Faculty and Research

Elisabeth Köll is an Associate Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at the Harvard Business School. After pursuing her undergraduate education at the University of Bonn in Germany, and at Fudan University, Shanghai, she received her PhD in Chinese Business History from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She has taught courses on Chinese business, economic, and social history and on doing business in contemporary China. At Harvard University she is affiliated with the Fairbank Center and a member of its executive committee.

 

Elisabeth's research focuses on the managerial, legal, and financial evolution of firms and entrepreneurship in China throughout the 20^th century to the present. She is particularly interested in how Chinese firms managed issues of control and accountability and the process of industrialization and incorporation in comparative perspective.  Her book From Cotton Mill to Business Enterprise: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2003) shows how concepts, definitions, and interpretations of property rights, corporate structures, and business practices in contemporary China have to be analyzed in terms of their historical, institutional, and cultural roots. Her current research addresses the emergence of railroad infrastructure in China and how technology transfer and railroad companies have contributed to China’s economic and political development as a modern nation-state. Exploring the evolution of railroads as transportation and communication infrastructure in China, her work also addresses issues that continue to impact the country’s current approaches to infrastructure and economic development.

 

Elisabeth has lived and conducted field work in China for many years. As an undergraduate, she gained her first practical business experience working as an intern for a Chinese-German joint-venture firm in Tianjin in the summer of 1987. Since then she has returned to China on a regular basis and maintains a research affiliation with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. She collaborates with colleagues in China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and has received various grants from organizations such as the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and the Research Foundation of Japanese Banks in Tokyo. In 2005 she received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies which allowed her to work in Shanghai, Jinan, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Hong Kong for a year, researching the role of railroads as new technology and infrastructure in China’s economic and social transformation in the 20^th century. Prior to coming to HBS she taught at Case Western Reserve University.