The Exchange

An international group is organizing a conference to be held at the University of Frankfurt am Main, November 17-18, 2017, on “The 'Nationality' of the Company': Historical Approaches to a Possible Paradox.” The organizers are Boris Gehlen (University of Bonn), Christian Marx (University of Trier), Werner Plumpe (University of Frankfurt/M.), and Alfred Reckendrees (Copenhagen Business School). According to the call for papers: The question of companies and their nationality opens the discussion about how companies relate to society and the nation state, and vice versa. What nationality (if it has one) does a company have and how can it be conceived? In this call for papers we present some topics and examples indicating that nationality might matter in specific ways and that discussing a company’s nationality and studying how it is produced and/or how it changed over time might be a promising enterprise. The topics are not conclusive; all proposals discussing the issue of...

From the Imperial War Museums, an essay on their "Women's Work Collection," illustrating women's role during the First World War in the UK. On a related topic, the "Women's Work in Rural England, 1500-1700" project has a new blog post on "How 'domestic' was women's work?" The Canadian Historical Association recently announced its prize winners for 2016; included are Alexia Yates, who won the Ferguson Prize for Selling Paris , and Robert MacDougall, who won the Albert B. Corey Prize for The People's Network . Slate's "Atlas Obscura" blog has an interesting post on the criticism Lydia Pinkham encountered for using her own image in advertising her products. Viveka Hansen's Textilis blog has a well-illustrated essay on "Early Fashion and Cloth Trade-Cards" from the British Museum. From the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, an essay, with lovely graphics, on the Canton Trade , 1757-1841. "...

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH), in cooperation with the Banco de España, is holding a summer seminar in Madrid, Spain, on September 14-16, 2016. The topic will be "Transparency and Information Management in Financial Institutions." According to the seminar organizers, Transparency is becoming an increasingly important theme, and mode of operation, in today’s financial institutions and global financial markets.  This year’s EABH summer school will provide training on the latest developments in financial transparency and how financial archivists can serve their institutions’ need for evidence, information and corporate memory. . . . We will focus on initiatives within financial institutions to improve internal transparency for better control and compliance, among financial institutions to achieve costs saving and to drive financial innovation, and then moving to discuss new regulatory demands for transparency and how they affect financi...

The  Hagley Museum and Library has just launched its newly reorganized Digital Archives website . The Hagley Digital Archives includes a selection of digitized material from the library and makes it available to researchers around the world via the internet. Since the site launched in 2008, approximately 400,000 items (photographs, manuscripts, publications, etc.) have been added, totaling millions of pages. The site is divided into topical areas, reflecting the organization of Hagley's holdings. The new format allows better and faster searching, as well as the display of audio and video materials.      For explanations of the migration to the new site, readers can check "Collections and Research News" at Hagley here and here .

The Economic History Society has launched a new blog, called "The Long Run." According to the editors, The aim of the blog is to encourage discussion of economic and social history – broadly defined. The blog is part of the Society’s evolving strategy to, one the one hand, strengthen ties among its members and, on the other hand, broaden the public appeal of economic and social history while increasing the impact of its members’ research by making it relevant to contemporary policy debates. The blog will also publicize abstracts of articles in the Economic History Review ; the editors will select one article from those advertised as forthcoming from each issue that has appeal to a wider audience and approach a specialist to review this article. This review will also appear on the NEP-HIS blog – publication of which will be timed to coincide with publication of the article in the Review . For information about posting to the blog, please see here ; submissions can be ...

On May 27-28, the Association of Business Historians (ABH) and the Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (GUG) held a joint annual meeting in Berlin at Humboldt University. The theme for the meeting was "Creativity and Entrepreneurship in the Global Economy." The program for the meeting is available on-line.     The Coleman Prize for the best dissertation was awarded to Christopher Phillips (University of Leeds, UK) for "Managing Armageddon: The Science of Transportation and the British Expeditionary Force, 1900-1918."      The keynote address was given by John Lithgow and Mary Yeager (past-president, BHC) on the topic "Money in Thy Purse: The Drama of Business."

This is a reminder that the deadline for the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal special issue on "Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Research" is July 15 . Scholars working on papers that (a) use historical perspectives on time, context, or change to address entrepreneurship theory or concepts, (b) take an entrepreneurial perspective onto history, or (c) explore the potential value of historical sources and/or methods for entrepreneurship research are encouraged to submit.     Editors for the issue are R. Daniel Wadhwani, David Kirsch, William Gartner, Friederike Welter, and Geoffrey Jones.     For an extended discussion of the aims for the special issue, editor contact details, and submission information, please see the full call for papers. Authors are encouraged to contact the special issue editors if they have questions.

The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) will hold its 2016 annual meeting on June 22-26 in Singapore. The opening plenary will feature Bruno Latour; Ruth Schwarz Cowan will be the keynote speaker; and Francesca Bray will give the presidential address. The full program is available as a pdf; daily sections can be viewed on the conference website .     There is of course a large overlap between business historians and historians of technology; among the many familiar names on the program are Ross Bassett, Hyungsub Choi, Lars Heide, Lee Vinsel, Xaq Frolich, Courtney Fullilove, Corinna Schlombs, Ann Johnson, Merritt Roe Smith, Emanuela Scarpellini, Scott Knowles, Jonathan Coopersmith, and Ellen Spero.      For registration and other information, please consult the conference website .

The most recent issue of the on-line journal Common-Place features a roundtable on Thomas Piketty and his Capital in the 21st Century . The forum focuses on the work in relation to the humanities; as the introductory essay by Michelle Burnham argues: Taken together, the short essays gathered here point out the ways in which numbers and graphs constitute narratives, and insist that data’s stories are just as constructed as those found in words and novels. . . . we hope this forum points toward possibilities for developing a critical business humanities, an endeavor made all the more necessary in a neoliberal age in which the human is increasingly defined in terms of numbers. The six essays offer a different viewpoint from that of the many reviews by economists and economic historians. There is also a link to another interesting forum on the book , this one by political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists, coordinated by Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell.

The project "Base de Datos de Empresas Extranjeras en Argentina / Foreign Companies in Argentina"has recently launched a website where the database can be freely examined.      The "Foreign Companies in Argentina Database" (FCAD–PICT 2010/0501) contains information on all foreign companies (registered as foreign or registered in Argentina) operating in the country, and takes into account country of origin, date of creation, organizational form, principal activity, type of investment (greenfield, brownfield and joint-venture), social capital, reserves and results, as well as other data such as composition of boards, for the selected years: 1913, 1923, 1930, 1937-8, 1944, 1959-60, and 1970-1.      The head researchers on this project are Andrea Lluch (CONICET/UNLPam y Facultad de Administración, UNIANDES, Colombia, and a BHC trustee) and Norma Lanciotti (CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Rosario). As they explain on the website, Foreign compani...

Harvard Business School invites applications for its several fellowships in business history: The Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business History To be awarded for twelve months’ residence, study, and research at Harvard Business School. The fellowship is open to scholars who, within the last ten years, have received a Ph.D. in history, economics, or a related discipline. This fellowship is to enable scholars to engage in research that will benefit from the resources of Harvard Business School and the larger Boston scholarly community. A travel fund and a book fund will be provided. This fellowships will also provide an opportunity for the fellow to participate in the activities of Harvard Business School. This can take several forms. The fellow can research and write a case, under the direction of a senior faculty member, to be used in one of the business history courses. She or he might also organize a research conference under the auspices of the Business History Ini...

The final project conference for "The Enterprise of Culture," a three-year European collaborative research project investigating international structures and connections in the fashion industry since 1945, will take place at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on June 10, 2016. The theme for the day will be ""The European Fashion System around the World." According to the organizers, This one-day event showcases exciting new research undertaken by the Enterprise of Culture project team and offers an insight into the European fashion industry around the world, looking at topics such as influential brands from Biba and Mary Quant to today’s H&M, Italian fashion and the role of the department store buyer, Scottish tartan and tweed, the international reach of British textiles, and global luxury brands such as LVMH. We welcome speakers from the V&A, the Centre for Business History Stockhol, archive collections, the fashion industry and researcher...

Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, seeks a full-time, year-round Associate Director and Oral Historian for its Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society. The position includes full benefits and provisions for scholarly work, including travel and attendance at professional meetings. Hagley Library is an independent research library devoted to documenting the history of American business, technology, and industrial design. Responsibilities: The Associate Director and Oral Historian will lead Hagley’s oral history collecting initiatives and participate in all aspects of Center program activities, including its grant programs, public events, and administration of the Business History Conference. The Associate Director also is expected to engage in his or her own scholarship, and will receive support for those activities. Requirements: At a minimum, a doctorate in a relevant field of history in hand at time of application; experience with oral history...