Louis Galambos: The Business of History
[Mr. Galambos, a professor at Johns Hopkins and the Maguire Professor at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, is the author, with Roy Vagelos, of "Medicine, Science, and Merck" (Cambridge, 2004).]
What did you learn about business in the history courses you took in your college or university? Not much, I suspect. Not if you're thinking about the kind of business you do every day, the company you work for, and the people with whom you work. You may have learned a bit about the Robber Barons of the late 19th century. Or the antitrust cases of the 20th century, the business frauds uncovered by the Great Depression of the 1930s, or, if you were really lucky, the insider trading of the 1980s.
What you wouldn't have learned is how the U.S. became the world's leading industrial power in the late 19th century, and why the nation has been able, through the following decades, to keep its position as the world's most successful economy. Ever! Through scandals, depressions, wars and great waves of international competition -- through the first, second and third industrial revolutions -- the American business system has remained flexible, efficient and, above all, innovative.
* * *
That story -- one that weaves together bankruptcies, frauds, booms and busts with stunning breakthroughs and ultimate success -- should have a central role in American history, and that's the challenge that makes it exciting to write the history of American business. That's what I decided almost 50 years ago. I'm still excited about it today.
It's not always an easy field for serious scholarship. You can't just truck off to the National Archives or the Library of Congress and find the documents you need to write a reliable account of business strategies, structures, decisions and operations, or their impact on the American or the world economy. The National Archives and the Library of Congress have wonderful resources. But very often the business historian needs to work with a company or an individual executive to get access to essential records and opportunities for interviews.
When you do move inside business, you can get tangled in some very sticky problems. You may run into a vice president who is convinced that business is all about the present and the future, not the past. The skeptical VP will probably roll out an appropriate cliché -- perhaps quoting Henry Ford, "History is bunk." Or, the skeptic may tell you that "Hindsight is 20-20," an empty idea that ignores the simple fact that all evaluations of performance, whether of a CEO or a foreman on the shop floor, are based on past performance. That is, on the history of the individual and the organization. If Henry Ford had really thought about the history of his organization and similar businesses, he might have avoided pushing his great enterprise to the edge of bankruptcy in the late 1920s. He could have learned a great deal about the Ford Motor Company's distinctive culture and strategy from its history, and maybe even understood why General Motors was driving Ford to the wall. Much later, Henry Ford II learned those lessons and pulled the company off the path to failure.
So it's not an easy task to write business history from the inside out. You can, for instance, get stuck in corporate infighting that doesn't really interest you. You can run into a legal department that senses risk in every sentence and wants to cross out every word that isn't one of the corporate platitudes that abound in annual reports. If you're not successful in negotiating these hazards, you may find your finished work tucked in a drawer. Forever. That can be a fatal blow to an assistant professor striving to get tenure (and they all strive for tenure)....
Read entire article at WSJ
What did you learn about business in the history courses you took in your college or university? Not much, I suspect. Not if you're thinking about the kind of business you do every day, the company you work for, and the people with whom you work. You may have learned a bit about the Robber Barons of the late 19th century. Or the antitrust cases of the 20th century, the business frauds uncovered by the Great Depression of the 1930s, or, if you were really lucky, the insider trading of the 1980s.
What you wouldn't have learned is how the U.S. became the world's leading industrial power in the late 19th century, and why the nation has been able, through the following decades, to keep its position as the world's most successful economy. Ever! Through scandals, depressions, wars and great waves of international competition -- through the first, second and third industrial revolutions -- the American business system has remained flexible, efficient and, above all, innovative.
* * *
That story -- one that weaves together bankruptcies, frauds, booms and busts with stunning breakthroughs and ultimate success -- should have a central role in American history, and that's the challenge that makes it exciting to write the history of American business. That's what I decided almost 50 years ago. I'm still excited about it today.
It's not always an easy field for serious scholarship. You can't just truck off to the National Archives or the Library of Congress and find the documents you need to write a reliable account of business strategies, structures, decisions and operations, or their impact on the American or the world economy. The National Archives and the Library of Congress have wonderful resources. But very often the business historian needs to work with a company or an individual executive to get access to essential records and opportunities for interviews.
When you do move inside business, you can get tangled in some very sticky problems. You may run into a vice president who is convinced that business is all about the present and the future, not the past. The skeptical VP will probably roll out an appropriate cliché -- perhaps quoting Henry Ford, "History is bunk." Or, the skeptic may tell you that "Hindsight is 20-20," an empty idea that ignores the simple fact that all evaluations of performance, whether of a CEO or a foreman on the shop floor, are based on past performance. That is, on the history of the individual and the organization. If Henry Ford had really thought about the history of his organization and similar businesses, he might have avoided pushing his great enterprise to the edge of bankruptcy in the late 1920s. He could have learned a great deal about the Ford Motor Company's distinctive culture and strategy from its history, and maybe even understood why General Motors was driving Ford to the wall. Much later, Henry Ford II learned those lessons and pulled the company off the path to failure.
So it's not an easy task to write business history from the inside out. You can, for instance, get stuck in corporate infighting that doesn't really interest you. You can run into a legal department that senses risk in every sentence and wants to cross out every word that isn't one of the corporate platitudes that abound in annual reports. If you're not successful in negotiating these hazards, you may find your finished work tucked in a drawer. Forever. That can be a fatal blow to an assistant professor striving to get tenure (and they all strive for tenure)....