A review of current biographies and business histories

Abstract

From kiss-and-tell to war stories, fawning fables to muckraking, this is the new that promises to enliven if not always enlighten business history. E ver since Lee Iacocca wrote his best-selling autobiography, publishers have been releasing business and professional books that strip the veils from corporate oligarchs, or publishing unvarnished corporate histories that lay bare the weaknesses and foibles of management . No doubt managers who read love to scan these true (or not so true) tales of how GM, Chrys.ler, Ford, IBM, Du Pont, and dozens of other companies have muddled through. A number of reasons for this rash of new nonfiction fables can be listed. Revenge ranks high for many. Graduate schools of business now offer highly popular elective courses in business history that are much more interesting than the majority of eye-glazing business school courses. The Journal of Business History, published at Harvard, produces only scholarly articles that are mostly research-based. Because business history was one of my areas of teaching for a number of years, I read most of the new books concentrated in this area. Therefore, I want to provide here a classification of those books, from which readers can characterize forthcoming volumes and decide which ones are for them. As management becomes more professional, reading business history and related biographies can provide an interesting and useful self-development program for the thoughtful manager. These books can be classified into seven major types: * The kiss-and-tell book by disgruntled exemployees; ° War stories: How I won the commercial wars; • The company secrets of the XYZ company; • The fawning fable-noth ing but good news; • The thick description of a single company; • The muckrakers -expos ing the fools and rascals; • The genuine business history, by real historians. Let's look at each of these types and provide some examples published in recent years.