Journal•ISSN: 1467-2227
Enterprise and Society
Oxford University Press
About: Enterprise and Society is an academic journal published by Oxford University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Business history & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 1467-2227. Over the lifetime, 956 publications have been published receiving 9036 citations. The journal is also known as: Enterprise and society.
Topics: Business history, Politics, Capitalism, Corporate governance, Government
Papers published on a yearly basis
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TL;DR: In this paper, the nineteenth and twentieth-century experiences in Britain, Spain, and Italy were used to support the claim that there was a Mediterranean model for family business. But they also pointed out the need to consider family businesses in national and regional contexts if we are to understand their various capabilities and characteristics.
Abstract: We provide here a complement to recent work on family business, which has demonstrated the need to go beyond the generic definition of the family firm to place personal capitalism in an appropriate institutional, historical, and cultural framework. By focusing on the nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century experiences in Britain, Spain, and Italy, we challenge the notion that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was anything so simple as a Mediterranean model for family business. Rather, we demonstrate the need to consider family businesses in national and regional contexts if we are to understand their various capabilities and characteristics. We use similarities and differences in the experiences and responses of families and firms in the three countries to support this claim.
193 citations
TL;DR: In a series of recent essays, including their contributions to this symposium, Richard N. Langlois and Naomi R. Raff as mentioned in this paper present interesting but contradictory views of the decentralized or vertically disintegrated post-Chandlerian economy from whose vantage point they seek to reconceptualize business history.
Abstract: In a series of recent essays, including their contributions to this symposium, Richard N. Langlois and Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin (hereafter LRT) present interesting but contradictory views of the decentralized or vertically disintegrated post-Chandlerian economy from whose vantage point they seek to reconceptualize business history. Starting from an orientation that uneasily combines Adam Smith’s ideas about the division of labor with organizational learning, Langlois sees the current situation as dominated by the modularization of production. This modularization and the arm’s-length transactions it facilitates create a world reminiscent of the antebellum United States, although today’s highthroughput differentiated exchanges are underpinned by a set of market-supporting institutions, notably standard interfaces or design rules. Starting from an orientation toward Oliver Williamson and the minimization of coordination costs, LRT in contrast see a world of collaborators joined by long-term, largely informal relations of a distinct type reducible neither to markets nor hierarchies.
106 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the corporation is a globally superior form of business organization and that the Anglo-American common-law is more conducive to economic development than the code-based legal systems characteristic of continental Europe.
Abstract: This article challenges the idea that the corporation is a globally superior form of business organization and that the Anglo-American common-law is more conducive to economic development than the code-based legal systems characteristic of continental Europe. Although the corporation had important advantages over the main alternative form of organization (partnerships), it also had disadvantages that limited its appeal to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a result, when businesses were provided with an intermediate choice, the private limited liability company (PLLC) that combined the advantages of legal personhood and joint stock with a flexible internal organizational structure, most chose not to organize as corporations. This article tracks the changes that occurred in the menu of business organizational forms in two common-law countries (the United Kingdom and the United States) and two countries governed by legal codes (France and Germany) and presents data showing the rapidity with which firms in each country responded to enabling legislation for PLLCs. We show that the PLLC was introduced first and most easily in a code country (Germany) and last and with the most difficulty in a commonlaw country (the United States). Late introduction was associated with prolonged use of the partnership form, suggesting that the disadvantages of corporations did indeed weigh heavily on SMEs.
104 citations
TL;DR: The social conditions that affect innovation change over time and vary across productive activities as mentioned in this paper, and hence theoretical analysis of the innovative enterprise must be integrated with historical study through the use of what I call a historical-transformation methodology.
Abstract: The social conditions that affect innovation change over time and vary across productive activities. Hence theoretical analysis of the innovative enterprise must be integrated with historical study through the use of what I call a historical-transformation methodology—a methodology that stands in sharp contrast to, but can nonetheless be complemented by, the constrained-optimization methodology favored by conventional economists. In surveying some major attempts to analyze the role of the business enterprise in generating superior economic performance in the advanced economies, including the works of Oliver Williamson, Alfred Chandler, Edith Penrose, and resource-based theorists, I explain what a historical-transformation methodology is and why such a methodology is needed for understanding how and under what conditions business enterprises can in fact be innovative enterprises.
94 citations
TL;DR: The roots of the corporate social responsibility movement trace back to the early years of the Cold War, when advocates urged expanded business social responsibility as a means of aligning business interests with the defense of free-market capitalism against what was depicted as the clear-and-present danger of Soviet Communism as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Both business executives and management scholars have, in recent years, focused a great deal of attention on the theme of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Calls for business leaders to expend resources on behalf of “social good” tend to downplay, if not ignore, what is fundamentally an ideological question: just what is a “good” society and who defines “goodness”? The ideological underpinnings of social responsibility and its relationship to the “good” society can be explored through an historical perspective. The roots of the CSR movement trace back to the early years of the Cold War. Led by Donald K David, Dean of the Harvard Business School and supported by other academics and executives given voice on the pages of the Harvard Business Review, advocates urged expanded business social responsibility as a means of aligning business interests with the defense of free-market capitalism against what was depicted as the clear-and-present danger of Soviet Communism. Today's enthusiastic calls for business to “do well by doing good” could benefit from a similar critical analysis not just of the goals of CSR but also the ideological assumptions, often unacknowledged, that underlie those goals.
92 citations