Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • Article
  • Scandinavian Economic History Review

The Future of Economic, Business, and Social History

By: G. Jones, Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Stephen Broadberry
  • Format:Print
ShareBar

Abstract

Three leading scholars in the fields of business, economic, and social history review the current state of these disciplines and reflect on their future trajectory. Geoffrey Jones reviews the development of business history since its birth at the Harvard Business School during the 1920s. He notes the discipline's unique record as a pioneer of the scholarly study of entrepreneurship, multinationals, and the relationship between strategy and structure in corporations, as well as its more recent accomplishments, including exploring new domains including family business, networks, and business groups, and retaining an open architecture and inter-disciplinary approach. Yet Jones also notes that the discipline has struggled to achieve a wider impact, in part because of methodological under-development. He discusses three alternative futures for the discipline. The first, which he rejects, is a continuing growth of research domains to create a diffuse "business history of everything." The second is a re-integration with the sister discipline of economic history, which has strongly recovered from its near-extinction two decades ago through a renewed attention to globalization and the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest. The third path, which the author supports, is that business historians retain a distinct identity by building on their proud tradition of deep engagement with empirical evidence by raising the bar in methodology and focusing on big issues for which many scholars, practitioners and students seek answers. He identifies four such big issues related to debates on entrepreneurship, globalization, business and the natural environment, and the social and political responsibility of business.

Keywords

Economic History; Business History; History; Asia; Africa; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America

Citation

Jones, G., Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, and Stephen Broadberry. "The Future of Economic, Business, and Social History." Scandinavian Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2012): 225–253.
  • Find it at Harvard
  • Purchase

About The Author

Geoffrey G. Jones

General Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • 2025
    • Faculty Research

    Institutional Entrepreneurship and Climate Change

    By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Geoffrey Jones
    • February 2025
    • Asian Business & Management

    Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective

    By: Geoffrey Jones
    • 2025
    • Faculty Research

    Sustainability and Green Business in Latin America

    By: Geoffrey Jones
More from the Authors
  • Institutional Entrepreneurship and Climate Change By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Geoffrey Jones
  • Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective By: Geoffrey Jones
  • Sustainability and Green Business in Latin America By: Geoffrey Jones
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College.