Best and Bad Practices - The Imperial Guilds of Constantinople

The intention of the present paper is to cover the entrepreneurial - micro-organizational and macro-administrative - aspects concerning structures and procedures (best and bad practices) within the imperial guilds as they are stated in the Book of the Eparch or Book of the Prefect («Tο Eπαρχικóν Bιβλίον») as it is named by the Swiss professor Jules Nicole and is known as the Codex Genevensis gr. 23. We are analyzing first the extent and structure of the Book of Eparch (BE) via text and statistical analysis based on the translated old Greek text and in a next step we investigate the relationships between the information items (sentences, phrases) of the BE and the various regulations (general. special, fees, money penalties and personal punishments) in order to detect significant codified commercial and trade regulations for best practices (general. special, fees) as well as for bad practices (money penalties, personal punishments).