Business History, Entrepreneurial History, and Business Administration

The Economic History Association is an interdisciplinary organization of widely varying interests. The Association has several times considered the relationships between Economic Theory and Economic History, but it has paid little attention to that between the applied field of Business Administration and Economic History. It is appropriate to do so now because significant special interests have arisen within and around Economic History in recent years which have been of particular interest to students of Business Administration. I refer to the studies in Business History, Entrepreneurial History, Economic Development, and Innovation. Like Economic History, Business Administration is interdisciplinary, at least in part, and relies considerably, though at the applied level, on the same fundamental social sciences that interest economic historians. Also we have seen an outpouring of histories of individual enterprises, as American business, once more proud of its accomplishments and increasingly conscious of the value of public relations, has sat for its portrait. At the same time, in the field of Business Administration there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the long-range view in appraising administration, and of the use of the social sciences to improve its quality. It therefore is time to attempt some integration of these strands of thought.