Unternehmensformen oder Formen von Unternehmungen zwischen Spätmittelalter und beginnender Früher Neuzeit

The article “Business forms or types of companies between the late Middle Ages and the onset of the early modern” focuses on “entrepreneurial” activity on the one hand and on the business-like structures and networks of capital and labor-intensive large undertakings between 1300 and 1550 on the other. The first case study shows how intensively the domain was involved in the economy and markets already at this time through good planning and accounting, by taking the example of a noble estate in the 15th Century. The article then compares the operational and corporate organizational structures in the central European mining sector in the early 16th Century by means of a second case study. It shows that mining and metallurgy emerged early on in various corporate and operational forms, because of the capital requirements of large-scale production conditions, distance and the differentiated division of labor organization, but differed greatly from each other because of their strong adjustment in respective political and environmental conditions. Based on the “Corporate Governance” of the Italian banking houses of the 14th Century the third example explains how early the company’s size and distance relationships were able to mould the organizational structure of these financial institutions. With increasing international trade and credit transactions only the semantics of family and kinship survived. Overall, the article is able to show by means of its examples, that increasing company size, greater market orientation, an increasing need for capital, the internationalization of market relations and the question of the risk limit lead to the emergence of new institutional forms of business organization from the late Middle Ages onwards.