The eternal adolescent? An interdisciplinary meta-narrative review of African business history

Research in African business history is not extensive but highly multi-disciplinary. Our review focuses on publications in key business and economic history journals to better understand the research themes favoured by these two disciplines. We follow a systematic review approach by clearly describing our search strategy and developing a definition of the field with explicit criteria for inclusion and exclusion. Through a meta-narrative approach, we demonstrate that small research niches like African business history function as interdisciplinary intersections that are sometimes too small and fragmented to form coherent research questions and agendas, and which have little consistent recognition of research contributions even within the field. We propose that meta-narrative reviewing can develop greater coherence in such interdisciplinary niches and can help to develop research agendas by providing a better overview of what historical sources are available and what gaps can be productively addressed.