The Visible Hand and the Top 100 Companies in South Africa, 1964–84

In recent years very considerable progress has been made in the field of business history, which, as Alfred Chandler points out, has moved from the writing of historically specific descriptive history to comparative institutional history that can generate non-historically specific generalisations and concepts.1 Not surprisingly, Amercian scholars have led the way. Harvard appointed the first professor of business history over half a century before England took up the challenge. Yet though the origins of modern business history go back to the early years of the century, it was in the second half of the century that seminal developments occurred on both sides of the Atlantic with the publication of Gras’s monumental work on Standard Oil and Charles Wilson’s work on Unilever, works that were to be the forerunners of a stream of major publications on the modern business corporation. Significantly most of these works were the product of historians rather than economists. This occurred because of developments within the field of economics, where the school of institutionists was out of favour and Keynesian macroeconomics in favour, supported by a growing interest in econometrics. The former were not interested in micro case studies of historical firms: the latter denied the importance of individuals, whose thoughts and actions simply disappeared from the scene.