Time for a Nordic business history initiative?

ABSTRACT

The current state of Nordic business history is by certain estimates better than ever. Nordic business historians publish extensively in leading international journals and have a strong presence at international business history conferences. Still, in this discussion article we raise a yellow flag of warning for the future of Nordic business history. We argue that the subject field is challenged along three important dimensions: (i) lack of relevant teaching, (ii) continued reliance on commissioned history and (iii) limited recruitment. The article discusses these challenges and seeks to place them in a historical perspective. For each challenge, we develop a set of concrete proposals to address the problems identified. A common theme in our proposed solutions is to intensify Nordic collaboration, particularly through the establishment of common, externally funded Nordic research projects. To create meeting grounds for the development of such projects, The Scandinavian Society for Economic and Social History – the formal collaborative body for Nordic economic historians and the owner of Scandinavian Economic History Review – should be reinvigorated.

KEYWORDS:

• Business history
• teaching
• commissioned history
• doctoral courses
• Nordic co-operation

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• N01
• N80

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 How many business historians are there in the Nordic region? This question is almost impossible to answer precisely. An attempt to measure the number of business historians by counting the number of academic positions formally related to business history is hardly relevant. In the Nordic countries taken together, only around two small handfuls of scholars are formally employed as associate professors, professors or researchers in business history. An alternative approach would be to count the number of authors responsible for the articles published in Business History and Business History Review as analysed above. Such a count brings us to the exact number of 80. Again, these are not figures on Nordic historians by nationality but on historians affiliated to Nordic institutions. These figures again omit business historians who have published in other international journals, as well as in national history journals, monographs and anthologies. To these one also needs to add the number of doctoral dissertations that have recently been published. A fairly recent overview has shown how in the years 2014–2015, a total of 48 doctoral dissertations were completed in economic history, and the among these ‘the most popular topics are business history, welfare and institutions’ (Ojala et al., 2016, p. 181). Hence, one may add perhaps yet another 10–15 scholars. Perhaps, we are altogether talking about around 150 researchers?.

2 Oslo (2001), Helsinki (2002), Copenhagen (2006), Bergen (2008, 2016), Uppsala (2013) (http://www.ebha.org/?seite=conferences, visited on 8.1.2018), Moreover, of the 10 presidents elected to head the organisation since its establishment, 2 have been from the Nordic countries: 2008–2009 Per Boje, University of Southern Denmark; 2011–2013 Harm G. Schroeter, University of Bergen, Norway.

3 Estimated from printed conference programmes and Ojala and Sogner (2015). The ‘nationality’ of the paper was determined by the institutional affiliation of the (main) author, not the (main) author's nationality. Hence, a Finnish historian working at a Swedish institution will be counted as a Swedish contributor. A co-authored paper written, e.g. by a Norwegian and a Danish author will be counted as Norwegian if the main author is Norwegian.

4 The figures were gathered from the Web of Science database. For each country, a selection was made of the most relevant academic institutions. This means that the table counts the number of articles written by academics affiliated to Nordic academic institutions and not necessarily articles written by Nordic scholars (since there are a number of non-Nordic scholars working in Nordic academic institutions). The institutions selected were the following: Norway (University of Oslo, University of Bergen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), BI Norwegian Business School and Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)), Finland (University of Helsinki, Aalto University, University of Jyväskylä, University of Tampere, University of Turku, University of Oulu and University of Eastern Finland), Denmark (Copenhagen University, Copenhagen Business School, University of Southern Denmark, Aarhus University) and Sweden (Lund University, University of Gothenburg, Uppsala University, Stockholm University, Sodertorn University and Umea University). We are grateful to Jari Ojala for all help in gathering and analysing the data.

5 Joint conference with the Business History Conference.

6 EBHA 20th congress and First World Congress on Business History.

7 ‘Clio, the queen of the sciences’, The Economist 7.10.2010.

8 This challenge also manifests in another way, namely in the danger that business history journals are demoted to low-level management journals rather than continuing as A-level (business) history publications.

9 See http://www.hbs.edu/businesshistory/Documents/00-final-volume-2-report-Oct%2017-2012-with-cover.pdf