What explains the growth of a business, and more broadly the development or decline of a whole economy? What role does a particular entrepreneur or indeed a culture of entrepreneurship play? Does the evidence suggest that a particular structure or organizational form was or should be adopted to ensure best practice and commercial success? These fundamental questions have long preoccupied business and economic historians. With the current expansion of business and management education and training, the investigations and findings of the historian may have wider significance and relevance.
This volume has been stimulated by the work of Peter Mathias, one of the leading figures in this field in the post-war period. Here a number of his former students—many now internationally distinguished historians—pay tribute in a book that explores the move from family firms to corporate capitalism. The contributors argue that sustained growth has never been a matter of a few spectacular technical breakthroughs, but instead rests on subtle economic and social transformations—in cultures, in economic organizations, and in the roles of science and technology.