Business history and the organization of industry

This paper focuses on recent developments of business history on a specific theme : the boundaries of firms and industries. Connexions with industrial organisation, and especially with neo-institutionalism, have increasingly appeared in the literature. Connexions are generally developed according to two main tendencies which are discussed in the paper. We show that the first tendency uses economic models dealing with information problems as a benchmark for the analysis of historical facts, while the second tendency offers the opportunity to refine some of the principles of industrial organisation by taking into account the emphasis of business history on a concrete problem of innovative firms and industries : the coordination of productive activities.