“The Nature of the Firm”—and the Eternal Life of the Brand

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 752-776
Author(s):  
TERESA DA SILVA LOPES
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Business History ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Multiple Impacts ◽  
Multinational Activity ◽  
Core Competences ◽  
Cartagena De Indias ◽  
Conducting Research

Explanations of why firms exist and evolve and how intellectual property—including trademarks—contributes to their growth, survival, and impact on globalization and deglobalization have been widely studied in business history and in other fields. Drawing on the study of firms with multinational activity, this article argues that ownership of strong brands can have multiple impacts on the nature of the firm, on the dynamics of industries, on processes of globalization and deglobalization, and on shifts of power and wealth. In the process of doing so, this paper also argues that business history has great potential to have an impact beyond the field, serving as a “hub” for dialogue between disciplines. To achieve that, business historians need to remain truthful to their core competences, which include conducting well-grounded archival-based research, taking into account the uniqueness of the firm and the complexity of the environment, and conducting research that is comparative and international. This article is based my presidential address presented at the Business History Conference on March 16, 2019, in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.

Understanding collaborative research practices: a lexicon

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Project Teams ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Research Outcome ◽  
Conducting Research

Collaborative interdisciplinary research processes, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, necessarily unsettle assumptions about expertise and about what counts as a valuable ‘research outcome’. What we have found is that part of the challenge of evaluating these sorts of projects is the development of a language to talk about how project teams held open spaces for new possibilities to form and new ideas to emerge in ways that then could transmute and cross boundaries. This way of working is very different from linear models of research that have clear lines of causality and in which research ‘ideas’ are associated with particular individuals in the form of intellectual property. Instead, these ways of conducting research are enmeshed, entangled and complex, and are associated with divergent outcomes as well as sometimes-difficult experiences and contrasting clusters of ideas....

Looking Toward the Future: Expanding Connections for Business Historians

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Walker Laird
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Business History ◽  
The Future

Last year, Will Hausman gave us a splendid overview of business history's development for his presidential address. Despite his modesty, he treated us to a review of the parallels between his career and the field's progress, which owes much to his dedication to the Business History Conference (BHC) and its various constituencies. What we have within the BHC now, thanks to Will and many others, are multiple opportunities for exciting interactions based on ideas. As we share, exchange, and rearrange our ideas, they grow, as do our pleasure in and appreciation for them. The BHC offers us a wonderful arena for advancing the life of our minds—while advancing our ideas.

scholarly journals From Finance Capitalism to Financialization: A Cultural and Narrative Perspective on 150 Years of Financial History

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per H. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Business History ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Financial History ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Finance Capitalism ◽  
Over Time

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.

scholarly journals “The Vast and Unsolved Enigma of Power”: Business History and Business Power

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-920
Author(s):  
NEIL ROLLINGS
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Business History ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
World Today ◽  
Business Power ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Business is commonly regarded as one of the powerful actors in the world today. However, this position is neither as straightforward as often believed nor particularly new. Nevertheless, business historians have not focused on the topic of business power to date, often leaving it as something lurking in the background of their analyses. There are signs that this may be beginning to change with the growth of studies on the history of capitalism, but this revised presidential address encourages business historians to engage more fully and explicitly with the concept of power and to recognize the different ways in which the concept can be used to enlighten the study of business history.

Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent S. Salter
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Business History ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Professional Norms ◽  
History Of

Drawing on fascinating archival discoveries from the past two centuries, Brent Salter shows how copyright has been negotiated in the American theatre. Who controls the space between authors and audiences? Does copyright law actually protect playwrights and help them make a living? At the center of these negotiations are mediating businesses with extraordinary power that rapidly evolved from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries: agents, publishers, producers, labor associations, administrators, accountants, lawyers, government bureaucrats, and film studio executives. As these mediators asserted authority over creativity, creators organized to respond, through collective minimum contracts, informal guild expectations, and professional norms, to protect their presumed rights as authors. This institutional, relational, legal, and business history of the entertainment history in America illuminates both the historical context and the present law. An innovative new kind of intellectual property history, the book maps the relations between the different players from the ground up.

scholarly journals Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. John
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
York City ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Robber Barons

The antimonopoly critique of big business that flourished in the United States during the 1880s is a neglected chapter in the history of American reform. In this essay, a revised version of Richard R. John's 2011 Business History Conference presidential address, John shows how this critique found expression in a gallery of influential cartoons that ran in the New York City–based satirical magazines Puck and Judge. Among the topics that the cartoonists featured was the manipulation of the nation's financial markets by financier Jay Gould.

scholarly journals The Prospects for Collaborative Research in Business History

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 824-852
Author(s):  
EDWARD J. BALLEISEN
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Business History ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Research Teams ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Duke University

After reflecting on the thematic evolution of business history as a field over the past 50 years, this revised presidential address invites readers to consider the potential payoffs of expanding the contexts in which business historians work together on research projects, as well as with colleagues from cognate fields and with students. In addition to charting the steady growth in collaborative research among business historians since 2000, the essay also identifies areas that especially lend themselves to this mode of historical inquiry, including comparative or transnational analysis that requires detailed knowledge of multiple societies, the development of oral history projects, and the use of data science techniques. It concludes by exploring the advantages of incorporating interdisciplinary research teams into curricular structures, using the example of the Bass Connections program at Duke University.

scholarly journals PECULIARITIES OF USING SOCIOLOGICAL INTERVIEWS IN CARRYING OUT FORENSIC EXAMINATIONS IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

2020 ◽  
pp. 639-642
Author(s):  
I. Holova
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Opinion Polls

The article provides materials regarding the peculiarities of the use of opinion polls in conducting forensic examinations in the field of intellectual property. It should be noted that when conducting research in order to answer the question about the possibility of misleading consumers, and the presence of reports on conducted sociological surveys in the case materials, it is advisable for experts to analyze the following factors: – compliance with the target audience, which was studied during a sociological survey, the target audience of the objects of study; – the correctness of the data and information used in the sociological survey; – the conformity of the questions submitted to the sociological survey with its goals and the questions of examination.

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