1. I have deliberately retained the conversational tone of my presentation at the 2004 Business History Conference in Le Creusot, but have extensively revised its text.

2. Hannah, Leslie, “Marshall’s ‘Trees’ and the Global ‘Forest’: Were ‘Giant Redwoods’ Different?,” in Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms and Countries, ed. Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Raff, Daniel M. G., and Temin, Peter (Chicago, 1999), 253-93.Google Scholar

3. Dodd, David, The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics; first posted in 1995, last revised in 2003. URL: http://www.ucsc.edu.Google Scholar Collins, James C. and Porras, Jerry J., Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, 1999).Google Scholar

4. Boyer, Robert, Une théorie du capitalisme est-elle possible? (Paris, 2004).Google Scholar

5. Quoted in Legace, Martha, “Enron’s Lessons for Managers,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (12 July 2004). URL: http://hbswk.hbs.edu.Google Scholar Let me seize this opportunity to mention here two remarkable French books on the Challenger disaster: Morel, Christian, Les décisions absurdes. Sociologie des erreurs radicales et persistantes (Paris, 2002)Google Scholar; and Mayer, Paul, Challenger, les ratages de la décision. La gestion manquée d’un risque majeur (Paris, 2003).Google Scholar

6. Sapelli, Giulio, Giochi proibiti. Enron e Parmalat: capitalismi a confronto (Milan, 2004).Google Scholar For another view on the Italian dimensions of the problem, see Ferrari, Massimo, “Tra gestione e controllo, dopo i casi Cirio e Parmalat,” IlMulino 53 (March-April 2004): 254-65.Google Scholar

7. Graham, Margaret B. W., RCA and the Videodisk: The Business of Research (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

8. See, for example, Moss, Michael and Jobert, Philippe, eds., The Birth and Death of Companies: An Historical Perspective (Carnforth, England, 1990)Google Scholar; and Moss, and Jobert, , eds., Naissance et mort des entreprises en Europe XIXe-XXe siècles (Dijon, 1995).Google Scholar

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10. Balleisen, Edward J., Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001)Google Scholar; Mann, Bruce H., Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of Independence (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).Google Scholar My thanks to William M. Reddy for bringing the former book to my knowledge.

11. Hoffman, P. T., Postel-Vinay, Gilles, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “What Do Notaries Do? Overcoming Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets: The Case of Paris, 1751,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 154 (July 1998): 499–530 Google Scholar; and their essay, “No Exit: Notarial Bankruptcies and the Evolution of Financial Intermediation in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” in Finance, Intermediaries and Economic Development, ed. Engerman, Stanley L. et al. (Cambridge, U.K., 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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13. Stern, Marc, “The Social Utility of Failure: The Long Island Rubber Industry and the Setauket Shtetle, 1876-1911,” Long Island Historical Journal 4 (Fall 1991): 15–34.Google Scholar

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15. Lévy-Leboyer, , “Le patronat frangais”Google Scholar; and Olivier Zunz, written remarks to the author, 1 July 2004.

16. I owe the idea of this parallel to William M. Reddy.

17. Fraud and counterfeiting are the themes of the triennial congress of the French Economic History Association in November 2004.

18. In English, see Jean-Baptiste, Say, An Economist in Troubled Times: Writings (Princeton, N.J., 1997).Google Scholar My thanks to French sociologists Philippe Steiner, François Vatin, and Michel Villette for drawing my attention to this often forgotten analysis.

19. In this vein, compare the remarkable works by Martin, Jean-Clément, Commerce et commerçants à Niort au XIXe siècle: les faillites (Niort, France, 1980)Google Scholar; and “Le commerçant, la faillite et l’historien,” Annales E.S.C. 52 (Nov.-Dec. 1980): 1251-68.

20. The following section on Honda, and quotations, are from the unpublished work of McKenna, Christopher, “Mementos: Looking Back at the Honda Motorcycle Case, 2003-1973,” forthcoming in a collected volume, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

21. Otahara, Jun, “An Evolutionary Phase of Honda Motor: The Establishment and Success of American Honda Motor,” Japanese Yearbook on Business History 17 (2000): 109-35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Lipartito, Kenneth, “Picturephone and the Information Age: The Social Meaning of Failure,” Technology and Culture 44 (Jan. 2003): 50–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Kristensen, Peer Hull and Zeitlin, Jonathan, Local Players in Global Games: The Strategic Constitution of a Multinational Corporation (Oxford, U.K., forthcoming), XII–XXII.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 304-9.

25. Ibid., 303.

26. Ibid., 303, 309-12; to be fair, one of the five scenarios for the future of this firm that the authors imagine (312-314) is quite the opposite: “producing disasters through passivity.”

27. Olivier Zunz is researching a history of philanthropy in the United States since the 1860s. He presented a first paper at the BHC in Le Creusot.

28. OECD Statistics, 1975-2000 (Paris, 2001).

29. Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York, 1942).Google Scholar

30. On the former, see L’Aoufir, Rachid, La Prusse de 1815 å 1848: L’industrialisation comme processus de communication (Paris, 2004).Google Scholar

31. Lemercier, Claire, Un si discret pouvoir. Aux origines de la chambre de commerce de Paris, 1803-1853 (Paris, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosengarten, Monika, Die internationale Handelskammer. Wirtschaftliche Empfehlungen in der Zeit der Weltwirtschaftskrise, 1929-1939 (Berlin, 2001).Google Scholar

32. Wada, Kazuo, “The Development of Tiered Inter-Firm Relationship in the Automobile Industry: A Case Study of the Toyota Motor Corporation,” Japanese Yearbook on Business History 8 (1991): 23–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chilin, René, Moutet, Aimée, and Muller, Martine, Histoire de l’ANACT: vingt ans au service de l’amélioration des conditions de travail (Paris, 1994).Google Scholar

33. Quoted by Ferrari in “Tra gestione,” 264.

34. Jensen, Michael and Meckling, William, “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure,” Journal of Financial Economics 3 (Oct. 1976): 305-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Wright, Robert E. et al., History of Corporate Governance: The Importance of Stakeholder Activism (London, 2004).Google Scholar

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37. This point that I stressed in my oral address is now covered by Englander, Ernie and Kaufman, Allen, “The End of Managerial Ideology: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Indifference,” Enterprise & Society 5 (Sept. 2004): 404-50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. For a path-breaking article, see Tilly, Richard, “Moral Standards and Business Behaviour in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Britain,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan (New York, 1993), 179–206.Google Scholar

39. Kristensen and Zeitlin, Local Players in Global Games. The authors actually draw a list of such proposals for today.

40. Anheier, Helmut K. and Moulton, Lynne, “Studying Organizational Failures,” in When Things Go Wrong: Organizational Failures and Breakdowns, ed. Anheier, Helmut K. (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1999), 273–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My thanks to Leslie Hannah for drawing my attention to this book.

41. Powers, Richard, Gain (New York, 1998), 350.Google Scholar

42. Anheier, Helmut K. and Moulton, Lynne, “Organizational Failures, Breakdowns, and Bankruptcies,” in Anheier, , ed., When Things Go Wrong, 3, 3–14.Google Scholar

43. Perrow, Charles, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, 2nd ed. (New York, 1999), 3–14, 353-87.Google Scholar

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45. Lipartito, “Picturephone and the Information Age,” 57.

46. Hager, Mark, Galaskiewicz, Joseph, Bielefeld, Wolfgang, and Pins, Joseph, “Tales from the Grave: Organizations’ Accounts of Their Own Demise,” in Anheier, , ed., When Things Go Wrong, 51–70.Google Scholar

47. Lipartito, , “Picturephone and the Information Age,” 57–58.Google Scholar

48. In Japan, for instance, an association called Shippai Gakkai, a nonprofit organization with the English name “Association for the Study of Failure,” was established in Nov. 2002. Its purpose is stated as follows: “The human act of production is always accompanied with accidents and failures. These events include tedious ones to those that lead to economic loss, injury, or even large catastrophic ones that include even death. The Study of Failure identifies the cause of these accidents and failures; it further offers ways to prevent such accidents and failures that cause economic loss and fatality.” URL: http://www.shippai.org/eshippai/html/.

49. McKenna, “Mementos.”

50. Midler, Christophe, L’auto qui n’existait pas (Paris, 1993).Google Scholar See also Christensen, Clayton, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston, 1997).Google Scholar

51. For a striking example of such a tendency, see Beaud, Claude, “Le drame de Creusot-Loire: échec industriel ou fiasco politico-financier,” Entreprises et Histoire 10 (June 2001): 7–23 Google Scholar; continued in “Heurs et malheurs de Creusot-Loire (1985-2001),” Entreprises et Histoire 12 (June 2003): 152-62.

52. Graham, RCA and the Videodisk; Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents.

53. Colli, Andrea, The History of Family Business, 1850-2000 (Cambridge, U.K., 2003)Google Scholar; Lipartito, “Picturephone and the Information Age,” 80n95.

54. Bomann-Larsen, Lene and Wiggen, Oddny, eds., Responsibility in World Business: Managing Harmful Side Effects of Corporate Activity (Washington, D.C., 2004).Google Scholar