Adam Tooze's Crashed is arguably the first historical narrative of the financial crisis. It is an ambitious account of the crisis and its global economic, financial, political, and geopolitical causes and implications. Crashed is organized chronologically in four parts—the “Gathering Storm,” “The Global Crisis,” “Eurozone,” and “Aftershocks”—and focuses more on the macrolevel structures, processes, and decisions than on the microlevel and the people suffering from the crisis. Except, that is, in aggregate numbers and a few empathic comments such as this: “As house prices fell, equity dwindled, and the hardest hit slid into negative equity. Families scrambled to slash spending and pay down credit card and other short-term debt. The result was a smothering recession in consumer demand” (p. 143).

We analyze how Hollywood films from 1928 to 2016 represented business within a broad historical and business context. We argue that the films actively contributed to audiences’ sensemaking processes and to how different groups perceived the role of business in society. We advance the idea that films provided cultural blueprints to be used by viewers for their own understanding, identification, and practices in relation to business in its historical context, particularly during periods of uncertainty, crisis, and instability when many films addressed deeper societal concerns about the role of business.

Barry Eichengreen's new book Hall of Mirrors is a detailed, excellent, and somewhat pessimistic comparison of the two most serious financial crises ever—their causes, development, and consequences. Readers well versed in the comprehensive literature on the Great Depression and the Great Recession in the United States and Europe will not find much information in Hall of Mirrors that is completely new, but most others will. What is new is the comparative approach: the detailed and analytically successful search for similarities and differences between the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

In this article I interpret 150 years of financial history with a focus on shifts in the role of finance in society. I argue that over time the role of finance has shifted twice from that of servant to that of master of society, and that this process has been driven by sense making through narratives that legitimized and shaped these changes. When finance became a master rent seeking, cultural capture and out-of-control financial innovation resulted in financial and social instability. Finance as a master was the characteristic of finance capitalism from around 1900–1931 and of financialization from around 1980 to today. Finance capitalism and financialization were enabled by a dominant narrative that legitimized the power of finance. The shifts in the role of finance happened when crises undermined the meaning of the existing narrative and created for a new narrative able to make sense of the crisis and point society in a new direction. This sense-making process stabilized when a new narrative was established that could explain the crisis and legitimize and shape a new role for finance. The article is based on my presidential address presented at the Business History Conference’s annual meeting in March 2014 in Frankfurt.

Rarely does a relatively unknown professor of economics publish a book that sells more than 200,000 copies in a few months. When critics accuse the same economist of being normative, political, of manipulating data, of misunderstanding basic economic theory, and of wanting to impoverish everyone, surely it must be because he is on to something. Other commentators, perhaps a bit prematurely, are claiming that his book is the economics book that will define twenty-first-century debate.

In this paper I discuss a dramatic financial collapse and scandal in Denmark in the interwar period. I analyze the asset price bubble from 1914 to 1920 and the subsequent failure in 1922 of Scandinavia's largest bank, the Danish Landmandsbanken, as well as the downfall of its CEO Emil Glückstadt. I discuss the sense-making process, first during the bubble and then following Landmandsbanken's collapse and Glückstadt's fall from power in 1922, and finally until the introduction of a new bank act in 1930. I further argue that such crises and scandals force contemporaries to make sense of the dramatic fall from the top of society of these icons and of their role in the collapse of their banks. I view the sense-making process as centered on the construction of narratives that explain the crisis and enable or constrain institutional response to the crisis. To conclude, I argue that the process of sense-making in the case of Landmandsbanken can be generalized as the way in which society enforces norms and values in cases of dramatic financial crisis and scandal.

This article argues that a cultural and narrative perspective can enrich the business history field, encourage new and different questions and answers, and provide new ways of thinking about methods and empirical material. It discusses what culture is and how it relates to narratives. Taking a cultural and narrative approach may affect questions, sources, and methodologies, as well as the status of our results. Finally, a narrative approach may contribute to our historical understanding of entrepreneurship and globalization.

This issue of Business History Review is devoted to financial crisis, business failure, and scandal. As readers of this journal know, white-collar fraud is not a new phenomenon. Public and private authorities have confronted the problem for a long time, looking for ways to deal with it that will not stifle economic growth.

In this article, I argue that organizations' historical narratives are a basic and important component of their culture and identity, and that these narratives can be resources as well as constraints. I combine a narrative approach with Joanne Martin's three perspective theory of organizational culture, and using the transformation of Danish savings banks as a case, I demonstrate how a narrative approach can provide a new and better understanding of organizational behaviour and change than mainstream economics and the abundant functionalist organizational culture literature. I demonstrate how, when change was called for by external pressures, the savings banks choice set was constrained by a shared narrative about their historical origins. This narrative, in turn, constituted the identity, image and organizational culture of savings banks and to a high degree restrained learning capabilities, created organizational inertia and delayed the adoption of a new strategy.

Histories of the rising popularity of Danish modern furniture in both Denmark and the United States have traditionally ascribed its success to the inherent beauty of Danish design. This article argues that Danish modern furniture succeeded for two other reasons. First, through the creation of powerful narratives, or stories, that framed the way consumers made sense of this furniture; and, second, through the calculated development of a network of individuals and organizations whose goal was to promote and legitimize these narratives.