The global retail sector has undergone one of the most dramatic periods of corporate failure in modern business history. Once-dominant giants such as Sears, JCPenney, Debenhams, Edcon, and Toys "R" Us collapsed not simply because of the disruptive rise of e-commerce, but because their internal systems—strategic judgment, cultural adaptability, governance discipline, and investment priorities—failed to evolve on time. This paper challenges the conventional narrative that retail decline was technologically predetermined. Instead, it shows that the decisive breakdowns were internal: managerial myopia, financialization-driven resource erosion, and cultural rigidity that hindered organizations' ability to sense, seize, and transform in response to strategic inflection points. Drawing on eight cross-country case studies and integrating insights from the Structure–Conduct–Performance framework, Porter’s competitive strategy, the Resource-Based View, and Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the study identifies consistent patterns across diverse markets. Retail giants that collapsed did not lack resources; they lacked the ability to renew them. By contrast, resilient incumbents such as Walmart, Target, and Inditex demonstrate that reinvestment, cultural coherence, and organizational agility—not scale or history—determine survival. The study contributes a unified model explaining how strategic, cultural, and governance failures interact to erode adaptive capacity. It concludes with practical implications for executives and boards seeking to rebuild resilience in a digital, financially volatile era.

Abstract This study investigates how small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) respond to deglobalization and economic nationalism, using historical evidence from fascist Italy, a period of autarky and restricted international trade. While prior research has focused primarily on larger firms, especially multinational enterprises (MNEs), the strategic behaviour of the resource‐constrained category of SMEs remains underexplored in both management and business history literatures. Drawing on archival material from the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano and historical sources, we identify four adaptive strategies: (i) market repositioning, (ii) national re‐branding, (iii) disguising core business, and (iv) mobilizing formal ties. Our findings reveal that, while SMEs draw from the strategic playbook of MNEs, they implement these strategies in distinct ways due to internal and external constraints. In doing so, they exhibit both strategic and political ambidexterity to adapt. They leverage their distinctive flexibility and agility by mobilizing internal capabilities (e.g., brand identity), and resources (e.g., formal international ties). This enables SMEs’ market repositioning and allows them to achieve symbolic alignment with government agendas through reshaping narratives to secure critical resources. Ultimately, this leads to bolder strategies like pivoting from global niche to broader domestic markets. This framework offers insights into SMEs’ resilience under deglobalization and economic nationalism.

A high appraisal of the monograph devoted to the history of the oil business in the Russian Empire is given. The significant author’s contribution to the comprehensive disclosure of the subject of the origin, establishing and evolution of the oil business in Russia even to the point of 1917, of its different structural aspects and features, regional specificity, main ways of the business of the joint-stock oil companies, is detected.

This article traces the evolution of paternalism at Michelin from 1889 to 2024. Rather than disappearing with the welfare state and modern management, Michelin’s paternalism persisted through change and adaptation. Using archival materials, we trace how Michelin combined material care, emotional attachment, and symbolic practices to maintain control over its workforce across four periods. We propose a framework that distinguishes between the stable and changing elements of paternalistic management by showing that while tools and techniques evolved, the underlying structure of moral authority and worker alignment endured. The article advances business history debates, first by illustrating how forms of managerial control can survive institutional change by adjusting to new expectations, reconsidering the place of affect, identity, and belonging in the history of corporate governance, and second, by offering a longterm perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), showing how Michelin’s paternalism prefigured CSR by embedding social concerns into corporate strategy.

This article analyzes the Wallenberg family’s central role within Sweden’s neutrality-industrial complex (NIC) during the Cold War, highlighting their secret collaboration with the military intelligence service. Drawing on archival evidence from the Swedish War Archives and the family bank SEB, the study shows how the family’s uniquely dominant position in industry, banking, and national defense made them a close partner to the intelligence community. By applying the Resource Mobilization Model from the literature on military-industrial complexes, the article further argues that Sweden’s NIC mainly developed as a corporatist response to perceived Soviet threats, requiring close coordination between state, military, and business elites. The Wallenbergs’ cooperation with the military and economic intelligence services—specifically through their control of SEB and large Swedish exporting firms—had both business and nonbusiness-related reasons, including nationalism and elite consensus on total defense. This study adds to the sparse literature in business history on the relationship between the business and intelligence communities and demonstrates how elite business families can use access to senior decision makers and classified information in the service of both national security and to advance their own strategic positioning.

<i>Japanese Capitalism and Entrepreneurship: A History of Business from the Tokugawa Era to the Present</i>, by Pierre-Yves Donzé and Julia S. Yongue

Abstract This article traces the history of the life sciences business in the Cambridge–Boston area and explores how it became the global epicenter of the modern therapeutics industry. While business history scholarship on therapeutics is extensive, few have studied recent technological modalities—from therapeutic proteins to cell and gene therapies—or adopted a regional ecosystem perspective. Based on archival materials and oral histories, this research bridges these works and incorporates insights from the innovation ecosystems framework. It considers how dynamic interactions between an evolving network of complementary and interdependent actors, including therapeutics firms, universities, hospitals, and risk capital providers, enhanced innovative capacity. This perspective also illuminates how ecosystem strength derived from the co-evolution of actors—from universities restructuring technology transfer offices to academic scientists becoming entrepreneurs. The research further highlights the nonlinearity of innovation processes. It shows how an extraordinary interplay between structural advantage, serendipitous timing, and strategic actions cultivated an unparalleled capacity to translate emergent technologies into novel therapies.

How has caste influenced entrepreneurship in India in the past and how does it do so in the present? Using the Industrial Census of 1911, this paper provides the first detailed caste-level mapping of firms in Indian business history and links it to the present by an analysis of the Economic Census of 2013–2014. It finds that while trading castes were dominant, there were significant regional variations and nontrading castes were far more important than usually posited in the literature. Over the course of a century, the social base of entrepreneurship has widened slowly but significant barriers remain. The paper argues that “caste embeddedness” through the nature of wealth distribution, social capital, and ritual purity affects entrepreneurial choices and presents a typology of “caste,” “caste-advantage,” “caste-restricted,” and “noncaste” businesses that characterize the economic life of India.

While archives are common in developed countries, it is generally recognised that they are lacking in developing countries. To cope with the challenges faced by a 500-year-old water irrigation system in a semi-arid region in the south of Morocco, we demonstrate that the absence of archives invites methodological exploration, making the invention of new sources, especially visuals, inevitable. They serve as mnemonic devices for keeping track of community water management infrastructures. Documenting actors’ reconstruction of organisational memory reveals new memory categories: communal, community-based, common, and historicised memory. Inspired by the eight principles of Ostrom’s theory on the commons, our case study also shows that the governance of commons cannot last beyond one generation ­without a process of organisational re-membering. Organisational re-membering, as the ninth principle of the commons theory, induces memory as well as a renewed community membership.

This study explores the transformation of Human Resource Management (HRM) strategies in private companies from 1995 to 2024, emphasizing employee satisfaction and retention amid technological and socio-economic shifts. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the research examines how digital innovations, remote work, and evolving workforce demographics have reshaped HR practices. Findings reveal that forward-thinking HRM, such as flexible scheduling, digital platforms, and wellness initiatives, correlates strongly with higher employee satisfaction and a 15–20% improvement in retention. The influence of Millennials and Gen Z underscores the growing demand for meaningful work, work-life balance, and inclusive environments. The study also highlights the strategic pivot of HR from administrative roles to data-informed, employee-centered functions. Despite noted limitations, this research contributes valuable insights into the dynamic nature of modern HRM, offering guidance for future practice and research. It calls for continued adaptation to emerging technologies and generational expectations to sustain organizational resilience and workforce loyalty.

This paper examines how automated multiphasic health testing and services (AMHTS), which were originally developed in the United States but never widely adopted there, gained traction in Japan despite being excluded from the country’s public health insurance system. Drawing on Fitzgerald et al.’s theory of interlocking interactions, we show how Japanese physicians and other stakeholders reframed AMHTS as a streamlined and affordable alternative to Ningen Dokku, Japan’s high-cost, elite medical checkup service. This creative reinterpretation helped spur efforts by actors such as the National Federation of Health Insurance Societies (Kenporen) to provide health screening subsidies outside the formal insurance framework, which supported the widespread adoption of the AMHTS by middle-class consumers. We introduce the concept of the “democratization of premium health services” to explain how care originally designed for elite users was redefined as both accessible and trustworthy. By highlighting how symbolic framing can promote innovation diffusion even beyond formal institutional boundaries, this study contributes to the business history of health care.

Achieving and maintaining a monopolist position is often assumed to be among the objectives of a firm. However, there are instances where it is better to operate in a competitive market than remain a monopolist. Monopolistic firms may, therefore, push for deregulation – at least on their terms. We introduce the concept of monopolists for competition to analyse two such companies, Swedish telecom operator Televerket and the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE). Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on incumbent action and corporate political activity (CPA) by state-owned/state-controlled companies, a field that has received little interest in business history research. We find that the personal political skills of the companies’ managers played a crucial role in the deregulatory process, as institutional obstacles prevented them from using many standard CPA tools. Fear of being perceived as monopolistic also restricted them from leveraging their market positions when controlling the evolving market structures.

Abstract Business education and research in Ireland are currently flourishing and scholars in Ireland punch above their weight in the international research literature – ironically the main reason for the demise of the Irish Journal of Management. But the road to the strong performance of the business academy in Ireland is both long and winding, stretching back to before the foundation of the state and reflecting change in the Irish economy and in the education priorities of Irish society. This paper examines the history of business and management education and research in Ireland and the emergence and development of the Journal of Irish Business and Administrative Research, the precursor to the Irish Journal of Management. The paper offers some thoughts on current challenges and threats and considers whether the internationalisation of research scholarship might sound the death knell for detailed research on business and management in Ireland.

This article introduces ‘popular sources’ (民间文献 minjian wenxian)—original business records, ledgers, and correspondence from Chinese firms—that promise to transform the study of Chinese business history. Drawing primarily from the recently published 88-volume Jinshang shiliao jicheng collection of Shanxi merchant documents from the late imperial and Republican periods, the article outlines a six-step methodology for analysing these materials. Just as De Roover revolutionised European business history through Medici bank records, these sources enable a ‘bottom-up’ understanding of Chinese enterprise that challenges established assumptions about business practices. By illuminating internal operations and market relationships in unprecedented detail, these materials provide valuable insights not only for China specialists but also for scholars of global capitalism seeking meaningful comparisons between Western and non-Western business organisation. This study serves both as a methodological compass for scholars wishing to use these materials, while showcasing how they promise to reshape the field.

ABSTRACT Organizational Theory has engaged with other fields of knowledge since the late twentieth century, particularly at the intersection of business, management, and history. Now, 40 years after the introduction of a promising relationship between history, the past, and historiographical methods in Organizational Theory – under the influence of adjacent fields such as Business History – organizational theorists appear to have moved beyond the debate on whether the past is relevant to organizational research. Instead, the academic discussion has shifted toward how to operationalize this dialogue. In this article, we propose two questions for reflection: Through which epistemologies are historiographical approaches mobilized in Organizational Theory? How do such epistemologies support the methodological operationalization of historiographical research in the field? The reflections developed in this article are structured around three main points, grounded in a critique of the dominant Anglo-European or Euro-North American geography in the epistemology, theory, and historiographic methods within Organizational Theory. First, we revisit the cause-and-effect debate between structure and strategy, influenced by Chandler’s ideas, Edith Penrose’s resource-based view (RBV), and new insights from institutionalists. Second, we examine the recurring calls from critical organizational theorists advocating for a closer integration of Organizational Theory with the discipline of history. These calls played a role in the so-called Anglo-European historical turn in Organizational Theory, introducing new theoretical currents influenced by constructivist and interpretivist ontological perspectives, as well as epistemologies that relativize the past. Third, we highlight the emergence of theoretical currents stemming from the rewriting and contestation of organizational historiography, reinterpreted in epistemic, theoretical, and empirical contexts from diverse geographies of the Global South.

This paper provides a methodological contribution around how the history of a sector can be researched when the records of the past have either not been maintained or erased. Set against the backdrop of Vietnam’s colonial history and experiences of political turmoil, we had to overcome this challenge creatively, understanding what made sense for that context, what could be asked, and how to collect data when it was not possible due to (auto)censorship or absence of archives. We developed two alternative methods of inquiry: mobilising objects to discuss stories that otherwise would be censored, which we refer to as an object-oriented method, and an art-based method, based on critical fabulations. We explain the challenges of using traditional business history methods in this context, present the process of developing these two novel methods through empirical accounts, and finally discuss the ethical implications and limitations researchers might face in their application.

Where people face immature or contested political institutions – a characteristic of many lower-income countries – the lack of access to the ballot box may result in political violence. Terrorism, uprisings, and other forms of individual or collective action to shift power may result in damage, fatalities, and, above all, uncertainty about what is to happen next. How then do businesses respond to political violence? This paper argues that political violence can be an alternative way in which to understand business history in difficult environments, creating less of a ‘rupture’ in the history of a firm than a ‘structural break’. By using stock prices and popular press, researchers can triangulate the strategic responses of firms and sectors to political uncertainty. This methodological framework is developed using political violence in one country, Russia during the nineteenth century, to show the effect of such violence on firms and their environment.

This paper will revisit the intersection of Alfred Chandler with Oliver Williamson (and the New Institutional Economics more generally) and attempt to draw lessons from it. I will argue that despite their similar influences, both from the Carnegie School and more generally from the varied currents of post-war managerialism, Chandler and Williamson modelled the corporation quite differently. On the one hand, their disagreement had what I view as a salutary effect on the economics of organisation by lending the imprimatur of Chandler to the capabilities approach. On the other hand, Chandler’s rejection of the NIE also arguably threw out the Coasean baby with the Williamsonian – or, more precisely, the asset-specificity – bathwater. I attempt to outline a path for post-Chandlerian business history that retains the lessons of Weber and the Carnegie School while adding the lessons of Ronald Coase.

The profit-centric mentality within much of the global fashion industry causes great harm to societies, environments, and international economies. This focus has come under stark criticism from academia, industry, and consumers who call for broader, more inclusive definitions of success. These should consider people, places, interconnections, and relationships, alongside financial gain. This paper explores how our engagement with fashion’s future can be expanded by looking into its past. This backwards gaze employing a ‘sustainable prosperity’ approach can provide both context and examples for current and future industry application. Focusing on fashion businesses established prior to the rise of fast fashion, we indicate the value of non-traditional sources and viewing business success from a more holistic perspective. We ask how ‘prosperity’ might be defined for a more diverse range of fashion firms. Utilising examples from the 19th and 20th centuries, we suggest that the boundaries of business history of fashion methodologies and sources should be extended. These should account for social, environmental, and collective as well as economic and technological success. If we wish fashion to extend the concept of prosperity, this approach should also be applied within historical contexts as well.

This introduction discusses the evolution of the discipline of business history in Japan in the context of its global transformation. We show that, while Japanese researchers were largely integrated into international research networks until around 2000, there has since been a loss of presence. Over the past two decades, business history has experienced a profound transformation worldwide, engaging in dialogue with management studies and other social sciences. By comparison, Japanese business historians have continued to pursue the Chandlerian paradigm, with descriptive studies into the evolution of firms. Our special issue highlights the potential for renewal in Japanese business history research by showcasing a new generation of researchers pursuing new approaches and research questions.