Merchants to Multinationals examines the evolution of multinational trading companies from the eighteenth century to the present day. During the Industrial Revolution, British merchants established overseas branches which became major trade intermediaries and subsequently engaged in foreign direct investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While theories of the firm predict the demise over time of merchant firms, this book identifies the continued resilience of British trading companies despite the changing political and business environments of the twentieth century. Like Japanese trading companies, they 're-invented' themselves in successive generations. The competences of the trading companies resided in their information-gathering, relationship-building, human resource, and corporate governance systems. This book provides a new dimension to the literature on international business through the focus on multinational service firms and its evolutionary approach based on confidential business records.

US Newcomen-Harvard Book Award for the best book published in business history for 1998-2000. Wadsworth Prize for Business History 2001

About the Author
Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Entrepreneurial Management Unit, Harvard Business School. He previously taught at the universities of Cambridge and Reading, and at the London School of Economics, in the U.K. He is the author and editor of many books and articles on the history of international business, including British Multinational Banking 1830-1990 (OUP 1993). He is a former President of both the European Business History Association and the Business History Conference of the United States, is co-editor of the journal Business History Review, and editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Business History.

Reviews
... good source material replete with a lot of case studies as to how the British trading companies have evolved to make their mark over globabl trade and become common household names today. * DAWN, Pakistan *
... a valuable source of information and would be a good read for those interested in the subject. * DAWN, Pakistan *


Awards
Winner of Wadsworth Prize for Business History 2001.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199249992
Author Geoffrey Jones
Format Paperback
Page Count 414
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 609g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 22mm