As an interdisciplinary field of study, there are a range of different groups interested in organizational history or historical research on organizations, but from different angles. It is not always clear which of these would be of interest to scholars.
There are some ongoing iniatives, such as the ESRC seminar series in Organizational History (2015-2016) in the UK, run by Stephanie Decker, Mick Rowlinson & John Hassard, or the CBS Initiative in Business History, based in the Centre for Business History (Denmark).
This year’s AOM in Vancouver (2015) features a significant number of well-attended sessions on management & organizational history, which highlights an increased interest in historical approaches in management and organization studies. In fact several professional organizations in management and organization studies have regular tracks on organizational history, such as:
- The European Group for Organization Studies, Standing Working Group 8 on Historical Perspectives in Organization Studies (2011-2016), contact Dan Wadhwani, Stephanie Decker or Matthias Kipping.
- Management History division at Academy of Management
- British Academy of Management, regular track on history run by Kevin Tennent
- The Management History Research Group hosts annual conferences in the UK.
There are several professional associations in business history, which also include some work on organizational history, such as
- The Association of Business Historians (UK)
- The Business History Conference (USA)
- The European Business History Association (European)
- Arbeitskreis fuer kritische Unternehmensgeschichte (Germany)
A fascinating EU-funded project in organizational history is the Enterprise of Culture .
The International Network for the Theory of History offers a broader perspective on generic issues for organizational history.
But this is hardly an exhaustive list, so we would be very interested in hearing about any additional initiatives or groups that we should include here.
Organizational History Network 