Business & Society 

• 8 hrs guided group project work
• 24 hrs lecture
• 30 hrs group project work without guidance
• 15 hrs Individual project work without guidance
• 60 hrs individual study period

Business & Society is concerned with the processes of mutual influence that exist between firms, the economy and society. It specifically focuses on three industrial revolutions that fundamentally reshaped firms, technologies, and societies. Business & Society tries to understand how companies work, and it places them firmly in their context. By doing so, Business & Society introduces theories, models and concepts that aim to understand the relations between firms, the economy, and society.

Business & Society has the following specific objectives:

1.    After completing this course, students understand the effects of society on business, and the effects of business on society, i.e.

a.         Students are able to relate the behavior and characteristics of firms to characteristics of societies.

b.         Students are able to analyze this relation using theories, models, and concepts from management science, business history, and institutional economics.

2.       After completing this course, students understand the relevance of history for understanding business and society, i.e.

a.         Students are able to analyze how events of the past have enabled and constrained future events, and as such have shaped the present.

b.         Students are able to evaluate the role of history in the theories, models and concepts used to explain the relations between firms, the economy and society.

The master track Management & Technology focuses on the interface between science, technology and business. Subsequent courses focus on one aspect of this interface, but in Business & Society we focus on the interface itself, and provide a helicopter view of firms in their environment. It is essential to take a broad view of the workings of business. Inside firms, different disciplines do not work in isolation, but work together to provide value on a market. Moreover, firms do not operate in a vacuum, but operate in a context that shapes them;  vice versa, firms shape their environment. Business & Society sets the scene for the courses of Management & Technology that follow.

Business & Society focuses on four leading capitalist nations, and particularly on leading firms from those nations, over a the course of three industrial revolutions up to the twenty-first century. The study of history provides the means to understand how firms and their environments shape each other. The study of history also underlines that each firm and each society is different, and underlines that firms and their environments change. In this way, students are introduced into the workings of business in its economic, technological and societal context.

Subjects that are covered in this course include:

·         Industrial revolutions;

·         Innovation systems, business systems, and varieties of capitalism;

·         Business history, particularly of leading firms in the 19th and 20th centuries;

·         Entrepreneurship;

·         The role of the state in the economy.

Written exam, group work and individual assignments make up the final grade for this course. More details will be announced on Blackboard at the start of the course.

T. K. McCraw, Ed. (1997). Creating modern capitalism: How entrepreneurs, companies, and countries triumphed in three industrial revolutions. Harvard University Press.