Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on July 21, 2008
Enterprise and Society 2008 9(4):631-636; doi:10.1093/es/khn077
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.
Editors’ Introduction: Business History and the Middle East: Local Contexts, Multinational Responses—A Special Section of Enterprise & Society
ANDREW GODLEY is a lecturer at the University of Reading Business School
RELLI SHECHTER is a senior lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University
Contact information: University of Reading Business School, Reading RG6 6AA, UK. E-mail: a.c.godley@reading.ac.uk
Contact information: the Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. E-mail: rellish@bgu.ac.il
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Business history is now global history. This is in stark contrast to twenty years ago, when the discipline was based only on U.S., British and, to a lesser extent, German and French empirical foundations.1 The 2003 publication Business History around the World contains area chapters summarizing business history research that essentially cover the world, reflecting the enormous growth in the discipline in Europe, Asia, and Latin America in recent years.2 Moreover, this global spread of coverage has coincided with a thematic maturing, as scholars have diverted their attention from the technologically innovative and managerially intensive, large-scale firm. Big businesses remain a key topic today, but the particular focus is more likely to be their multinationality rather than managerial capabilities.
Beyond the traditional topic of large firms, recently published research would appear to have focused far more on small, entrepreneurial and often family-managed firms,