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Business History and the Problem of Action

Enterprise & society, 2020-09, Vol.21 (3), p.561-591 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

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Title:
Business History and the Problem of Action
Author: RAFF, DANIEL M. G.
Subjects: Action ; Agency and structure ; Business history ; Decision making ; Formal organization ; Historians ; Historical analysis ; Meaning ; Social sciences ; Symposia
Is Part Of: Enterprise & society, 2020-09, Vol.21 (3), p.561-591
Description: The problem of action is the problem of both identifying and explaining it. The two aspects are not as distinct as this formulation might suggest, and the present paper focuses on the first, bringing in only as much of the second as is absolutely necessary. (A companion paper focuses on the second in a similar way.) Because business history is for all practical purposes a history of organizations and because action in and by organizations generally implicates those organizations’ routines, addressing the problem of action as business historians encounter it requires discussion of relatively recent literature on the relationship between structure and agency. That discussion raises questions about the meaning of agency in human conduct and in historical analysis. After exposition of some helpful ideas drawn from the sociology literature, this paper draws out implications for writing the business history of firms and industries.
Publisher: New York, USA: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Identifier: ISSN: 1467-2227
EISSN: 1467-2235
DOI: 10.1017/eso.2020.41
Source: ProQuest Central

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