Business history

During his 20-year career as a professional boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard won world titles in five weight classes, became the first in his sport to earn more...

The story of a royal trading company comes to life on an 18th-century stock certificate.

The questions that boards, managers, and shareholders should be asking.

In the last year, war broke out, the economy took a nosedive, and an alarming number of businesses went belly up. Thus, it is with some urgency that we...

Stressful conversations are unavoidable in life. In business, they can run the gamut from firing a subordinate to, curiously enough, receiving praise....

A wounded-but-wiser AT&T veteran recounts how one of the world’s biggest and best-known companies became one of its most battered—and explains how others can avoid that fate.

Business and family are at odds in the United States. Whereas women once stayed home to care for the sick, the young, and the elderly, most now work outside...

When we make decisions, we make mistakes. We all know this from personal experience, of course. But in case we didn't, a stream of experimental evidence...

Democracy is in trouble. Fifty-five percent of Americans say their democracy is weak. A Pew Research poll of 27 countries shows that only 45% of people...

How the Japanese manufacturer YKK has stayed at the top of its industry.

In any sensible system of institutional governance, negligence would be sanctioned. So why is it that leaders of major corporations often seem to escape...

Pulling up the drawbridge has never been an option.

The battle to control the airwaves, from Herbert Hoover to Steve Jobs.

Strategic planners were among the first to adopt it in their work.

Agricultural inventions from 18th-century noble estates in France, including a wheat thresher, a tree transporter, and an incubation shed for chicken...

If you want to pinpoint a place and time that the first glints of the Management Century appeared on the horizon, you could do worse than Chicago, May 1886. There, to the recently formed American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Henry R. Towne, a cofounder of the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company, delivered an address titled “The […]

First, set aside the time.

Virtually everyone in the field of leadership studies can agree on the greatness of two or maybe three titles. But because it's axiomatic that leadership...

“There’s no need to dwell on the past; what matters is the future.” As business historians who consult frequently to companies, we hear some version of this sentiment all the time from executives. When the history of an organization does come up, it’s usually in connection with an anniversary—just part of the “balloons and fireworks,” […]

The Business Roundtable's letter is encouraging, but only if it leads to change.