IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v53y2011i3p401-424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Kobrak
  • Andrea Schneider

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Kobrak & Andrea Schneider, 2011. "Varieties of business history: Subject and methods for the twenty-first century," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(3), pages 401-424.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:53:y:2011:i:3:p:401-424
    DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2011.565515
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2011.565515
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076791.2011.565515?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kobrak,Christopher, 2008. "Banking on Global Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521863254.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Decker, Stephanie, 2012. "The silence of the archive: post-colonialism and the practice of historical reconstruction from archival evidence," MPRA Paper 37280, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Karabag, Solmaz Filiz, 2019. "Factors impacting firm failure and technological development: A study of three emerging-economy firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 462-474.
    3. Peter J. Buckley, 2016. "Historical Research Approaches to the Analysis of Internationalisation," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 879-900, December.
    4. Monica Keneley, 2020. "Reflections on the Business History Tradition: Where has it Come from and Where is it Going to?," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 282-300, November.
    5. Daniele Pozzi, 2016. "Heritage & profits: La storia come vantaggio competitivo per l'impresa," LIUC Papers in Economics 300, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    6. Hadjikhani, Amjad & Hadjikhani, Annoch Isa & Thilenius, Peter, 2014. "The internationalization process model: A proposed view of firms’ regular incremental and irregular non-incremental behaviour," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 155-168.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arjen Mulder & Gerarda Westerhuis, 2015. "The determinants of bank internationalisation in times of financial globalisation: evidence from the world's largest banks, 1980-2007," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 122-155, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:53:y:2011:i:3:p:401-424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.