Business Enterprises and Global Worlds GEOFFREY JONES The role of business enterprise in integrating economies is one of the central historical themes of the last two centuries. Although globalization—both in its current iteration and in its nineteenth- century form—has been widely studied, the role of the firm, as opposed to macroeconomic forces, has yet to receive sufficient attention. Many research questions remain, including the role of the United States as a host country, the place of multinationals based in emerging markets, and the importance of understudied sectors such as retailing. Business historians should shift the focus of queries from “why” to “how” and go beyond the discipline’s traditional organization along national lines to study the behavior of firms worldwide. By coincidence, I gave my first paper at the Business History Confer- ence in 1987, when the annual meeting was last held at the Hagley. The topic—British banking in Iran between 1890 and 1952—was ob- scure, but the audience was distinguished, and even politely inter- ested. 1 The program on that occasion was put together by president Mira Wilkins, who was seeking to internationalize the Business His- tory Conference. Since then the society has indeed become very in- ternationalized, and it has also reached out in many other direc- tions—for example, to historians of gender and ethnicity and to legal historians. This year it has been an honor to serve as president of such an open academic society, one that does not ask its members to Enterprise & Society 3 (December 2002): 581–605.  2002 by the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. GEOFFREY JONES is professor of business administration at the Harvard Busi- ness School. Contact information: South Hall 113, Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163, USA. E-mail: gjones@hbs.edu. 1. Geoffrey Jones, “The Imperial Bank of Iran and Iranian Economic Develop- ment, 1890–1952,” Business and Economic History 16 (1987): 69–80. This article was based on research for a history of the British Bank of the Middle East, whose predecessor was the British-owned state bank of Iran. The study was published as Geoffrey Jones, Banking and Empire in Iran: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East, vol. 1 (Cambridge, England, 1986) and Banking and Oil: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East, vol. 2 (Cambridge, England, 1987). 581