Business History
Code
1209
Credits
7,5
Teacher in charge
Luciano Amaral
Teaching language
English
Objectives
This course provides an overview on the historical formation of the modern enterprise. This analysis is put in a comparative perspective, assessing the importance of the modern corporation in different countries. This course also examines the development of multinationals and the international business since the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, the relation between state and firm is put in an historical perspective, considering not only the different forms of regulation, but also the rise and decline of the state-owned enterprise. Finally, corporate finance, marketing, operations management, and human resources as different functional areas of the firm are studied in an historical perspective.
Prerequisites
Subject matter
1.Introduction
2.Tradition and innovation: the business firm and the Industrial Revolution
3.The advent of the modern industrial enterprise (1850-1914)
?The railways: the first modern business
?The advent of mass retailers
?The road to mass production
?The integration between mass distribution and mass production
?Factors to the rise of big business
4.Comparative approach to business structures over time and across space
?Business structures in Britain, Germany and Japan
?The ?Americanization? of the European business
?Multinational enterprises over time
?Beyond the firm: business groups and networks
5.The functions of the firm: an historical perspective
?Marketing
?Corporate finance
?Technology and innovation
?Industrial relations
?Business organization
?Entrepreneurship
6.Business in motion
?The automobile industry
?The IT industry
?The consultancy services
?Financial crises: blowing bubbles and defaulting sovereigns
7.Business and state
?Regulation in historical perspective
?The evolution of the state-owned enterprise
8.The modern firm: summary and prospective
Bibliography
Amatori, F. and A. Colli (2011), Business History: Complexities and Comparisons. London: Routledge.
Blackford, M. G. (1998), The Rise of Modern Business in Great Britain, the United States and Japan. Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press.
Chandler Jr., A. D. (1977), The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Chandler Jr., A. D. (1989), Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Chandler Jr., A. D., F. Amatori and T. Hikino (eds.) (1997), Big Business and the Wealth of Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, G. (2005), Multinationals and global capitalism: from the nineteenth to the twenty first century. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Jones, G. and J. Zeitlin (2008), The Oxford Handbook of Business History. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Toninelli, P. A. (ed.) (2000), The Rise and Fall of State-Owned Enterprise in the Western World. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press
Teaching method
Evaluation method
The assessment will be based on the following items:
1.Presentation in class (20 %);
2.Written essay (25%)
3.Business Goes to the movie (5%)
4.Discussion participation (10%)
5.Final exam (40%)
To pass the course, students must get at least 9.0 (over 20) in the final exam.