Asli M. Colpan is Associate Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Graduate School of Management and Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Japan. She was the Alfred Chandler Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School in 2016. Her research interests include corporate strategy, corporate governance and business history. Her work has been published in such journals as Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Management Studies, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Strategic Management Journal, Business History and Corporate Governance: An International Review. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. In 2010 she was awarded the Tachibana Prize for the most outstanding female scholar at Kyoto University.

Takashi Hikino is Mizuho Securities Endowment Professor at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University. His research interests include business history, industrial organization and corporate governance. His recent publications include Big Business and Wealth of Nations, Cambridge University Press, 1997 (co-edited with Alfred D. Chandler and Franco Amatori), Competing Policies for Competitiveness: Microeconomic Policies During the Golden Age of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 1998 (co-edited with Hideaki Miyajima and Takeo Kikkawa), and The Global Chemical Industry in the Age of the Petrochemical Revolution Cambridge University Press, 2006 (co-edited with Louis Galambos and Vera Zamagni) and Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, Oxford University Press, 2010 (co-edited with Asli M. Colpan and James R. Lincoln).

Bharat Anand, Harvard Business School, USA
Marco Becht, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Marcelo Bucheli, Department of Business Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Youssef Cassis, Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Italy
J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Harvard Business School, USA
Andrea Colli, Department of Institutional Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi University, Italy
David J. Collis, Harvard Business School, USA
Asli M. Colpan, Graduate School of Management and Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Japan
Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, USA
Takashi Hikino, Graduate School of Management and Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Japan
Ferry de Goey, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University, Netherlands
Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School, USA
Abe de Jong, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Netherlands
Mats Larsson, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
James R. Lincoln, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, USA and National University of Singapore, Singapore
Randall Morck, School of Business, University of Alberta, Canada
Pedro Neves, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, Portugal
Tom Petersson, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Matthew Sargent, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, USA
Ben Ross Schneider, Department of Political Science, MIT, USA
Harm Schroter, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway
Gloria Tian, Australian Graduate School of Management, Australia
Alvaro Ferreira da Silva, Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal
Michelangelo Vasta, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena, Italy
Simon Ville, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Law, Humanities & the Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia
Weihuang Wong, Department of Political Science, MIT, USA

"This is exciting original research from 12 modern Western nations, documenting the co-evolution of business groups with their ambient institutional contexts. The work makes clear that we should not think of business groups as anachronisms of the process of economic development, rather they both react to and shape the surrounding context, and therefore are likely very persistent organizational forms. This volume is of great value to scholars and policymakers alike." - Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School and Director, Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University

"This is an innovative and important book with a solid message. It demonstrates that business groups can live and prosper even in the fiercely competitive environment of advanced economies. It is reassuring to observe that business groups in advanced economies still act as value adding entities thanks to their longer-term horizons in decision making processes. I believe that this book has critical implications for the business executives of large enterprises in emerging markets." - Rahmi M. Koç, Honorary Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.

"Colpan and Hikino have given us a remarkable survey of an essential element in modern capitalism. They provide breadth and depth to the comparative study of the flexible business groups which played and continue to play a central role in our industrial economies." - Louis Galambos, Research Professor and Co-Director, The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, Johns Hopkins University

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, diversified business groups have continued to evolve and grow in many developed economies, from Continental Europe and Britain to Canada, the United States and Australia. This book provides the best analysis of the reasons why corporate diversification is so resilient even in the face of global competition and deregulation." - Mauro F. Guillén, Director of the Lauder Institute and Dr. Felix Zandman Professor of International Management, The Wharton School