The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, seeks applicants for a postdoctoral scholar interested in entrepreneurial history.

The postdoctoral researcher will work under the supervision of Professors Noam Wasserman and Christina Lubinski of the Greif Center and in conjunction with Professor Dan Wadhwani of the University of the Pacific. Professor Wasserman is the founding director of the Greif Center’s Founder Central initiative and Professor Lubinski leads its entrepreneurial-history activities. Founder Central’s new course on Entrepreneurial History will debut in the Spring of 2019.

The position is for 1 year, with the potential of extending this to 2 years. In addition to research, the postdoc will teach one entrepreneurship or general business course per year if qualified, and will receive mentoring in this teaching role.

The Greif Center is among the nation’s leaders in entrepreneurship education and research. Its faculty includes a diverse mix of researchers and practitioners. This year, our undergraduate entrepreneurship program was ranked #4 and our graduate program #8 by US News and World Report. The Greif Center is one of the organizers of the West Coast Entrepreneurship Research Symposium and the sponsor of the Greif Entrepreneurship Research Impact Award — given annually at the Academy of Management conference. In addition to offering courses in the school’s undergraduate and MBA programs, we offer specialized graduate degrees in social entrepreneurship (MSSE) and innovation (MSEI).

Requirements: You should have a Ph.D. (or expect to complete your Ph.D. by September 2018) in history or should have engaged in historically-oriented work in a related discipline (e.g., management, sociology, anthropology, law, economics). Candidates should be interested in historical perspectives on entrepreneurship and its role in socio-economic change. Experience with archival and primary source research is preferred. You will be expected to participate in at least one existing research project while also having time to continue developing your own research.

Qualified candidates should email the following documents to entrepreneur@marshall.usc.edu:

Cover letter
Curriculum vitae, specifying research, teaching, and work experience
Research statement
Teaching statement
Two letters of recommendation

Timing: Review of applications will begin immediately, and continue until the position is filled. The position is expected to start September 2018, although the start date is flexible.

For questions about the position, please contact Christina Lubinski (cl.mpp@cbs.dk) or Noam Wasserman (nwasserm@marshall.usc.edu)

USC Marshall is renowned for its high-ranking undergraduate, graduate, international and executive education programs, an exceptional faculty engaged in leading-edge research, a diverse and creative student body, and a commitment to technological advancement. The research productivity of Marshall’s 200 full-time faculty ranks among the top 15 business schools in the world. For more information about the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, please go to: http://www.marshall.usc.edu.

The University of Southern California (USC), founded in 1880, is located in the heart of downtown L.A. and is the largest private employer in the City of Los Angeles. USC is an equal-opportunity educator and employer, proudly pluralistic and firmly committed to providing equal opportunity for outstanding persons of every race, gender, creed and background. The University particularly encourages women, members of underrepresented groups, veterans and individuals with disabilities to apply. USC will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities unless doing so would result in an undue hardship. Further information is available by contacting uschr@usc.edu.

At OHN we are very pleased to announce that Alistair Mutch, one of our long time EGOS Standing Working Group 8 participants, has published an insightful piece in Organization Studies recently (now available via Advance Online). In the acknowledgements he particularly credits this stream as having helped him develop the ideas presented in his article. It’s great to see research from the track getting published. Personally I can only agree with Alistair’s sentiment that SWG8 has been very influential and supportive for me in developing my research, and it is truly a shame that 2016 will be last year of the Standing Working Group. Nevertheless, hopefully we will be seeing a series of single year tracks on history, starting at Copenhagen 2017!

Bringing History into the Study of Routines: Contextualizing Performance

Alistair Mutch

Abstract

The focus on routines as ‘generative systems’ often portrays them as patterns of action relatively divorced from their context. History can help to supply a deeper and richer context, showing how routines are connected to broader structural and cultural factors. But it also shows that routines themselves have a history. This is explored using the illustration of the history of one particular organizational routine, that of the visitation of local organizational units by central church bodies, in three times and places: 15th century Italy, 18th century England and 18th century Scotland. This illustration shows that similar routines can be found but these are given very different inflections by the broader social, cultural and political context. Attention is drawn in particular to the differential involvement of lay actors and the implications for broader impacts. The case is made for analytical narratives of emergence of routines which can reconnect organizational routines both with their own history and with their broader context.