Month: November 2015

MH division newsletter is out!

Steph

The newsletter of the Management History division of the Academy of Management, “Historically Speaking”, is out. See newsletter.

It marks two important events:

  • Michael Rowlinson, my co-author, received the Ronald Greenwood Award Recipient Mick Rowlinson for contributions to the field of Management History – which I thought was fantastic!
  • The Journal of Management History changed editors, and Bradley Bowden is taking over as of tomorrow I believe. Great news and for anyone interested in the journal, follow this link!

Bill Cooke on why management history matters

Steph

With thanks to Andrew Smith of The Past Speaks to alerting me to this interesting YouTube video.

Prof Bill Cooke talks about my management history matters, and how it allows present day phenomena to be put into a general context.

 

Beyond the Managerial Utopia of American Schools of Business Administration: Early Emergence of European Management Education in the 18th and 19th centuries

Dan

Call for Papers

The 2016 Association pour l’Histoire du Management et des Organisations Conference will hold a special track on the “Emergence of European Management Education in the 18th and 19th centuries.” This special track invites new thinking and empirical findings on 18th and 19th century European management education that both supplement present history and facilitate broader analysis of the interplay with the now dominant US model. In line with the main scientific orientation of the 21st AHMO conference, contributions could, for instance, investigate two main issues:

1) Could 18th-19th century European management education have offered a managerial utopia alternative to the American model?

2) How was early European management education institutionalized? Were there gaps between the ideals presented and the institutionalisation process in practice?

The full call for papers can be found here: http://ahmo.hypotheses.org/1122

Contributors are expected to submit their papers to the co-organizers: lise.arena@unice.fr, thomas.durand@cnam.fr and jcspender@gmail.com by January 5th, 2016 and will be notified of acceptance by January 15th, 2016.

The track will be held on March 18th during the 21st JHMO at UTBM Sevenans (Territoire de Belfort), FRANCE.

 

The Association pour l’Histoire du Management et des Organisations is a French research community that gathers researchers in management, organisations studies, history, sociology and economics. The annual AHMO “Journées” aim to facilitate discussion and to stimulate pluridisciplinary collaborations on the history of management and organizations. The aim of the association is also to promote the integration of history in teaching curricula and to help Ph.D. students for early careers developments.

Popp’s history of an entrepreneurial family

Steph

It is always great to see the work of colleague’s reviewed by scholars outside organizational history, and this one is a particularly charming and insightful discussion into how private history, organizational process and those of us who research those things can be closely intertwined:

Emotional Historians? A review of Andrew Popp’s Entrepreneurial Families

Posted on January 29, 2015 by jbailey2013

What happens when historians fall in love with their subjects? Love is supposed to make us blind, isn’t it? Does this mean we can’t write ‘objectively’ about the object of our fascination and affection? I am regularly besotted by some of the people I study, from the good (the adorable Northumbrian engraver, Thomas Bewick) to the bad (William Ettrick, the wife-beating justice of the peace), to the lovely (Mary Robinson, who seduced theatre audiences, princes, and her readers).

ShawJSSa

It is not just individuals. I fell for a whole family while researching my last book Parenting in England; the Shaws: John and Elizabeth who grew a family and a successful business in Staffordshire in the first half of the 19th century. Reading their correspondence through their courtship and marriage (1811-1839) created a powerful picture for me of the couple’s admirable characters, their loving relationship with each other and their children and parents, and – in fact – the appeal of the minutiae of their daily lives.

…

If you’d like to read the full review, click here.

Seminar Program ‘The Narrative Construction of Memory’

Steph

Program for the ESRC Seminar ‘The Narrative Construction of Memory’

December 10, 2015 – Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

 9.00 – 9.30           Welcome & Introduction

9.30 – 10.15         Tor Hernes, CBS: “Temporal Trajectory and Organizational Narrative”

10.15 – 11.00       Robin Holt, CBS: “Memory and Mnemosyne”

11.00 – 11.15       Coffee

11.15 – 12.00       Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific: “Projecting Plausible Futures: Uses of Historical Narratives in the Entrepreneurial Process”

12.00 – 13.00       Lunch

13.00 – 14.15       Ronald Kroeze, Free University of Amsterdam: “The Use of History and Narratives by Dutch Top Managers and Companies”

14.15 – 14.30       Coffee

14.30 – 15.15       Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria: “Rhetorical History and Narrative History”

15.15 – 16.00       Per Hansen, CBS: “Narratives as the Basis of Memory and History”

16.00 – 16.15       Coffee

16.15 – 17.00       Discussion & Conclusion

For further information, please see the poster.

CfP: Applied microhistory: A workshop

Steph

Applied microhistory: A workshop.

 Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Tuesday, 15 March 2016.

As time puts things into perspective, the heated and sometimes misleading historiographical debates of the 1970s and 1980s on micro-history and its focus on small subjects seem to fade away. Yet in the meantime historical micro-analysis has emerged as a useful method to approach a very diverse set of questions in different fields of social sciences and humanities.

Micro-analysis focuses on the reduction of scale as an instrument to answer theoretical general questions, maintaining a dynamic tension between ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ perspectives. In so doing, it offers a logical procedure to infer general considerations from specific cases, regardless of their statistical representativeness. At the same time, this approach implies a contingent view of the relationship between agency and structure, highlighting the creativity of the former and the complexity of the latter.

This workshop aims at discussing the contribution of micro-analytical historical approaches to research in different fields, from the most classical focus on local communities to the challenge of studying at micro level global connections and institutions, as well at the organizational level. Contributors are invited to address the methodological issues implied in the use of a micro-analytical approach with reference to a diverse range of research fields.

Scholars interested in participating should send a title and short abstract of their proposed contribution by January 15 to Giovanni Favero (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) – gfavero@unive.it

References:

Decker, Stephanie (2015) Mothership reconnection: Microhistory and institutional work compared. In T.G Weatherbee, P.G. McLaren, & A.J. Mills (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History (pp. 222-237). London: Routledge. https://goo.gl/hBJD7A

Fellman, Susanna & Rahikainen, Marjatta (Eds.) (2012) Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. http://goo.gl/znojt0

Magnússon, Sigurour G. & Szijártó, Istvan M. (2013) What is Microhistory? Theory and Methods. London: Routledge. https://goo.gl/G9yzYa

Trivellato, Francesca (2011). Is there a future for Italian microhistory in the age of global history? California Italian Studies Journal, 2(1). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0z94n9hq

 

 

Making Markets: Histories of Commodity Grading and Trading

Dan

On Friday, Caitlin Rosenthal and Espen Storli hosted an interesting workshop on “Making Markets: Histories of Commodity Grading and Trading” at Berkeley. (The description and program can be found here: http://cstms.berkeley.edu/current-events/making-markets/) It seems to me that interest in “grading” and “standards” creation is on the rise at the moment in historical studies of organizations and markets; I can think of a number of historians working on the topic from different angles, including JoAnne Yates and Stephen Mihm.

Nostalgia Conference in London

Steph

By chance I came across the announcement for a conference at the German Historical Institute in London on the topic of “Nostalgia: Historicizing the Longing for the Past”. The influential historian David Lowenthal was one of the contributors, and one of the keynotes was delivered by the social psychologist Konstantin Sedikides, one of the leading nostalgia researchers in the field. Multi-disciplinary in nature, it was a fascinating two day event, which the GHIL has covered in a blog that recounts the different panels and discussion. If you are interested, see https://nost.hypotheses.org/. The website also includes a “reading list” of texts discussed at the event, which underscores how varied the academic research on nostalgia is.

Deadline for EGOS SWG8: The future of organizational history

Steph

Sub-theme 08: (SWG) History and Organization Studies: The Ways Forward

Back to list | Program
To upload your short paper, please log in to the Member Area.
  • Please upload by:  Monday, January 11, 2016, 23:59:59 CET
Convenors:
R. Daniel Wadhwani, University of the Pacific, USA, and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Matthias Kipping, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada
Stephanie Decker, Aston Business School, UK

Call for Papers

Historical sources, methods, and theoretical constructs have gained considerable attention in management and organizational studies in recent years (Üsdiken & Kipping, 2014). Researchers have mades a range of notable conceptual (Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2014; Rowlinson et al., 2014) and empirical contributions (O’Sullivan & Graham, 2010; Rowlinson et al., 2014; Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014) that have laid the foundations for a diverse array of approaches to historical research and reasoning in organization studies. Moreover leading journals, such as Organization Studies and Academy of Management Review, have supported these developments by announcing special issues devoted to historical research and theory. Indeed, one could fairly state that the nature and value of historical research has come to be more broadly understood and accepted than when the EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) on “Historical Perspectives in Organization Studies” was formed.

In this, the final year of the SWG 08, we seek a broad range of empirical papers that explicitly build on the foundations that have been established but move the conversation between history and organization studies forward in interesting and novel ways. We also welcome innovative conceptual papers based on previous research. Some of the ways in which this might be done includes:

  • Building new bridges between history and other approaches to the study of organizations that are sensitive to time and context, such as process research, institutional theory, and evolutionary theory.
  • Extending the work that has been done on history and organization theory to related domains, including strategy and entrepreneurship.
  • Introducing new or underused methods for interpreting historical sources related to organizations and organizing.
  • Exploring novel types of historical source material.
  • Examining new and understudied historical periods or regions.
  • Considering new ways in which the past is used in organizations and organizing

Short paper submissions should not only describe the empirical research conducted and elaborate on theoretical claims, but should also explicitly engage the extant work on historical approaches to management and organization studies and point to promising new theoretical, methodological, and empirical directions.

References

  • Bucheli, M., & Wadhwani, R.D. (eds.) (2014): Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kipping, M., & Üsdiken, B. (2014): “History in organization and management theory: more than meets the eye.” Academy of Management Annals, 8 (1), 535–588.
  • O’Sullivan, M., & Graham, M.B.W. (2010): “Moving Forward by Looking Backward: Business History and Management Studies.” Journal of Management Studies, 47 (5), 775–790.
  • Rowlinson, M., Hassard, J., & Decker, S. (2013): “Strategies for organizational history: A dialogue between historical theory and organization theory.” Academy of Management Review, 39 (3), 250–274.
  • Rowlinson, M., Casey, A., Hansen, P.H., & Mills, A.J. (2014): “Narratives and Memory in Organizations.”Organization, 21 (4), 441–446.
  • Üsdiken, B., & Kipping, M. (2014): “History and organization studies: A long-term view.” In: M. Bucheli & R.D. Wadhwani (eds.): Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 33–55.
R. Daniel Wadhwani is Fletcher Jones Associate Professor of Management at University of the Pacific, USA, and Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research has used historical approaches to study a range of organizational issues, including the emergence of new markets, the nature of entrepreneurial agency, and the processes of categorization and value determination in organizational fields. He is co-editor (with Marcelo Bucheli) of “Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods” (Oxford University Press, 2014), which examines the role of historical research and reasoning in organization studies.
Matthias Kipping is Professor of Policy and Chair in Business History at the Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto, Canada. His research has focused on the development and role of the different institutions of management knowledge, namely management consulting and business education. In his publications, as well as in his teaching, he has been trying to link historical research with organizational theory. He is active in a variety of scholarly associations in both business history and management and organization studies.
Stephanie Decker is Professor of Organization Studies and History at Aston Business School, UK. As a historian working at a business school, most of her work is concerned with the relation between organization theory and history. She is co-editor of ‘Business History’ and is the recipient of the prestigious Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship 2014–15, as well as the principal organizer of a seminar series on organizational history funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council (UK). She co-authored “Research Strategies for Organizational History” (Academy of Management Review, 2014) with Michael Rowlinson and John Hassard.
To upload your short paper, please log in to the Member Area.

Cross-posting: Organizational history and international business

Steph

This has been cross-posted from Andrew Smith at The Past Speaks – if interested please contact Andrew!

The Journal of World Business is calling for proposals for Special Issues (see below). As someone who strongly believes that Business History can offer a great deal to scholars in International Business and International Management, I would be interested in forming a team to submit a proposal for a special issue on Business History to this journal. I’m thinking that a team of three guest editors would be ideal for this project. One of them should be an established IB or IM scholar who is interested in historical research methods.

If you are interested in helping me to craft a proposal for the Special Issue of this prestigious journal (ranked 4 in the ABS journal guide), please contact me.

JOURNAL OF WORLD BUSINESS

CALL FOR SPECIAL ISSUE PROPOSALS

Due date: January 15, 2016

Please send proposals to

Kim Cahill, Managing Editor

 The Journal of World Business (JWB) invites proposals for special issues with a due date of January 15, 2016.

JWB has a long tradition of publishing high impact special issues on emerging or provocative topics within the editorial purview of the journal. The objective of these special issues is to assemble a coherent set of papers that move understanding of a topic forward empirically and theoretically. Therefore, as a rule, JWB will not publish special issues based solely on papers presented at conferences or workshops. Rather, special issues must be motivated by a clear and compelling focus on an issue that is timely, significant and likely to generate interest among JWB‘s readership.

PROCESS

Prospective guest editor(s) should submit written proposals that incorporate the rationale for the special issue topic, positions it in the literature, and include some illustrative topics that papers could focus upon.The proposal should also include a draft of the actual call for papers and outline the credentials of the guest editor(s).

After the closing date, the JWB editorial team will review the proposals submitted and select one to three for further assessment. This additional analysis may include communication with prospective guest editors, suggestions as to how to strengthen the proposal and/or recommendations for the addition of other guest editors. Following this consultation, one proposal will generally be selected by the Editor in Chief to progress, although the guest editor(s) may still be asked to develop and refine the proposal further. The Editor-in-Chief will generally assign a JWB Senior Editor to serve on the SI editorial team as the Supervising Editor. The Supervising Editor will be responsible for acting as a liaison between the JWBeditorial team and the guest editor(s) and ensuring that JWB editorial standards are maintained through the special issue process. She/he will be actively involved in the entire editorial process, including helping to select which papers are sent for review, identifying and assigning reviewers and in preliminary decisions throughout the review process. However, the ultimate decision to accept or reject papers rests with the Editor in Chief.

GUEST EDITOR(S)’ ROLE

 The guest editor(s) will be responsible for publicizing the call for papers and for generating submissions for the special issue. If appropriate, they may host a workshop for papers being considered for the special issue but attendance at the workshop cannot be a prerequisite for the acceptance of papers. They will also be actively involved in all stages of the review process in terms of inviting reviewers and making preliminary decisions on submissions. The review process will be managed online through the EES system. It is also expected that the guest editors will write an introductory article that will position the special issue in the relevant literature and briefly introduce the papers in the issue. This paper will be subject to editorial review. In order to prevent any perception of conflicts of interest, it is JWB policy that Guest Editors cannot submit to the special issue as authors of papers beyond the introductory article.