A corporate history is a historical account of a business or other co-operative organization. Usually it is produced in written format but it can also be published as audio or

audiovisual Audiovisual (AV) is electronic media possessing both a sound and a visual component, such as slide-tape presentations, films, television programs, corporate conferencing, church services, and live theater productions. Audiovisual service ...

ly. Thousands of companies across the industrialized world have recorded their histories, albeit in their own unique ways – from relatively benign, albeit colorful chronicles, usually written for the private

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual ...

s of founding families, to titles with well-defined corporate applications. Corporate histories in the United States have been particularly prolific, those in the UK less so.

History

In the late 19th century, corporate histories were initially written by

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwa ...

businessmen, either the founder of a company himself, members of the surviving family owners or long-serving employees. Rather than being sequential histories, as is now done, many of them were

diary A diary is a written or audiovisual record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digital. A personal ...

-type personal recollections or short, superficial

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...

exercises. One of the earliest corporate histories, that of a publishing company in the UK called the Catnach Press, was done in 1886. A notable early US corporate history, published in 1902, was that of

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co- ...

. Academic involvement probably started in 1924 when George Unwin and co-author George Taylor published a detailed history, ''Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights: The Industrial Revolution at Stockport and Marple''. It was published by the Manchester University Press. Between the World Wars, the majority of business histories, and especially in the UK, were house histories, consisting mainly of reminiscences and anecdotes. Only a tiny handful of serious work existed using business records which had found their way into museums, county record offices or the private possession of collectors. Corporate histories were typically unplanned. Relevant records were often discovered by chance and deemed interesting enough to turn into historical narratives which were funded either by the family descendants of the long-dead businessmen in question or, less frequently, the author in association with a publisher. They had one thing in common - they were generally records of companies that had died or otherwise dropped out of sight. One exception occurred In 1938, when the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government o ...

commissioned a two-volume 250-year anniversary history. Written by J. H. Clapham, professor of economic history at Cambridge, it took six years to produce. It was a deliberately celebratory vehicle for this famous British institution. Modern corporate history took a large conceptual step in 1947 when the then chairman of

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

, Geoffrey Heyworth (later Lord Heyworth) approached

G. N. Clark Sir George Norman Clark, (27 February 1890 – 6 February 1979) was an English historian, academic and British Army officer. He was the Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford from 1931 to 1943 and the Regius Profes ...

, who had led the national campaign against the destruction of business records, for his advice on writing the history Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch manufacturing company. Clark, who had just become a professor of modern history at Oxford, suggested as author a younger colleague, Charles Wilson. The result was a classic, two-volume work that transformed the writing of business history in the UK from a public relations exercise into a reputable branch of scholarship. Wilson's work, about one of western Europe's most important companies, made him the father of modern corporate histories in the UK.

Current practices

The majority of books written today are PR projects expressly designed to celebrate important anniversaries. There are also fewer: More histories of British companies were being produced in the last year of the 19th century than were published in the last year of the 20th century. Many more corporate histories are used in the education system of the US than in the UK and other countries. Many companies see their corporate histories as effective purveyors of long-term

organizational memory Organizational memory (OM) (sometimes called institutional or corporate memory) is the accumulated body of data, information, and knowledge created in the course of an organization's existence. The concept of organizational memory includes the id ...

and especially suitable for transmitting strategy. As such it can provide an efficient induction/educational tool for transient employees in the highly flexible labor market. Corporate historians collect and catalog materials and disseminate information for internal use. "When people think of an archives, they tend to think of the National Archives in Washington," Dave Smith, the manager of Walt Disney Co.'s multimillion-piece collection of artifacts, said in 2003. "But a lot of organizations maintain them, including businesses." Perhaps the largest corporate archive ever assembled is that of

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

, which began gathering historical material in 1921. As of 1999, its collection was overseen by a full-time staff of 11 people, and included of documents; 800,000 still photos; 12,000 various gadgets and artifacts, some of them dating back to Alexander Graham Bell; and 16,000 films and videos about AT&T.David Stamps
"The Next Wave of the Future: History"
''Training'' magazine, 1 December 1999

References

External links

Society of American ArchivistsShashi Wiki, Bibliography records of Japanese Coroparate history books

History

Current practices

See also

References

External links

Further reading