A lecture in ELTE, by Daniel Raff

Daniel Raff is an Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School. His research interests include business history and strategy. He joined Wharton in 1994 and was previously appointed at Harvard University and Oxford University. He fellowships include the National Bureau of Economic Research (1988–present) and the Wharton Financial Institutions Center (2000–present). He received his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987, his BPhil at Oxford University in 1978, his MPA at Princeton University in 1976, and his BA at New College in 1973.

After WBHCEE 2023, Professor Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) visits again Budapest and ELTE.

Title of the lecture: “Five Locomotives and a Couple of Glimpses into One Very Capacious Caboose: Some Concepts for the Business History of Firms and Some Applications”

Abstract: The paper which follows is as a text addressed to two audiences which generally think themselves quite distinct, management academics and historians.  The core business of the paper is an attempt to clarify and relate a group of concepts commonly assumed (and often actually deployed) in both management academia and historical research, especially research in either category amounting to the history of organizations.  The concepts are analysis, causation, explanation, agency (of individuals and in the context of formal organizations), and that of a causal order coupled to a particular conception of time. I view each concept as a sort of engine of inquiry and in itself a powerful one—a locomotive, so to speak.  The caboose is the last car on a train.  It is the place where the train crew live during any journey.  The concepts are illustrated in discussion of the life cycle of a once dramatically innovative—in customer-facing aspects but at least as importantly in back-office operations—firm in the American retail sector.  That discussion concerns an example of the sort of place we as academics, management academics and historians alike, live in our work lives and shows off the usefulness of the concepts as developed.

Time: 03.07.2025 10:00 AM

Place: 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 6–8. First Floor 11.

Photo: Daniel Raff, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania