Business Failure and the Agenda of Business History
Author(s)
Fridenson, Patrick
Abstract
Is it really useful to focus the interest of business historians on major companies that failed in recent years, like Parmalat in Italy or Enron in the United States? What can we learn from studying cases like that of the French company Schneider, a first mover in metallurgy, armaments, and nuclear energy, which for almost 150 years dominated the company town Le Creusot, where the Business History Conference held its fiftieth anniversary meeting in 2004, but which has now disappeared? What is really at stake here for the present and future of business history? This paper argues that there are three major issues that call for a major reconsideration of our work: first, the life and death of companies, going perhaps beyond Joseph Schumpeter; second, the position of the business historian in relation to such a subject; and, third, going back to the future and considering the broader implications for our agenda in the next years.
