Les Hannah on the History of Barclays

24 04 2015

Just in time for its tumultuous AGM (for outbursts by shareholders, see here), Barclays bank has produced a video on the history of this venerable financial institution. The video features the distinguished business historian Les Hannah talking about the bank’s history and values. The video alludes to the bank’s Quaker founders and long history of involvement in overseas business.

The video is interesting on a number of levels, not least as an example of constitutive historicism and a fine case of a firm using its heritage in investor relations.


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CFP: Management History Research Group Annual Workshop

23 04 2015

The Management History Research Group Annual Workshop, Tuesday 21 July and Wednesday 22 July 2015 at the University of York, UK.

This year the Management History Research Group meeting will remember two important figures in the foundation of the MHRG, Derek Pugh and Andrew Thomson. Derek Pugh was a path-breaking contributor to management thought, particularly through his 1971 edited volume Organization Theory which helped to establish organizational behavior as a field of enquiry. Pugh’s team, known as the ‘Aston School’, was important in furthering this field. In his later career, at The Open University Business School, Pugh went on to help found the MHRG with Andrew Thomson. As well as the MHRG, Thomson was a founder of the British Academy of Management and served as Dean of the Open University Business School. In the management history field he co-authored The Making of Modern Management: British Management in a Historical Perspective with John F. Wilson, and with Edward Brech and John F. Wilson published a biography of Lyndall Urwick, the British pioneer of scientific management.

The Management History Research Group Meeting 2015 will be hosted by The York Management School at the University of York.

The theme of the workshop will be “The scholarship of Derek Pugh and Andrew Thomson”, and we encourage papers that engage with the themes covered by Pugh and Thomson during their working lives, such as organizational behavior and the history of the management profession. As usual, papers can also be on any topic in the field of MOH, broadly conceived. Heterodox approaches are especially well received. Panel proposals are also welcome.

We welcome three types of submission:

Full Papers c. 2,000 words, excluding references. These papers are expected to be works progress and will be peer reviewed. They will be circulated to the participants in the workshop.

Developmental Papers/Presentations c. 500 words, excluding references. These papers/presentations are expected to be at a more formative stage of production should be presented with a view to gaining feedback for further development.

PhD/Post-doc Presentations. There will also be a session for PhD students and Postdocs who wish to gain feedback for their work from experienced scholars. Papers for this session should be c. 500 words excluding references.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 4 May at 5pm. Late submissions will not be considered. Please email submissions and any queries to:

mhrgyork2015@gmail.com

Notification of acceptance will be given by 5pm on Monday 11 May.

Workshop details:

The cost of the workshop is £100 for full-time academic members of staff. The cost for PhD

students and post-doctoral students will be £60.

Lunches and a conference dinner will be provided.

Accommodation will not be provided, but a list of possible places to stay in York will be made available.

Workshop conveners:

Dr Simon Mollan, Dr Kevin Tennnent, Dr Phil Garnett, and Professor Bill Cooke (all The York Management School, University of York)

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The Business History Network at Oxford University – 2015 Workshop

23 04 2015

The Business History Network at Oxford brings together early-career researchers from all disciplines with an interest in business history. They want to be a forum for discussion and build long-term collaborative relationships among the participants of our workshops.

Their second Workshop of 2015 will take place on 18th June 2015 at St. John’s College, Oxford. Any graduate students and postdocs who are interested in attending the workshop or signing up to their newsletter can find more information on their website.


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CFP: The Environmental Histories of Ports and Ocean Trade

22 04 2015

Call for papers

“The Environmental Histories of Ports and Ocean Trade”
Liverpool, 18th-19th September 2015

Throughout history, humans have exchanged and traded in biological agents, specimens, and commodities, often with very dramatic and unequal effects on environments and ecologies, cultures, nations, and economies. Since the Columbian Exchange, the number of organisms (human and non-human) passing through the world’s ports has increased dramatically. Natural resource extraction, exploitation, and transfer has been both enriching and denuding – for human societies and natural worlds. Impacts are felt in both exporting and importing locations. They have reshaped human nutrition and been central to core industries of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. They have introduced new sources of pleasure and enjoyment to societies, as well as inducing fear and anxiety about invasion by ‘alien’ species.

Port cities are obvious loci for these very long-running and deeply embedded flows and processes. They are key points through which transfers are handled and in which they are made manifest. Ports have risen and fallen with the fortunes of the resources passing through them. They have helped reshape ecologies and have themselves had their own environments reshaped, for example by dramatic changes in waterfront topography or the importation and naturalization of non-indigenous species of flora and fauna.

The waterfront of the great port city of Liverpool is still dotted with huge warehouses that were once dedicated to the oceanic trade in a wide variety of different natural products; from rice and sugar to bananas and cotton. They are testament to profoundly important commodity trades that encircled the world, helping to establish Liverpool as a leading commercial metropolis of the British Empire. As such, Liverpool is an ideal location for a conference on the environmental histories of ports and ocean trade (18th-19th September 2015).

Building on a growing interest in integrating environmental history with other sub-disciplines, this two-day conference will reflect on environmental histories of port cities and ocean trade. This theme will have a wide appeal, to, amongst others: environmental historians and historical geographers, food historians, social and cultural historians, business and economic historians, historians of empire, subaltern studies, archaeologists. Topics of potential interest might included but are not limited to:

• Ports and environmental knowledge
• Environmental histories of oceans, estuaries, and marine life
• The role of ships in connecting transoceanic ports
• Ports in the age of sail versus the age of fossil fuels
• Ports in temperate and tropical worlds
• Ports as exotic and liminal environments
• Ports, urban development, and pollution
• Ports, tourism and the environment
• The environmental histories of fishing industries and fishing ports
• Commodities, empires, and expansion?
• Changing port and riparian topographies and ecologies
• Quarantines: human and non-human
• Environmental history, ports and food systems (from cuisine, to food security, to the political economy of international food trade)
• Ports as sites of biological – and other – invasions
• Ports and climate history
• The built environments of port landscapes and waterscapes: histories and legacies

We are interested in receiving proposals for either individual papers or full panels. For individual papers please send an abstract of no more than one A4 page and a brief biography. For panels (no more than three papers) please send abstracts and biographies for each paper and a cover sheet briefly outlining the rationale of the panel. Please send all proposals to Professor Andrew Popp at andrew.popp@liverpool.ac.uk by 30th June 2015


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Constitutive Historicism in Barry Eichengreen’s Hall of Mirrors The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History

21 04 2015

As readers of this blog are aware, I am very interested in how the constitutive historicism approach can be applied in management research (for an earlier blog post, see here). Constitutive historicism involves investigation how economic actors’ perceptions of their own place in historical time shape their strategies.  In other words, you look at the lessons others have derived from their reading of history. In a paper I delivered at the British Academy of Management last year and in some follow up papers I have advocated the application of this approach to a wide range of management-school research topics. Of course, I’m not the only one calling for this approach: see Wadhwani and Jones (2014) in Organizations in Time for a discussion of how we can use constitutive historicism to understand entrepreneurial decision-making.

I’m almost finished Barry Eichengreen’s great new book  Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History. This book is filled with interesting information about interwar economic history, the recent global financial crisis and is therefore a must-read for anyone who teaches about these topics. Moreover, the quality of the writing is delightfully superior and should please anyone who appreciates a sardonic turn of phrase. The really interesting thing about the book, however, is that it is replete with comments about how actors’ perceptions of the past shaped their actions in the present, for better or for worse. Needless to say, Ben Bernanke, the economic historian turned Fed chair, appears frequently in the pages of this book.


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Is Globalization Slowing Down? Is Banking Experiencing Deglobalization? Is the Perceived Relative Decline of the United States to Blame?

20 04 2015

There is some evidence that globalization has slowed down since the Global Financial Crisis. One way of measuring globalization is to compare the growth of global trade to growth in the world economy in general. By that measure, the rate of globalization definitely appears to be slowing. According to a recent article in the FT, in three decades before the 2008 financial crisis, global trade regularly grew at twice the rate of the global economy.”With last year’s growth of 2.8 per cent, global trade has now expanded at, or below, the rate of the broader global economy for three straight years.”

In the last year or so, the term “deglobalization” has been on everyone’s lips (see here, here, and here). I get the impression the word was used frequently at the 2015 World Economic Forum meeting (see here and here). This discourse of deglobalization can also be seen in the Wall Street Journal and the other publications read by senior corporate managers. In The System Worked, Dan Drezner has argued that we haven’t seen any deglobalization.  My own view is that while the global trade data suggests that while we haven’t witnessed any actual deglobalization, the process is decelerating dramatically.  Recent news out of the banking sector provides some evidence of deglobalization: HSBC is retreating from key emerging markets: the “world’s local bank” has decided it will no longer provide retailing banking service in Turkey and Brazil, two important countries.  See here, here, and here.

As I read the press reports about HSBC’s exit from emerging markets, I noticed the frequency of references to political factors in influencing the change in the bank’s strategy. As a business historian who is interested in globalization, I’ve long believed that the changing political institutions are incredibly important as drivers of the various waves of globalization and de-globalization the world economy has experienced over the last few hundred years.  I’m particularly sympathetic to the view that rapid globalization requires a strong global hegemon, which means that globalization is most likely to take place in a world dominated by a single superpower capable of providing global public goods such as international stability. We had such a superpower for almost a century after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 (it was the British Empire). Banks and other firms made their strategies accordingly. Britain’s status as the first of the great powers was challenged in the early 20th century by rising great powers like Germany and the world experienced de-globalization, largely because of the reluctance of the interwar US to step into the shoes of the British Empire. International firms still made money, but they had to adjust their strategies to the new geopolitical landscape. Globalization did not resume until the post-1945 period, when the United States began to perform many of the functions  that had the previous liberal capitalist global hegemon, the British Empire, had discharged (Kindleberger, 1986 and Gilpin, 2011, 94-95).

Recent years have seen the accumulation of evidence of American relative decline. I don’t know if we are really in a post-American world, but the unipolar system that underpinned rapid globalization in the 1990s no longer exists. Perhaps the Obama’s administration’s foreign policy has contributed to the perception of American weakness. Such perceptions, accurate or not, may influence the strategies of MNEs. In any event, we now live in a world of great power rivalries that is uncannily similar to the world circa 1905. The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 ended the first era of globalization and initiated several decades of deglobalization and de-financialization. I’m certainly not saying that great-power rivalries will continue to intensify. Nor am I saying that the expectation of intensification now informs the strategy of HSBC and other multinationals. (I simply don’t know what the senior managers of such firms think about the international system, although I would very much love to talk them about this issue!). However, I would speculate that the people who make high-level strategy in firms like HSBC expect that the world’s political systems are moving in a direction that means that a business model of providing retail banking services on every continent and in every major emerging market no longer makes sense.

Please note that I am not saying that either globalization or deglobalization are normative. I’m mainly interested here in how shifting policy environments influence the strategies of multinational firms.


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Papers on Canadian Topics at BHC 2015

18 04 2015

Three papers on Canadian topics will be presented at the upcoming Business History Conference in Miami.

Kristin Hall, University of Waterloo
Trade Journals, Manhood, and “Legitimate Advertising”: Establishing Advertising as a Necessary Business Practice for Canadian Consumer Goods Manufacturers, 1887-1914

Laurence B. Mussio, McMaster University
Winners, Losers, and Bankers in the Making of Canada’s Central Bank, 1932-1938

Matthew Bellamy, Carleton University
Brewing Inequality: Regulatory Capture and the System of Beer Distribution in Canada, 1969-1981


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Keith Neilson

16 04 2015

I have heard the sad news that Prof. Keith Neilson of Royal Military College has died. At the time of his death, Prof. Neilson was working on the paper described below.

Have any of my readers seen this important paper? If so, please email me so that we can investigate the possibility of obtaining the permission of the author’s estate for a posthumous publication.

Canada’s Imperial Munitions Board (IMB) in the First World War

The IMB was perhaps Canada’s most important contribution to the Imperial war effort in the First World War. It provided as much as one-third of all the shells used by the British and Imperial forces in 1917. Despite this, however, the efforts of the IMB are not widely known.

This is unfortunate, for study of the IMB provides an excellent window into a number of important matters. First, as the IMB was a part of the British Ministry of Munitions (despite being located in Canada, being headed by a Canadian and often funded by the Canadian government), a study of it enriches our understanding of the way in which extra-British business was tied to the Allied war effort. Second, as British war supplies from Canada had to be paid for, an examination of the IMB and its role adds considerably to our understanding of the international financing of the war. This issue of finance has several dimensions. One involves how financing Canadian munitions production affected Anglo-Canadian relations generally (as Britain often wanted Canada to pay for munitions without having any control over ordering) and the relationship between the Canadian government and private banks; the other shows how Britain’s borrowing of money in the United States was linked to British purchasing in Canada (with regard to exchange rates in particular and the distribution of munitions contracts in general).

My paper will deal with these and related topics. It is based on the relevant secondary work and a wide range of primary material. The latter includes the files of the Ministry of Munitions in the United Kingdom (MUN 4 and 5 in particular), the private papers of a number of people intimately involved in this process (the first Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George; the head of the IMB, Sir Joseph Flavelle; the prominent banker and British liaison with the IMB, Robert Brand, and the Canadian prime minister, Sir Robert Borden among others). It is also utilises the private papers of several prominent Americans, particularly William Gibbs McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury in the period.


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Two First-Class EconTalk Podcasts

16 04 2015

This week’s episode of the EconTalk podcast is particularly good. In it, Phil Rosenzweig, professor of strategy and international business at IMD in Switzerland and author of the book Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book.

Last year, two of my (more senior) colleagues Robin Holt and Mike Zundel published “Understanding Management, Trade, and Society Through Fiction: Lessons from The Wire.” Academy of Management Review 39, no. 4 (2014): 576-585. If you liked this article, or the TV show The Wire, you will definitely like the recent EconTalk podcast in which David Skarbek, a political economist at King’s College London discusses his book The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System.


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Is Economic History Making a Come Back?

13 04 2015

The Economist has used the recent Economic History Society conference as an excuse to publish a thoughtful piece on the current state of economic history. Back in 2013, Peter Temin published a working paper charting the rise and fall of economic history in the economics department at MIT, which is now probably the world’s most important econ department. The global financial crisis led to a chorus of demands for more research and teaching about economic history. The piece in the Economist asking for more economic history is one such example.

In order to investigate these, as well as the historical claims of economists over issues as varied as the impact of high public debt and the causes of inequality, the contribution of historians—who have in fact mostly stayed away from these debates—is desperately needed. Economic history may well be dead as a subject studied in independent academic departments, as it was at universities in the 1970s. But as a subject that is needed as part of the study of economics and the making of public policy, economic history is—and should be—very much alive.

I strongly agree with the normative statements in this Economist piece. However,  I am slightly annoyed that the author didn’t distinguish economic history from business history, which is indeed thriving in management schools and which is methodologically quite different from economic history.

More importantly, there is little evidence of an actual renaissance of economic history taking place in history departments.  It certainly remains to be seen whether all of this pent-up demand calls forth an increased supply of economic history, at least in economics departments. [Management schools are different kettle of fish and there is abundant evidence of a historical turn in management research and education]. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on a revival of economic history in econ departments, as young economists, or at least those who post in EconJobRumors, still appear to believe that treating a historical topic in a job market paper is career suicide. Two years ago, at about the time Professor Temin was publishing his paper, a prospective grad student posted the following query on EconJobRumors under the alias ca2F. I’m reposting it below because it gives a sense of how young economists talk about their career strategies.

Hey bros,

Prospective grad student here. I’m interested in Economic History (specifically economic history of developing countries). Is there any room for me in the discipline? Which universities could I apply to? should i go to history departments? I know this field is in decline but I want to revive it and take it to the next level. peace out.

Here is a sample of the replies:

Sup bro. Are you any good with clits and metrics? If so you’re gonna rock the cliometrics. Aight bro peace out.

and

Just want to point out this is douchey and makes it pretty clear you suffer from undergrad hubris and have very little understanding of the dynamics of the profession.

Four years ago, there was a discussion of the rankings of economic history journals on the same website. Here is a sample of the comments.

are you desperately trying to get tenured??? you the **** cares about economic history review???

which generated the following reply in the thread

I am already tenured in a top 50, thank you; hence, my ability and willingness to dabble in economic history. I asked about EHR because I am not sure where to send my paper if it is rejected by JEH and EER.

Here is a representative sample of some of the other comments:

Economic history belongs in the history department.

and

Good economic history work will not get labeled as such. Market yourself as growth/development or labor or whatever fits your particular research. Problem solved.

and

i highly doubt it is easy to find a job in econ history. Most depts cannot justify having more than one economic historian, but they can usually justify having multiple people in almost any other field.

and

Acemoglu shits on economic historians [The implication is that you want to defer to the wisdom of Daron Acemoglu, who is some sort of living god].

and

Historians, who look at economic history, suck ( e.g. Nial “asshole” Ferguson)

Economists, who care about history, rule (e.g. Barry “next Nobel” Eichengreen)

[AS: I would agree that Eichengreen’s books are superb on many levels. Enjoyable to read.]

and

My analysis of the Econ History field as that it’s very club-ish. That is, it’s a hard field to enter if you didn’t have a Fishback-like adviser.

and

Econ history journals don’t tend to rank as highly as other top field journals (e.g. macro) so that’s something to keep in mind if you are sending something there.

For the record, the journals the economists considered worthy of some respect were the Journal of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History, European Review of Economic History, and Cliometrica. Cliometrica was considered the fastest-rising journal in the field. Somewhat tellingly, the economists on EconJobRumors do not appear to think much about the Economic History Review, the journal of the Economic History Society.

Similarly, economic history is basically dead in history departments for a variety of demand-side and supply-side reasons. Historians who work on economic-historical and business-historical topics tend to migrate out to more lucrative fields. Moreover, demographic renewal in history departments means that the level of interest/literacy in economic historical topics in the historical profession is now quite low, which means that it may be difficult to get hired, rapidly promoted, etc.

If it were a stock, I would try to find some way of shorting economic history.


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