Writing business history: creating narratives

Andrew Popp* (University of Liverpool) and Susanna Fellman (University of

Gothenburg)

Abstract:

In this article we examine business history’s relationship to narrative history writing. In so

doing we respond to the call for paper’s question: ‘storytelling vs. business history: do business

historians create narratives and in what ways?’ We survey attitudes in business history to

narrative history writing, the relationship between archive, narrative, and historical knowledge

claims, and the importance of writing practices and qualities. We report the results of

interviews with practicing business historians and conclude that whilst the discipline has an

ambiguous relationship with narratives and narrative history writing, there is a recognition that

all historians are to an extent engaged in the construction of narratives, whenever they write.

We argue that a re-engagement with narrative history writing might provide a way of resolving

a current epistemological impasse between realist and interpretivist positions. Ultimately, any

narrative turn in business history will be incomplete without an examination of the status of

narrative history writing within the field.

Keywords: Narrative history; archives; writing; historical knowledge; practice.

* Corresponding author: andrew.popp@liverpool.ac.uk

Writing business history: creating narratives

Introduction

The narratives that a society tells about business are important lenses through which

interpretations and understandings are reached, providing the ground from which

actions arise. Hansen has argued that as ‘instruments for ordering reality, assigning

causality, and … constructing meaning’ narratives are socially and culturally

constructed. Moreover, narratives can ‘be viewed as actions’ and are thus ‘important

analytical objects’.1 Narratives are not mere chronicles but are constitutive, shaping

choice, action, and outcomes. Business historians have been urged to treat these

narratives as important subjects of analysis.

In parallel, Decker has claimed that ‘the sense-making and storying of the

historians begins in the archive, not in the construction of the narrative on the page’.2

This highlights how business historians are also engaged, at some point, in constructing

narratives – in telling stories. As Lipartito has argued, the ‘history of business is a

narrative of how we remake ourselves, and the consequences of doing so’.3 This

reflects a shift in the wider field of history in which many philosophers of history, most

notably Hayden White and Paul Ricouer, have emphasised that historical scholarship is

a narrative representation of the past transmitted by means of stories.4 It is our

contention that we should judge the narratives we fashion as business historians on the

same terms by which we study the narratives produced by others: that is as constructed

and in ways that are of consequence.

However, it has also been noted that business historians are often reluctant to

discuss their sources, methods, and research practices, or to examine the status of the

archive and its contents.5 This weak engagement with methods and sources is a barrier

to a more thoroughgoing narrative turn, in which not events but their representation and

the discourses surrounding them come into focus, demanding a new relationship to

sources. But if business historians have neglected questions of sources and methods

then they have paid even less attention to their practices as writers and the urge towards

a narrative turn has led to little significant debate amongst business historians about

either the processes whereby we create narratives or the epistemological status of those

creations. We contend that business history frequently expresses a bias against narrative

history writing and rarely acknowledges that it, like all historical disciplines, produces

narratives. The discipline has come to view narrative as a lesser form of history writing.

It cannot be said of business historians, as Rowlinson et al. say of historians in general,

that they are ‘preoccupied with epistemological problems of narrative construction’.6

Yet, the constructed nature of all narratives makes an examination of that process of

construction imperative. Our purpose is to open up to examination the status of

business history writing as narrative.

Questions and contributions

We contribute to the narrative turn in business history by focusing on how business

historians approach the creation of narratives, motivated by a belief that the writing we

do cannot be divorced from the claims to historical knowledge we make. We build on

our earlier work on business historians’ archival practices.7 In that work we examined

the complexity of business historians’ engagement with archives whilst also revealing

our lack of awareness of what happens after the archive. Our questions here concern the

relationship between the sources we use, the task of writing, processes of sense-making,

resulting texts, and the historical knowledge the historian seeks to create. Ultimately,

we examine the practice and epistemological status of narrative writing in business

history. We explore this question empirically, through conversations with business

historians. We believe that by talking to historians about their practices we can achieve

a deeper understanding of the process of research.

We begin where the historian often begins: in the archive.8 From the archive

emerge unsettling questions about the relationships between our sources, what we write

and the knowledge we create. We turn then to a discussion of the forms of historical

writing dominant in business history, uncovering both business historians’ ambivalence

about narrative and the relatively scant attention they have paid to writing and its

relationship to historical knowledge. From these sections emerge the questions that

guided our data collection, the findings from which are then reported. Our sources,

methods, and the scope of the paper are discussed in Appendix 1.

Archives and narratives

The historian’s struggle with knowledge creation often begins as we encounter the

archive. Here we are most concerned with the movement between archive and the

written narrative. As a result we risk occluding the vital question of the relationship

between the archive, the wider historiographical literature, and the research questions

that motivate our desire to write and undoubtedly shape the final text. It would be

mistaken to conceive of this relationship as linear. Doing history is always iterative,

involving feedback loops between each phase: it is an on-going process between

sources, existing scholarship and the gestating narrative.9 Moreover, no historian goes

to the archive without some knowledge of existing narratives.10 Thus, our separation

here of the formulation of research questions from the process of constructing

narratives is artificial. The process of rethinking questions constantly inserts itself back

into the work and narratives are always contingent until published, at which point they

simply become vulnerable to being destabilized once more as they are read. This was

the experience of all our interviewees. However, pragmatically, we have chosen to

focus on processes of narrative construction.

Nonetheless, Decker’s claim that ‘the sense-making and storying of the

historians begins in the archive, not in the construction of the narrative on the page’

signals that the archive and the narrative ‘on the page’ are intimately entwined and not

easily separated.11 From one perspective, it might even be claimed that the archive

contains the narrative. Archival studies scholar Eric Ketelaar, for example, repeatedly

refers to the archive’s ‘tacit narratives of power and knowledge,’ ‘the tacit narratives of

the archive,’ and the ‘tacit narratives ... hidden in categorization, codification and

labelling’.12 Strikingly, Ketelaar always refers to the narratives contained within the

archive as ‘tacit,’ suggesting that they are hidden, awaiting discovery by the historian,

who brings them into the light of day. These views are found amongst historians as well

as archivists. Antoinette Burton describes how she aims to raise ‘provocative questions

about the nature and use of archives and the stories they have to tell’ before going on to

describe the archive as ‘a mechanism for shaping the narratives of history’.13 Some

even argue that, archival materials are not sources until the historian gives to them a

voice.14

However, as increasing numbers of studies argue, the archive cannot be seen as

a neutral space. Archives and archival practices are firmly embedded in institutional

contexts and in societies’ memory paradigms, influencing what is remembered, what is

preserved, how documents are indexed and organized, how archival knowledge is

defined and even what forms archives take. The archive does not provide us with access

to the past, but rather a mediated representation of the past.15 The archival material gives

us access to an event as it is recorded and to the archivization of it, not to the event in

itself.16 Furthermore, the interpretation of the material found in the archive occurs

within the context of the archival space. Thus the archivization also activates the event

in relation to other material (and events), The event of the past is even altered by the

very search for it.17 This encounter between the problematized archive and the scholar

with his/her questions, interpretations and stories waiting to be told, becomes a crucial

moment for the creation of the historian’s narrative. Given the problematization of the

archive it seems clear that the writing that follows the time spent in the archive should

also be problematized.

Business history as narrative and as writing?

We consider that business history is, or should be, part of the broader field of history.

However, even if that positioning is accepted, business history shows considerable

variance in terms of themes, theories, methods, sources, and epistemic positions. This

variance has led to internal tensions and challenges in defining boundaries. These

difficulties have led to a restless search for legitimacy and has often resulted in an

attempt to attach the field to larger fields: once that was economics or economic history

and now, more frequently, the management sciences. However, as Clark and Rowlinson

argue, these are fields hostile to or uncomprehending of historical methods.18 At the

same time, connections to the wider discipline of history, with its rich exploration of

the power and potential of narrative, have become attenuated.19

As a result business history can often seem antithetical to narrative history. This

claim partially contradicts that of Rowlinson et. al., who see the field as dominated by

an ‘objective narrative’ approach exemplified by the genre of the corporate history.20

We agree that much business history remains objectivist/realist in orientation but assert

that, simultaneously, it increasingly rejects the genre of narrative history in favour of

the case-based but thematically oriented journal article, stripped of thorough narrative

presentation and yet methodologically committed to archival sources that can be ill-

suited to analytical, theoretically-informed social science.

In the broad field of history there have been repeated calls for a revival in

narrative history writing, accompanied more recently by similar calls for greater

attention to the craft of writing history.21 We are not able here to fully explore or to do

full justice to the wide-ranging discussions on the nature and status of the narrative that

have taken place in historiography and the philosophy of history in recent decades.

Interventions from White, Riceour, Jordanova, Ankersmit and others have both

rehabilitated narrative and led to a far subtler and more sophisticated understanding of

its power. We define narrative history as a literary form (without implying linear,

chronological story-telling) that cannot be uncoupled from either certain

epistemological claims (that narratives contain explanatory powers) or ontological

positions (that narratives have representational powers with regard to the experiential

dimensions of history). Coupling the literary form to epistemological and ontological

claims separates narrative history writing from chronicling. As Keulen and Kroeze

observe, the explanatory power of narratives emerges because it is ‘through the

composition of the story we can make sense of it’.22 In fact, historical scholarship needs

(in order to be read) to have a beginning, middle, and an end, preferably a plot and even

villains and heroes. These features of a narrative do not naturally pre-exist its creation.23

Similarly, Hayden White has claimed that by ‘common consent,’ historical accounts

should be ‘narrated as well, that is to say, revealed as possessing a structure, an order of

meaning that they do not possess as sequence of events’.24 Historians ‘sew’ these events

together aiming to reveal causes and effects, even causalities.25 This is in part a matter

of sense-making, but also a result of desiring to create stories people want to read.

Nonetheless, there is a long-running suspicion of narrative writing in business

history. Donald Coleman’s 1987 judgement on narrative as writing, technique, and

knowledge was damning; much business history was the ‘mere compilation of narrative

company history … without analysis of issues’.26 This view of narrative as essentially

atheoretical continues; in 2014 business historian Daniel Pope observed that theorizing

might, at best, ‘creep through the rear door of the narratives we construct’.27 In making

his critique, Coleman built on Hannah, who accused business historians of clinging ‘to

a tradition which, at its best, is a triumph of narrative skill … at its worst … narrow,

insular and antiquarian’. Thus, Hannah had ‘castigated British business historians as

“inveterate empiricists”, obsessed with getting the story right’. Moreover, comparative

work was difficult because of ‘the narrative shape’ of most business history writing had

‘precluded or inhibited concern with theory’.28 Ultimately, Coleman concluded:

If the subject is to make its due impact … it will, in part at least, have to abandon a

merely narrative focus … Narrative remains essential to any account of change

over time; but in business history it must be combined with the analysis of

economic issues pertinent to management and organization.29

Narrative was reduced to a subservient role. That narrative writing might be central to

the production of historical knowledge seemed impossible. Though made close to three

decades ago, the claims of Coleman and Hannah have had a powerful legacy. Recently,

for example, de Jong and Higgins have called for ‘theory-building and theory-testing in

business history using empirical approaches beyond descriptive case study analysis’.30

This legacy is further seen in Toms and Wilson’s defence of ‘traditional’

business history: ‘the business historian is interested in discovering truth’, through

‘processes of verification, authentication and replication’. They contrast these aims

against relativist positions that present ‘“just one of several equally valid stories”’.31

The epistemological value of ‘stories’ is unmistakeably diminished. ‘Truth,’ for many

business historians resides not in the telling of the story but stands objectively outside

it. Much business history assumes that the subjects it studies are to a large extent

knowable and explicable; it is nomothetic rather than idiographic. As Lipartito

observed, business history proceeds ‘on the assumption that business structures can be

thinly described as unproblematic expressions of an underlying, universal process’.32

Business historians do not commonly accept that ‘“writing is the search for the

answers, and the answer is in the form, the method of telling”’.33

This is not to claim that there has been no engagement by business historians

with the wider turn towards narrativism. Kroeze and Keulen, for example, suggest it

has become ‘clear that narrative is an up-to-date, scientifically sound and

understandable analytical tool for business historians’ and go on to recommend

narrativism as a ‘means to improve and hold together the field’.34 However, by their

own admission, uptake of this recommendation amongst business historians has been

limited and the discipline is ‘now one of the last historical fields to have remained

almost untouched by the … so-called cultural or linguistic turn’. As a result, turning our

attention to the act of writing, ‘between business historians and “general” historians

there is a different understanding of history writing’.35

There is little written about business history writing, though the issues of

writing, style and form have received attention from other historians.36 However, this is

hardly surprising given business historians’ reluctance to acknowledge the validity of

narrative writing as means of knowledge creation. Business history writing is often

viewed as a means of documenting results, conveyed within a naturalized narrative,

coupled with unproblematized notion of truth.37 It is difficult to imagine a business

historian saying, as Pihlainen does, that as a ‘form of writing, history is a strange

aberration,’ for to ‘present a realistic story, indeed to impose any kind of organizing

form or structure, leads to employing a great deal of artifice in the construction

process’.38 Moreover, in order to simply be believable, history must employ ‘the most

intricate strategies of literary truth-creation’.39

Kobrak and Schneider do seem significantly concerned with the idea of doing

‘good’ or ‘professional’ history.40 They dedicate their paper to Gerald Feldman and his

‘commitment to the historian’s craft’ and ask the question as to ‘whether writing history

is art or science’.41 Throughout their paper Kobrak and Schneider recur to the theme of

‘writing history’, including its ‘basic principles’; adherence to which, they believe, may

provide a ‘feasible and intellectually rigorous solution to division in the discipline’.

Thus good writing might not merely give aesthetic pleasure but can be central to the

quality of the history produced. Moreover, Kobrak and Schneider critique scholars for

being most interested in theory, ‘not writing history’. But the criteria for ‘good history’

are rarely made explicit beyond demanding ‘rich sources’, ‘poignant connections to

contexts’, ‘coherent and poignant stories’.42 Creating poignancy is a very literary effect

– ‘literary truth-creation’ one might say – that takes skill as a writer. Ultimately,

however, Kobrak and Schneider settle on ‘good history’ being that that is ‘well

researched and well organised’ – not that which is well written.43

Reviewing the preceding sections there seem to be three interlinked themes.

First, where do the narratives we write come from and, in particular, how do they relate

to the archive and to our research questions. Second, if we admit that we create

narratives, how do we create them and what is their value and status? And, thirdly, how

much does that value depend on their ‘writerliness’ – that is on the quality as literary

texts. These themes prompt one overarching question: if the narrative turn asks us to

view constructed narratives of business as our subjects, then why do we not recognize

the narratives we produce as being equally constructed?44 Ultimately, is business

history in a position to move past the critique of narrative writing launched by Coleman

and Hannah and reclaim narrative as a powerful source of historical knowledge and an

important part of the production of historical scholarship?

Business historians and their narratives

The first question we asked our respondents was whether they consider themselves to

be producing narrative history? One of our interviewees, William has played an active

role in making business history theoretically sophisticated and engaged and has an

excellent track record of publishing in high quality management and organization

studies journals that demand a style of writing that is in many ways the antithesis of

historical writing. Hypotheses, literatures, and discussion sections are almost

obligatory. Narratives are not. Textually, articles tend to be flat, even dispassionate, in

their language.

Yet William retains a deep attachment to history. He remains an historian in

terms of a conscious identity; not as an intellectual conceit but as a matter of

disposition. It reflects an attachment to what some would call the historian’s craft.

When we first interviewed William the focus was on sources and archives, not

narratives or writing. Nonetheless the centrality of the narrative form came through

clearly. Describing his first major project, William recalled his ‘resolution that this

would be a narrative that cast light on a series of issues in a structured way’ – this

seems very close to the form of ‘analytically structured history’ identified by

Rowlinson et al.45 William’s commitment to narrative is a first principle. Later he

described how during this first stage in his career he was ‘just a young person who had

good stories to tell’. His words naturalize storytelling as something that is pre-

theoretical and perhaps, to a degree, innate. The stories his youthful self told may have

been good but they were still ‘just’ stories. The slippage in language from ‘narrative’ to

‘story’ seems significant for the importance of what can be claimed for each. When we

returned to this issue with William a more considered relationship between theory and

narrative emerged. When asked, ‘Do you consider yourself a narrative historian?’ he

replied ‘I have tried to embrace theory explicitly while embracing a narrative style’.

Theory and narrative are thus compatible but also separate if complementary: narrative

is not theory – it is style. There is an undeniable tension. Theorization occurs not

‘within a narrative’ but instead ‘within a generalizing analytic scheme’ that is

presented, at least in part, through a narrative as vehicle.

Duncan describes a similar trajectory across his career. Asked if he wrote

narratives he affirmed; ‘Yes, I absolutely do’. Like William, he first entered the archive

with a youthful naivety: ‘I went there expecting to find the truth, in one way or

another’, a truth that his political convictions led him to believe ‘was really simple’ and

a ‘worthwhile thing to record’. Memorably, he describes his approach to history then as

‘almost ventriloquism’. We will return to how his practices developed but it is worth

noting that he can still say of a much more recent work that it is ‘absolutely a story …

the story’s got a fascination in itself … it seemed to me that was an important story to

tell precisely because it had been neglected’.

In fact, all but one of the interviewees considered themselves narrative

historians. What they understood by this varied, but at least the storying aspect appears

to be an important part of the research process. Asked what he understood by narrative

history, and whether he writes narrative history, Adrian presents a complex argument

rooted in an explicit ontology. He first distinguishes between two dimensions:

One is a classic chronological narrative where you start at the beginning of a

particular period and end at the end … you tell a story based on the events that

happened. The other … is analytical narrative where you actually use certain

themes to structure that narrative. That … is a conscious decision … the classic

view of a chronological narrative is simply that history is an unfolding story.

Asked about his own stance Adrian presents an even more considered statement:

I see myself in the tradition of Margaret Archer’s writing, what she calls analytical

histories of emergence, that’s linked to my ontological commitment to critical

realism, so it is very much shaped by social theory [but] I was socialized as an

historian in my research training to write something that had a beginning, a middle

and an end.

We venture that few business historians have such a clear ontological ‘commitment.’

As with William, however, we can detect tensions. Duncan’s commitment to writing

narratives is strong but his understanding of what that constitutes is surprising.

Emplotment, and storyline are ‘not too important to me … I’ve never thought in those

terms’. There is a plurality of understandings. The one interviewee who does not see

himself as a narrative historian does define himself as a historian who uses narrative

approaches. At the same time, the others often distinguish between different types of

narrative, and, critically, separate the narrative out from other aspects of what they do;

in particular the relationship to historical knowledge remains ambiguous at this point.

Rowlinson et. al. claim that the ‘default position for craft historians can be

characterized as a form of “historical realism”, where history is seen as an “untold

story” that exists independently of and prior to being discovered and told by the

historian’.46 In other words patterns and narratives in history are found not made. We

are reminded of the confidence Toms and Wilson have in their ability to tell the

‘truth’.47 The separation between history-as-past and history-as-narrative, accepted as

self-evident by many historians, is perhaps less reflected upon by many business

historians, reflecting commitment to a view of historical phenomena as ‘unproblematic

expressions of an underlying, universal process’.48

Undoubtedly, archives do have structures within which most historians have

little choice but to work. On this relationship William is extremely clear. Asked, ‘Do

you ever feel that the structure of the narrative is in some sense contained in the

archive?’ he answered ‘No.’ It must, then, be of his own making. Another of our

interviewees, Thor, shares Williams’ view. This could perhaps be because he also

trained as an archivist. A quite persistent attitude amongst archivists is that they do not

– as part of their professionalism - create either ‘tacit’ or visible narratives in the

archive.49 Another of our interviewees, Marja on the other hand, clearly experienced

that there is a narrative contained in the archive. Duncan shares this view, asserting that

there is a ‘narrative, which is very much hierarchical, very much top down.’ Moreover,

the narratives of the archive can be ‘so seductive’. In this context, it is very important

for Duncan ‘not to write the narrative that is in the archive … there are several but there

is one which is [dominant], particularly in business archives’. On the other hand, Marja

felt that in private archives it was often obvious that something had been taken out,

although she could not know what was missing. But recognizing that there is something

one cannot see was still important. Key here is sensitivity to the marginal. Adrian notes

that as historians we are necessarily ‘conditioned’ in what we are able to do simply by

the vagaries of record survival. At the same time, patterns of record survival are in

themselves important clues; for example in recent cross-national work he has

undertaken these very differences in record survival reveal something ‘about the nature

of the [governance] systems in both countries’, the subject in which he is interested.

Serendipity and chance are also able to enter this process. Working recently

with several uncatalogued collections he realized that a lack of archivist-determined

structure ‘might [confer some freedom] in that you had to actually look through the

material, you couldn’t take a shortcut, you couldn’t be guided by someone else’s’

logic’. Conversely, increasingly sophisticated catalogues and search aids means that it

no longer matters ‘what the archivists structure was’ so long as item descriptions are

fine grained enough. Too often though, the necessity of optimizing time in the archive

forces the historian to work with, rather than against, the structuring logics of the

archive. At another point, Adrian notes how his choice to begin a chapter in a recently

completed book with a 2000 word vignette was ‘interesting because that was very much

shaped by the archive, because I found a story’. However, this should not be too

quickly interpreted as a naïve objectivist statement; instead the story allowed him to

slip into a different, micro-historical register that opened up wider questions and

connections. In other words, how the apparently ‘found’ story is deployed also matters.

Here we turn to the question of where and when the construction of the

narrative begins. How do historians narrativize past events? How does sense-making

emerge from storying? Beside learning about the actual process of writing and thus of

creating the narrative, these questions are also key to understanding to what extent

business historians reflect on their own role in the scholarly process and its implications

on the production of history and historical knowledge.

The majority of the interviewees considered that composing and writing

narrative does start in the archive, or even before. As Marja told us:

Now, after the doctoral dissertation, which really showed me what research is, the

narratives begin to take shape when I am planning my research. Then, during the

research process and writing, they will be reshaped and rewritten. Often …

correspondence gives possibilities to explore a number of themes or narratives that

perhaps are not evident when reading for the first time the documents. I’m

thinking how I have used the same letters between fathers and sons or brothers and

sisters to write about a variety of subjects.

This is a familiar feeling among historians: the story begins to develop and take shape

while reading the documents. Duncan even begins forming sentences in the archive

because ‘there’s an immediacy there’, but the story is often still open at this point, and

includes possible dead-ends, and a multitude of pathways, not all of which are

followed. We make choices; what is important, what is not. Thor agreed that the

narrative creation does begin while he is in the archive, but, for him, it starts properly

only when he starts writing and he has plotted the chronology. Henrik felt the same.

The text takes shape only when writing. He also insists it’s an iterative process between

material, research questions, emerging theoretical and analytical strategies, and finally

the text.

According to William the narrative takes shape as ‘reading and primary research

are conducted, taking more definite shape once writing begins’. He expands on this a

little further; ‘Once the research is at an advanced stage and I feel I have command of

the archive material, I begin the process of plotting. Writing invariably leads to

refinements to the storyline and the way the narrative unfolds’. Writing is clearly, for

William a highly creative process that does not simply record results on to the page but

which instead actively shapes not only how something is said but what is said or

argued. Reinforcing this William also uses quite literary terms, talking about plotting

and storylines.

Adrian too used such terms as plot, story, and resolution, but the emergence or

solidification of plot and storyline can occur in different ways. When he first found the

single document that formed the basis of the vignette described above he merely found

it interesting; it engaged his imagination. He made a note and moved on. That it might

function as a device only became clear later, away from the archive. But he is also

somewhat unusual in that he still, for the most part, reads in archives rather than

capturing digital images. He described the mental processes this approach facilitates for

him:

There’s not only a selection mechanism you have to do before the start [of archival

work], there’s almost a selection mechanism going on all the time ... you are

saying ‘this is relevant, this is not relevant, this could be relevant, this changes my

story [and] when this changes my story this becomes relevant, this is what I need.

As these final phrases indicate – as well as recurring to notion of story – this method of

working also leaves Adrian open to the possibility of surprise. Marja felt the same,

emphasising that the more she knows about her material and the context of the

phenomena she studies, the easier it becomes to make these decisions. Constructing the

narrative becomes a continuous process, sometimes conscious, sometimes less so. This

was a common notion among all our interviewees, in spite of different perceptions

about when and where the story begins. Interestingly, Lipartito has noted that we

cannot separate out the analysis and the writing of history from the process of

research.50 He continues that ‘Asking questions of the past and conducting research is a

hermeneutical process, in that one’s reading of a source will change as one’s

knowledge of text and context grows’. Material does not exist in a vacuum. Marja, for

example, also felt it had become easier to compose a story from very small and

fragmented pieces material when as her knowledge of the context develops.

In contrast, Thor had previously told us that he worked very fast in the archive

and did not usually stop to think very much about the material.51 He did not let the

material ‘talk’ to him in the archive. Thus, new technology, enabling him to work very

fast, had in his case affected the archival process, but had most likely also affected the

creation of the story. For him the story develops ‘between the archives’:

If it is one of the later archival trips I will probably have developed firm ideas

about what the narrative will look like, and in many cases the information I find in

the new archives will fill in and supplement what I have already investigated in

other archives. This is also a consequence of targeting going to the archives that I

think will be the most helpful as early as possible.

This could also be seen as a problem: the historian lets their hypotheses and

presumptions guide the search for evidence. However, Thor admits he might have to

change his ‘narrative’ over the course of time, ‘and then the narrative will develop into

something very different from what I first imagined at the start’.

Nonetheless, according to Thor, the main creation occurs when he starts writing.

Then he goes back to his systematized, transcribed sources (and to the literature), which

now demand close-reading. Adrian, in contrast, is ‘sure’ plotting is ongoing between

the archive and the page.

Duncan’s practice represents another variant. He dislikes working with

technology in the archive, saying his archive work has become less ‘thorough’ over

time. But he has come to believe that spending too long in the archive means ‘you lose

the opportunity to generate other ways of thinking about the same material … by

breaking it up you get a chance to reflect’. These observations support our earlier claim

that concrete archival practices are not irrelevant to our subsequent knowledge claims.

The same is likely also true of writing practices.52

How do we write and what do we write?

In a series of special issues on History as Creative Writing in the journal Rethinking

History, James Godman aimed to create space for historians to give attention to the

‘ways that from and style shape substance, content and meaning’.53 Historians generally

consider writing an important part of the research process and this was a sentiment that

came up in our interviews.

Adrian says ‘[t]he writing is fantastically important. I actually rather enjoy

writing things in different ways and styles … I love pushing myself to the challenge …

I do enjoy writing’, conveying an excitement about writing. But in admitting to

‘playing’ with forms of writing he acknowledges the complicity between how we write

and what we say. Duncan is similarly engaged with the act of writing: ‘I’m a better

writer than I am a theorist … I spend a lot of time on the writing, I really enjoy working

with the [text].’ He aims ‘to make every sentence read better … the detail is important’.

Marja, too, thought of the writing process as an exciting period of her research, and

when it went well, as a very creative process: she especially liked when, coming close

to having the final story, she can concentrate on ‘sculpting the language’.

But writing is not easy. Marja feels that writing is the hardest part of the scholarly

process, because the text should always be subordinate to the sources. Thus, she

constantly questions whether she has enough evidence to support her argument. In

acknowledging that writing is difficult historians reveal its significance for the creation

of the story.

The reader can also be involved in making meaning. Marja told us that it is vital

for her to think of an intended reader: she has to write to somebody. She feels strongly

that such communicative interaction also occurs between her and the (future) reader

during the writing process. Thus, the writing process is an on-going communication

with the material, the text, the intended reader(s), other scholars, and previous research.

Similarly, Adrian does not use devices such as writing sections in the present tense for

dramatic effect ‘because I’m dealing with historians … I want it to be taken seriously

so I daren’t’. Duncan, however, consciously reads fiction with an eye to learning how

to write more effectively. He recalls how US author Cormac McCarthy used a very

long, rhythmic sentence to convey the expansive Western landscape, which inspired

him to write very short and sharp sentences to convey the rapid staccato rhythms of

work. ‘Writerliness’ can be a desirable quality.

It is also important to emphasize writing as a process. Marja told us how her

ideas change over the course of that process, as the writing extends her thinking into

new questions:

writing leads to new territories, to new questions and, on the whole, my research is

growing from archival work, reading research literature and writing. For me,

writing is a means to think and process my research.

Thus, writing is ‘not only writing’, but also a period of thinking and processing in

which the scholar formulates and reformulates, not only the story but the research

question, the focus and perhaps even the whole basis of the research. In spite of slight

divergences in processes and approaches to their writing, our discussions resonated

with Munslow’s notion that the writing process is an iterative one between texts and

sources, and that most historians constantly re-work and even overhaul their work.

In this respect Adrian notes that careful prior-planning, aided by both note-

taking and writing software, is critical to his writing process: ‘I know there are some

people who free-write but I’m a planner. I’m a bit obsessive about that’. Nonetheless,

even within a single project, there is space for variation. In one chapter of a recently

completed monograph, a chapter that aimed at synthesis over detailed presentation

Adrian said that he ‘felt freer’. Asked if that enabled a bolder approach to language, he

replied ‘I think so … I think it did’. Duncan works more loosely, with small scraps of

numbered texts that are played with and moved around, allowing him ‘when … writing

to make connections I simply would not make otherwise’. Marja starts with small

scraps, and always with pen on paper. The final story takes form only when she sits at

her computer.

The process of writing is, however, not only a question of argumentation and

persuasion, of a convincing narrative, but also of authorisation. Some voices are

privileged over others. The scholar must seek that authority/authorisation when

presenting an interpretation. Clearly command of the sources is important.

Nevertheless, most historians also agree that the ‘well-crafted historical narrative

remains a useful tool’ in historical scholarship.54 Indeed, it may even be a major source

of authority. In this context, thinking about the quality of the writing itself becomes

important. Unsurprisingly, given the emphasis, described above, on history writing as a

creative rather than a technical function, all of the interviewees agree that ‘good

historical writing’ is ‘very important’. William describes its hallmarks thus; ‘you need

to be grammatically accurate, fluent, elegant, and engaging. You need to make an

argument and support it, emphasizing the key points without becoming repetitive or

sterile’.

Marja emphasized the importance of ‘being precise’, something often

considered a strong academic ‘virtue’. Thor pointed out that a good text should also be

analytical so that it relates to something broader than the actual story told. Adrian

expressed this point forcefully, connecting it to dominant practice in business history:

You have to put these stories in a bigger picture; otherwise it just gets … like one

damn thing after another, which takes us back to business history. And what often

happens with business history is that it is one damn thing after another.

Duncan framed similar arguments in slight different terms. Noting the ease with which

narrative can lead us to mistake sequence for causality, he believes ‘that confusion is

very present in business history. One thing followed and therefore … one thing

followed another. But that to me is dumb theoretically. It’s like reading the yellow

pages’. Obviously, these comments extend beyond a comment on writing to a

consideration of business history’s epistemological claims and ambitions.

Returning to the characteristics of ‘good’ writing, some additional qualities

were also mentioned. The text should be easy to read and vivid, with the ‘academic

scaffolding’ removed. The text should also be well structured. Linking this back to

discussion of the relationship between theory and narrative, William says that he also

aimed to ‘soften the edges of all this theoretical stuff … make it more readable’. Thor

brought up an additional aspect. According to him:

[g]ood historical writing is writing that opens up the past so that you as a reader

feel that you really understand the time period and the historical actors, that you in

some regards understand who these people are and what is driving them.

Similarly, Adrian stresses ‘I want people to see the past in a different way’. Marja is

driven by an urge to try to understand the actors of her stories and for this purpose, the

narrative form is the ‘correct and most suitable’. Duncan wants to ‘entertain’ but never

to explain: ‘Not at all. That’s one thing that’s been utterly consistent’.

William has clear views on the centrality of what he calls the ‘historical

imagination.’ He relates how he learnt that developing an historical imagination means

that ‘you can often take yourself back into the Board Room … you try to imagine

people sitting round a table … in conversation’, and how that conversation might

‘correspond to what is being documented here’ – that is in the archival document you

hold in your hand, years later, as a researcher. Maela Powell expresses a similar notion,

but takes it further: ‘“when talk turns into text,” something happens to it – something

else arises as the words get inscribed, revised, polished, distressed and re-presented.

Some meanings open and flower; others meanings die the quiet death of alphabet, of

print’.55 The archive has a resonance that fires the historical imagination and sparks the

narrative

Finally, we enquire what it is that business historians’ believe they do when

they write stories, how does their writing, and the work that precedes it, relate to the

claims they make to historical knowledge? In a positivist/realist tradition truth claims

stand separate from and independent of the writings that convey them. From positions

of narrativization such a divorce becomes very problematic.

As we saw, Duncan initially saw the role of the historian as a passive one,

giving voice to a ‘truth’ to be found in the archive through diligent work. His

understanding today is much more complex. Rowlinson et. al. critique analytical

narratives as being in an essentially ‘positivist style’, but Duncan, identifying as a

narrative historian and, at the same time, as working in an interpretivist tradition, is not

prepared to separate text and knowledge: gradually he came to believe that ‘the act of

writing a history itself constituted some of the truth. You [are not] just finding things in

the archive, you are making things of the archive, in the archive, through the archive’.56

He thus explicitly sees both the act of writing and the resulting text as constitutive and

‘generative’. Critically, this advance on his initial naïve realism was in origin ‘not

theoretical … [but] about how you write … in how I approach narrative’. Writing, text,

and knowledge are intimately entwined, even if we do not always recognize the

complexity of this entanglement. At the close of his interview Duncan observed how:

You have to turn [the archive] into [something]. The creative act is in making sense of

an archive which overwhelms you or almost teases you. And one of the things we are

not good at as a community … [is] acknowledging the limits of what we can say.

For Duncan, history has never been associated with the explicatory mode but Adrian

believes the explicatory can be reconciled with a rejection of positivism. He highlighted

how Isaac Reed explored the possibility of ‘explanation in interpretivist styles’. From

his perspective, for scholars as diverse as Clifford Geertz and Michel Foucault,

description is ‘not all [they] are doing, no they’re doing explanation, but their

explanation is of a different character’ from the positivist. Thus both Adrian and

Duncan reject Rowlinson et. al’s stringent critique of analytical narratives. Equally,

Adrian rejects the realism of Toms and Wilson; ‘there are,’ he says ‘varieties of realism

and it does not have to be this way’.57 Adrian sees the stark dichotomy between realist,

narrative business history on the one hand and interpretive, non-narrative business

history on the other as no longer tenable. This is a key insight that will drive forward

our discussion and the implications that we believe can be drawn from this study.

Discussion and conclusion: reflecting on narratives

Narrativization places a new value on narratives as constructed, constitutive, and sense-

making. That perspective should be extended to our own writing as business historians.

We began with three core questions: how do business historians view the relationship

between archive and narrative; how do narratives relate to business historical

knowledge; how important is writing in business history? Behind these questions lay

more a fundamental question; is business history ready to embrace all dimensions of a

narrative turn? We believe the narrative turn should extend to narrative as both method

and subject.

Business history displays, at best, an ambivalent relationship to narrative history

writing, and the broader field of history. Narrative is often distrusted as atheoretical.

Business historians are now much less likely to write company histories, a genre in

which a chronological narrative is an obvious solution to issues of structure. Literary

qualities, compared to explicit theoretical frameworks, have become less central to the

consideration of what constitutes ‘good’ business history. In Europe at least, closer

alignment with the management sciences is intensifying these shifts. Journal articles are

also now more likely to be structured around a theme than a case study, reducing the

scope for narrative. Explicit narrative elements are often brief and descriptive, aimed at

providing context before the work of conceptualization begins.

Nonetheless, it is clear that some business historians do grapple with how to

write analytical narratives and the relationship between their research, the texts they

write and what it is they hope to claim. In the face of the challenges outlined above

some business historians retain a commitment to narrative forms, combined with a

regard for ‘good writing’ and a recognition that the archive is a complex place, not a

straightforward repository of records and facts. Our interviewees believe that any

narrative apparently contained in the archive is to be distrusted and upended. A

naturally corollary of these beliefs is that they are actively engaged in making historical

narratives. They recognize that storying and sense-making result not only from

analytical rigour or the application of theoretical frameworks but also from and through

complex, iterative, even intuitive processes that unfold at multiple times and places,

including at the writing desk. For all of them, storying and the narrative form are

largely indivisible from sense-making and knowledge creation. Critically, sense-

making occurs, at least in part, through the act of writing. Writing emerges as a

difficult, but extremely important process, one through which much of their thinking

takes place and during which much of the construction of the narrative takes shape. It is

also a period when they feel creative. The writing process can be gratifying, enjoyable,

and even invigorating. Writing ‘matters,’ and to what we say, not simply how we say it.

If this is the case then we believe there would be value for business historians in

thinking more explicitly about historical knowledge, truth claims, and their relationship

to both the archive and practice(s) of writing. We believe that historical knowledge is

not only located in the archive but also resides in and is expressed in our texts, whether

or not they are presented as narratives. This also makes us as (business) historians

crucial in the production of historical knowledge. A more deliberate and thoroughgoing

engagement with these issues would leave business history better placed to justify its

methods, its forms, and its claims.

Specifically, we believe that this article has two important implications, one

internal to the discipline and one external. First, in the context of the call for a narrative

turn, we urge business historians to deliberately re-engage with (multiple forms of)

narrative history writing. An epistemologically-informed use of narrative as a distinct

and legitimate form of historical knowledge might help business history negotiate the

realist and interpretivist stances between which it is currently awkwardly divided,

satisfying neither completely. Developing the language and tools to talk cogently about

narrative history writing as a valid and analytically rigorous epistemology can help the

discipline escape the trap into which it has fallen of seeing realist and interpretivist

positions as always and inviolably dichotomous. Critically, narratives are not simply

naïve, realist chronicles but nor does their constructed, interpretive nature render them

devoid of rigour or solidity. Finding the language and tools for this dialogue need not

encourage homogeneity but could instead support a more harmonious pluralism in

which those operating from different traditions within the discipline are better able to

converse and to read one another’s work. We view this article as taking a step towards

opening that dialogue by showing the centrality of these issues for a small sample of

business historians. The intention is not to demonstrate representativeness but

possibilities.

Such a dialogue might be advanced through a genuine re-engagement with the

broad field of historical studies, where numerous analytical tools, methods, and forms

of narrative writing – as well, of course, as advanced work in historiography and the

philosophy of history – are available. The narrative turn in business history can be

further advanced through a greater reflexivity with regard to the narratives we write and

how we write them, a reflexivity that complements the move to take narratives about

business as apt subjects of study.

It is not our intention to prescribe the forms that reflexivity should take; instead

we explore what might be gained through one concrete example, a paper exploring

entrepreneurship in early nineteenth-century Britain.58 In this work the authors

purposefully employed a tactic of twice telling the same ‘story’ from two different

perspectives. The purpose of this double-narration, which was motivated by an

encounter with sources that revealed their ‘sheer resistance to explanation, if by

explanation is meant an unfolding – ex plans – of a biographical life’, is not to

demonstrate that either one narrative or the other is ‘wrong’: instead it is, at least in

part, to reveal the constructed and contingent qualities of both narratives. In the gap that

opens between them we see that ‘the more we seek to narrate and thus theorize on these

conditions the more the [our subjects are] … placed in a derivative role’.59 If this seems

a pessimistic view – that to narrate is to negate – then the point is missed. Rather it is

argue for an explicit acknowledgement of the ‘intellectual conceit of narratives that find

in human lives something with plot’.60 That, too, is our purpose here.

But business historians do not speak only to each other or to other historians. As

we have several times indicated, business historians, especially those located in Europe,

where they are more likely to be employed by a business school, increasingly seek to

speak also to management scientists, organizational theorists, and a host of other social

scientists. In that context, to recommend a turn to explicitly narrative history writing

derived from a turn to history and historiography might seem counter-intuitive, willful,

or even self-destructive. However, we believe that this need not be the case. Hence we

turn to our second implication, one concerned with relations external to the borders of

the discipline.

Currently, business historians seeking a dialogue with scholars beyond the

boundary of the sub and parent discipline often struggle to make themselves understood

and to succeed in publishing in leading management and organizational studies

journals. This is not because they study irrelevant or uninteresting topics but because

their sources, methods, and genres are all alien, sometimes even distrusted.

Once again, as with the internal dialogue discussed above, business historians

wishing to rehabilitate narrative history writing have been caught in a trap. For highly

scientistic scholars, occupying the mainstream of management studies, the apparently

‘found’ nature of business historians’ sources renders them almost mere anecdotalists

and certainly not real social scientists. For more constructivist social scientists, such as

those interested in narratives and narrativization (who study narratives but rarely write

them), the same apparently found quality of business historians’ sources, coupled with

a reluctance to explicate the epistemological status of the texts they go on to write and

an unfamiliar genre of writing, casts an unmistakable shade of naive objectivism over

business history. And for both camps these doubts can be complicated by a nagging

suspicion that historians are condemned by the nature of their sources to imposing

naturalized but nonetheless constructed narrative structures on to the past – a slight of

hand they then refuse to admit.

It is only through an explicit engagement with (and acknowledgement of) the

questions raised here about how narratives are constructed that it will be possible to

begin to answer and allay the doubts held by those outside the discipline. We will be

better positioned to explain the genesis and foundation of the epistemological claims

that can be made for and through narrative history writing. The narrative turn in the

social sciences has already persuaded many that narratives can and should be studied as

constitutive. We should, as a discipline, be able to explain that the narratives we write

are equally constitutive – that is thought-forming and thus analytical. Engagement with

these questions should begin with reflecting on and talking about current practices in

business history writing, as we have done here.

1Notes

Hansen, “Business History,” 709–710 and 697.2 Decker, “The Silence of the Archive,” 6.3 Lipartito, “Connecting the Cultural and the Material,” 704.4 White, Metahistory; Ricoeur, Time and Narrative.5 Kobrak and Schneider, “Varieties of Business History”; Decker, “The Silence of the Archives”; Schwarzkopf, “What is an Archive”; Fellman and Popp, “Lost in the Archive”.6 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History,” 251.7 Fellman and Popp, “Lost in the Archive”.8 Throughout we use the term ‘the archive’ but recognize that business historians rely on an increasingly large range of sources, many of them not found in archives as conventionally understood. Whilst recognizing the complexities involved we use ‘the archive’ as shorthand for the sources on which we rely in constructing our narratives. It may be that the characteristics of different types of sources subtly imprint themselves on the process of narrative construction but teasing out those effects is beyond the scope of this paper.9 William, one of our respondents, described this as the ‘inducto-deductive cycle … a process of refinement … [and] understanding.’ Fellman and Popp, “Lost in the Archive,” 218 and 240.10 Munslow, Narrative and History: 24.11 Decker, “The Silence of the Archive,” 612 Ketelaar, “Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives,” 132, 133, and 135.13 Burton, Archive Stories: 2.14 Steedman, “The Space of Memory”.15 Trouillot, Silencing the Past.16 Wake, “Writing from the Archive”.17 Steedman, “The Space of Memory”.18 Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History”.19 Hansen and Wadhwani, “Can Business History and Anthropology Learn from Each Other?”20 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History,” 251.21 Sachs, “Letters to a Tenured Historian”.22 Keulen and Kroeze, “Understanding Management Gurus,” 177.23 White, Metahistory.24 White, “The Value of Narrative,” 5.25 Ritter, “Archival Research”.26 Coleman, “Uses and Abuses,” 149 and 15427 Pope, “Business History and Business Anthrolpology,” 71.28 Coleman, “Uses and Abuses”, 149 and 151.29 Coleman, “Uses and Abuses”, 154.30 De Jong, A. and D. Higgins, “New Business History?,” 2. Emphasis added.31 Toms and Wilson, “In Defence of Business History,” 111.32 Lipartito, “Culture and the Practice of Business History,” 4.33 Foote, quoted in Sachs, “Letters to a Tenured Historian,” 31.34 Kroeze and Keulen, “Leading a Multinational,” 1266 and 1270.35 Kroeze and Keulen, “Leading a Multinational,” 1268 and 1266.36 For example in the scholarly journal Rethinking history, there have been special issues on History as Creative Writing.37 Toms and Wilson, “In Defence of Business History”; Amatori, “Business History as History”.38 Pihlainen, “Realist Histories?,” 177.39 Pihlainen, “Realist Histories?,” 178.40 Kobrak and Schneider, “Varieties of Business History,” 402 and 401.41 Kobrak and Schneider, “Varieties of Business History,” 402.42 Kobrak and Schneider, “Varieties of Business History,” 404, 406, and 407

43 Kobrak and Schneider, “Varieties of Business History,” 411.44 Hansen, “Business History”.45 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History”.46 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History,” 253.47 Toms and Wilson, “In Defence of Business History”.48 Lipartito, “Culture and the Practice of Business History,” 4.49 McNeill, “Trust and Professional Identity”.50 Lipartito, “Connecting the Cultural and the Material,” 288.51 Fellman and Popp, “Lost in the Archive”.52 Fellman and Popp, “Lost in the Archive”.53 Goodman, “Editorial: History as Creative Writing”.54 Heehs, “Shaped like themselves,” 27.55 Powell, “Dreaming Charles Eastman,” 115.56 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History”.57 Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies for Organizational History”; Toms and Wilson, “In Defence of Business History”.58 Popp and Holt, “The Presence of Entrepreneurial Opportunity”.59 Popp and Holt, “The Presence of Entrepreneurial Opportunity,” 66 and 64.60 Popp and Holt, “The Presence of Entrepreneurial Opportunity,” 66.

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Appendix 1: sources, methods and scope

This is paper is exploratory in scope. It is intended to sketch out a field of enquiry and as historians we begin

that task empirically. Our primary sources are a series of semi-structured interviews with business historians

active in producing business history texts. Previously, we carried out interviews with business historians in

order to better understand their archival practices. For this study we approached an expanded set of

respondents with additional questions, wishing to explore how they constructed and understood the historical

knowledge generated by the texts they write. We aim, through reflection on our interviewees’ words,

combined with our own experiences of writing as business historians, to begin to open up these questions.

We conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with six business historians over two phases.

All interviews were taped and transcribed. The interviews, supplemented with email conversations, aimed to

develop an understanding, first, of the particular historian’s practical approaches to archival work before

moving on to a consideration of underlying epistemological principles, the relationship between the archive

and the research question or topic. In the second interview we asked about the process of writing, the role of

writing in historical scholarship, and whether they considered themselves to be narrative historians.

Interviews have been anonymized in line with social science practice. The transcribed

interviews have not been subject to formal methods of content or discourse analysis. Our sources

and methods are thus qualitative, triangulated, and interpretive – appropriate for an exploratory

piece of research aimed at a first mapping of an under-developed research domain, namely the

writing practices of professional business historians.

The selection of candidates for interview relied on the authors’ personal contacts and is not

intended to be representative. We believe this to be appropriate in an exploratory paper. Marja (the only

female) and Thor are young, post-doctoral scholars. Henrik, William, Duncan, and Adrian are all senior

scholars. Nonetheless, our sampling aimed to identify a group varied in age, seniority, nationality, research

interest, and geographical and temporal foci. All are either British or Scandinavian (Denmark, Sweden, and

Finland). However, the gender balance is heavily biased towards males (the authorial team is gender

balanced and Anglo-Scandinavian in composition).

It is notable that our sample, though comprising historians from four different countries,

contains no US-based scholars. This requires some explanation and justification. We acknowledge that our

findings may well have been different if our sample had included US-based scholars (just as they probably

would have been if we included, for example, German, Spanish, or Japanese scholars). Before exploring the

issue further we would again stress that this an exploratory study and does not aim at representativeness.

Though the discipline of business history is highly internationalized relatively distinct national

or regional traditions do persist. These traditions are institutional, epistemological, thematic, and even genre

oriented. This paper aims to contribute to a narrative turn in business history, itself closely related to and

deriving much of its impetus from the historic turn in management and organization studies. These

phenomena are much more prominent in Europe, where they largely originated, than they are in the USA.

Hence we thought it important to address this first exploratory study to a European context, where it is both

more relevant and more vital.

Institutionally, US-based business historians are much more likely to be located in history

departments than those in the UK and some other European nations. In the UK and many other European

countries business historians are probably more likely to be located in business and management schools.

The strong clusters of business historians at Henley Business School, University of Reading and at

Copenhagen Business School are excellent examples. These institutional differences are fundamental as they

are a significant factor in structuring other variations. Thus, in epistemological terms, US-based business

historians are typically in much closer contact with mainstream history than their European counterparts. In

turn, this closer contacts sees US-based business historians often responding in terms of their choice of

themes to developments in the larger field of history. Gender and race were largely first added to business

history’s repertoire by US-based scholars and most recently the history of capitalism has come powerfully to

fore in the USA whilst gaining, so far, very little traction in Europe. In turn, US-based business historians are

more likely to prioritise monographs over journal articles or to target history journals.

As we have already noted, European business historians are much more often located in

schools of business and management. Epistemologically and thematically they are thus much more strongly

influenced by cognate social sciences, especially management and organization studies, and as a

consequence have reoriented much more of their publishing strategies towards journals and in particular non-

history journals. In short, their dialogue with those beyond the boundaries of their discipline is more intense.

It is vital that that dialogue be both cogent and comprehensible. Thus, we believe that the second of the two

implications we outlined in our conclusion is both more pressing and richer in opportunities for European

business historians than it is for their US-based counterparts. At the same time, the reorientation of European

business historians towards the social sciences has revealed divisions between positivist and interpretivist

streams, as shown in this article. Thus, the first of the two implications we identified, that of improving

dialogue within is again both more pressing and richer in opportunities for European business historians than

it is for their US-based counterparts. The question of business history’s relationship to history and narrative

is then simply more urgent and more vexed in Europe than it is in the US.