Moderne Unternehmensgeschichte: Eine themen- und theorieorientierte Einfuhrung (review)

This book by the German economic historian Hartmut Berghoff intends to introduce German students, and to some degree managers and entrepreneurs, to the theory and themes of "modern business history." Business history has been thriving in Germany for about fifteen years. Given the hagiographic tradition of German business history, there has been a marked change in that period. Commissioned studies of German business in the Third Reich, for example, proved to be anything but hagiographic. It is thus plausible to speak of a "modern" business history in contrast to the "traditional" one. While the economic historian Toni Pierenkemper in his introduction to business history (Unternehmensgeschichte. Eine Einführung in ihre Methoden und Ergebnisse, 2000) focused mainly on business and its economic logic, Berghoff chooses to deal with themes that better conform with the title of this journal—the interaction and interdependence of enterprise and society.

After an introduction on the advantages of studying business history and a summarizing theoretical chapter on entrepreneurs/manag-ers and business, Berghoff introduces the German reader to Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s work. Overall, the discussion of Chandler's major works is well balanced; Chandler's major critics Michael Piore, Charles Sabel, and Philip Scranton are also presented. Berghoff concludes that Chandler "excessively exaggerated" (p. 103) the importance of big business and that he neglected the small and medium-sized enterprises, in German the "Mittelstand," to which Berghoff then devotes a whole chapter. While at the beginning he tells the reader how important small and medium-sized enterprises are, he later discusses the problem with that term, since it mainly refers to the number of employees, not sales, and thus is quite difficult to use given the technological change over the last four decades. Berghoff next dedicates a chapter to multinational firms, mainly discussing the British and American literature. Though the role of different societies and political orders for business becomes rather clear already in this chapter, the importance of society for business becomes very obvious in his chapter on business culture, where Berghoff does not evade the problems inherent in the very notion of "business culture." All these chapters have a comparative perspective, looking at the American, the British, and the German experiences—other countries are spared.

The next chapter, on the role of politics on business and the economy, however, concentrates solely on the German experience. This chapter, by far the longest in the book, offers a good overview. Yet here a more detailed, if not more balanced, account would have been desirable. Given the wide range of themes in this book, however, this was hardly possible. Certainly interesting also for non-German readers is Berghoff's discussion of the relations between labor and business, as well as of the relations between business and local communities. His chapter on the social history of the economic elite is one of the best parts of the book, particularly the discussion of the role of women, a far too neglected chapter in business history. Being a prejudiced historian of technology as well as an economic historian, I found his chapter on technology too narrow. Also, the chapter on marketing could have been more elaborated. But again, given the wide range of themes in this book, Berghoff needed to choose what he wanted to present. And it is certainly better to introduce the reader briefly to an important theme rather than to leave it out entirely.

To conclude, this is a very good, well-written, and informative introduction to business history, bringing in many different themes and discussing the major theories on business. Since the book is a revised manuscript of a lecture, it is sometimes overly general. It is important to note that all major theoretical discussions on business that Berghoff presents and discusses have been American or British, with no truly important German contribution. It is surely no coincidence that quite a number of the most important studies on business in...