The Past Speaks

I’m sharing some information about a business-historical workshop that will take place in Oxford on 28 June 2019.

Conveners: David Chan Smith and Rowena Olegario

This one-day symposium at the Weston Library brings together an interdisciplinary group of speakers to offer insights into how business has acted as a radical force to upset and replace social norms over time. Whether seeking to normalize new products and services, such as autonomous vehicles, or reacting to environmental or safety concerns, business is engaged in a constant negotiation with larger cultural codes. Speakers will discuss the consequences of this contest over social norms, including ethical as well as strategic implications. By bringing together researchers from across disciplines, the symposium will also explore common conceptual ground to understand the significance of this problem for the history of capitalism and management.

All are welcome to attend, but please RSVP.

David Chan Smith is Associate Professor, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, and is the Royal Bank of Canada-Bodleian Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries during Trinity Term 2019.

Presented in association with the Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book.

Confirmed speakers:

Aled Davies, University of Oxford
Stephanie Decker, Aston University
Neil Forbes, Coventry University
James Hollis, University of Oxford
Mary Johnstone-Louise, University of Oxford
Alan Morrison, University of Oxford
Anne Murphy, University of Hertfordshire
Adam Nix, De Montfort University
Will Pettigrew, University of Lancaster
David Chan Smith, Wilfrid Laurier University
Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia
Michael Weatherburn, Imperial College London
Lola Wilhelm, University of Oxford

For a number of years, I’ve been a member of the Management History Division of the Academy of Management. Each year, the MH division elects a new PDW Chair who will serve a five-year leadership rotation within the division—Year 1: PDW Chair; Year 2: Program Chair; Year 3: Division Chair Elect; Year 4: Division Chair; Year 5: Past/Outgoing Division Chair. This year, we also had positions open for Division Representative-at-Large and Division Graduate Student/Junior Faculty Representative-at-Large.

I am very happy to report that I was elected to one of these offices. Patricia McLaren and Nick Deal were also elected.
Patricia McLaren, Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada)—PDW Chair

Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool Management School (UK)—Division Representative-at-Large

Nicholous (Nick) Deal, Saint Mary’s University (Canada)—Division Graduate Student/Junior Faculty Representative-at-Large.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming AoM conference in Boston.

I immensely enjoyed the Uses of the Past in International Economic Relations conference here in Oxford. The conference began with a great keynote by Per Hansen followed by a series of excellent papers. The first day ended with me talking about how historical analysis can help senior managers to mitigate cognitive biases, promote long-term thinking, and ultimately increase earnings per share. My presentation generated a lively discussion and I got lots of feedback that will be useful in preparing the paper for submission. On the second day, I heard a variety of excellent papers. I found that the paper on the ECB by Anselm Kuesters was particularly methodologically innovative. I also heard a fantastic presentation by a young economic historian that was based on research in the archive of Stanford University, which now holds the records of the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council.

At the conference, I learned of a new book by Marc Flandreau that I need to order and read.

The conference included an excursion to Brasenose College, where I drank out of a silver tankard that had been manufactured in the seventeenth century. The date on the tankard reads 1659, which I was told is implausible given that the college lost all of its silver under Cromwell’s rule. Archival research has confirmed that the tankard existed by the 1680s but for some reason its creators wanted to backdate it to the year after Cromwell died and the college’s silver was returned. Anyway, drinking from a silver tankard is an interesting experience, because the container cools the drink down after you pour it in.

I express my gratitude to the conference organizers for including my paper and to the European Commission for funding the conference.

I thought I would draw the attention of my readers to a new paper in the journal Enterprise and Society by Greig Mordue of McMaster University.

Abstract: New perspective is provided on a critical period in the development of the Canadian automotive industry. In the 1980s, five foreign manufacturers built new vehicle assembly operations in Canada, effectively transforming that country’s automotive industry. Drawing from a combination of interviews with key actors and a review of archives, this case study makes several contributions. First, gaps are closed in the economic history of one of Canada’s most important industries. Second, the case demonstrates the capacity of using historical perspective to extend an existing theory to a new area of inquiry. In this case, Multiple Streams Theory is employed to explain the process of inward FDI attraction. This includes a description of the role of policy entrepreneurs and their capacity to create and exploit opportunities. Third, the case demonstrates the continuing relevance of integrating historical perspective to contemporary issues in business, management, and public policy.

Even though I’m not a fan of the concept of “policy entrepreneur,” which is used by this author (and many others), this paper is an excellent piece of historical research. The author, Greig Mordue, did a PhD in business history at Strathclyde Business School in Glasgow.  He is now an associate professor and ArcelorMittal Dofasco Chair in Advanced Manufacturing Policy at McMaster University.

Eline Poelmans and Jason E. Taylor. “Belgium’s historic beer diversity: should we raise a pint to institutions?.” Journal of Institutional Economics (2019): 1-19.

Despite its relatively small size, Belgium has historically been considered to have the most diverse array of beer varieties in the world. We explore whether Belgium’s institutional history has contributed to its beer diversity. The Belgian area has experienced a heterogeneous and variable array of institutional regimes over the last millennia. In many cases institutional borders crossed through the Belgian area. We trace the historical development of many of Belgium’s well-known beer varieties to specific institutional causes. We also show that the geographic production of important varieties, such as Old Brown, Red Brown, Trappist, Lambic, Saison, and Gruitbeer, continues to be influenced by Belgium’s institutional past.

EGOS 2019 paper Smith Online Appendix

AS: The lens with which I observe historical phenomena differs considerably from that of Sven Beckert, but I am always interested in listening to what he has to say. Next month, he will be presented in Copenhagen about the relationship between violence and capitalism. My priors, which are much more like those of Pinker, strongly suggest to me that the rise of capitalism has produced a reduction in the overall rate of violence, but I am certain curious to learn more about Sven Beckert’s presentation on this subject, which will likely argue that there is a causative relationship between capitalism development and violence. Anyway, here are the details of his talk.    

Professor Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and transnational dimensions. He just published Empire of Cotton: A Global History, the first global history of the nineteenth century’s most important commodity. The book won the Bancroft Award, The Philip Taft Award, the Cundill Recognition for Excellence and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times named it one of the ten most important books of 2015. His other publications have focused on the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, on labor, on democracy, on global history and on the connections between slavery and capitalism. Currently he is at work on a history of capitalism. Beckert teaches courses on the political economy of modern capitalism, the history of American capitalism, Gilded Age America, labor history, global capitalism and the history of European capitalism. Together with a group of students he has also worked on the historical connections between Harvard and slavery and published Harvard and Slavery: Seeking a Forgotten History.

Beckert is co-chair of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University , and co-chair of theWeatherhead Initiative on Global History (WIGH). Beyond Harvard, he co-chairs an international study group on global history, is co-editor of a series of books at Princeton University Press on “America in the World,” and has co-organized a series of conferences on the history of capitalism. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. He also directs the Harvard College Europe Program.

Date: 14^th May 201

Time: 11.00 – 12.15

Venue: Udvælgseværelse  3, Nørregdae