ABSTRACT
The historical development of large-scale capitalist business entities is a frequently canvassed topic of research across the economics, business history and organizational structure disciplines. Most of these studies have focused on large-scale capitalist enterprises in advanced countries such as the United States, England, Europe and Japan. 2 In contrast, scant attention has been paid to these enterprises in the newly emergent capitalist economies of the East Asian regions, especially those in South Korea (hereafter Korea). This is surprising, given the dominant role of family-controlled conglomerates, the chaebol, in the course of Korea’s rapid industrialization and the position of Korean economy in the world. Hence, this chapter addresses the evident gap in the literature through a detailed, in-depth case study of a leading industrial conglomerate, the Hyundai Business Group, in Korea from its origins in the 1940s to the 1990s.
