1 Comment

At Business History, we are very proud to be one of the sponsors of this year’s EBHA doctoral summer school!

Keynote Speaker: Albert Carreras (Pompeu Fabra University).

Faculty Members: Adoración Álvaro Moya (CUNEF), Veronica Binda (Bocconi University), Andrea Colli (Bocconi University), Christina Lubinski (Copenhagen Business School) and Jari Ojala (University of Jyvaskyla).

Local organizers: Paloma Fernández and Miquel Gutiérrez (University of Barcelona).

The 10th edition of the EBHA (European Business History Association) Summer School will take place at Barcelona, from Wednesday, July 8th to Friday, July 10th, 2020. The school, titled Challenges for Business History in a Changing World, aims to encourage a fresh and rigorous exchange of thoughts, ideas, and new research being done by doctoral students in early stages of their doctoral work, in fields closely related to Business History. It is organised jointly by the European Business History Association (EBHA) and the University of Barcelona (UB) in cooperation with the Spanish Association of Economic History (AEHE).

The school will focus on theoretical, methodological and practical issues which are of relevance for advanced research in business history. The main aims of the school are to provide students with a full understanding of the newest trends in research in the field and to provide a friendly atmosphere in which to discuss their preliminary findings with leading scholars as well as among their peers. In this respect, the program features both lectures and seminars given by faculty and student presentations of their research projects. Each student will have 20 minutes maximum to present her/his project, stressing especially: research questions and goals, methodology, sources, challenges and provisional outcomes. After her/his presentation, each student will receive questions and comments from other students and from faculty members.

Students will be accommodated in the beautiful and lively city of Barcelona. The organisers will cover all local costs (accommodation in double room and food), but participants are expected to pay their own travel expenses.

Those interested in attending the summer school should send the following documents by e-mail to Paloma Fernández (palomafernandez@ub.edu):

1) a brief CV (not exceeding one page);

2) a summary of their dissertation project (not exceeding three pages);

3) (if possible) an example of their work in progress, e.g. a draft chapter or a working paper (in any language).

The deadline for applications is February 29th, 2020. A maximum of 10 participants will be selected from these applications and will be notified by March 30th, 2020.

New database of company archives

Steph

The University of Florida’s History Department program in the History of Capitalism has created a curated and searchable database of corporate archives and is proud to announce that this new digital resource is now available. The name and virtual location of the database are Inquire Capitalism at https://inquirecapitalism.omeka.net/. 

https://inquirecapitalism.omeka.net/

Inquire Capitalism seeks to both unify information about corporate archives and also to connect scholars, archivists, and businesses by making information about company archives more discoverable. In addition, the researchers collecting the information about company archives have focused on finding out what is the digital presence of companies’ history, whether through digital archives or by having heritage sites and chronologies as part of the company’s website. The database contains information mostly about the United States, but the team at the University of Florida plans to continue expanding the list by including information from other parts of the world. Inquire Capitalism has counted with the partnership of the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. and the Hagley Museum and Library to start the project and wishes to create new partners to make this list global and even more useful. Comments and new contributions are most appreciated and welcomed. Please contact the team by emailing to inquirecapitalism@history.ufl.edu.


I would be thrilled to know what you think of the project. I am also writing to find out if you would be willing to hear more about how we created it and how we intend to make it permanent. It would be great if we can find a way to maybe integrate it as part of one of your working projects, or possibly discuss a way to (once again) pursue research grants opportunities so that this resource can become even more useful and internationally generated and powered.

My best, Paula
Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández, Ph.D.
Historiadora, Administradora de Patrimonio || Historian, Heritage Manager

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3535-7195
Editora || Editor The Exchange, the BHC blog
Redes sociales || Contact@cruzmosu or LinkedIn