Abstract

"When does a new source enable a business historian to reopen a problem?"

Patrick Fridenson, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (patrick.fridenson@ehess.fr)

The typical approach of a business historian today is to frame a problem, mobilize adequate sources, explore them by choosing a scale, a panoply of tools and a theory, and build a narrative which depicts the processes observed and the results. The aim is to open a new topic or to revise common wisdom. A number of such studies also reflect on how the author and her or his work are situated, and how the exploration of the mobilized sources often changes the initial problem setting. During many years further researches by other scholars criticize the shortcomings of the picture that has been built or they enrich it, till the business historian’s construction becomes obsolete. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a different issue. When, afterwards, a fully unexpected source appears, materializes, comes to the foreground, what should the business historian do ? A striking example is the book by sociologist Robert Freeland on General Motors' organization between the years 1924 and 1970 (2001), which fruitfully challenged dominant theories of control and efficiency. I am currently confronted by a similar problem. The grandchildren of a top manager of a major French family business have donated a series of notes and letters about the period 1930-1943 to which I have been given access. They enable me to illuminate a world of intense conflicts, of irrationality created by contradictory rational analyses and opposite reconstructions of the recent past. In such an event a business historian works like an experimental biologist. She or he uses the shock of the unexpected source to show how splendid scholarly wisdom may hide phenomena or processes which were outside the scope of analysis.