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Page 1 of 2

  • 9 - Europe's Difference and Comparative History: Searching for European Capitalism
  • from PART III - MAKING PEOPLE MATTER: EMERGING APPROACHES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
  • Edited by Andrew Popp, Paolo Di Martino, Peter Scott
  • Book: People, Places and Business Cultures
  • Published by: Boydell & Brewer
  • Published online: 25 October 2017
  • Print publication: 17 March 2017, pp 201-220
  • View extract

    Summary

    In a recent article published in a special issue of the journal Business History, Mats Larsson and I explored the contribution to be made by the comparative method in social science research. As an example, or, better, a sort of ‘test’, we analysed a particular research topic from a comparative and longitudinal perspective, namely the governance of family firms in Italy and Sweden, with reference to two main dimensions: a) corporate finance and the structure of domestic financial markets, and b) the institutional determinants of the persistent eradication of family capitalism. For better or worse, the article provides an example of comparative analysis, of a largely qualitative nature, examining the same topic across different geographic, cultural and institutional settings while also taking into account the long-term horizon of the economic development of the two countries. In that article, our argument was, in sum, that solid historical research had to stand equally on two legs, one being the long-term orientation (highlighting structural transformations) and the other, a comparative perspective that could instead highlight idiosyncratic features.

    This basic research methodology is well known to business historians, and is in some ways instinctive, or innate, in some colleagues, as was certainly true in the case of Francesca Carnevali. Francesca devoted a significant part of her research to longitudinal comparative analysis, as for instance in the book Europe's Advantage, in which she explored the relationships between banks and small firms in four large European economies in the twentieth century. Francesca, in essence, ran a comparative analysis of the alternatives for industry financing in different countries characterised by different banking and corporate finance systems. In running this exercise she was thus able to understand better the dynamics of the British decline in manufacturing, as well as the way in which a specific banking system is able to positively, or negatively, influence the development of small firms and industrial districts.

    In the above-mentioned Business History article, Mats Larsson and I concluded by stressing how, through an extensive use of cross-national comparisons, it would be easier to ‘understand not only the development in specific companies but also the differences between national business systems’. Indeed, the vast domain of governance and ownership structures, and, more generally, of the notion of ‘varieties of capitalism’, is an important arena for comparative analysis, as has been shown in multiple research fields ranging from organisation studies to sociology, political science and others.

  • Multinationals and Economic Development in Italy during the Twentieth Century
  • Andrea Colli
  • Journal: Business History Review / Volume 88 / Issue 2 / Summer 2014
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2014, pp. 303-327
  • Print publication: Summer 2014
  • View abstract

    As a host country for foreign direct investment, conventional measures suggest that Italy is not a very attractive location. However, based upon a new database of the one hundred largest multinationals in the country, this article shows that foreign firms consistently played a crucial role in Italy's industrial activities throughout the twentieth century. A detailed analysis of investment patterns, distribution across industries, and entry modes reveals that they concentrated their investment in sectors of high technological and scale intensity, such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where domestic capabilities and competition remained weak during much of the period.

The Endurance of Family Businesses
  • The Endurance of Family Businesses
  • A Global Overview
  • Edited by Paloma Fernandez Perez, Andrea Colli
  • Published online: 05 September 2013
  • Print publication: 30 September 2013
  • View description
    The Endurance of Family Businesses is a collection of essays offering an overview of the importance and resilience of family-controlled large businesses. Much of economic and business history research neglects family businesses, considering them an inefficient form of business organization. These essays discuss the strengths of family businesses: the ways family firms have managed, financed and governed their corporations, as well as the way in which they structure their relationship with the external environment, from the government to the company's stakeholders. Family businesses have learned new ways of organizing their resources and using their accumulated know-how for new markets and institutional environments. This volume combines the expertise of well-known scholars who specialize in business history, economic history, management and consulting, to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on family businesses. Contributors provide a global view by taking into account Asian, American and European experiences.

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