BAM2019 Conference
3rd – 5th September 2019
Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Track 14: Management and Business History
Track Chairs:
– Kevin Tennent, University of York kevin.tennent@york.ac.uk
– Roy Edwards, University of Southampton r.a.edwards@soton.ac.uk
Track description:
This track aims to encourage the growing number of management and business historians who work in business schools and social science departments to engage in constructive debate with a wide
range of management scholars. The 2019 conference theme, ‘Building and Sustaining High Performance Organisations During Uncertain Times: Challenges and Opportunities’, is an ideal
opportunity to explore the value of historical study for management research. Histories of organizations, industries and institutions give us the opportunity to understand how managers have built through uncertain and challenging times in the past, whether it be through war, economic crisis, scandal or other disruptions to their activities. Inspired by Fayol, Ford and Taylor, managers also attempted to boost productivity, often with mixed results. In this track we specialize in
chronologically or longitudinally motivated research. We welcome papers, symposia or workshop proposals either using new and innovative methodologies or applying archival methodology to a
new disciplinary context. We are also interested in context specific papers using more traditional historical methodology but which take innovative approaches to relate their findings to wider social
science concerns. In addition, we appreciate papers dealing with the legacy of uncertainty in the past in business and management more generally, and how it has influenced the diversity of
experience in present day businesses, regions and communities.
This year we encourage cross-disciplinary papers and workshop submissions that link different Tracks, while the main conference theme ought to feature prominently in all submissions. As a group
we are inherently multi-disciplinary and believe in the application of theory to historical analysis, and there is no single epistemology for approaching this. We aim to encourage theoretically orientated
social science history with a clear relationship to present day debates in the management discipline.
Contributions might focus on but are not limited to: the economic or social history of business, historical case studies for theory building, theoretical contributions on the relevance of history to
management studies, the uses of history, history as a method for management studies.
Please note that while we are open-minded work not featuring a historical dimension, broadly defined, will not be accepted.
This editorial may be a useful provocation:
- Tennent, K.D., 2018. Guest editorial. Journal of Management History, 24(2), pp.122-127.
Some theoretical and empirical examples of the genre of work that we seek to welcome include:
- Cummings, S. and Bridgman, T., 2011. The relevant past: Why the history of management should be critical for our future. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 10(1), pp.77-93.
- Edwards, R., 2010. Job analysis on the LMS: mechanisation and modernisation c. 1930–c. 1939. Accounting, Business & Financial History, 20(1), pp.91-105.
- Gillett, A. G., and Tennent, K. D., 2017. Dynamic Sublimes, Changing Plans, and the Legacy of a Megaproject: The case of the 1966 Soccer World Cup. Project Management Journal. 48(6), pp. 93- 16.
- Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2018. Shadow hybridity and the institutional logic of professional sport: Perpetuating a sporting business in times of rapid social and economic change. Journal of Management History, 24(2), pp.228-259.
- Maclean, M., Harvey, C. and Clegg, S.R., 2016. Conceptualizing historical organization studies. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), pp.609-632.
- Mollan, S. and Tennent, K.D., 2015. International taxation and corporate strategy: evidence from British overseas business, circa 1900–1965. Business History, 57(7), pp.1054-1081.
Organizational History Network 