Covering a time frame that ranges from 8000 BC to the present, and drawing upon both Marxist and feminist theories, the book argues that nearly all the decisions we make in our most intimate lives—whom to marry, how to have children, how to have sex, how to think about love and romance and families—are driven, and always have been driven by technology. We think we’re behaving as fully autonomous individuals; we think we’re pushing or participating in social change; but we’re actually just being swept up in, and responding to, much broader shifts in technology. Or to what Marx and his kin would have termed “the means of production.” As current technologies—particularly the technologies of assisted reproduction, robotics, and artificial intelligence—continue to evolve, they will drive fundamental changes in how we structure our families and our lives.
This article 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 creating and making accessible corporate archives in most countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It also permits a level of nuance that is hard to obtain even if written archives are accessible. Oral histories provide insights into why events did not occur as well as why companies have chosen certain industries over others. Oral history can also shed light on hypersensitive topics, such corruption, which are rarely formally documented.
This article contributes to the literature on political risk in business and economic history by examining both new perspectives (risk encountered by companies domestically, rather than risk for foreign investors) and new settings (emerging markets economies in Latin America and South Asia). It makes use of the Creating Emerging Markets oral history database at the Harvard Business School to examine business leaders’ perceptions of political risk over time between the 1970s and the present day, employing NVivo coding of the dataset to move beyond simple descriptive use of the content. The article identifies five major sources of risk operating in both geographies. Macroeconomic and policy turbulence emerged as the biggest source of risk for Latin Americans, while excessive bureaucracy was the biggest source of risk for South Asians. Political instability, corruption, and violence were other sources of risk encountered by many firms. The article examines not only the types of risk found in different environments, but also how interviewees discussed and responded to risk. In the case of corruption, although most countries surveyed had similarly high levels of corruption, it manifested itself differently in different regions. Especially informative was the issue of bureaucratic risk. Although interviewees in both regions reported having to dedicate significant time to navigating government regulation, interviewees in South Asia frequently reported attempting to stay away from highly regulated industries, while many interviewees in Latin America discussed how they adapted to heavier government oversight by forming closer ties or working relationships with incumbent administrations. This article demonstrates how oral history testimony can deepen and nuance current understandings of the evolution of business in emerging markets over the last half century. It can shed light on sensitive topics that are hard to study using written sources alone and adds nuance to phenomena commonly surveyed or measured qualitatively.
See more research
Maria Fernanda Miguel joined Harvard Business School in 2013 as Director for the Latin America Research Center (LARC). Her responsibilities include leading research activities for Spanish speaking countries in LATAM, and providing programmatic support to different areas of HBS including admissions, executive education, and immersion programs. Fernanda is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Prior to join Harvard Business School, Fernanda was a Senior Director and Leader for LATAM Business Development at Merck and senior consultant at McKinsey & Co., serving as global Practice Manager for the Business Technology Office Health Care Practice.
Fernanda holds a degree in economics from the Argentine Catholic University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Master of Research from University of Bath.
Fernanda has been very active in non-profit activities, including fund rising at the Fundación Acción Hemato-oncologica – Argentine National Academy of Medicine, and acting as advisor to the Board of Directors of the Hospital Garrahan.
Priscilla Zogbi is the Director of the Latin American Research Center in São Paulo. Priscilla focuses on the School’s work in Brazil, developing research opportunities for faculty and relationships for other educational efforts such as the MBA curricular innovation and immersion programs.
Priscilla has over 17 years’ experience in marketing and product development. Before joining HBS she was a consultant to private equity and venture capital firms interested in the region. Prior to that she was a Global and a Regional Marketing Director at Avon Products, and has held managerial positions in the US and Brazil with Bath & Body Works, General Mills, Johnson & Johnson and Reckitt Benckiser.