Writing business history: Creating narratives
本文探讨商业史与叙事历史写作的关系，通过访谈商业史学家，指出该学科对叙事态度模糊，但所有历史学家都在构建叙事，并认为重新参与叙事写作可能解决现实主义与解释主义之间的认识论僵局。
In this article we examine business history’s relationship to narrative history writing. In so doing we respond to the Call for Paper’s question: ‘storytelling vs business history: do business historians create narratives and in what ways?’ We survey attitudes in business history to narrative history writing, the relationship between archive, narrative, and historical knowledge claims, and the importance of writing practices and qualities. We report the results of interviews with practicing business historians and conclude that whilst the discipline has an ambiguous relationship with narratives and narrative history writing, there is a recognition that all historians are to an extent engaged in the construction of narratives, whenever they write. We argue that a re-engagement with narrative history writing might provide a way of resolving a current epistemological impasse between realist and interpretivist positions. Ultimately, any narrative turn in business history will be incomplete without an examination of the status of narrative history writing within the field.