| dc.description.abstract | S
hould the discourse of business history serve as
a guide to business policy? Or should it be studied
as an end in itself? This is the primary choice that
a business historian must make: it will dictate not only
his method, but also define the scope of his work and
the nature of his readership. Dwijendra Tripathi, the
former Kasturbhai Lalbhai Professor of Business History
at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad,
faces this difficult question head on. He argues that
business history is a worthy discipline in itself. While
he does not seek to either verify or falsify the postulates
of business policy in a historical frame per se, he cannot
help but hope that the attempt to chronicle the historical
transition from a mercantile economy to industrial capitalism
in colonial India will ‘provide an insight into the
evolution of strategies and structures’ that subsequently
emerged. This hope, however, is not strongly worded
but is modestly presented as ‘a synthesis of the present
stage of our knowledge.’ In other words, though Tripathi’s
academic interest is primarily in business history,
he does not rule out its relevance for an understanding
of business strategies. Again, Tripathi eschews any major
claim to originality and emphasizes that his contribution
lies in designing the ‘basic framework’ of the historical
narrative that is presented in this book. | |
