Franco Amatori into the Business History Olympus

THE BOCCONI PROFESSOR IS THE FIRST SCHOLAR AFFILIATED TO A UNIVERSITY OUTSIDE THE US TO RECEIVE THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FROM THE BUSINESS HISTORY CONFERENCE

The Business History Conference (BHC) has acknowledged Franco Amatori with the Lifetime Achievement Award 2019. Professor Amatori is the first European scholar to receive the honor since it was established in 2002 (the first recipient was the founding father of business history, Alfred Chandler).
 
The award recognizes the scholarly contribution to the development of business history and the commitment to BHC, an association active since 1954 to encourage research and teaching in business history.
 
The prize-giving ceremony (see image below) took place on Saturday, March 16 in Cartagena (Colombia).
 
Born in Ancona, Amatori obtained a degree in Political Science in 1973 in Florence and then began teaching business history in his hometown and working for IFAP, the Institute for Research and Training in Business Administration established by IRI, then the largest Italian public holding company. «There I understood how companies and technological processes work», he says today. His academic success, though, dates back to his first, much-wanted encounter with Professor Chandler in 1977 at Harvard.
 
«I had gone to Boston to improve my English», he says, «and I had the audacity to call him to ask for a meeting. My fortune was that his stern secretary was on vacation and the substitute, decidedly softer, arranged the appointment. I showed him my work and he spoke to me at length. Because of my still rudimentary English and his mumbling way of speaking, which was difficult even for Americans, I had to interrupt him often, asking him many questions. This must have impressed him, because some time later, in response to a potential funder who asked for information about me, he admitted that he did not know me well, but wrote that he had the impression of a serious and determined person, who would spread business history in Italy». After that meeting Amatori stayed in Boston to perfect his studies in business history with Chandler and David Landes.
 
Amatori interprets Chandler's methodology as a layered construction: the first layer is about development of individual companies; the second deals with industries; the third with nations. «Back in Italy», he explains, «I realized that the bricks themselves were lacking and I began to write the histories of the most representative companies of the most important sectors (Rinascente, Montecatini, Lancia and Fiat), then of local industrial clusters in my home region, Marche, and of the Italian steel industry, before being able to produce a summary, in 1999, in Impresa e industria in Italia dall’Unità a oggi (Enterprise and industry in Italy from Unification to today), a volume reviewed very positively by the Business History Review. The book is authored with Andrea Colli, the student (now a Full Professor at Bocconi himself) whom I met in 1989 on the recommendation of my colleague Marzio Romani to help me in the history of Lancia ("the most fascinating and difficult enterprise of my career", says Amatori).
 
Amatori's last great scientific venture in Italian is the monumental Storia dell'IRI (The History of IRI), conceived together with Pierluigi Ciocca. Amatori edited the second volume of the work in 2013 and has been a member of the scientific committee together with Luciano Cafagna, Valerio Castronovo and Ciocca himself.
 
At Bocconi since 1986, Amatori can boast of having made the University a reference point for Italian business history. Francesca Polese, Veronica Binda, Mario Perugini, Valentina Fava, Daniele Pozzi, Giuseppe Berta and, of course, Andrea Colli have passed through or are still active here.
 
«If it is true that Colli is a mentee of mine, it is also true that I have learned from him», explains Amatori. «A business-partnership-like relationship has developed, in which I act as the elderly partner, but in some moments life has turned it into a relationship similar to that between father and son».
 
Since the end of the 70's, Amatori's English has improved ("also thanks to an American wife married for this very reason", he jokes), so much so that he became the de facto Minister of Foreign Affairs of ASSI, the Italian Association of Historical Business Studies that he co-founded in 1983 and has been animating from then on. His scholarly works in English, furthermore, made him an international reference point and it is curious that the Wikipedia community devotes a page to him in the English version, but not in the Italian one.
 
In 1980 he began telling the history of entrepreneurship in Italy to the Americans with Entrepreneurial Typologies in the History of Italian Industry (1880-1960) and revisited the topic some thirty years later to clarify what had happened in the meantime in Entrepreneurial Typologies in the History of Italian Industry: Reconsiderations. In 1997, with Alfred Chandler and Takashi Hikino, he edited Big Business and the Wealth of Nations, which compares business development in 12 countries. In 2011, with Andrea Colli, he published Business History: complexities and comparisons, a book that the Economic History Review defined «an exceptionally good tool for teaching». Thanks to these works, he has become an honorary member of the American Historical Association, an honor recognized only to about ninety scholars since 1885.
 
Despite the fact that David Landes and Franco Bonelli are also among his masters, Amatori calls himself «a stubborn Chandlerian», who studies developments in technology and in the organizational skills that represent the true wealth of nations. In his studies on Italy, he focused his attention on the relationship between business and the state and on the cultural aspect that determines whether the transition from familism to universalism is accepted or not, devoting some less attention to the third juncture that Chandler considers fundamental, the development of dynamic markets, because less relevant for Italy.
 
Amatori is left with the task of coordinating another collective scientific enterprise, the verification of the so-called Amatori-hypoteses on the development of the European businesses, which would have unfolded around four fundamental pillars (cartels, family business, the active intervention of the state and the politicisation of the workers' movement) and under the pressure of three successive waves: the Americanization that followed the Marshall Plan, the establishment of the European Union and globalization. «After the 2008 crisis», says Amatori, «the fundamental features have resurfaced with a vengeance».
 
In presenting the motivation for the award, the chairman of the evaluation committee, Kenneth Lipartito, stressed the importance of prof. Amatori’s commitment that has materialized in monographs, collections, summaries and books editing, mentioning the formation at Bocconi of a group of business historians among the most regarded worldwide.
 
In his brief acceptance speech, Prof. Amatori recalled with gratitude his mentors Alfred Chandler, David Landes and Louis Galambos, wondering if, with these mentors, he could have done more. «It's a legitimate question», he said, «but that's life and what's done is done». He thanked his wife Maggie, «who knows how to turn the mud of my regional English into the gold of a perfect English. Finally, he mentioned the special relationship with the mentee and co-author Andrea Colli, «a son more than a mentee - but you know that children grow up and Andrea no longer needs any father».

by Fabio Todesco