This paper examines the business achievements of the once-powerful House of Mitsui. Its long success is studied from the perspective of its founders' skills, making extensive use of historical documents of the Mitsui family collected and prepared by the Mitsui Research Institute for Social and...

In the early 17th century, the Mitsui brothers began business in Tokyo. After a lapse of several years, they split up into three families. Among them, only the House of Mitsui had conducted business until the end of the World War II for 272 years and the other two families disappeared from...

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the reasons why most of the Japanese companies have a high regard for employee's competence and don't adopt personnel retrenchment as one of the urgent countermeasures to come out of a business slump. We looked over historical documents about business...

Based on case studies prepared at the Harvard Business School, the article analyses the content of university courses on business history. Its aim is to answer the question whether or not business history courses are used for discussing the problems of CSR or moral dilemmas behind strategic...

The M-form, in which a corporate parent manages relatively freestanding business units, was the most successful organizational design of the twentieth century. However, contemporary economic conditions call for designs that allow firms to exploit synergies across their business units and on this...

This article reviews experimental evidence on the effects of policies intended to promote behavior by firms that is more socially responsible and less socially irresponsible. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can provide firms with opportunities for profit, but changes are likely to increase...

Im Laufe der letzten Jahrzehnte ist es zu einer grundlegenden Veränderung von Narrativen hinsichtlich der Gewinnerzielung von Unternehmen gekommen. Dabei wurde die neoklassische Grundidee, dass Unternehmen nach Gewinnmaximierung streben, in den Anspruch auf eine Mindesteigenkapitalrendite...

The paper analyses the case of The Body Shop in the mid-2010s, when a new CEO attempted to revitalize the brand through the development of the new corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. The paper briefly reviews the history of the company, noting that some important problems emerged as...

Political mobilization of business forces in the post-communist world has crucial implications for economic development and civil society. The emergence of strong cross-sectoral business associations during Putin's presidency challenges the prevailing view of Russia's political economy as an...