Resilience and related variety: The role of family firms in an ocean-related Norwegian region

Rolv Petter Amdam, Ove Bjarnar and Dag Magne Berge

Business History, 2024, vol. 66, issue 8, 1962-1982

Abstract: Recent research in economic geography has introduced two notions that historical studies should explore: regional resilience and related variety. Regional resilience refers to a region’s ability to recover from external shocks. Related variety refers to the existence of related industrial sectors in a region, and the relatedness promotes economic development due to spill-overs between sectors. From an evolutionary perspective, external shocks result in new development paths in regions with related variety. This is a dynamic process well suited to historical studies. This article argues that historical studies can contribute to this literature by studying how related sectors interact in resilient regions. We propose that family firms may act as a micro-coordination mechanism by moving financial and human resources from one sector to another related sector as a response to shock. The paper develops this argument by studying how six major regional business families within ocean industries reacted to external shocks over time.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00076791.2020.1822329 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:66:y:2024:i:8:p:1962-1982

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FBSH20

DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2020.1822329

Access Statistics for this article

Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms

More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().