In the field of business history, there are some clear distinctions between the goals and methodologies considered by historians. The vast majority of those interested in economic theory are found in business schools, and they are more concerned with the social and political aspects of businesses than they are with the historical methodologies used by their peers (Gelderblom & Trivellato, 2019). In contrast to historians, who typically regard business history as a subfield of general history, economists frequently view their work as the pursuit of a universal truth that draws the attention of students in business and management careers (Kobrak & Schneider, 2011).

Despite the relevance of this subject, business used to be viewed by those more akin to historical methods as not quite important two decades ago. In the United States and other developed countries, for example, business history was not well embraced by universities’ history departments (Rowlinson et al., 2014; Kobrak & Schneider, 2011). This, however, has been changing as a result of the growing number of research topics in organizational and administration studies that the historical approach is influencing. These new contributions are receiving more attention, as evidenced by the fact that they have been published in prestigious business and management journals in the United States and Europe. In fact, most of these contributions employ methods other than the conventional hypothesis testing (Decker et al., 2015). For instance, Atkinson (2021) proposed a novel research angle to analyze the problem of wealth inequality, which can be overcome through cooperation and collaborative efforts to strengthen the public sector without damaging the private sector. For their part, Decker et al. (2015) highlighted the need for changes that include methodological aspects in studies using multiple interpretative and qualitative techniques rather than a single one.

According to an article by Geoffrey and Friedman (2017) published in a special edition of the Business History Review journal of the Harvard Business School, the methodology to be employed in research on business history has been a topic of discussion since the emergence of this discipline. This is because there is not a clear consensus between the approaches being used. As a matter of fact, methodologies that focus on the entrepreneur, the company, the economic aspect, the brand, or work-related aspects are considered competing methodologies. Moreover, there is debate among scholars from several disciplines about the boundaries of the subject of study in business history. Also, the studies that show a significant increase in the number of publications in the field have been criticized. For example, Gómez and Castrillón (2016) and Hernández Romo (2006) state that some of these studies lack a clear theoretical and methodological focus and wander into a variety of topics.

Given that business history has only recently been recognized as an emerging area in the field of historical studies—specifically since the middle of the 1970s and with a stronger emphasis in the 1980s—it is a relatively young discipline in the Latin American context (Barbero, 2008b; Szmrecsanyi & Topik, 2004b). Additionally, business history in Latin America was not properly integrated into teaching and research programs due to prevailing traditions and theoretical perspectives, as well as the countries’ restricted access to information sources and resources until a few years ago (Montiel & Alvarado, 2022). In Colombia particularly, only 21.4% of business administration-related programs were found to offer a specific course in business history, with its main focus being the history of the business community, that is, the evolution of the country’s business elites and groups (Gómez & Castrillón, 2016).

Numerous studies have been conducted in Latin American countries as a result of the increased interest in the region’s economy. Since Latin America has historically experienced economic instability, learning from the experiences of other businesses makes it possible to adapt to the shifting social, economic, and policy structures and build capacities for the development of innovations and technological advancements (Kapac, 2018). These latter aspects are crucial for companies to be competitive and work toward internationalizing their sectors, as well as for the economic growth and positioning of Latin American nations in the world. Among the first studies developed in America, there is the research on Sao Paulo’s industrialization conducted by Professor Warren Dean from the University of New York. Peter Evans, for his part, investigated the relationship between the government, local entrepreneurs, and international industries in Brazil and its impact on the country’s economy. Frank Hagen analyzed entrepreneurship in Antioquia (Colombia) from a psychological perspective, and other studies have also been carried out in Argentina and other Latin American countries (Barbero, 2008). Likewise, entrepreneurs and scholars who were studying the businesses in the region collaborated with historians to explore the theoretical and methodological aspects of the subject that had previously been overlooked. Currently, a variety of topics continue to be investigated, including entrepreneurial families (Lluch & Fernández, 2019) and emerging markets and countries (Austin et al., 2017a).

In recent years, the subjects that have piqued the interest of researchers in the field of business history include large private companies, state companies, biographies of business leaders, relationships between business owners and the government, organizational culture, technological innovation, and lessons learned from experiences as study cases (Faria et al., 2022; Chatziioannou, 2019; Logan, 2022; Vargas-González & Toro-Jaramillo, 2022). Besides the clear differences across countries, there are also some common aspects in the business history of the past 20 years. For instance, one of the main research trends in the field has been the promotion of business history and the increased number of company case studies (Ojala, 2017).

Furthermore, according to Ratten (2022), there have been recent developments in the literature on entrepreneurship that incorporate sustainability in finance, as well as the social and environmental dimensions, in order to comprehend business models holistically. By documenting the evolution of businesses, all these developments have served as guides not only for established companies but also for entrepreneurs looking to find and create business management opportunities.

As indicated by Tucunduva et al. (2022), the PRISMA methodology requires defining a set of characteristics that the articles must have to be included in the analysis (inclusion criteria). In this particular case, the articles must contain the terms “business history” or “entrepreneurial history” (both in plural and singular form) in their title in order to obtain publications relevant to the field of research. Regarding exclusion criteria, they are applied in two distinct stages (eligibility and screening), as described in the study by Nawijn et al. (2019). In the screening stage, all articles with indexing errors are excluded from the analysis because they might contain errors in their metadata, as well as those that do not meet a given standard of methodological rigor (based on the type of publication).

In this study, the articles listed in Scopus (retrieved in June 2022) served as the main data source for this bibliometric analysis on business history. Since Scopus meets the requirements for accessibility and citation count, it is one of the most frequently employed databases in this type of literature reviews (Hall, 2011) and an excellent source of secondary information for the scope and relevance of this research.

A specialized search equation that considered the previously described inclusion criteria was designed to perform a search in Scopus from 1934 to July 2022. The following is the search equation that was used in Scopus: (TITLE ( {business history} ) OR TITLE ( {entrepreneurial history} ) )

The search strategy used in Scopus retrieved a total of 466 publications. Based on the defined exclusion criteria and using Microsoft Excel, the PRISMA Statement guidelines outlined in the study by Nawijn et al. (2019) and described in the flowchart in Figure 1 were applied.

Figure 1. PRISMA flowchart for systematic reviews Figure 1. PRISMA flowchart for systematic reviews Figura 1. Diagrama de flujo para revisiones sistemáticas según PRISMA Source: Authors’ own work based on (Nawijn et al., 2019)

In this study, Microsoft Excel was employed to process and analyze the 242 selected records using quantity and quality indicators. Academic productivity or quantity indicators are used to examine the current state of a field of knowledge, whereas quality indicators serve to measure the impact of authors, articles, or journals in a certain area or discipline (Camps, 2008). Regarding research trends, two analyses were conducted to propose a research agenda in the field: (i) a keyword analysis (persistent and frequent themes) and (ii) an analysis of the evolution of the field of business history.

This subsection analyzes various quantity indicators, i.e., number of publications per year, author, journal, institution, and country (Villa et al., 2018), which serve to examine research trends and developments in the field of business history.

Figure 2 shows the number of publications per year. As observed, scientific production in the field varied between 1934 and 2018, exhibiting a cyclical behavior during the period under analysis. The years with the most publications (15 each) are 2003, 2009, 2014, and 2017, and those with the least publications (1 each) are: 1966 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1985. Additionally, even though the number of publications has fluctuated over the years, there has been an increased interest in the field.

Figure 2. Number of publications per year Figure 2. Number of publications per year Figura 2. Cantidad de publicaciones por año Source: Authors’ own work

These results are plausible if one considers that business history has undergone significant changes due to several administrative reforms while also experiencing a technical revolution, in which mass production boosted business consolidation and growth. This, indeed, has made economists and business managers become increasingly interested in the field of business history and the development of strategies to prevent severe financial crises.

The findings of studies in the field are often disseminated through scientific or technical publications such as articles, books, conference proceedings, and patents, which are considered primary sources of information. In this regard, Figure 3 presents the ten journals with the highest number of publications in the field. As observed, Business History is on the top of the list with 60 publications, followed closely by Business History Review with 38 publications. This information is relevant when it comes to evaluating disparities in terms of coverage across journals.

Moreover, after examining the cumulative percentage of publications per journal, this indicator is found to comply with the Pareto principle—introduced by Vilfredo Pareto in 1896 (Pareto, 1896). Approximately, 24.18% of the journals publish 80% of the articles, which is within the acceptable limit of such principle. Due to the predominance of publications from 22 of the 91 journals in the database, the distribution of articles per journal tends to be uneven.

Figure 3. Number of publications per journal Figure 3. Number of publications per journal Figura 3. Cantidad de publicaciones por revista Source: Authors’ own work.

Figure 4 shows the ten authors with the highest number of publications in the field. As can be seen, Jones G. is on the top of the list with 8 publications, followed by Berghoff F. with 6 publications, and Amatori F., Casson M., and Colli A. with 5 publications each. Importantly, as stated by Bordons and Zulueta (1999), the productivity of authors depends on a number of factors that can be divided into two categories: 1) personal traits (e.g., intelligence, perseverance, ability) and 2) authors’ surroundings or context (e.g., influence of prestigious colleagues, ease of obtaining information, discipline in which they work, prestige of the institution to which they belong, financial endowment).

Figure 4. Number of publications per author Figure 4. Number of publications per author Figura 4. Cantidad de publicaciones por autor Source: Authors’ own work.

According to the results of the statistical analysis on the number of publications per author, this indicator does not fulfill the Pareto principle, as 64.15% of the 287 authors publish 80% of the articles. Given this situation, the publications were divided into quartiles, and the results showed that 25% of articles are published by 9.43% of authors; 50%, by 26.77% of authors; and 75%, by 55.35% of authors. Thus, it may be concluded that there is an equitable distribution of articles per author, which prevents the concentration of publications on a single author.

Regarding the most productive institutions in the field, Figure 5 presents the ten universities with the highest number of publications (of the 160 that report publications in Scopus), which account for 22.98% of the total production. As seen, Harvard University and Harvard Business School are on the top of the list, with 12 publications each, followed by the University of Reading and Universita Bocconi, with 10 publications each. Copenhagen Business School is in third place, with 9 publications.

Figure 5. Number of publications per institution Figure 5. Number of publications per institution Figura 5. Cantidad de publicaciones por institución Source: Authors’ own work.

Based on the statistical analysis, 60% of the 160 institutions that report publications in the field produce 80% of the articles. This confirms that this indicator does not comply with the Pareto principle. Hence, as in the previous case, the percentage of universities was divided into quartiles, and the results revealed that 6.88% of the institutions publish 25% of the articles; 20.63%, 50% of the articles; and 50%, 75% of the articles. Finally, 78.13% of the institutions were found to have two or fewer publications, which translates into a suitable dispersion of knowledge.

Furthermore, the bibliometric analysis revealed that there are 29 countries with publications on the matter, of which 27.59% produce 80% of the total publications. This suggests that this indicator is within the acceptable limits to comply with the Pareto principle. As observed in Figure 6, the United States is the most productive country with 73 publications, followed by the United Kingdom with 55 publications, and Germany with 14 publications. In addition, the ten most productive countries were found to produce 85% of the total publications, and 41.37% of the countries were found to have two or fewer publications. This means that knowledge is not dispersed but rather is evidently concentrated on certain countries. Importantly, the most productive countries in the field of business history are classified as developed, which emphasizes the importance of this discipline.

Figure 6. Number of publications per country Figure 6. Number of publications per country Figura 6. Cantidad de publicaciones por país Source: Authors’ own work.

This subsection examines a series of quality indicators, which serve to evaluate the impact of authors, articles, or journals in the field of business history. The proposed analysis does not focus on the quality of the information in the scientific production but rather on the impact of the article in the field (Bordons & Zulueta, 1999b). In fact, these indicators consider aspects such as the reputation of the author, institution, or country, or the persistence of the research topics, which somehow distorts the importance of the number of citations as a quality indicator (Villa et al., 2018).

Figure 7 shows the top ten authors in the field based on the number of citations they have received. With a total of 228 citations, Jones G. is the most cited author, followed by Decker S. with 197 citations, Casson M. with 158 citations, and Toms S. with 149 citations. When the list of the most productive authors (Figure 4) and that of the most cited authors (Figure 7) are compared, four authors—Jones G., Casson M., Colli A., and Toms S.—appear on both lists. This suggests that these authors are the most influential and representative in the field of business history.

Figure 7. Number of citations per author Figure 7. Number of citations per author Figura 7. Cantidad de citaciones por autor Source: Authors’ own work.

Figure 8 presents the ten journals with the most citations per article in the field. As can be seen, Business Review is the journal that tops this list, with an average of 919 citations per publication, followed by Family Business Review with 655 citations per publication, and Management and Organizational History with 238 citations. When comparing this ranking with that of the most productive journals, the Business History, Business History Review, Management and Organizational History, Business History around the World, Enterprise and Society, and The Oxford Handbook of Business History journals appeared in both lists. Thus, it can be concluded that their publications have a significant influence on the transfer of knowledge in the field of business history.

Figure 8. Number of citations per journal Figure 8. Number of citations per journal Figura 8. Citaciones por revista Source: Authors’ own work.

Finally, Figure 9 shows the ten countries with the highest number of citations in the field. As observed, the United Kingdom is the most cited country with 1012 citations, followed by the United States with 967 citations, Denmark with 149 citations, and Italy and Germany with 116 and 115 citations, respectively. When the rankings of the most productive and most cited countries were compared, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, and Spain appeared in both lists, making them the most representative and influential in the field of business history.

Figure 9. Number of citations per country Figure 9. Number of citations per country Figura 9. Citaciones por país Source: Authors’ own work.

This subsection analyzes the trending topics in the field of business history, which were identified based on the estimated bibliometric indicators. The analysis is divided into four parts: keyword analysis, discussion on persistent and frequent topics, the evolution of the field of business history, and proposed research agenda.

For keyword analysis, the frequency of occurrence of each keyword in the 242 selected publications retrieved from Scopus was estimated. Figure 10 shows a Cartesian plane with the most relevant terms in the field of business history, where the x-axis represents the frequency of the keywords, and the y-axis indicates the average year in which they were used. In other words, the frequency of the keywords increases from left to right, with the one that is furthest to the left being the less frequent, and their persistence increases from bottom to top, with the one that is closest to the top being the most emerging.

Figure 10. Persistence and frequency of keywords Figure 10. Persistence and frequency of keywords Figura 10. Vigencia y frecuencia de las palabras claves Source: Authors’ own work.

Quadrant I on the Cartesian plane is considered the most important one. It includes the terms that are not only among the most widely used but also among the most current. In this case, such terms are methodology and economic history, which have, indeed, been the most relevant terms in the field in recent years.

Then, there is Quadrant II, which contains the terms that, although not the most often used now, are among the most recent or emerging terms, that is, those that have recently been the subject of investigations. In this case, such terms are organizational longevity, archives, research methods, institutions, history, business groups, corporate history, narratives, entrepreneurship, and environmental history.

The terms in Quadrant III are those that, on the one hand, do not have a significant impact or relevance in the field due to their low frequency or number of repetitions and, on the other hand, are not among those that have been addressed more frequently in recent years. Therefore, they are not likely to gain much ground in the near future in terms of theoretical or conceptual growth and thus should not represent the research agenda. In this case, some of these terms include globalization, epistemology, Harvard business school, corporate governance, economics, industrial relations, organizational change, and business administration.

Finally, Quadrant IV includes the terms that formerly held a significant place in the body of literature on business history found in Scopus (based on the number of repetitions) but have lost their relevance and prominence in the most recent studies on the subject. In other words, while these concepts served as a foundation for current research and were crucial to understanding the subject in the past, they are not currently concepts that will need to be examined in the near future. In this case, historiography is the only term that appears in this quadrant.

Economic history: On this concept, Sluyterman (2014) points out that business history is often seen as a subfield of economic history, a later addition, and a younger field of research. Yet, as the field of economics evolved throughout the 20th century, economic history did too and had to change its subject matter. According to Plumpe (2016), German economic history has classically provided a significant framework for the study of economic growth and industrialization in general. Moreover, Colli and Larsson (2014) discussed one of the cornerstones of modern business history: the use of transnational comparisons. Besides being longitudinal, the comparative approach is an essential component of business research and economic history. It has made it possible to explain the development and structuring of national markets and companies both in the present and in the past.

For Dávila (2013), business historians from around the world who conduct research on emerging economies, the relationship between businesses and governments, the role of entrepreneurship, business groups, business families, foreign investment, and imperialism can learn a lot from the economic and business history of Latin America. This has brought with it a recognition and specialization of research in economic history within historical studies (Logan, 2022). However, presenting a vision of this history is by no means a simple task, as this region is made up of twenty countries that have many traits in common but also considerable disparities between them. These differences are observed not only at an economic, social, or political level but also in their cultural traditions, as well as in the development of social sciences and business history.

According to Hyde (1963), business history is, in fact, economic history with a particular emphasis. With more recent serial publications in Spanish and Portuguese than the Library of Congress, the libraries of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Organization of American States are significant repositories of economic materials with a Latin American origin (Reber, 1985)

Methodology: Regarding the studies and methodologies used in research on business history, several authors have recommended business historians to focus on analytical strategies that contribute new knowledge and provide a better way of communicating it to cooperate with social sciences studies (da Silva & Cavalcante dos Santos, 2022). For Eloranta et al. (2020), historians face great challenges when it comes to digitizing information, which has opened the door to the use of quantitative techniques that process large volumes of data such as Big Data. Even today, the original theoretical frameworks of the social sciences often require a large amount of information that cannot always be analyzed without classifying it in databases. Finally, De Jong (2022) recommends employing combined theoretical and empirical approaches that balance and enrich the field of business history. Hence, the longitudinal and comparative approach of this type of studies, which serves as evidence to build new theories and question the existing ones, should not be completely ruled out (Colli, 2011).

Entrepreneurship: Over the past four decades, there has been a resurgence of interest in the figure of the entrepreneur and the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in the field of economic theory and business history. In this regard, Salas (2012), recognizes that the new economic theory and schools, such as evolutionary economics and institutional economics, have incorporated, into their processes, the analysis of factors that determine a country’s economic growth, including entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, research on entrepreneurship remains a fragmented field in business history, with the lack of conceptual clarity being the main factor preventing comparisons between studies and dialogue among scholars. To address this issue, Wadhwani and Lubinski (2017) propose reinventing business history as a field of research in which the emphasis shifts from actors, hierarchies, or institutions to three business processes: envisioning and valuing opportunities, allocating and reconfiguring resources, and legitimizing novelty. This idea is supported by Austin et al. (2017b), who have also suggested changes to the field of business history. According to them, the business history of emerging markets should be seen as an alternative business history, instead of just adding new configurations to explore the already established core debates.

Narratives: “Narratives can be defined as the relaying of human experience through accounts that are structured as stories that provide, in sequential order, the meaningful telling of events” (Kivijärvi et al., 2018, p. 3). The importance of narratives lies in the fact that their construction and relaying is possibly a fundamental human activity: a way of thinking and being that focuses on human action and is part of identity construction processes (Søderberg, 2003). In the field of business history, narratives have been playing an increasingly important role in business studies (Clark & Rowlinson, 2004), which was also observed in the publications considered in this bibliometric analysis. In this regard, Mordhorst and Schwarzkopf (2017) encourage business historians to reflect on the narrative nature of their work and state that business history can be enriched if researchers become more aware of the communicative, rhetorical, and argumentative nature of their works. By recognizing the importance of narratives, Kivijärvi et al. (2018) carried out a study that promotes the use of narrative methods in business history.

Business group: “Business groups are an organizational model in which collections of legally independent firms bounded together with formal and informal ties use collaborative arrangements to enhance their collective welfare” (Colpan & Cuervo-Cazurra, 2018, p. 2). In the field of business history, business groups are recognized for their contribution to the economic growth of countries, mainly in emerging economies; they are even the dominant economic force in some cases (Austin et al., 2017b). As a result, they have attracted the attention of researchers such as Kumar (2014), who, investigating the history of the Indian economy, found that, since all large companies start small, tracking the evolution of large companies and business groups would help understand how companies improved and grew and how social and political forces influence these processes.

Figure 11 provides a summary of the evolution of the field of business history and shows, in chronological order, the recurrent themes highlighted by the authors over the past years. This summary makes it possible to see how the emphasis of this field has shifted over time and identify the topics that have received more attention in the specialized literature.

Figure 11. Summary of the evolution of the field of business history Figure 11. Summary of the evolution of the field of business history Figura 11. Resumen evolución del campo de la historia empresarial Source: Authors’ own work.

In order to provide scholars with a guide for upcoming studies, this subsection presents a series of business history-related considerations, which were covered in this bibliometric analysis based on the publications retrieved from Scopus.

There are few studies into the changes and impacts endured by the economies as a result of the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is critical to analyze and continue investigating such aspects, given their effects on the productive structures in the Latin American and Caribbean countries, which have exposed the weaknesses accumulated over the years.