Tag: management history

CfP: Enterprising York

Steph

Call for Papers

Enterprising York: Histories of Business, Management and Society in a City of Heritage

York, England

15-16 September 2023

Deadline for submission: 30 November 2022

More than eight million tourists flock to the city of York each year to celebrate its heritage, gaining brief glimpses into the city’s long history as an important centre of private trade and public enterprise. From bustling mediaeval markets to industrial railways, chocolate manufacturers, and luxurious teahouses, the history of enterprise in the city of York is widely recognized as a valuable resource of particular significance to small businesses and public organisations. Yet unlike larger cities in northern England, York’s business and management history has received very little scholarly attention. Despite being recognized since the Roman conquest of Britain as an important and well-connected commercial city and site of public administration, an important mediaeval and early-modern trading centre, and a pioneering hub at the forefront of 19th-century industrialisation in transport and manufacturing, the city of York is now largely overlooked as a site critical to the development of the British economy. This conference seeks to address the apparent paradox of a city that, economically, always seems simultaneously behind and ahead of its times.

As the institutional home to one of the largest concentrations of business and management historians in the UK, the University of York’s School for Business and Society invites proposals for original research presentations that reconsider the history of York’s private and public enterprise. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • The conflicted legacies of colonialism, slavery and philanthropy in York’s chocolate industries
  • Papers drawing on the rich archival materials of the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York
  • York’s pioneering role in public administration of government, religious, military, and nonprofit enterprises
  • Histories of retailing, hospitality, tourism and consumer culture in York
  • Transportation and trade from the Roman and Viking eras through mediaeval and early-modern commerce, industrialization and to the post-industrial present
  • Gender, race, diversity and inequality in work and employment, labour-management relations, and corporate governance 
  • Entrepreneurship in a local context, including the successes and challenges faced by women, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBT+ communities
  • The role of rural enterprise and rural development in the North Yorkshire economy
  • The historical relationship between the University of York and local and regional private and public enterprises

Please submit proposals of no more than 500 words and a one-page C.V. to Shane Hamilton (shane.hamilton@york.ac.uk) by 30 November 2022. Conference presenters will be asked to submit complete versions of their papers by 15 August 2023. Presenters will receive accommodation, meals, and compensation for their travel costs. The conference organisers are planning an edited publication based on a selection of revised conference papers. The program committee is composed of Shane Hamilton, Matthew Hollow, Stephen Linstead, Simon Mollan, and Kevin Tennent.

Message from the BAM MBH Track

Steph

British Academy of Management 

Management and Business History Track 

Track Chairs 

  • James Fowler, University of Essex James.Fowler@essex.ac.uk 
  • Roy Edwards, University of Southampton r.a.edwards@soton.ac.uk 

Track description: 

This track encourages 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 2022 conference theme, ‘Reimagining business and management as a force for good’ offers ample opportunity to explore the value of historical study for current management. 

In this track we specialize in chronologically or longitudinally motivated research. Histories of organizations, industries and institutions give us the opportunity to understand how managers have dealt with reinventing themselves in the past. History is replete with makeovers. We would welcome papers that explore how businesses and managers have responded to the requirement to change themselves, change the narrative about themselves, or both. How did this happen, and how successful was it? History allows us to both challenge and develop theory by exploring its explanatory power in relation to real events where the outcomes are already known. 

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 including the diversity of experience in present day businesses, regions and communities. While the main conference theme ought to feature prominently in all submissions, we encourage cross-disciplinary papers and workshop submissions that link different Tracks. 

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, and history as a method for management studies. Please note though that while we are open-minded, work without a historical dimension will not be accepted. 

This article is a useful initial point of reference: 

Tennent, K. (2020). Management and business history – a reflexive research agenda for the 2020s. Journal of Management History. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-09-2020-0061. 

These articles offer commentary on the ‘dual integrity’ of business history methods as a combination of social science and historical craft: 

Decker, S., Usidken, B., Engwall, L. & Rowlinson, M. (2018). Special issue introduction: Historical research on institutional change. Business History, 60(5). pp613-627. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2018.1427736 

Maclean, M., Harvey, C. and Clegg, S.R., (2016). Conceptualizing historical organization studies. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), pp.609-632. DOI: 10.5465/amr.2014.0133 

Rowlinson, M., Hassard, J. & Decker, S. (2014). Research Strategies for Organisational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organisation Theory. Academy of Management Review, 39(3), pp250–274. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2012.0203 

Some theoretical and empirical examples of the genre of work that we seek to welcome include: 

Fowler, J., & Gillett, A. (2021) Making a hybrid out of a crisis: historical contingency and the institutional logics of London’s public transport monopoly, Journal of Management History, ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-01-2021-0003 

Gandy, A., & Edwards, R. (2017). Enterprise logic vs product logic: the development of GE’s computer product line, Business History, 59(3), pp431-452. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2018.1462796 

Gillett, A. & Tennent, K. (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. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-11-2017-0060 

Hamilton, S. (2016). Revisiting the History of Agribusiness, Business History Review, 90(3), pp541-545. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000768051600074X 

Hollow, M. (2014) ‘Strategic Inertia, Financial Fragility and Organizational Failure: The Case of the Birkbeck Bank, 1870–1911’, Business History, 56(5), pp. 746–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2013.839660 

Lane, J. (2019) Secrets for Sale? Innovation and the Nature of Knowledge in an Early Industrial District: The Potteries, 1750–1851, Enterprise and Society, 20(4), pp861-906. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2019.8 

Maclean, M., Shaw, G., Harvey, C. and Booth, A., (2020). Management learning in historical perspective: Rediscovering Rowntree and the British interwar management movement. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 19(1), pp.1-20. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2018.0301 

Mollan, S. & Tennent, K. (2015). International taxation and corporate strategy: evidence from British overseas business, circa 1900–1965. Business History, 57(7), pp.1054-1081. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2014.999671 

Tennent, K., Gillett, A. and Foster, W., 2020. Developing historical consciousness in management learners. Management Learning, 51(1), pp.73-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507619869669 

AMLE SI: New Histories of Business Schools

Steph

AMLE’s September issue features an exciting special issue on the History of Business Schools and Business School education.

Special Issue on New Histories of Business Schools

From the Editors—New Times, New Histories of the Business School
Patricia Genoe McLaren, Todd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings, Christina Lubinski, Ellen O’Connor, J.-C. Spender, and Gabrielle Durepos

Research & Reviews

Business Schools and the Role of the Executives’ Wives
Rolv Petter Amdam and Allison Louise Elias
Teaching (Cooperative) Business: The “Bluefield Experiment” and the Future of Black Business Schools
Leon Prieto, Simone Phipps, Neil Stott, and Lilia Giugni
Social Imaginaries of Entrepreneurship Education: The United States and Germany, 1800–2020
R. Daniel Wadhwani and Christoph Viebig
Recentering the Global South in the Making of Business School Histories: Dependency Ambiguity in Action
Sergio Wanderley, Rafael Alcadipani, and Amon Barros
Historicizing Management and Organization in Africa
Baniyelme D. Zoogah

Essays

Business Education in the U.K. Polytechnic Tradition: Uncovering Alternative Approaches through Historical Investigation
Alistair Mutch
Feeling Left Out: Revising Business School History and Inserting Lyrical Sociology
Renee M. Rottner

Exemplary Contributions

Professional School Obsession: An Enduring Yet Shifting Rhetoric by U.S. Business Schools
Behlül Üsdiken, Matthias Kipping, and Lars Engwall
The Future of the Business School: Finding Hope in Alternative Pasts
André Spicer, Zahira Jaser, and Caroline Wiertz
Reckoning with Slavery: How Revisiting Management’s Uncomfortable Past Can Help Us Confront Challenges Today
Caitlin Rosenthal
Indigenous Conversational Approach to History and Business Education
Mary Beth Doucette, Joseph Scott Gladstone, and Teddy Carter

Book & Resource Reviews

Business School Archives: The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) Archives
Tumbe Chinmay
African American Management History: Insights on Gaining a Cooperative Advantage
François Bastien
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools
O’Doherty Damian

AOM MH community blog

Steph

AOM submission dates move ever closer (14 January 2021 5pm EST). In case you were not aware that the Management History track at AOM now runs a blog with news and updates, you should visit this website and subscribe!

The PDW call for submissions can be found here: https://aom.org/events/annual-meeting/submitting/calls-for-submissions/call-for-submissions-mh-pdw

The call for the scholarly programme is here: https://aom.org/events/annual-meeting/submitting/calls-for-submissions/call-for-submissions-mh-scholarly

CfP: SI Management & Political Philosophy

Steph

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Management and Political Philosophy (Philosophy of Management)

Deadline: 31 March 2021

Guest Editors: Marian Eabrasu and David Wilson

Political philosophy explores general questions about how to organize ourselves, and how to make legitimate decisions about how to organize ourselves, for the purpose of meeting our most fundamental needs of security and welfare.  Management philosophy, for its part, explores general questions about existing organizations and how they can best advance their goals. There is, thus, much overlap of subject area.  Political states themselves must engage in the management of public resources and public institutions; thus, historians of management typically start with a discussion of ancient thought about how to rule (see Witzel, 2016; Wren, 2020).  With the rise of industrialization, organizations that were independent of but hosted by the state began to proliferate, and management thought became focused on them instead.  However, not only does management continue to occur in both, but political behavior and organizational behavior strongly influence one another. Thus, inquiry in each area can be pertinent to the other. This idea joins the observation that in the past decades CSR took a political turn (Kourula et al., 2019). However, while welcoming papers discussing political CSR (Scherer et al., 2016), this call for paper opens a wider theoretical angle by inviting contributions to take a step back from the current conversations on the political roles of corporations and think more broadly on topics such as:

  • States are not exactly like corporations: some argue that it is a difference in degree, others that it is a difference in kind (Schrempf-Stirling, 2018). Among other things, this question bears on the extent to which the vast literature about ruling the state can be applied to managing the firm (Philips and Margolis, 1999; Moriarty, 2005; Taylor, 2017).
  • There are lively debates about the extent to which it is appropriate and desirable for the state to treat corporations as persons. What rights, and what responsibilities, are best accorded them? Are they more properly treated by the state (contrary to the first question) not as a different sort of state but as a different sort of citizen  (French, 1979; Ripken, 2019)?
  • Corporate management, along with state government, is an important variety of social authority. Many have argued that there is a strong case to be made for democracy in corporate management (Dahl, 1985; McMahon, 2017; Anderson, 2019). What would such democracy look like?
  • Political thought has been directed to supporting a robust notion of corporate social responsibility-owing, for example, to the deployment of the same arguments that are used to justify capitalism (Heath, 2020) or to the argument that they serve important political purposes (Singer, 2019). How can political thought support the notion of corporate social responsibility?
  • It is argued that it is appropriate and even desirable for the state to regulate managerial behavior with respect to, for example, safety, discrimination in hiring and pay, and whistleblowing. This, in other words, is the area of state-enforced worker’s rights (Werhane, 1985; Werhane, Radin, and Bowie, 2004). Should the state regulate managerial behavior – and if so, how?   
  • The increasing permeability of the boundary between public and private spheres raises the question of where the power should reside: business or politics? The struggles of influence between business and politics, often epitomized by formulas such as “big corporations” or “omnipotent government,” leaves open fundamental philosophical questions on how their relations should eventually be organized (Chomsky, 2013; Bakan, 2003; Reich, 2007; Blok, 2019).
  • Political philosophers generally make a space for civil disobedience in the case of illegitimate governments or laws (Simmons, 1979). At the same time, corporate social responsibility and business ethics literature typically assumes that businesses should obey the law.  Is there a space for civil disobedience by firms that are faced with corrupt political regimes or immoral laws? 

Details

Submissions are sought for review and publication in Philosophy of Management: www.springer.com/journal/40926

Articles can be submitted at https://www.editorialmanager.com/phom/ by 31 March 2021.

Expected publication date: January 2022.

Word length: 6,000-10,000 words, excluding References.

Guest Editors:

David Carl Wilson, Professor of Philosophy, Webster University: wilson@webster.edu

Marian Eabrasu, Associate Professor, European Business School Paris, EM Normandie: eabrasu@yahoo.com

References

Anderson, E. (2019) Private Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Bakan, J. (2005) The Corporation (New York: The Free Press)

Blok, V. (2020) ‘Politics versus Economics. Philosophical Reflections on the Nature of Corporate Governance’ Philosophy of Management 19, pp. 69–87

Chomsky, N. (2013) Making the Future (San Francisco: City Lights Open Media)

Dahl, R. A. (1985) A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press)

French, P. (1979) ‘The Corporation as a Moral Person’ American Philosophical Quarterly 16(3), pp. 207-15

Heath, J. (2020) The Machinery of Government (New York: Oxford University Press)

Kourula, A., Moon, J., Salles-Djelic, M.-L. & Wickert, C. (2019). ‘New Roles of Government in the Governance of Business Conduct: Implications for Management and Organizational Research’ Organization Studies 40, pp. 1101-23

MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue (South Bend:  University of Notre Dame Press)

McMahon, C. (2017) Authority and Democracy: A General Theory of Government and Management (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Moriarty, J. (2005) ‘On the Relevance of Political Philosophy to Business Ethics’ Business Ethics Quarterly 15(3), pp. 455-73

Phillips, R.A. & Margolis, J. D.  (1999) ‘Towards an Ethics of Organizations’ Business Ethics Quarterly 9(3), pp. 619-38

Reich, R. (2007) Supercapitalism (New York: Vintage)

Ripken, S. K. (2019) Corporate Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Scherer, A. G., Rasche, A., Palazzo, G. & Spicer, A. (2016). ‘Managing for Political Corporate Social Responsibility: New Challenges and Directions for PCSR 2.0’ Journal of Management Studies 53, pp. 273-98

Schrempf-Stirling, J. (2018) ‘State Power: Rethinking the Role of the State in Political Corporate Social Responsibility’ Journal of Business Ethics 150, pp. 1-14

Simmons, J. (1979) Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton:  Princeton University Press)

Singer, A. A. (2019) The Form of the Firm:  A Normative Political Theory of the Corporation (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Taylor, R. S. (2017) Exit Left: Markets and Mobility in Republican Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Werhane, P. H. (1985) Persons, Rights, and Corporations (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall)

Werhane, P., Radin, T., & Bowie, N. (2004) Employment and Employee Rights (London: Blackwell)

Witzel, R. (2016) A History of Management Thought, 2nd ed.  (London: Routledge)

Wren, D. & Bedeian, A. (2020) The Evolution of Management Thought, 8th ed. (New York: Wiley)

Digital evaluation copies for Wren & Bedeian

Steph

The Evolution of Management Thought

By David A Wren & Arthur G Bedeian

It is our pleasure to announce that the eighth edition of The Evolution of Management Thought has been released and that digital evaluation copies are now available. Over the nearly half-century since the publication of EMT’s first edition, we have come to more fully appreciate that everything about management as an academic discipline—its language, its theories, its models, and its methodologies, not to mention its implicit values, its professional institutions, and its scholarly ways—comes from its inherited traditions. In the belief that contemporary scholarship within the management discipline suffers to the extent that it lacks an appreciation of the past’s impact on current thinking, our new edition traces the evolution of management thought from its earliest days to the present, examining the backgrounds, ideas, and influences of its major contributors. 


In preparing this new edition, our intent was to place various theories of management in their historical context, showing how they have changed over time. As with previous editions, we exhort readers to eschew what might be called “straight-line thinking” in associating individual factors with specific events. Throughout 22 chapters, we move back and forth through time highlighting unsuspected connections, demonstrating that history is more than simply a sequence of disparate events and personalities that careen through time and space. As a special feature, this edition includes a PowerPoint package (prepared by Regina Scannell Greenwood and the late Julia Kurtz Teahen) featuring 650 photographs, charts, and other visual materials. 


Request a digital evaluation copy by pasting the following URL into your browser: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Evolution+of+Management+Thought%2C+8th+Edition-p-9781119692904
We remain grateful for the suggestions and encouragement of the many people who have used previous editions of The Evolution of Management Thought in the classroom and in their own research. For more information, or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.


Sincerely, 

Daniel A. Wren
David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus
The University of Oklahoma
dwren@ou.edu

and

Arthur G. Bedeian
Boyd Professor Emeritus
Louisiana State University
abede@lsu.edu
https://faculty.lsu.edu/bedeian/

MHRG Annual Workshop meeting report

Steph

For those of us who missed it, Chris Corker has kindly provided us with a short report on the Management History Research Group event, which has, like many others, gone virtual this autumn:

The 2020 edition of the Management History Research Group (MHRG) Annual Workshop took place, via Zoom, on Thursday, 1st October with two panels comprising a total of five papers presented, with participants as far away as Japan and Washington DC.

Original plans for the workshop, in the pipeline since our successful 2019 workshop in Preston, had been to head to Newcastle and continue the tradition of the MHRG to host a predominantly single-track workshop with a range of papers, either developmental or fully formed, for constructive and critical feedback.

Keen to not loose this approach, the Zoom version of MHRG followed the same focus. With a total of 20 participants, the first paper from Ayumu Sugawara (Tohoku University, Japan) explored BOLSA’s encounter with Japan in the 1960s Eurodollar market, followed by Leo McCann and Simon Mollan (University of York) on Placing Camelot: Cultivating Leadership and Learning in the Kennedy Presidency, the first panel concluding with James Fowler (University of Essex) discussing The Management, Politics and Strategic Narratives of Decline and Turnaround at London Transport 1970-87.

Following a brief recess, the second panel featured Simon Mollan (University of York), Beverly Geesin (University of Dundee), and Joel Tannenbaum (Community College of Philadelphia) work titled ‘American Caesar? Authoritarian leadership and the American Right’, and concluded with Leo McCann (University of York) and John Heath (American University, Washington DC, USA) discussing ‘A Parable about Power’: Management and Leadership in Robert McNamara’s Presidency of the World Bank.

Overall, the contributions were informative and interesting for all participants, with much discussion, debate and feedback was generated for the presenters.

Like many events across academia, the MHRG Workshop had to adapt and the Zoom approach worked for everyone involved. Still small, supportive, and constructive as prior MHRG workshops have been, the change in format worked for this year.

What was missing, as it is for every postponed or adapted conference, was the sense of community among colleagues and friends who traditionally work in a multitude of places and come together in person infrequently to catch up, talk about new projects and potential collaborations, and bring into the community new members, emerging scholars, and encourage doctoral students.

The chat in a local licensed premise, the discussions over a meal, the conversation in coffee breaks and the chance to bounce an idea among participants without the formal structure of a presentation, are what is missing.

Virtual conferences and workshops may be keeping our research alive and our discipline-specific communities together, but the informal chat, the catching up with friends and talking about family, hobbies, and all the non-research stuff, the chance to see a new town or city and the opportunity to travel are understandably absent and hard to replicate with the video conferencing format.

The world of academic conferences and workshops is likely to continue in this at distance approach for the foreseeable future in light of the devastating effect the pandemic is having on the world, but in time our communities will reform in person, drinks will be consumed, ideas exchanged, enthusiasm for research reignited, and the shared love for research experienced.

It is the hope of the MHRG committee to run a face to face workshop in September 2021. We embrace management history in all its forms, and contributions from associated sub-disciplines of history. If you would like to join our mailing list for next year, or just find out some more, please get in touch with me.

Chris Corker, MHRG Chair

Chris.Corker@York.ac.uk

AOM2020 Management History Calls for submission

Steph

The Management History (MH) Division invites PDW, symposium, and paper submissions for the 80th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from 7 – 11 August 2020. You may send us your submissions through the AOM Submission Center until it closes on Tuesday, 14 January 2020 at 5:00 PM ET (NY Time). The Submission Center opens in early December 2019.

Conference Theme: This year’s conference theme is “20/20: Broadening our Sight” and encourages us to widen our view when examining our domain, practice and organizational phenomena. We encourage you to make connections to the theme wherever possible in preparing your submission.

Our Domain: The Management History (MH) Division is a wide-ranging network of scholars interested in the antecedents of modern business practice and thought. We invite submissions of empirical and conceptual papers, as well as proposals for symposia (including panel discussions, debates, and roundtables), for consideration for inclusion in the division’s scholarly program. We encourage submissions from all members of the academy interested in devoting or sharing their work in management history broadly defined.

As there is an element of history within every division in the Academy, the division is open to a variety of methodological approaches and themes ranging from historical events in management practice (empirical focus) to studies that engage with historiography, philosophies of history, and the history of ideas and management thought (theoretical orientation). In this spirit, the MH Division welcomes scholarly contributions that generate meaningful and original contributions in history from across all AOM divisions’ interest groups. Submissions for sessions sponsored jointly with other Academy divisions are regarded as particularly attractive, and highly encouraged. The MH Division encourages submissions from doctoral students. Papers with a PhD student as the first or sole author should be clearly identified when submitted to allow identification of possible winners of the Best Graduate Student Paper.

See our call for PDWs: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faom.org%2Fannualmeeting%2Fsubmission%2Fcall%2Fmh%2Fpdw%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cs.decker%40aston.ac.uk%7C37d1deba710c4c7d5b2108d7736c83c2%7Ca085950c4c2544d5945ab852fa44a221%7C0%7C0%7C637104782223824129&sdata=2HRobwAYRgVxdUDAUHumsrId9Ce4IosuZeS6rSQbs8Y%3D&reserved=0

And our call for the scholarly program: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faom.org%2Fannualmeeting%2Fsubmission%2Fcall%2Fmh%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cs.decker%40aston.ac.uk%7C37d1deba710c4c7d5b2108d7736c83c2%7Ca085950c4c2544d5945ab852fa44a221%7C0%7C0%7C637104782223824129&sdata=x%2FYFjHP%2BN%2BV6ysqk9y7IdqEiJBgBebWVDuyur3DipIs%3D&reserved=0

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Vancouver,

Roy Suddaby, Program Chair (rsuddaby@uvic.ca) and Trish McLaren, PDW Chair (pmclaren@wlu.ca)

AOM MH division election results

Steph

The election results from the Academy of Management, Management History Division are in. It’s with great pleasure that I read that the following three colleagues were elected. Congratulations!!

Patricia McLaren, Wilfrid Laurier University—PDW Chair

Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool—Division Representative-at-Large

Nicholous (Nick) Deal, Saint Mary’s University—Division Graduate Student/Junior Faculty Representative-at-Large

Thank you to all who ran on the ballot this year. I greatly appreciate your willingness to serve. I hope to see everyone in Boston!

Stephanie Pane Haden

Texas A&M University-Commerce

Past Division Chair

The problem with Harvard Business School case studies

Steph

Reblogged from The Past Speaks:

The discipline of business history has long been linked to the case-study method of teaching. It will therefore interest many readers of this blog to learn of a new article in the business press that talks about the historical origins of the case study method, which began at Harvard Business School and which was later adopted in management schools around the world. The article in Quartz disseminates some of the key findings presented in A New History of Management, an important new book by John Hassard, Michael Rowlinson, Stephen Cummings, and Todd Bridgman. Regardless of whether you are a friend or a foe of the use of case studies, I would encourage you to check out the piece in Quartz and the underlying scholarly works.

Personally, I’m glad to see that the life and ideas of HBS Dean Wallace Donham (1877-1954) is being investigated. In the 1920s, Donham was one of the most influential critics of shareholder primacy and the related idea that the maximization of shareholder value is the best criterion for judging the performance of managers. At a time when the idea of shareholder primacy is being scrutinized once again, it is encouraging to know that people are paying attention to Donham.