This research note reports on the quantity of business records available in Australia as indicated by a recent survey of the top one hundred firms operating during the twentieth century.1 The archival work was undertaken as part of a large study investigating aspects of corporate leadership in Australia, conducted jointly at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne.2 We found that the surviving records of Australian businesses cover a wide selection of firm types, and that the comprehensiveness of many archives places business history on a sound foundation for the future.
Motivation
The study of business history is a somewhat neglected area of scholarly research in Australia. While there are several histories of individual companies, in most cases they celebrate a firm's achievements over a period of time, normally a century, and provide details of particular interest to former employees such as unusual events and lists of managing directors.3 Generally these studies have shied away from making critical assessments and have been reluctant to compare the firm's performance with similar enterprises in Australia or overseas. It has only been in the 1990s that writers have utilized archival records to undertake studies that examine the performance of Australian business enterprise over extended periods of time, providing valuable insights into the current condition and future prospects for corporate Australia.4
Access to the internal business records of Australian firms is vital in order to make in-depth appraisals of comparative performance. Researchers need to examine detailed prima facie evidence available in the archival records of individual firms in order to obtain a clear understanding of the types of managerial strategies and organizational structures adopted by Australian firms and with what degree of success. This research note and a published archives listing is designed to stimulate and facilitate analytical research into the history of Australian business enterprise by providing details of the extent and nature of surviving records for Australia's leading firms throughout the twentieth century.5
Sample Construction
As a starting point for more extensive research into Australian business development, Simon Ville and David Merrett have identified the leading one hundred non-financial enterprises measured by assets, using the years 1910, 1930, 1952, and 1964 to provide a reasonable time spread.6 The choice of asset data in preference to market capitalization reflected the slow development of stock markets in Australia but necessitated the exclusion of asset-rich financial institutions with whom size comparisons would have been invalid.7 Ville and Merrett relied upon published balance sheet data taken from investment digests and a few other secondary sources. Although their paper does not use archival records, their results were used to decide which firms should be included in our sample.
Given the underdeveloped state of research in Australian business history we are particularly keen to analyze Australia's corporate leaders for their role as organizational and technological pioneers and the importance of their contribution to the development of the domestic economy. In the course of this work it has become apparent that historical records survive for many of these leading firms from which it will be possible to undertake extensive comparative analysis. However, these records are scattered widely around a range of private and public depositories. In some cases the existence of business records can be traced through the published guides of individual depositories which list many other classes of manuscripts. In other cases there is no printed listing of extant business records, especially where they remain in the possession of the original firm or its current owners.
Results
The Ville and Merrett top one hundred listings of non-financial companies for the four spot years involved 262 companies. Of these we have 162 companies (62 percent) for whom records are known to exist. One hundred and forty-four firms (55 percent) are included in the archival listing; we have been unable to find any useful information about the records of the remaining 18 at this stage. Well over half of the top one hundred firms are known to have extant records for each of the spot years 1910, 1930, 1952, and 1964.8 Except for a single omission in 1930, in each case all of the top ten firms are represented (see Table 1).
Business Records by Sector
The broad groups of the Australian Standard Industrial Classification of 1969 are used to analyze the spread of extant business records across the major sectors of the Australian economy. We find that the sectoral distribution of business records correlates closely with that of big business as a whole. Thus, comparing the companies that have extant archives with the full top one hundred of Ville and Merrett we find that the rank order of representation between sectors remains the same for each year (see Table 2). The proportion of each sector also remains very similar. These results mirror quite closely the broad macroeconomic trends of twentieth-century Australia, particularly as reflected in the growing share of manufacturing in gross national product.9
Location of Business Records
The records of firms in our sample was spread around the country in 19 public archives and libraries, and 32 private firms. Although the universities and state archives have been the predominant collectors of business records, a number of firms have preserved their internal records.10 There are particular concentrations of business records in Victoria, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory, although this is not an accurate reflection of the geographic location of the firms covered, many of whom operated nationally or at least across state lines. Location of records by state or territory is presented in Table 3.
Possible Sample Problems
Several problems should be noted with the survey. First, as is often the case, smaller and failed companies within the sample are least well represented except in cases where they were acquired by a larger one. Second, while the number of companies with extant records is impressive, the extent and quality of the material is variable, with some very good collections existing alongside others of limited value. Details of the business records available for the top 20 companies in each of the spot years is provided in the appendix. In many cases the business records contain qualitative information from internal letter books, directors' minutes, and correspondence files with external parties. Such data is crucial in order to construct an understanding of the intentions, beliefs, and decisions of Australian business leaders in their strategic management role. Quantitative information ranges from sales, cost and price data, to personnel and superannuation records. The appendix also provides illustration of some of the "less successful" attempts at obtaining information on date ranges, quantity of information, and access conditions. Third, the identification of records is a continuing process. In due course we hope further archives will come to light both in Australia and in the country of origin of foreign multinationals based here.
Conclusions
Corporate memory in Australia is remarkably robust. The primary records of an encouragingly large and representative proportion of Australia's leading corporations have survived. It is hoped that researchers and corporate decision-makers will be encouraged by our findings to make full use of this source of competitive advantage and to acknowledge and support the continued development of this memory bank.
[Author Affiliation]
SIMON VILLE is Reader in Economic History, Australian National University.
GRANT FLEMING is Senior Lecturer in Commerce, Australian National University.
We would like to acknowledge the excellent research assistance provided by Dorothy Terwiel and Helen Bridge, comments by Russell Craig, and support from the ANU Faculty of Economics and Commerce Research Infrastructure Fund.
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