This is part 2 of our case study on the Hudson's Bay Company and remote work where we focus on responses to pandemics by distributed organizations. We explore an article by Paul Hackett, titled “Averting disaster: The Hudson’s Bay Company and smallpox in Western Canada during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,” published in 2004 in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Smallpox was a feared and well-known killer in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries. But as vaccination became possible, HBC officials in Canada made some surprising decisions about employing it. Are there insights we can glean and apply to present-day crises?
Talking About Organizations Podcast