“Global business practices in historical perspective”

Association of Academic Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools (AAHANZBS) 7^h Annual Conference, 2-3 November 2015.  AUT Business School, Auckland, New Zealand.

Call for Papers

The Business and Labour History Group (B&LHG) of the Work Research Institute, AUT University Business School, New Zealand, will be hosting the 7^th Annual Conference of AAHANZBS on 2-3 November 2015.

You are invited to submit papers addressing the conference theme, including papers relating to accounting history, business history, economic history, labour history, management history, marketing history, tourism history, transport history and other areas of interest relating to historical research in business schools. We also invite papers / panel suggestions around teaching and pedagogy relating to business and labour history.

Plenary speaker: Professor Ray Markey, Macquarie University

We welcome papers from researchers outside business schools who have an interest in these fields of study.

Both abstracts and full papers may be submitted. Full papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

Please submit either a 1000 word abstract or a 6,000 word maximum paper for refereeing by 12 June 2015 to Simon Mowatt at simon.mowatt@aut.ac.nz

The abstract will provide: –

(i) A summary of the argument of the paper

(ii) A summary of the findings of the paper

(iii) A selected list of references for the paper

Papers should follow the Labour History style guide. All authors of the abstracts will be notified by 14 August 2015 at the latest whether their abstracts or papers have been accepted for the conference.

Postgraduate Students awards: The B&LHG is pleased to be able to offer up to 4 competitive travel support awards for Postgraduate Students of NZ$250 each plus free registration. These will be awarded to the best full papers as decided by the AAHANZBS conference committee. Details of these awards, including conditions and eligibility, will be published in April on the conference homepage at the AUT WRI B&LHG site.

Prof. Simon Ville has published an interesting op-ed on why economic history needs to be taught. The opinion piece appears the World Economic Forum website.

Michael Pettis, economic theorist, Wall Street veteran, merchant banker, equities trader and entrepreneur, exclaimed:

“Economic history should be at the heart of economics instruction.”

Just rhetoric? Written in the wake of the crisis, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s ironically titled This Time Is Different saw common patterns across hundreds of financial crises of many nations over nearly a millennium. How did so many well-paid bankers and public officials miss what was happening?

I am, of course, sympathetic to what Prof. Ville is saying here. However, I thought that it was odd that such a distinguished economic historian would make very bold predictions of the sort that appear in his piece. He writes:

Casting forwards, Australia has set foot in the Asian century, when Asian nations, especially China, will dominate development. Given the geographic closeness and trade complementarity, yet cultural and political differences, Australia faces a specific set of challenges in coming decades. If the recent past resonates with resilience, the near future speaks of potential frailties.

One of the things I’ve learned from studying business history is that we need to be very tentative in extrapolating recent trends into the future and in making predictions. Business and economic history are littered with examples of predictions that didn’t work out. Remember the late 1980s, when people were talking about Japan overtaking the United States?

Ok. I guess I need to get to marking my students’ reviews of Lant Pritchett and Lawrence H. Summers, Asiaphoria meets regression to the mean. No. w20573. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014.

AS: Business History has just published two (advance access) articles on the current state and future direction of business history.

Towards a new business history?

Abstract: This article calls for a discussion about business history research. We advocate that the current typical approach in business history – dominantly case study analysis – maintains its prominent position, but the purpose and relevance of this type of research in the scientific method for business history is made more explicit. Moreover, the article proposes the application of additional approaches in business history, which specifically aim to develop theory and test hypotheses. These approaches are well established in the social sciences, but require adaptation to the particular needs of business history. The purpose of this article is to argue that opportunities for scientific explanations in business history are enhanced by engagement with the circle of knowledge creation where theory is confronted with empirical evidence and empirical observations feed back into theory formation.

Abe de Jong is a Professor of Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and a Professor of Financial Reporting at the University of Groningen.