ABSTRACT
Until recently, it has not been the custom for discussions on business organization to go back very far in history. For a complete review of the theory of business organization, Taylor and Fayol were convenient starting-points. Since the interdisciplinary approach has come to the fore, the economists, by going back as far as Adam Smith, have thrown the business firm — which conventionally they had treated as a ‘black box’ – into sharper historical relief. However, in general the industrial revolution in England is considered as the beginning of industrial capitalism, and business is usually associated with industrial capitalism. Hence, to the extent that there are references, in the context of discussions on the modern business firm, to, for example, Phoenician trading, they merely serve as historical decoration in most cases.
