Paloma Fernández

Paloma Fernández Pérez (born Barcelona, 1964), is Professor of economic and business history at the University of Barcelona.^[1] Licenciada en Geografia e Historia (University of Barcelona, 1987), Master of Arts in History (University of California at Berkeley, 1989), and Ph.D. in History (University of California at Berkeley, 1994).

Dissertations

Her bachelor's dissertation under the supervision of Carlos Martínez-Shaw dealt with the history of economic press in Spain in the 18th century. Her Ph.D. dissertation Family and Marriage Around Colonial Trade in Eighteenth-Century Cádiz, under the supervision of Richard Herr, was published in Spanish as El rostro familiar de la metrópoli. Redes de parentesco y lazos mercantiles en Cádiz 1700-1812 (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1997).

Awards etc.

She has received several fellowships and awards from Spanish, U.S. and British institutions: La Caixa/Indiana Fellowship to study a M.A. in the U.S. (1988), Fulbright Fellowship to study a Ph.D. in History in the U.S. (1989), P.E.O. Fellowship Award (1989), Mellon Write-Up Dissertation Grant from U.C. Berkeley (1990), Travel grants from U.I.M.P. in 1987, Catalan government travel grants in 1989, Instituto de la Empresa Familiar Travel Grant in 1996, Fundación Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria Grant for Research in Economics and Business Studies (2003), and several public competitive research projects from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia y Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (2005 and 2008). The University of Lancaster in the UK has nominated her Honorary Visiting Fellow in 2008 for her numerous projects of cooperation in research and teaching initiatives with several members of its Institute of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Development.

Studies

Fernández Pérez has studied the influence of personal networks in European business in the transition from the early modern period to modern times, in diverse economic sectors (colonial trade, capital intensive industries), and regions (Andalusia, Catalonia). Her focus has been family businesses and how family-owned and managed firms have been resilient and enduring forms of reducing uncertainty and transaction costs across borders and time. Alone or in collaborative articles and books Fernández Pérez has presented a long-term overview of evolution and transformation of relevant strategies of large Spanish family firms regarding: gender roles, training and education, professionalization of management, internationalization, networking and collective action.

She has also published Un siglo y medio de trefilería en España. Rivière y Moreda (Barcelona, Trivium 2004), has coedited with P. Pascual Del metal al motor. Innovación y atraso en la historia de la industria metalmecánica española (Bilbao, FBBVA 2007), and coedited with M. B. Rose Innovation and Entrepreneurial Networks in Europe (Oxford, Routledge 2009).

Fernández Pérez has organized several panel sessions for the Joint Business History Conference-European Business History Association conference in Lowell Mass. (2003) and -if accepted- in the forthcoming conference in Milano (2009, with J. Vidal). She is member of the Asociación Española de Historia Económica, the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, and the European Business History Association. She has been refereeing articles and/or reviewing books for Revista de Historia Industrial, Investigaciones de Historia Económica, Revista de Historia Económica, Business History, and Enterprise&Society. She is member of the council board of the Centre of Studies in Economics and Economic History Antoni de Capmany from Universitat de Barcelona, and of the Entrepreneurial History Discussion Papers website.

Recent articles

Some of her recent articles are:

• with A. Colli, M.B. Rose, “National Determinants of Family Firm Development? Family Firms in Britain , Spain and Italy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” Enterprise and Society, 4-1 (2003), pp. 28–64
• "Reinstalando la empresa familiar en la Economía y la Historia Económica. Una aproximación a debates teóricos recientes”, Cuadernos de Economía y Dirección de Empresas, 17 (2003)
• with N. Puig, “Knowledge and Training in Family Firms of the European Periphery: Spain , XVIII to XXth centuries”, Business History, 46-1 (2004), pp. 79– 99
• "Redes empresariales en el sector del metal: el caso de las industrias del alambre de hierro y acero en España (1880-1974)”, Investigaciones de Historia Económica, 4 (2006), pp. 51–76
• with L. Gálvez, "Female Entrepreneurship in Spain during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries", Business History Review, Special Issue on women in the service sector, Autumn 2007, vol. 81, no 3, 495-516.
• with N. Puig, “Bonsais in a Wild Forest? A historical Approach to the Longevity of Large Historical Family Firms in Spain”, Revista de História Económica. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History,25-3 (2007), pp. 459– 497
• "Small Firms and Networks in Capital Intensive Industries: The Case of Spanish Steelwire Manufacturing", Business history, Sept. 2007, vol. 49, no. 5, 647-667.
• with N. Puig, "Silent Revolution. The internationalization of large Spanish family firms". Special Issue on internationalization of firms edited by Peter Buckley and John Wilson, Business History, forthcoming.

References