Geoffrey Jones (academic)

Geoffrey Jones
Born Birmingham, United Kingdom
Nationality British & American
Alma mater Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Occupation Academic
Known for Professor of Business History at Harvard Business School

Geoffrey G. Jones is a British-born business historian. He became a U.S. citizen in 2010.[1] He is currently Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. The previous holders of this Chair, which was the first in the world in business history being founded in 1927, included Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Thomas K. McCraw.

Jones's works have concentrated on the historical evolution of globalization, international banking and trading, and foreign direct investment by multinationals. He has published histories of Unilever, and is now writing a history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century.

Life

Born in Birmingham, Jones attended Corpus Christi, Cambridge.[2] After receiving his Phd, he worked there as a research fellow.[2] He then became a lecturer in economic history at the London School of Economics before becoming a professor in business history at the University of Reading.[2] In 1997 he founded the Centre for International Business History at the University of Reading.[[3] Jones served twice as President of the Association of Business Historians (1992–93 and 2000-1), President of the European Business History Association (1997-1999) and President of the Business History Conference (2001-2002). Between 1988 and 2003 Jones was the co-editor of the journal Business History.[4] In 2002 he moved to Harvard Business School. In 2012 he was appointed Faculty Chair of the Business History Initiative at Harvard Business School. Subsequently the Business History Initiative developed a project called Creating Emerging Markets, designed to facilitate research and teaching on the business history of emerging markets, which includes interviews with long-time leaders of firms and NGOs in Latin America, South Asia, Turkey and Africa.[5][6][7][8][9]

Jones holds an honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and an honorary Phd from the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Jones currently serves as the co-editor of the quarterly journal Business History Review.[10]

Work

Jones initially researched relationships between business and governments. He published historical monographs on the oil industry[11] and international banking.[12] From the 1980s, Jones, alongside Mark Casson, was also involved in calling for a more theoretical approach to business history, particularly in the use of economic theory.[13] During this period he wrote historical studies of industries over long time periods, including British Multinational Banking 1830-1990 (Oxford, 1993)[14] and Merchants to Multinationals (Oxford, 2000).[15] Merchants to Multinationals was awarded the Newcomen-Harvard Prize for the best business history book published in the United States between 1998 and 2000, and the Wadsworth Prize for the best work of business history published in Britain in 2000. After moving to Harvard Business School, Jones published books on the history of global business, including Multinationals and Global Capitalism (Oxford, 2005).[16] In 2010, Jones published Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (Oxford, 2011).[17] In this book, and elsewhere,[18] Jones has sought both to explain the growth of the beauty industry and to explore its impact over the last century on homogenizing beauty ideals worldwide. Recently Jones has focused on the history of green business and sustainability,[19] and has written on the societal responsibilities of capitalism.[20] In addition to the Creating Emerging Markets project, he has also researched the business history of emerging markets, especially Latin America.[21] Jones has encouraged international business scholars to test theories against historical evidence. In 2006 he and Tarun Khanna published a widely cited article in the Journal of International Business Studies, the premier international business journal, on this issue. [22]

References

  1. "Geoffrey Jones: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  2. 1 2 3 Geoffrey Jones; M. W. Kirby (1991). Competitiveness and the State: Government and Business in Twentieth-century Britain. Manchester University Press. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-7190-3276-9.
  3. "The Centre for International Business History". Henley Business School. Henley.ac.uk. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  4. Harvey, Charles (2004). "Tribute to Geoffrey Jones". Business History. 46 (1): xi–xiii. doi:10.1080/00076790412331270159.
  5. "Creating Emerging Markets". Business History Initiative. Harvard Business School.
  6. Jones, Geoffrey (14 January 2015). "Thriving in the Turbulence of Emerging Markets". Working Knowledge: The Thinking That Leads. Harvard Business School.
  7. Hanna, Julia (28 May 2014). "Building Histories of Emerging Economies One Interview at a Time". Working Knowledge: The Thinking That Leads. Harvard Business School.
  8. Jones, Geoffrey (22 April 2015). "History has its place in business". Live Mint.
  9. "Doing Good By Doing Business - Creating Emerging Markets" on YouTube
  10. "Business History Review - Cambridge Journals Online". Journals.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  11. Geoffrey Jones (1981). The State and the Emergence of the British Oil Industry. MacMillan Press. ISBN 0-333-27595-0.
  12. Geoffrey Jones (1986). Banking and Empire in Iran. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32322-3.
  13. Geoffrey Jones; Jonathan Zeitlin (2008). The Oxford Handbook of Business History. Oxford Handbooks Online. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-19-926368-4.
  14. Geoffrey Jones (1993). British Multinational Banking. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-820602-X.
  15. Geoffrey Jones (2000). Merchants to Multinationals. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924999-7.
  16. Geoffrey Jones (2005). Multinationals and Global Capitalism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927210-7.
  17. Geoffrey Jones; Bee Wilson (2010). Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199556496.
  18. "Geoff Jones". Big Think. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  19. "The Importance of Green Business, AIB Conference, Nagoya, 2011". YouTube. 2013-02-15. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  20. http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/14-004_2fbc7e4e-09a2-4c52-9b15-910b43fa0d5b.pdf
  21. Geoffrey Jones; Andrea Lluch (2015). The Impact of Globalization on Argentina and Chile. Business Enterprises and Entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar. ISBN 978-1-78347-363-2.
  22. Geoffrey Jones; Tarun Khanna (2006). "Bringing History (back) to International Business". Journal of International Business Studies. 37 (4): 453–468.
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