Another year, our seventeenth, draws to a close at Enterprise & Society. I hope you have enjoyed reading this year’s volume as much as I have enjoyed helping to put it together.
Traditionally, our December issue carries the Business History Conference (BHC) presidential address. For reasons beyond everyone’s control, Margaret Graham’s (McGill) stimulating address on the topic of “When the Corporation Almost Displaced the Entrepreneur” will appear in the first issue of the 2017 volume. However, this issue, as is also traditional, does carry summaries of the dissertations short-listed for the Krooss Prize. This year’s finalists were Michael Aldous, Jessica Burch, Anne Fleming, and Lindsay Schakenbach Regele. As ever, the work of these promising young scholars reminds us that business history is in rude health, and that diversity, innovativeness, and rigor remain defining hallmarks of the discipline. I am sure that we have much fascinating work to look forward to from this year’s four finalists. In 2016 the Krooss Prize was won by Anne Fleming for her dissertation, “City of Debtors: Law, Loan Sharks, and the Shadow Economy of Urban Poverty, 1900–1970.”
Along with the dissertation summaries, this issue hosts a series of research articles. I feel confident that these articles exemplify the reach and ambition of both business history as a field and of Enterprise & Society as a journal. With Lee Vinsel we dive into the role of government in setting standards in the automobile industry, and Sebastian Teupe tells a fascinating tale of some of the contrasting ways in which to sell televisions. Thereafter, we travel with Julie Bower to the United Kingdom to sample aspects of the brewing industry, before crossing the North Sea to explore state-owned industries in Norway with Einar Lie. This issue also sees the appearance of major intervention from two of the field’s most important scholars, Lou Galambos and Franco Amatori. I feel sure that their provocative and wide-ranging article, “The Entrepreneurial Multiplier Effect,” is going to act as stimulus to debate for a long time to come. To get that process started, I have commissioned two comments on the article from David Sicilia and Dan Wadhwani. Those comments, along with a response from Professors Galambos and Amatori, will appear in a forthcoming issue.
I want to end by thanking all those that make this work possible: Book Reviews Editor Richard Weiner and his assistant Jessica Cortesi; the Editorial Board, our Associate Editors—Shane Hamilton (University of York), Per Hansen, (Copenhagen Business School), and Sharon Murphy (Providence College)—all those involved at Cambridge University Press, especially Diane Davis, and last but very definitely not least, Carol Lockman. However, the last word of thanks must go to our referees. I cannot better what I said last year: our work would simply be impossible without their diligence, application, and insight. A list of those assisting Enterprise & Society between September 2015 and August 2016 follows immediately.
