Business Historians Beyond the Professoriate

Business Historians Beyond the Professoriate
The BHC Ad Hoc Committee on Business Historians Beyond the Professoriate proposes a
roundtable discussion featuring members of the committee and moderated by Roger Horowitz.
(No pre-written papers.) The panel will discuss the careers business historians pursue beyond
traditional tenure track research and teaching and how their training, while not specifically
geared toward those roles, enables them to thrive. We argue that the tools of historical analysis
can be the tools of good business decision making. Further, the specific knowledge that training
in business history instills is especially useful.
This roundtable features five business historians who are working (or have worked) outside the
professoriate.
Discussion themes will include:
- Understanding how organizations develop over time enables historians to lead or advise on
corporate structure, evolving managerial practices, market expansion/contraction, and change
management.
- Understanding how organizations behave in economic, social, cultural, and policy contexts
allows historians to lead rigorous outcome or impact assessments and inform
performance/impact metrics that take into account all stakeholders.
- Contextual analysis also enables historians to build products, services, or policies that better
serve the needs of customers, clients, or constituents.
- Business historians are comfortable with qualitative and quantitative research, leading to
rigorous evidence-based narratives for policy development, grant writing, and other
communications.
- Business historians collaborate with others in their organizations to combine business history
methods with established business practices.
Programming note: We wish to reach as wide an audience as possible with this round table, but
in particular wish to make it accessible to emerging scholars.
Erik Rau , Director, Library Services, Hagley Museum and Library, erau@hagley.org
Stephen Chambers , Director, The Winthrop Group, schambers@winthropgroup.com
Claire Brennecke , Economist, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cbrenn8@gmail.com
James Cortada , Sr. Research Fellow, University of Minnesota, jcortada@umn.edu
Elizabeth Brake , Vice President of Community Partnerships, Venture For America,
elizabeth@ventureforamerica.org
Chair, Roger Horowitz , Director, Center for the HIstory of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley
Museum and Library, rh@udel.edu