Oral History and Writing the Business History of Emerging Markets

Geoffrey  Jones; Rachael  Comunale

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Oral History and Writing the Business History of Emerging Markets

by Geoffrey Jones and Rachael Comunale

Abstract

This working paper highlights the benefits that rigorous use of oral history can offer to research on the contemporary business history of emerging markets. Oral history can help fill some of the major information voids arising from the absence of a strong tradition of corporate archives in most countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Oral history also permits a level of nuance that is hard to obtain even if written documents exist and are accessible in corporate and governmental archives. Oral histories can provide insights into why events did not occur as well as why companies chose certain industries over others, including wishing to avoid sectors where there was extensive government interference. Oral history can shed light on hypersensitive topics, such as corruption, which are rarely formally documented. While the methodological challenges of oral history are considerable and fully acknowledged, oral history can still be seen as a critical source of data on opinions, voices, and judgements on events in which there was often silence in written records.

Keywords: oral history; Business History; Research; Emerging Markets;

Language: English

Format: Print

22 pages

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Citation:

Jones, Geoffrey, and Rachael Comunale. "Oral History and Writing the Business History of Emerging Markets." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-056, November 2018.

Examines the global strategy of Singer, one of the world's first multinationals, before 1914. Singer, a U.S. pioneer of the modern sewing machine, established its first foreign factory in Scotland in 1867. Investments followed in manufacturing and marketing in other countries, especially Russia. By 1914, Singer held a remarkable 90% share of all sewing machine sales outside the United States and was the seventh largest firm in the world. Examines why sewing machines became one of the world's first global products and the entrepreneurial and organizational factors behind Singer's international success. Taught as the first case in the MBA elective Evolution of Global Business.

The case describes the growth of Guggenheim Brothers as one of the largest mining companies in the world in the early twentieth century. Global expansion led the firm to Chile, first in copper and later in natural nitrates. Chile's economic growth was driven by the profits from mining, especially its world monopoly of nitrates. The Guggenheims invested in Chilean nitrates after synthetics were developed by German chemists. Their strategies to modernize the industry collapsed with the outbreak of the Great Depression, during which Chile experienced the greatest fall of incomes of any country. The case serves as a vehicle to explore the devastating economic and political impact of the Great Depression on the countries of the South, such as Chile, which had specialized in primary commodities, and on mining and financial capitalists such as the Guggenheims.

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Oral History and Writing the Business History of Emerging Markets

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