ABSTRACT
Business archives, though less well understood, constitute the written record of business, and are the key to unlocking our knowledge of it. This chapter shows how an increasing interest in and care of business archives is shaping academic and general understanding of business development, at a time of phenomenal change in global commercial activity. The majorities of business records reside with the business institution itself and are managed by company personnel. Under the guidance of the company secretariat, statutory records will be retained for as long as legally necessary and dependent on the size of the enterprise, other records created for regulatory reasons will similarly be kept and made available to regulatory inspectors as appropriate. The biggest proportion of managed business archives can, however, be found in public sector records repositories, museums, libraries and university archives. Business archives record social and political progress; in particular the involvement of government in business affairs.
