‘A new paradigm of British business history’: A critique of Toms and Wilson

We provide a critical reflection of Toms and Wilson's ‘new paradigm of British business history’ by focusing on the logical consistency of their model, the robustness of its predictive powers, and its explanation of transitional change related to stages of business capitalism. For example, central to the paradigm is the importance of accountability and external economies of scale, assumed as exogenous parameters in the analysis of British business history. This assumption is challenged, as is the predictive powers of the analytical matrix in providing an all-encompassing model for British business evolution. In particular, the transitional processes in British business history are not simply reducible to an assessment of accountability and economies of scale and scope, but rather to enhance our understanding there is a need also to engage with the concept of personal capitalism. While business historians should engage with theoretical frameworks, it must also be recognized that firms are idiosyncratic, a feature of business organizations that should not be lost.     

Towards a new business history?

This article calls for a discussion about business history research. We advocate that the current typical approach in business history – dominantly case study analysis – maintains its prominent position, but the purpose and relevance of this type of research in the scientific method for business history is made more explicit. Moreover, the article proposes the application of additional approaches in business history, which specifically aim to develop theory and test hypotheses. These approaches are well established in the social sciences, but require adaptation to the particular needs of business history. The purpose of this article is to argue that opportunities for scientific explanations in business history are enhanced by engagement with the circle of knowledge creation where theory is confronted with empirical evidence and empirical observations feed back into theory formation.     

Clio in the business school: Historical approaches in strategy,international business and entrepreneurship

On the back of recent and significant new debates on the use of history within business and management studies, we consider the perception of historians as being anti-theory and of having methodological shortcomings; and business and management scholars displaying insufficient attention to historical context and privileging of certain social science methods over others. These are explored through an examination of three subjects: strategy, international business and entrepreneurship. We propose a framework for advancing the use of history within business and management studies more generally through greater understanding of historical perspectives and methodologies.     

Valuing an entrepreneurial enterprise

This article focuses on valuation issues and methods that are related to a closely held entrepreneurial enterprise. This focus is motivated by the fact that the number of small, closely held business start-ups, which we refer to broadly by the term “entrepreneurial enterprises,” continues to grow year on year, and new business ventures remain the primary source for employment growth in the USA and most industrialized nations. Also, the topic of valuation of entrepreneurial enterprises has for the most part been ignored. The traditional approaches to valuation of small, closely held entrepreneurial enterprises are, in our view, wanting in a number of important respects. Simply, traditional valuation methods are modeled in a manner that is applicable to a going-concern business with a history of sales and revenues. That is not the case for an entrepreneurial enterprise as we define it, and thus use of traditional valuation methods is questionable.     

员工援助项目(EAP)的网络运营

员工援助项目(EAP)是一项为工作场所中个人、组织提供咨询的服务项目。它是现代企业管理中一个备受瞩目的新的工具。本文介绍了员工援助项目的定义、发展简史及其作用,并在简单介绍互联网络的功能的基础上,剖析了员工援助项目宣传、动员、调查、实施以及售后等环节的网络运营情况,并提出了员工援助项目在网络运营中应该注意的基点问题。     

Historical context and insights for criticisms of the 21st century business school

Many 21st century writers have articulated serious criticisms of the university-based business school. To have a complete understanding of the roots of these concerns and the viability of potential responses, we must see the business school in the context of the greater university—an institution with over 800 years of traditions and values. Seeing the 21st century university-based business school in this context informs us that many of the current-day criticisms are neither new nor unique to business schools. Without seeing the business school in this broader context, solutions offered by some critics are unlikely to gain sufficient traction to be successful. Fortunately, however, the lessons of history also provide the criteria for a solution that will succeed.     

Varieties of business history: Subject and methods for the twenty-first century

This paper deals with different approaches to business history. It argues that conflicting choices about methodology and subject can enrich a discipline, but that some of the current disputes among business historians produce unnecessary opportunity costs and block a more integrated understanding of how firms function in their larger social, political and economic contexts. The paper provides examples of how the separation in the field works against writing business history that is at once rigorous and appeals to broad audiences. It also suggests two approaches for bridging methodological differences. The first calls for reviving some basic historiographical notions. The second involves developing a closer relationship with business to gain more access to private, primary source materials. German experiences are drawn on to show how mutually beneficial academic–business cooperation can be.     

New business histories! Plurality in business history research methods

We agree with de Jong et al.'s argument that business historians should make their methods more explicit and welcome a more general debate about the most appropriate methods for business historical research. But rather than advocating one ‘new business history’, we argue that contemporary debates about methodology in business history need greater appreciation for the diversity of approaches that have developed in the last decade. And while the hypothesis-testing framework prevalent in the mainstream social sciences favoured by de Jong et al. should have its place among these methodologies, we identify a number of additional streams of research that can legitimately claim to have contributed novel methodological insights by broadening the range of interpretative and qualitative approaches to business history. Thus, we reject privileging a single method, whatever it may be, and argue instead in favour of recognising the plurality of methods being developed and used by business historians – both within their own field and as a basis for interactions with others.     

The Benefit Corporation and Corporate Social Responsibility

In the wake of the most recent financial crisis, corporations have been criticized as being self-interested and unmindful of their relationship to society. Indeed, the blame is sometimes placed on the corporate legal form, which can exacerbate the tension between duties to shareholders and interests of stakeholders. In comparison, the Benefit Corporation (BC) is a new legal business entity that is obligated to pursue public benefit in addition to the responsibility to return profits to shareholders. It is legally a for-profit, socially obligated, corporate form of business, with all the traditional corporate characteristics combined with societal responsibilities. Considering the history and perception of shareholder primacy in United States law, it is argued that this new business structure is an ethical step toward empowering socially committed commercial entities. The contribution of this research is to provide a fundamental base of knowledge about the new legal form of business, the BC, upon which further study may rely. First, the legal history of the corporation is briefly reviewed in order to provide context to the relationship of the corporate form to society, including exploration of the premise that shareholder wealth maximization is its best and only purpose. Second, the BC is described in detail, and state statutes are compared. Third, the BC is placed within the context of corporate social responsibility. Finally, opportunities for future research are discussed.     

美国“小企业投资公司计划”运作机制研究

小企业投资公司(SBIC)是私人拥有和操作的对美国小企业进行长期投资的公司,在美国中小企业的发展历程中起到了重要的推动作用。回顾其发展历程、组织形式、参与主体、资金来源及流向、投资对象界定以及法律的相关规定,试图对今天我国制定本国中小企业扶持政策提供一些思路。     

基于D2S模式谈服装制造业信息化经营模式的创新

中国服装制造业经过二十多年的高速发展,在世界上赢得了"中国制造"的美名,但由于我国服装制造企业身存在诸多历史沉积问题,造成了发展中的许多障碍。特别是在当前全球高速发展的基于互联网的电子商务、信息化经模式,对传统的经营模式形成新的挑战和强大的冲击,如何进行经营模式的创新是摆在中国服装制造业面前的紧迫问题本文通过对联泰控股(香港)有限公司从设计到商铺(Design to Store,简称D2S)的供应链管理模式进行分析研究,尝试出新的创新思路。     

从国美电器门店转型看我国零售业态的变迁

本文通过对国内外零售业态变迁史进行了对比研究,分析了影响零售业态变迁的动因。在家电连锁店扩张过快,规模太大的背景下,国美电器转变了门店业务模式,通过实行品类管理和建设自有销售队伍,逐渐探索向自有营业模式转变。国美电器开启的"新活馆"将成为家电连锁店新的增长点,对促进国零售业态的创新有积极的意义和影响。     

Internationalization of China’s Shanxi Province New Merchants: Implications and Use in Teaching IB

ABSTRACT

The Jin (Jin refers to Shanxi Province) merchants have a very important position in the history of Chinese business. The Jin merchants is a business course that investigates Shanxi businessmen and their business activities. As a local characteristic of the business curriculum of China, this course is taught in a number of universities. Taking the development of the new Jin merchants in Toronto as a breakthrough point, this article expounds the necessity of teaching the internationalization of the Jin merchants and puts forward the corresponding development strategies from the aspects of teaching objectives, curriculum, and the building of an international cooperation platform of teaching and scientific research. This study can promote teaching the internationalization of the Jin merchants and provide a chance for more people to understand the teaching of the Jin merchants.     

Seaside tourism in Europe: Business,urban and comparative history

This article explores aspects of the relationship between business history and urban history through a discussion of the seaside resort as a type of town that might also be regarded as a business (as might other kinds of town specialising in leisure and tourism). In the process it looks comparatively at aspects of the development of such towns across Europe, at the range of ways in which an understanding of seaside tourism contributes to a more satisfactory grasp of how businesses and societies function, and at the reasons for the enduringly marginal status of research in this sector and its limited integration into the perceived ‘mainstream' of all kinds of history, including business history.     

Leading a multinational is history in practice: The use of invented traditions and narratives at AkzoNobel,Shell, Philips and ABN AMRO

This article states that the distinctiveness of business history and its convincingness can be improved by the concept of invented tradition and narrative. After a theoretical overview it suggests that the narrative approach explains the way leaders operate in practice. It argues that with a narrative approach one sees that history is used by business leaders in four different ways: as a source to create traditions and symbols as means of communication, as a way to understand and strengthen the identity of the organisation, as means to create corporate memory and as a tool to connect past, present and future. The examples are taken from a Dutch oral history project on management behaviour at multinationals.     

Reconsidering the International Business Capstone: Capping,Bridging, or Both?

The capstone experience has become ubiquitous in undergraduate education. Originally, it served as a terminal display of academic excellence and bridging experience between study and work; more recently, however, it has been seen in terms of academic completion and consolidation. In times of increased turbulence for new business graduates, and in an international business (IB) landscape where appreciation of sociocultural and communication skills are critical, capstone experiences can provide a valuable means of demonstrating relevant and transferable professional competencies. This article considers the origins and context of the capstone, its evolutionary history, and current potential. It uses an analysis of undergraduate dissertations of non-American students studying at an American college in the Czech Republic to explore capping, bridging, and balanced strategies.     

Ben Ross Schneider. Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xix + 312 pp. ISBN 0-521-83651-4, $70.00 (cloth); 0-521-54500-5, $26.99 (paper).

This volume is a valuable addition to the extensive and disparatebibliography on business associations, state-business relations,collective action, corporatism, and civil society. One of itsmajor achievements is that it will help to redirect researchon these topics. The book encompasses a wide field of scholarlywork hitherto undertaken in a variety of disciplines: politicalscience, economics, sociology of organizations, and economicand business history. In terms of business history, Schneider’sbook is an important contribution to the study of     

H&M – documenting the story of one of the world's largest fashion retailers

The interest of fashion companies in documenting their history has been almost non-existent in Sweden until recently. For the Centre for Business History in Stockholm, the commission to secure the history of Sweden's largest fashion company and one of the world's largest fashion retailers, H&M, therefore offers new challenges. This study analyses the methods being used in this project. Apart from collecting, saving and digitising all existing documents from the company's 60 year-history, the documentation will be based on a considerable number of interviews with past and current employees. These oral history interviews will deal with a number of questions important to scholars doing contemporary business history.     

Assembling resources when forming a new business

Every business builds on a specific set of resources. New businesses in particular have to assemble external resources that are mostly new to them. This resource assembly requires developing business relationships with other actors that control and can provide the needed resources. Adopting a resource interaction perspective, this paper examines a case of a new business venture in the automobile industry. The case study shows that when forming a new business the actors possess only partial knowledge of how to assemble the resources. Consequently, the actors must engage in extensive adaptation and interaction with others to enact workable resource interfaces and combinations. This necessity makes the new business formation process nonlinear and onerous. Further, the case demonstrates that new business formation is a collective process involving not only the emergence of a formal business organization but also reorganizing the applicable resource market. Since third parties involved in developing the necessary resource combinations can be considered part of the new business venture, setting the boundaries of the new venture becomes arbitrary. The arbitrary nature of such boundary setting has implications in entrepreneurship studies with regard to the unit of analysis and the concept of opportunity.     

Ethics Sensitivity and Awareness Within Organizations in Kuwait: An Empirical Exploration of Epoused Theory and Theory-in-Use

This paper highlights the potential harms in the current state of business ethics education and presents an alternative new model of business ethics education. Such potential harms in business ethics education is due largely to restricted cognitive level of reasoning, a limited level of ethical conduct which remains only responsive and adaptive, and the estrangement between strategic thinking and ethical thinking. As a remedy for business ethics education, denatured by these potential harms, a new dynamic model of business ethics education is proposed. The new model is composed of a basic foundation for business ethics education and three practical components of business ethics education. The basic foundation comprises of ethical reasoning, moral sentiments, and ethical praxis. Three practical components of business ethics education are, respectively, to intensify moral imagination, to develop ethical wisdom and courage, and to enhance meta-strategic competences. The ultimate purpose of these practical components is to help moral subjects to conduct ethical leadership, to actualize integrity between individuals and organization, and to fulfill the social responsibility of business firms. This new model is expected to attract attention to the effective business ethics education both in college and in industry, and to be used as a benchmark for new curriculum designs and development of teaching methods. Finally, some teaching methodologies and pedagogical experiments are introduced and discussed according to this new model of business ethics educaiton.