The Great Depression? Challenging the Periodization of French Business History in the Interwar Period

In this essay we aim to demonstrate that economic and business historians‘ tendency to use moments of severe economic turbulence as turning points does not always fit with a periodization based on corporate change. In fact, our essay shows that the economic downturn of the early 1930s did not impact all companies‘ long-term strategies the same way and that it sometimes fostered management innovations or helped to reinforce nascent ideas. To illustrate our point we have chosen to look at two companies that, despite the Great Depression, developed new administrative methods and marketing innovations. They acted not only in a defensive mode but also to prepare for better times. The cases were deliberately taken from very different sectors. The first deals with heavy industry, using the metallurgy and chemicals company AFC-Pechiney; the second considers the family-owned and -managed retail group Galeries Lafayett

The Great Depression? Challenging the Periodization of French Business History in the Interwar Period

In this essay we aim to demonstrate that economic and business historians‘ tendency to use moments of severe economic turbulence as turning points does not always fit with a periodization based on corporate change. In fact, our essay shows that the economic downturn of the early 1930s did not impact all companies‘ long-term strategies the same way and that it sometimes fostered management innovations or helped to reinforce nascent ideas. To illustrate our point we have chosen to look at two companies that, despite the Great Depression, developed new administrative methods and marketing innovations. They acted not only in a defensive mode but also to prepare for better times. The cases were deliberately taken from very different sectors. The first deals with heavy industry, using the metallurgy and chemicals company AFC-Pechiney; the second considers the family-owned and -managed retail group Galeries Lafayett

Entrepreneurial Groups: Definition, Forms, and Historic Change

This article connects with the rapidly expanding idea that entrepreneurship is a collective action undergone by entrepreneurial groups - a debate so fundamental in its impact that it may ring in a paradigm shift in entrepreneurship studies. Yet, the emerging small group perspective to entrepreneurship treats the empirical phenomena as new, whereas historical studies suggest that entrepreneurial groups have been present all along, but have taken different forms across time and cultures. We adopt the view that the concept of entrepreneurial groups, which can function as an overarching term for various forms of collective engagement in entrepreneurship, goes beyond start-ups and new venture teams. This article features a broad definition of entrepreneurial groups as collaborative circles engaged in an entrepreneurial project and operating under organizational pressures. Such conceptualization is important because it allows a context-sensitive perspective of entrepreneurial groups that attends to the social and historic circumstances of group formation and their development. The papers featured in this special issue highlight diverse theoretical and empirical approaches to assist in understanding collective actors in entrepreneurship and further our understanding about entrepreneurial groups

The British aluminium industry, 1945-80s: chronicles of a death foretold?

The paper aims to give an overview of the evolution of the British aluminium industry after 1945. Its objective is to analyse the national character of the sector's evolution over the post-war period. The case seems to illustrate the so-called British economic 'failure' often quoted by economic historians writing about the period (Jones, 1997). Nevertheless, geographical, financial, managerial and cultural factors are crucial to understanding Britain's inability to sustain a domestically owned aluminium industry.British Aluminium Industry Post-SECOND World War Era British Economic Failure,