Bureau of Business Research records

The Bureau of Business Research (BBR) at Harvard Business School (HBS) was established in 1911 by Dean Edwin F. Gay and Arch W. Shaw as the first organized effort to conduct research in business administration. Shaw was the inventor of the Business Policy course at HBS and donated the initial capital to fund the Bureau. BBR was founded to assemble and analyze business data that could be used as teaching examples in classroom settings. HBS sought to augment typical textbook and lecture teaching with real life examples of what business executives were facing on a daily basis. Establishing business as a profession, similar to law or medicine was the end goal of HBS during its early days.

The first research project conducted by the Bureau was a study to establish the cost of operating a retail shoe business. Paul T. Cherington, HBS Professor in Economic Resources of the United States, and Clarence Stoner (MBA 1911) devised a committee of manufacturers, retailers and faculty to serve as field agents to collect financial data from businesses in the form of a standardized profit and loss statements. The profit and loss statements were collected from over 130 retail shoe stores. The data consisted of a merchandise statement, an expense statement, a net gain statement and a balance sheet. All identification associating a business with its financial data was kept strictly confidential. The data was summarized and the findings were published in the first Bulletin, Object and History of the Bureau with Some Preliminary Findings on the Retailing of Shoes, 1913. The standard classification developed by Cherington and Stoner was adopted by many retailers for their own internal use and helped establish uniform cost principles for the retail shoe industry. The uniform cost principles led to increased and profits, while cutting deficiencies and waste. The Bureau’s first reports became very popular and led to the standard practice of sharing operations cost and profit information among merchants. The Bureau continued its statistical data collecting operations through World War II. After each study was conducted, the published Bulletin was mailed to a participating businesses free of charge. BBR saw the collection of statistical data as a two pronged approach; the statistical data was collected and used as true factual business data for teaching purposes and used as an incentive for businesses that were supplying data to improve efficiencies and profits.

BBR operated as an autonomous unit that focused on industry research studies from its founding until 1944, when it merged with the Division of Research's Business Research Services (BRS). The new administrative unit was renamed the Division of Research-Bureau of Business Research. The Division of Research-(BRS) was founded in 1933 to administer project research, facilitate case development, faculty research and the working papers of the faculty. Professor Malcolm P. McNair served as assistant director and managing director of BBR from 1922-1933 and director of the Division of Research-(BRS) from 1933 until 1936. The two research units merged in 1944 to create one administrative unit for HBS with a focus on administering faculty research and publication. Research at HBS evolved from BBR conducting its own research to facilitating faculty project research and publication as the Division of Research Bureau of Business Research. An editor position was created to oversee the funding and coordination of faculty publication. Some faculty research projects were foundational in the development of certain disciplines including management, strategy, marketing and human relations. The collection contains records that extend past Division of Research Bureau of Business Research's lifespan, but were in use and carried forward by the Division of Research office of the editor. Records that reflect this date from 1963-1977.

In addition to publishing statistical studies on retail operating costs from 1913 to 1926, the Bureau administered the Harvard Business School case collection. The Bureau of Business Research also contributed early “cases”, which were used in HBS classrooms. The early cases were statistical analyses of industries including the wholesale grocery business, variety chain stores and textile industry. BBR was, at times, contracted by merchants to conduct in depth statistical analysis studies of businesses and industries.

Time line: Harvard Bureau of Business Research, 1911-1944 Division of Research – Business Research Services, 1933-1944 Division of Research Bureau of Business Research, 1944-1963