From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Business and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias

Abstract

What explains the growth of a business, and more broadly the development or decline of a whole economy? What role do particular entrepreneursor indeed a culture of entrepreneurship play? Does the evidence suggest that a particular structure or organizational form was or should be adopted to ensure best practice and commercial success? These fundamental questions have long pre-occupied business and economic historians. With the current expansion of business and management education and training, the investigations and findings of the historian may have wider significance and relevance. This volume has been stimulated by the work of Peter Mathiasone of the leading figures in this field in the post-war period. Here a number of his former studentsmany now internationally distinguished historianspay tribute in a book that explores the move from family firms to corporate capitalism. In a series of chapters they explore at the level of the firm the myriad of micro decisions that ultimately help to explain the overall performance of industries, sectors, and national economies as they evolve through time. The contributors argue that sustained growth has never been a matter of a few spectacular technical breakthroughs. Instead it rest on subtle economic and social transformations - in cultures, in economic organizations, and in the roles of science and technology.

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