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Reframing the Past: Thoughts about Business Leadership and Decision Making under Uncertainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Naomi R. Lamoreaux
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Abstract

How do business leaders make decisions in the face of uncertainty? More important, how do business and economic historians write a narrative that links a business problem, its proposed solution, and the outcome of this action without allowing the success or failure of the decision to determine the trajectory of the story? Counterfactual hypotheses and contextual analysis provide two tools that can help historians minimize the distortions of hindsight and recover a sense of the contingency that surrounds all decisions.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , December 2001 , pp. 632 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2001. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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