Papers presented by Bartow J. Elmore since 2019
2024 Providence, Rhode Island
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Bartow J. Elmore, University of Ohio
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"What Happens When the Business You Write About Comes to Your Home"
Bartow J. Elmore, Ohio State University
Abstract:
This presentation explores business historians’ relationships with the firms they study and draws on my personal experience with Bayer, the German life-sciences and agricultural firm, which bought St-Louis-based Monsanto in 2018. After I published Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food, an environmental history of Monsanto, Bayer reached out and said they wanted to talk. Months later a senior vice president of the company and another executive traveled to Ohio to speak with me in my home. This talk will explore what came out of those conversations and what business historians should do in these situations. What are the boundaries between academia and activism? How should scholars protect themselves when writing about businesses that are still in operation? Can business history help a company like Bayer become a more sustainable enterprise? We’ll explore these questions and more as we discuss the boundaries between a company’s past and present.