Youssef Cassis and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, eds. Entrepreneurship in Theory and History

In a paper delivered during the founding of Harvard's ResearchCenter in Entrepreneurial History, Joseph Schumpeter commented,"Personally, I believe that there is an incessant give and takebetween historical and theoretical analysis and that, thoughfor the investigation of individual questions it may be necessaryto sail for a time on one tack only, yet on principle the twoshould never lose sight of each other" [Joseph Schumpeter, "EconomicTheory and Entrepreneurial History," in Change and the Entrepreneur(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 264]. With thenotable exception of the theoretically inspired work producedat the Research Center in the early 1950s, historians largely     

The Effect of Unions on Productivity Growth, Investment and Employment: A Report on some Recent Work

Using two British microeconomic data sets, this paper reports the following. (1) Union firms experienced faster productivity growth during 1980–4, but there was no difference in performance in 1975–9, or 1985–6. So unions do not necessarily reduce productivity growth. It is also unlikely that the above pattern can be explained by changes in union legislation. (2) Unionism appears to have no significant effect on in vestment, once one allows for the effects of differential productivity growth. (3) Wages in union and non-union firms are equally responsive to changes in the capital–labour ratio. (4) Contrary to what is often alleged, unionism per se does not reduce employment growth. Instead, the negative correlation observed in 1980–4 probably arises from a significant reform of working practices in unionized firms during 1980–4.     

Interfield Dynamics: Law and the creation of new organisational fields in the nineteenth-century United States

Abstract

This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history.     

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.     

Transmission of volatility between stock markets

This article investigates why, in October 1987, almost all stockmarkets fell together despite widely differing economic circumstances.We construct a model in which 'contagion' between markets occursas a result of attempts by rational agents to infer informationfrom price changes in other markets. This provides a channelthrough which a 'mistake' in one market can be transmitted toother markets. We offer supporting evidence for contagion effectsusing two different sources of data.