Business History and Archives
A.Y. 2024/2025
Learning objectives
The course aims to offer intellectual elements of buisness history, its theoretical orientations and discipline-specific terminology. The course also aims to provide the basic tools to know and operate within a corporate archive.
Expected learning outcomes
The course intends to introduce participants to the historical reflection of buisness from a global perspective, through a plurality of written, oral and visual sources and the beginning of the use and discourse of business and labour archives, as well as through digital tools available online. Through the analysis of historical cases, students will be able to apply the theoretical instrumentation necessary to undertake historical investigation and analysis of archival documentation. At the end of the course, the attending students will be able to critically read primary sources and scientific texts relating to the early-modern and modern historical periods, and to develop independent reflections and research on the main aspects of modern enterprise in its various forms. Students will also exercise their research abilities and individual assemssments skills to set up and carrying out work of document inventory, as well as its communication and usable availability on digital platforms, including talks with professional historians and archivists.
These skills will be acquired through a direct and continuous meeting with the instructor in the classroom. Educational tools will be made available on Ariel.
Students opting not to attend the lessons will be able to make use of the educational tools provided by the instructor on Ariel, deepen their knowledge of main topics through special readings indicated in the exam program for non-attending and if desired (after reading the exam program) contact the instructor both by email and during office hours.
These skills will be acquired through a direct and continuous meeting with the instructor in the classroom. Educational tools will be made available on Ariel.
Students opting not to attend the lessons will be able to make use of the educational tools provided by the instructor on Ariel, deepen their knowledge of main topics through special readings indicated in the exam program for non-attending and if desired (after reading the exam program) contact the instructor both by email and during office hours.
Lesson period: First semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course can be attended as a single course.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
First semester
Course syllabus
Course title: Business history and archive experiences, in collaboration with the Historical Archives of Intesa San Paolo and the ISEC Foundation
Part 1: Business history in a global perspective: industry, labour, banking and financial systems
Part 2: Cataloguing and researching in the Historical Archives of Banca Intesa San Paolo
Part 3: Cataloguing and researching at the ISEC Foundation
The advent of the web has radically changed the access to archives, both with the online publication of inventories and through the online availability of digital reproductions of documents. Our challenge, in the next few years, will be to create real networks of data and information by involving different archival institutions and creating open and interoperable data.
After an initial general historical part, in the second part of the course students will enter a group that, working on primary sources that are in large part still "unpublished" - in particular, the overdraft books of the Banca del Monte di Credito di Pavia from 1957 onwards - will prepare a dataset that will constitute a substantial nucleus of reliable and coherent information that can be published according to Linked Open Data principles.
The second part of the course will be introduced by a lecture that will illustrate the basics of the use of semantic web standards and Linked Data technologies and will enable students to understand the context in which they will move and the meaning of the work required.
In the third part, a second archive experience will take place at ISEC Foundation (Institute for the History of Contemporary Age), Sesto San Giovanni. It will concern the cataloging and study of Umberto Colombo's personal archive. A company executive in Montedison and ENI, a chemist and expert in energy, environment and scientific and technological policy, Colombo (1927-2006) was also president of the National Center for Nuclear Energy and of ENEA, as well as minister of the University and scientific and technological research. The aim of the module is to show how personal archives can also be a valuable source for the historical reconstruction of the functioning of modern firms.
Part 1: Business history in a global perspective: industry, labour, banking and financial systems
Part 2: Cataloguing and researching in the Historical Archives of Banca Intesa San Paolo
Part 3: Cataloguing and researching at the ISEC Foundation
The advent of the web has radically changed the access to archives, both with the online publication of inventories and through the online availability of digital reproductions of documents. Our challenge, in the next few years, will be to create real networks of data and information by involving different archival institutions and creating open and interoperable data.
After an initial general historical part, in the second part of the course students will enter a group that, working on primary sources that are in large part still "unpublished" - in particular, the overdraft books of the Banca del Monte di Credito di Pavia from 1957 onwards - will prepare a dataset that will constitute a substantial nucleus of reliable and coherent information that can be published according to Linked Open Data principles.
The second part of the course will be introduced by a lecture that will illustrate the basics of the use of semantic web standards and Linked Data technologies and will enable students to understand the context in which they will move and the meaning of the work required.
In the third part, a second archive experience will take place at ISEC Foundation (Institute for the History of Contemporary Age), Sesto San Giovanni. It will concern the cataloging and study of Umberto Colombo's personal archive. A company executive in Montedison and ENI, a chemist and expert in energy, environment and scientific and technological policy, Colombo (1927-2006) was also president of the National Center for Nuclear Energy and of ENEA, as well as minister of the University and scientific and technological research. The aim of the module is to show how personal archives can also be a valuable source for the historical reconstruction of the functioning of modern firms.
Prerequisites for admission
There are no specific requirements different from those requested for the admission to the MA degree in Historical Science
Teaching methods
Attendance of classes is compulsory for acquiring the status of attending student. The teaching is delivered through frontal lectures and archive experiences (aimed primarily at the acquisition of knowledge, competence and specific language of the subject), and through work experience in a business archive. Discussion with the teacher, the archivists and the other students in the classroom is integrant part of the didactic method and aims at promoting a critical attitude and the capacity to apply the acquired skills and innovative knowledge.
The teaching is also based on didactic and multimedia materials provided on myARIEL.
The teaching is also based on didactic and multimedia materials provided on myARIEL.
Teaching Resources
Attending students - 6 CFU:
Knowledge of the topics taught in lectures (modules 1 and 2) and of the documentation made available on ARIEL; writing of a paper on the archival experience.
Students who take a 6 CFU examination may leave the lectures at the end of the second module, although full attendance of the course is also advisable for them.
Attending students - 9 CFU:
Knowledge of the topics taught in lectures (modules 1,2,3) and of the documentation made available on ARIEL; writing of a paper on the archival experience;
Non attending students - 6 CFU:
Readings:
Vera Zamagni, Forme d'impresa. Una prospettiva storico-economica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020;
Germano Maifreda, L'organizzazione del lavoro. Dalla rivoluzione industriale allo smart working, Milano, Pearson, 2022.
Non attending students - 9 CFU:
Readings:
Vera Zamagni, Forme d'impresa. Una prospettiva storico-economica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020;
Germano Maifreda, L'organizzazione del lavoro. Dalla rivoluzione industriale allo smart working, Milano, Pearson, 2022;
Renato Giannetti, Michelangelo Vasta, Storia dell'impresa italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012.
Knowledge of the topics taught in lectures (modules 1 and 2) and of the documentation made available on ARIEL; writing of a paper on the archival experience.
Students who take a 6 CFU examination may leave the lectures at the end of the second module, although full attendance of the course is also advisable for them.
Attending students - 9 CFU:
Knowledge of the topics taught in lectures (modules 1,2,3) and of the documentation made available on ARIEL; writing of a paper on the archival experience;
Non attending students - 6 CFU:
Readings:
Vera Zamagni, Forme d'impresa. Una prospettiva storico-economica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020;
Germano Maifreda, L'organizzazione del lavoro. Dalla rivoluzione industriale allo smart working, Milano, Pearson, 2022.
Non attending students - 9 CFU:
Readings:
Vera Zamagni, Forme d'impresa. Una prospettiva storico-economica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020;
Germano Maifreda, L'organizzazione del lavoro. Dalla rivoluzione industriale allo smart working, Milano, Pearson, 2022;
Renato Giannetti, Michelangelo Vasta, Storia dell'impresa italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012.
Assessment methods and Criteria
- Method: students will write a paper to be discussed during the examination
- Type of examination: oral interrogation
- Evaluation criteria: capacity to demonstrate and elaborate knowledge; capacity for critical reflection and historical assessment; quality of exposition, competence in the use of scientific lexicon, efficacy, clarity; quality of the work carried out in the Archives.
- Type of evaluation method: mark in 30s
The format of the exam for students with disabilities or SLD should be arranged in advance with the teacher, in agreement with the Disability/SLD Students Service Office.
- Type of examination: oral interrogation
- Evaluation criteria: capacity to demonstrate and elaborate knowledge; capacity for critical reflection and historical assessment; quality of exposition, competence in the use of scientific lexicon, efficacy, clarity; quality of the work carried out in the Archives.
- Type of evaluation method: mark in 30s
The format of the exam for students with disabilities or SLD should be arranged in advance with the teacher, in agreement with the Disability/SLD Students Service Office.
Unita' didattica A
SECS-P/12 - ECONOMIC HISTORY - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Unita' didattica B
SECS-P/12 - ECONOMIC HISTORY - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Unita' didattica C
SECS-P/12 - ECONOMIC HISTORY - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Educational website(s)
Professor(s)