Andrea Colli keynote speaker at IFERA 2010

With a speech titled Business history and family business studies at the plenary session of Thursday, July 8th, Andrea Colli, associate professor of economic history at Università Bocconi, is keynote speaker at IFERA 2010, the congress of the International Family Enterprise Research Academy, 10th annual World Family Business Research Conference, being held at the Lancaster University Management School.

Colli's speech concerns the relationship between business history and family business studies, using La Rinascente as a case history. The Milanese department store was founded by the Bocconi brothers and, in the following years, was owned or managed by families such as the Borlettis, the Brustios and the Agnellis.

The two main contributions business history can provide to family business studies are the in-depth knowledge of family business internal dynamics and relationships with their environment and the boost to the use of the comparative approach through the retrieving of data from primary sources. On the other hand, an inductive field of study such as business history, Colli concludes, "desperately needs to develop its conceptual framework, something that could be eased by the establishment of a fruitful relationship with other disciplines characterized by a more deductive approach, as those in the field of management".