A Revisionist Historiography of Business History : A Richer Past for a Richer Future

The historiography of business history is often recounted in linear terms, as evolving from a Chandlerian era focused on big business to a post-Chandlerian period marked by the study of a wide variety of organizational forms and topics. Taking a longer and more global perspective, we offer a revisionist historiographical account that emphasizes the multiple paths through which business history has developed around the world. Tracing the development of business history to its antecedents in the nineteenth-century historical schools of economics, we find a high degree of diversity in when and how business history developed depending on the institutional context in which it did and its relationship to other disciplines. Over time and place, we find that business history has long been characterized by a diversity of topics, varying stances on theory and methods, and shifting inter-disciplinary relationships. These rich and diverse traditions, we argue, are an important intellectual resource in building a vibrant future for business history