Call for Papers
International Session of the 58th Congress of the Business History Societyof Japan (BHSJ)
Using history in uncertain times:
A Dialogue Between Business Historians and Business Leaders
Business History Society of Japan (BHSJ), founded in 1964, is one of the longeststanding and largest national organizations in the discipline. Since its 50th anniversary,
the BHSJ has made it a priority to foment interaction and dialogue between businesshistorians in Japan and those based elsewhere, and as a result it has organizedinternational sessions in English on a biannual basis which take place concurrently withits Japanese sessions. In 2022, the congress will be held in Osaka, the vibrant city in theheart of the Kansai metropolis, former "Manchester of the East", home to Panasonicand many pharmaceutical companies. The congress will comprise two full days of paper
sessions and incorporates a plenary session titled “A Dialogue Between Business History
and Business Leaders” (in Japanese, with simultaneous interpreting) and a special
commemorative session, ‘The Fuji-Conference session’. This session honors the great
tradition of the BHSJ’s Fuji-Conference, a celebrated international meeting that dates
back to 1974.
This year the session’s theme is “Using history in uncertain times: A Dialogue Between
Business Historians and Business Leaders”. The current global business is contingent not
only on recent world-shaking events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in
Ukraine, but also on long-term structural transformations due to, for example, a shift inpolitical and economic power and climate change. The profound instability of thecontemporary world reminds us of the need for continuous adaptation to a constantlychanging environment. This represents a major challenge for business leaders who arenow positioned in a global market and therefore face a wide variety of risks. However,
the instability of the world is not a new phenomenon. Therefore, we propose to thebusiness history community to reflect on how business leaders have used - and still use
today - the experiences of the past to guide themselves in times of uncertainty. What isthere to learn from the past? How can business leaders make practical use of historicalknowledge? What historical awareness do they have and what do they do with it when
faced with an unstable world? By bringing together researchers working on thesequestions in case studies from diverse geographical, chronological and cultural
backgrounds, the Fuji-Conference session 2022 hopes to generate fruitful discussions
and suggest fresh avenues for future research.
Although this international session takes “Using history in uncertain times” as the main
theme, reflecting the great diversity in business history the BHSJ welcomes submissions

on a whole range of topics, periods, regions, etc. We invite submissions of proposals byboth individual researchers and complete panel sessions.
Conference Dates: September 16-17, 2022
Venue: Kansai University, Osaka, Japan
Deadline for submissions: June 15, 2022
Notification of abstract acceptance: July 5, 2022
Full or short paper submission deadline for pre-circulation: September 1st, 2022.
Please submit your abstracts and details to the following email address:
fujicon.japan@gmail.com
Requirements for proposals
The proposals should include the following parts:(1) Author(s) information: affiliation, short CV(2) An abstract of no more than 400 words(3) Additional information important to the program committee: clear statement of theresearch question (not more than 50 words), keywords on the major research areas towhich the paper relates and theoretical/conceptual framework used.
Scientific Committee:
Andrea Colli, Bocconi University, Milan
Pierre-Yves Donzé, Osaka University
Rika Fujioka, Kansai University, Osaka
Takafumi Kurosawa, Kyoto University
Ken Sakai, Tohoku University, Sendai