Economic Nationalism in West Africa: British Business in Nigeria and Ghana 1945 - 1977

Lead Research Organisation: London School of Economics and Political Science
Department Name: Economic History

Abstract

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Description As a one year postdoctoral fellowship, the key findings were mainly based on research related to my doctoral thesis. Research and dissemination during this grant focused on three key areas:
1) Visual representation of multinationals in less developed countries in advertising
- By highlighting how companies chose to represent their political strategies in visual and textual form to a wider audience during a politically turbulent time period (decolonization and economic nationalism in Africa from 1950s-1980s) I transferred methodological insights from visual history methods to business history and business studies, where they are less well-known.
2) I presented and translated my English-language research into German and published a state of the research article in a leading German history journal (Archiv fuer Sozialgeschichte). As research on decolonization has been less developed in Germany than in countries with longer imperial histories, this article provides firstly a significant resource to German researchers and students, and secondly promotes English-language research outcomes in the European Union research community.
3) I conducted research on corporate architecture as a form of organizational remembering. It was only this year that I published this research in response to an ongoing spatial turn not just in the humanities, but also in Organization Studies, where the historical aspects of how individuals make sense of the built environment is largely under-researched.
4) I contributed to my research community by writing several book reviews. Subsequently I was appointed to the Book Review Board of Business History Review, a leading journal in the field published by Harvard Business School.
Exploitation Route Both in terms of visual and spatial history my work broke new ground for business history. This type of research is now increasingly influential in some areas of management studies, where I continue to contribute a historical angle on how our understanding of images and artefacts are conditioned by our past and that of our communities in the form of memory.
Sectors Creative Economy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
 
Description My findings have highlighted the many resources, including visual and material, that organizational archives hold. At present I am engaged in collaborative work with academics and archivists to highlight the important resources that remain in privately held archives and their wider cultural significance for the corporate heritage of the UK.
First Year Of Impact 2008
Sector Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Retail
Impact Types Cultural,Societal
 
Description Harvard-Newcomen Fellowship in Business History
Amount $70,000 (USD)
Organisation Harvard University 
Department Harvard Business School
Sector Academic/University
Country United States
Start 07/2007 
End 06/2008