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CfP for JIBS SI on Historical Approaches in IB

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Great news! A new call for papers for a history-oriented special issue in the Journal of International Business Studies.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of the Journal of International Business Studies

INTEGRATING HISTORICAL APPROACHES IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS: MOVING BEYOND “HISTORY MATTERS”

Special Issue Editors:

Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2023

Introduction

International business in all its forms, whether cross-border activities by multinational companies or non-equity forms of investment, and the international environment it operates in is shaped by the historical legacies of countries and their international relations. The analysis of historical data played an important role in early stages of the development of international business (IB) as a field of research (Dunning 1958; Vernon, 1971). Yet, in recent years historical research on international phenomena that engage with business and management theories is more commonly published outside of IB journals (Gao, Zuzul, Jones, & Khanna, 2017; Lubinski, 2018). Once IB became academically established, interest in historical research waned, despite occasional calls for its revival (e.g., Jones & Khanna, 2006). Even rarer are historical studies in IB that are directly based on archival sources (Bucheli, Salvaj, & Kim, 2019; Minefee & Bucheli, 2021). This special issue seeks to bring together IB scholars interested in exploring how historical approaches can enrich and expand theory development on international business phenomena.

In recent years, IB journals have not seen the same development of historically-informed theorizing as related fields (Decker, Hassard, & Rowlinson, 2021; Maclean, Harvey, & Clegg, 2016; Rowlinson, Hassard, & Decker, 2014). For example, the editors of the Academy of Management Journal have, in an editorial, remarked upon “the value of these analyses in making us see the social, cultural, and institutional construction of organizational and managerial phenomena in historical context” (Bansal, Smith, & Vaara, 2018, p. 4). This appreciation is reflected in the substantial number of special issues over the last few years that have integrated historical approaches into key debates in strategy (Argyres, De Massis, Foss, Frattini, Jones, & Silverman, 2020), entrepreneurship (Wadhwani, Kirsch, Welter, Gartner, & Jones, 2020), organization studies (Wadhwani, Suddaby, Mordhorst, & Popp, 2018), and management theory (Godfrey, Hassard, O’Connor, Rowlinson, & Ruef, 2016), and further special issues currently in progress in family business (Suddaby, Silverman, Massis, Jaskiewicz, & Micelotta, 2021), the history of business schools (McLaren et al., 2021) and occupations and professions (Coraiola, Maclean, Suddaby, & Muzio, 2022). This special issue seeks to open up a similar dialogue between IB scholars and historical researchers.

How history matters for IB research

At its inception, the field of IB paid close attention to the evolution of firms’ international activities in their historical context (Vernon, 1971; Wilkins, 1974). Subsequently, however, IB and international business history have often addressed different questions and employed different methods: archival, mostly qualitative, research in the case of business historians, and a variety of mostly quantitative, though increasingly also qualitative, methodological approaches in IB in their historical context. This distinction is increasingly challenged (Buckley, 2016; Burgelman, 2011), but history also matters beyond its potential methodological contribution to IB. Greater attention to history would enable IB scholars to ask questions about change over time and develop theories addressing how and why some of these patterns have become dominant at certain points of time, and why they might be changing. Such theories may include, but are not limited to, institutional theory, organizational learning, knowledge-based view, organizational memory and forgetting, power, and dynamic capabilities.

Engagement with history and historical methods can help IB scholars respond to recent calls for more process-based approaches, qualitative research and an engagement with scholarly work beyond IB (Buckley, 2009; Nielsen et al., 2020; Shenkar, 2004; Welch & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, 2014). It would also help develop scholarship towards a deeper understanding of phenomena (Doh, 2015) and their context (Meyer, 2015; Tsui, 2004). For example, in their decade award-winning article in this journal, Welch et al. (2011) promoted more contextualized approaches to IB research through a focus on the case method, and in their recent retrospective (Welch et al., 2021) they explicitly highlight historical research as one of four approaches that engage context in their research design.

Aims and scope of the special issue

In the light of these developments in our field and beyond, the time has come to take stock and move beyond affirmations that “history matters” and flesh out the ways in which historical approaches matter to IB research in terms of theory, method, and novel perspectives. Here, we seek contributions that go beyond just analyzing data collected over time (such as survey data collection repeated after a certain number of years) in favour of studies that include the rich historical context into their analysis and theorizing. Historical approaches have the potential to offer new perspectives on the complex, multi-level, and contextually specific nature of multinational activities and the evolution of the global economy. We are particularly interested in contributions that can connect historical approaches with IB debates, and which draw on ongoing conversations in other disciplines and fields. We are interested in both quantitative and qualitative approaches, as well as methodological and conceptual/theoretical contributions. IB scholars who use historical approaches, as well as business and management historians who engage deeply with IB theories, are welcome to submit to the special issue.

Possible examples of research topics that would be suitable for inclusion in this Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

  1. Plurality of historical approaches. Other management disciplines such as Organization Studies, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship have expanded their use of historical research, as seen in a series of special issues and other contributions. The key theoretical contributions have outlined a spectrum of approaches from more social science-oriented contributions to more historically oriented narratives (Rowlinson et al., 2014; Maclean et al., 2016; Decker et al., 2021). Such work demonstrates that history provides new perspectives on advancing theory or challenging concepts and constructs and poses questions that are under-represented in IB research, such as how processes evolve over time (Gao et al, 2017). Historical approaches enable IB researchers to consider the past as an empirical setting to explore theoretical concerns, which are difficult to adequately study in the present, or which require a long-term perspective, such as global challenges or internationalisation. How can historical approaches benefit process and longitudinal research on IB topics? How can a dialogue between process researchers and historians form the basis for advances in IB theory?
  • Historical theories of IB.In recent years, historical research has become more theoretically oriented, driven by key contributions in organization theory, strategy (Argyres et al., 2020), and entrepreneurship (Wadhwani, Kirsch, Welter, Gartner, & Jones, 2020). Increasingly, such contributions are being extended to IB theory (da Silva Lopes, Casson, & Jones, 2019; Minefee & Bucheli, 2021) and this special issue seeks to expand on this interdisciplinary repertoire.
  • Long Run Change Processes. IB scholars have investigated environmental change mainly by exploring business responses to clearly identifiable disruptions. Yet, we know comparatively little of the historically embedded, contextually specific co-evolution of multinational organizations and their local, national, regional, and international environment. Emerging economies, in particular, have brought to the fore the importance of understanding the political, social, cultural and economic contexts of business activities (Meyer, 2015; Tsui, 2004). Multinationals often resolve key tensions by shifting the focus of their activities over time to stay aligned with the different trends and concerns in host and home societies. How do international actors and the global economy co-evolve? What factors influence such processes? What is the role of disruptive events (such as disasters, pandemics or wars) vs. slower, more long-term processes in changing international business strategies and practices?
  • Historical processes in IB and the role of time. Many key theories in IB, such as internationalisation theory, implicitly or explicitly theorise the passage of time as part of a process that becomes cumulative, experiential and changes organizations both in their structure, strategies and their practices (Verbeke & Kano, 2015; Welch & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, 2014). How does the historical evolution of organizations shape their operations, structure, and practises? How do international organizations deal with historical legacies, such as colonialism, past wrongdoing, war and conflict, and ideological disagreements?
  • History as a method for IB researchers. Historical research routinely covers long time periods in rich and detailed narratives based on archival records that can have a fly-on-the-wall immediacy unmatched by other types of public documents. These “eventful” accounts (Decker, 2022) offer new insights particularly for qualitative longitudinal research to scale up in terms of time periods covered. Frynas et al. (2017, p. 568) highlighted the potential contribution from historical evidence in studying the “long-term cooperative interactions and reciprocity by the actors involved.” Welch (2000, p. 198) considers archival data as an opportunity to add “empirical depth” and explain “processes of change and evolution”. Buckley (2016, 2020) has also explored the potential for historical methods to expand the types of questions IB researchers can ask. What methodological innovations are required to embed historical approaches into qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method IB scholarship?
  • Historical perspectives on the construction of national and cultural boundaries. A nation, in IB’s usual meaning, consists of a group of people living within a geographic area who are sovereignly governed by explicit laws and institutions which apply within a national government’s boundaries. Governments historically negotiated these boundaries with governments representing other similarly governed and bounded groups through warfare and treaties. IB scholars, however, are sometimes encouraged to take on the challenge of considering alternative societal boundaries besides nations (Hutzschenreuter, Matt, & Kleindienst, 2020; Peterson, Søndergaard, & Kara, 2018; Tung, 2008). Accepting that challenge suggests the importance of historical analysis for understanding how specific countries came to be legitimated, how countries continue to compete with sub-country and trans-country groups of people having shared political interests, and how alternative groupings support different business practices and transactions across not only country but other boundaries. This special issue supports analyses that make systematic use of a broad range of influential historical perspectives that have been taken to the geographic area they consider and to the construction of national, sub-national and trans-national groupings (Reckendrees, Gehlen, & Marx, 2022). Such submissions would need to show how these groupings, and the contests between them, have continuing implications for cross-border business.
  • Institutions in IB. IB scholars often turn to institutions to capture aspects of the external environment affecting businesses. Yet, their treatment of institutions has been criticised for being “hobbled by a thin account of institutions and their effect on business performance” (Doh, Lawton, & Rajwani, 2012, p. 27). Institutions are inherently historical in nature, as acknowledged for example in studies on IB in transition economies that emphasize the temporal nature of the institutional environment (Meyer & Peng, 2016). Nevertheless, institutional theory in its variants popular in management research favours ahistorical measurements and tends to ignore their historical evolution. More research is needed, not just on the interaction of different dimensions of institutions, but also on how they affect strategy both in terms of the firm’s home and host economies. How do institutions affecting IB change over time, and how do people and organizations purposefully or coincidentally change them? What new theoretical insights into IB topics can be gained from historical institutionalism, which to date has been little used by IB scholars?

Submission Process and Deadlines

Manuscripts must be submitted through http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jibs between July 18, 2023, and August 1, 2023. All submissions will go through the JIBS regular double-blind review process and follow standard norms and processes. For more information about this call for papers, please contact the Special Issue Editors or the JIBS Managing Editor (managing-editor@jibs.net ).

Workshop and Symposium

We plan to organize a webinar early 2023 for authors interested in submitting to the special issue, which we will advertise widely on scholarly social media and on AIB-L. To help authors who receive an invitation to revise their submission further develop their papers, we intend to organize a paper development workshop in late 2023. We encourage multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural co-author teams.

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Bansal, P., Smith, W. K., & Vaara, E. 2018. From the Editors: New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4), 1–7.

Bucheli, M., Salvaj, E., & Kim, M. 2019. Better together: How multinationals come together with business groups in times of economic and political transitions. Global Strategy Journal, 9(2), 176–207.

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Buckley, P. J. 2016. Historical Research Approaches to the Analysis of Internationalisation. Management International Review, 56(6), 879–900.

Buckley, P. J. 2021. The Role of History in International Business: Evidence, Research Practices, Methods and Theory. British Journal of Management, 32(3), 797-811.

Burgelman, R. A. 2011. Bridging history and reductionism: A key role for longitudinal qualitative research. Journal of International Business Studies, 42(5), 591–601.

Coraiola, D. M., Maclean, M., Suddaby, R., & Muzio, D. 2022. Call for Papers for a Special Issue: Occupations and Memory in Organization Studies. Journal of Management Studies.

da Silva Lopes, T., Casson, M., & Jones, G. 2019. Organizational innovation in the multinational enterprise: Internalization theory and business history. Journal of International Business Studies, 50(8), 1338–1358.

Decker, S. 2022. Introducing the Eventful Temporality of Historical Research into International Business. Journal of World Business, 57(6), 101380.

Decker, S., Hassard, J., & Rowlinson, M. 2021. Rethinking history and memory in organization studies: The case for historiographical reflexivity. Human Relations, 74(8), 1123–1155.

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Gao, C., Zuzul, T., Jones, G., & Khanna, T. 2017. Overcoming Institutional Voids: A Reputation-Based View of Long-Run Survival. Strategic Management Journal, 38(11), 2147–2167.

Godfrey, P. C., Hassard, J. S., O’Connor, E. S., Rowlinson, M., & Ruef, M. 2016. Introduction To Special Topic Forum What Is Organizational History? Toward a Creative Synthesis of History and Organization Studies. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 590–608.

Hutzschenreuter, T., Matt, T., & Kleindienst, I. 2020. Going subnational: A literature review and research agenda. Journal of World Business, 55(4): 101076.

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Maclean, M., Harvey, C., & Clegg, S. R. 2016. Conceptualizing Historical Organization Studies. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 609–632.

McLaren, P. G., Spender, J., Cummings, S., O’Connor, E., Lubinski, C., Bridgman, T., & Durepos, G. 2021. New Histories of Business Schools and How They May Inspire New Futures. Academy of Management Learning and Education.

Meyer, K. E. 2015. Context in management research in emerging economies. Management and Organization Review, 11(3), 369–377.

Meyer, K. E., & Peng, M. W. 2016. Theoretical foundations of emerging economy business research. Journal of International Business Studies, 47(1), 3–22.

Minefee, I., & Bucheli, M. 2021. MNC responses to international NGO activist campaigns: Evidence from Royal Dutch / Shell in apartheid South Africa. Journal of International Business Studies.

Nielsen, B. B., Welch, C., Chidlow, A., Miller, S. R., Aguzzoli, R., Gardner, E., Karafyllia, M., Pegoraro, D. 2020. Fifty years of methodological trends in JIBS: Why future IB research needs more triangulation. Journal of International Business Studies, 51(9), 1478–1499.

Peterson, M. F., Søndergaard, M., & Kara, A. 2018. Traversing cultural boundaries in IB: The complex relationships between explicit country and implicit cultural group boundaries at multiple levels. Journal of International Business Studies, 49(8): 1081–1099.

Reckendrees, A., Gehlen, B., & Marx, C. 2022. International Business, Multinational Enterprises and Nationality of the Company: A Constructive Review of Literature. Business History, (forthcoming).

Rowlinson, M., Hassard, J., & Decker, S. 2014. Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue between Historical Theory and Organization Theory. Academy of Management Review, 39(3), 205–274.

Shenkar, O. 2004. One more time: International business in a global economy. Journal of International Business Studies, 35(2), 161–171.

Suddaby, R., Silverman, B. S., Massis, A. De, Jaskiewicz, P., & Micelotta, E. R. 2021. Special Issue On: History-informed Family Business Research. Family Business Review.

Tsui, A. S. 2004. Contributing to global management knowledge: A case for high quality indigenous research. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21(4), 491–513.

Tung, R. L. 2008. The cross-cultural research imperative: the need to balance cross-national and intra-national diversity. Journal of International Business Studies 2007 39:1, 39(1): 41–46.

Verbeke, A., & Kano, L. 2015. The New Internalization Theory and Multinational Enterprises from Emerging Economies: A Business History Perspective. Business History Review, 89(3), 415–445.

Vernon, R. 1971. Sovereignty at bay: the multinational spread of US enterprises. New York: Basic Books.

Wadhwani, R. D., Kirsch, D. A., Welter, F., Gartner, W. B., & Jones, G. G. 2020. Context, time, and change: Historical approaches to entrepreneurship research. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 14(1), 3–19.

Wadhwani, R. D., Suddaby, R., Mordhorst, M., & Popp, A. 2018. History as Organizing: Uses of the Past in Organization Studies. Organization Studies, 39(12), 1663–1683.

Welch, C. 2010. The archaeology of business networks: The use of archival records in case study research. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 8(2), 179–208.

Welch, C., & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E. 2014. Putting Process (Back) In: Research on the Internationalization Process of the Firm. International Journal of Management Reviews, 16(1), 2–23.

Welch, C., Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E., Piekkari, R., Plakoyiannaki, E. 2022. Reconciling Theory and Context: How the Case Study Can Set a New Agenda for IB Research. Journal of International Business Studies, 53(1): 4–26.

Welch, C., Piekkari, R., Plakoyiannaki, E., & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E. 2011. Theorising from case studies: Towards a pluralist future for international business research. Journal of International Business Studies, 42(5), 740–762.

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About the Guest Editors

Stephanie Decker is Professor of Strategy at Birmingham Business School and Visiting Professor in African Business History at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her work focuses on historical approaches in Organisation Studies and Strategy, and she has published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Business History Review, and Business History. She is co-editor-in-chief of Business History, on the editorial board of Organization Studies and Accounting History, and Co-Vice Chair for Research & Publications at the British Academy of Management.

Geoffrey Jones is Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard BusinessSchool in the United States. He researches the history, impact and ecological and social responsibility of business. He is a Fellow of Academy of International Business (AIB), a Fellow of the Japan Academy of International Business Studies, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Multinational and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-First Century (OUP 2005), Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship (OUP 2017) and Deeply Responsible Business. A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership (Harvard University Press, 2023). He has published in Journal of International Business Studies and Strategic Management Journal.

Klaus Meyer is a Professor of International Business and William G. Davis Chair in International Trade at Ivey Business School, London, Ontario, Canada.  He is a leading scholar in international business, focusing on the strategies and operations of multinational enterprises in and from emerging economies. His research emphasizes the role of context on many aspects of management, and the contextual boundaries of theories of management. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), and in 2015 he received the Decade award of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). He has served as Vice President of the AIB, and as an area editor of JIBS and is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management. He has published over 90 articles in leading scholarly journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal and Journal of Management Studies, and he published nine books.

Catherine Welch is Chair of Strategic Management at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Aalto University, Finland. Her research has concentrated on two areas: qualitative research methodology and process approaches to studying firm internationalization. Her work has appeared in leading journals in international business and management. She was the first author on a paper which won the 2021 Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) Decade Award. Catherine is the current Book Review Editor of JIBS and a member of the journal’s Research Methods Advisory Committee. She is an Associate Editor of Organizational Research Methods. She is a Vice-President and co-founder of the Academy of International Business (AIB) Research Methods Shared Interest Group (RM-SIG). She currently serves on the AIB’s board as Vice President Programs.

Rebecca Piekkari is Marcus Wallenberg Chair of International Business at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. She is an incoming Associate Editor of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) and sits on several editorial boards of IB and management journals. Rebecca’s recent research interests focus on translation as a perspective on IB phenomena, the shifting meaning of location for cross-border activities, as well as questions of social sustainability, diversity and inclusion in multinational corporations. She is known for her expertise in qualitative research methods and language-sensitive research in IB. Together with her co-authors she won the 2021 JIBS Decade award on theorizing from case studies. Rebecca has also co-edited several handbooks and book chapters on these topics. She is Fellow of the Academy of International Business and the European International Business Academy.

FBR SI: History-informed Family Business Research

Steph

Family Business Review (FBR) Special Issue on History-informed Family Business Research

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: July 1, 2021

Guest Editors

Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria (rsuddaby@uvic.ca)

Brian S. Silverman, University of Toronto (silverman@rotman.utoronto.ca)

Alfredo De Massis, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and Lancaster University (Alfredo.DeMassis@unibz.it)

Peter Jaskiewicz, University of Ottawa (Peter.Jas@uOttawa.ca)

Evelyn R. Micelotta, University of Ottawa (Micelotta@telfer.uottawa.ca)

Special Issue Theme

History is pervasive in family business settings, where values, beliefs, narratives, and artefacts of the founding family are handed down from generation to generation (Colli, 2003). The history of a family and its business therefore pervades family business goals, practices, and outcomes, creating a close link between the history of family businesses, their present traditions, and future aspirations (De Massis et al., 2016; Jaskiewicz et al., 2015; Zellweger et al., 2012).

Because of the prominence of history in family businesses, these firms have often been stigmatized as a form of business organization that is steadfast to its history and traditions, path dependent, conservative, resistant to changes and unable to adapt to dynamic and constantly evolving markets (Chandler, 1977; Morck & Yeung, 2003; Poza et al., 1997). Yet, family businesses remain dominant in any economy (La Porta et al., 1999), many of them are highly innovative (De Massis et al., 2018), resilient to crises, and equipped with the stamina to pursue entrepreneurial projects over generations (Jaskiewicz et al., 2016; Sinha, Jaskiewicz, Gibb, & Combs, 2020). The latter is consistent with emerging research suggesting that the history and traditions of families and their businesses do not have to be a rigid burden but, in some cases, can be a holy grail for enduring innovation and change (Erdogan et al., 2020; Jaskiewicz, Combs, & Ketchen, 2016; Suddaby & Jaskiewicz, 2020).

While researchers thus recognize the paradoxical nature of the family business as an organization that can be burdened or empowered by history, theory on how history actually ties into family business’ tradition, change, and aspiration remains scarce (De Massis, Frattini, Kotlar, Messeni Petruzzelli, & Wright, 2016; Erdogan et al., 2020; Sinha et al., 2020; Suddaby, Coraiola, Harvey, & Foster, 2020; Suddaby & Jaskiewicz, 2020). One reason for this unsatisfactory status quo is the weak connection between history and family business scholarship that has limited current understanding of what family business scholars can learn from the wealth of history and historical research, and how they can integrate related learnings in the study of family business (e.g., Colli, 2003; Colli & Fernandez Perez, 2020).

Considering the rapidly growing interest in studying the link between history and family businesses, we believe that it is warranted and timely to build a strong foundation for a history-informed approach to the study of family businesses, by which we refer to family business research that draws on historical research methods and/or leverages history as a key component (or variable) of theory or empirical analysis (Argyres et al., 2020; Sasaki et al., 2020; Sinha et al., 2020; Suddaby & Foster, 2017; Suddaby et al., 2020).

This Special Issue therefore calls for new, interdisciplinary research on family firms that extends our understanding of how and why history and historical research methods can enrich theoretical explanations of family business behavior and of temporal phenomena happening in family business settings. We call for both “history in theory” and “history to theory” studies. We call for original studies that propose novel and more fine-grained theoretical understanding of the role and use of history in family business processes as well as a reconceptualization of history and the use of history in family business research. At the same time, we encourage scholars to develop and apply historical research methods that allow them to use historical data and records to build and test their theoretical models about family business behaviors and outcomes. By doing so, this Special Issue favors the development and application of new perspectives and innovative methodological approaches for addressing critical questions in family business that favor a better integration of the academic fields of history and family business.

Manuscripts may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • How can family business phenomena be better theorized when the historical context where they take place, and the complex temporal dimensions through which they occur, are explicitly taken into account?
  • How do family businesses and their actors use history to give meaning to the present, inform their expectations about the future, and make business and family decisions?
  • What is the role of rhetorical history in shaping family business behavior, its determinants and outcomes? (Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010). What is the relationship between narrative, story-telling, and history in the strategy processes of a family business?
  • How can traditions be (re-)conceptualized in family business settings to better account for their ambivalent roles for family business’ goals, behavior, and outcomes?
  • How can history-informed research be used to manage the tradition and innovation paradox or other typical paradoxes characterizing family business behavior?
  • How can family firms leverage their history, and/or resources pertaining to different points in their past, to make their way toward the future through acts directed to innovation (e.g., “innovation through traditions”) and/or entrepreneurship (e.g., “entrepreneurial legacy”), or other vital organizational processes?
  • How can change and innovation be used in a family business setting to perpetuate history and traditions (e.g., “tradition through innovation”)?
  • What are the distinctive organizational routines and capabilities that enable family firms to combine and reconfigure their history over time and build a bundle of valuable historical resources?
  • What are the distinctive organizational routines and capabilities that enable family firms to adopt retrospective and prospective approaches to using their resources to concurrently perpetuate tradition and achieve innovation (e.g., “temporal symbiosis”)?
  • How do the past and the historical context inform how family-centered and business-centered goals are set in the family business context?
  • How do the past and the historical context inform how new business opportunities are identified, evaluated and exploited? What’s the role played by history for transgenerational entrepreneurship in the family enterprise?
  • How can the assumptions behind transgenerational or path dependence-based predictions about family business behavior (e.g., decline in entrepreneurial attitude across generations) be understood when the historical context is considered?
  • How did specific and non-recurrent events or actions in the history of the family and/or its business lead to particular firm behaviors, and to the development of organizational capabilities (or lack thereof)?
  • What are the advantages of employing a historically embedded approach to improve current understanding of how family businesses learn, innovate, and make strategic decisions over time? How can such approaches be adapted and extended by family business scholars?
  • How do family business phenomena and practices evolve over time, and how are they shaped by the interactions between family firms, families, and their histories?
  • What are the unpredictable, nonrecurrent events either in the family or in the business system that change the course of history and the evolution of a family business organization?
  • How do different actors, groups, or family business organizations perceive time when it is conceived as a complex, socially constructed concept?
  • How do individuals and groups within family businesses conceive time in practice, and allocate their attention differently to the past, present, and future?
  • How do different temporal foci and/or orientations of different actors within the family business, and /or their perception of the past, influence the behavior and performance of the family firm? How do such orientations change in the presence of specific situational factors, such as intra-family succession or business exit?
  • How can an “historical cognizance” perspective (Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014) that incorporates period effects and historical contingencies into the theorizing process be useful to predict family firm behavior and its effect on family and business outcomes?
  • How can historical research methods and historical data be useful to family business research for understanding the context of contemporary phenomena, identifying sources of exogenous variations, developing and testing informed causal inferences and theories, and supporting analyses of temporal phenomena occurring across generations?

Submission Process

Manuscripts must be submitted through the Family Business Review web site indicating “Special Issue History” as the manuscript type. The special issue guest editors will review the received manuscripts for publication consideration in this special issue of FBR. Editors reserve the right to desk reject complete papers if they are deemed underdeveloped for this issue.

Timeline for 2022 Special Issue on History

May 28/29, 2021       Paper Development Workshop at FERC Conference

July 1, 2021               Manuscripts due. Please submit manuscripts via the FBR online submission portal at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fbr (please be sure to select “Special Issue History” as the submission type).

Sept. 1, 2021              1st round feedback on reviews provided to authors

Feb 1, 2022                Invited revisions due

April 1, 2022              2nd round feedback on reviews provided to authors

Sept 1, 2022               2nd round invited revisions due

Nov 1, 2022               3rd round feedback on reviews provided to authors

Jan 1, 2023                 All papers & editor’s introduction finalized; contents transferred to Sage

March 2023               FBR Special Issue “History-informed Family Business Research” published

Paper Development Workshop

We encourage authors to attend the Paper Development Workshop (PDW) for this Special Issue before submitting their manuscripts. The PDW will be offered during the Family Enterprise Research Conference (FERC) at the University of Florida Atlantic University, Delray Beach, Florida on May 28-29, 2021. More information about FERC in 2021 can be found here: https://business.fau.edu/ferc-2020/. We will add more detailed information on the PDW to the webpage at the beginning of 2021.

About FBR

Launched in 1988, Family Business Review is an interdisciplinary scholarly forum publishing conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research that aims to advance the understanding of family business around the world. FBR has a 2-year impact factor of 6.188, ranking it 13th out of 147 journals in the category business.

Conclusion

We look forward to receiving your manuscripts and working hard with you to make this issue a success for our field. For questions, please contact any member of the Special Issue co-editors.

References

Argyres, N. S., De Massis A., Foss N. J., Frattini F., Jones G., Silverman B.S. (2020). History-informed strategy research: The promise of history and historical research methods in advancing strategy scholarship. Strategic Management Journal, 41(3), 343-368.

Chandler, A. D. (1977). The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Colli, A. (2003). The history of family business, 1850-2000 (Vol. 47). Cambridge University Press.

Colli, A., & Perez, P. F. (2020). Historical methods in family business studies. In Handbook of qualitative research methods for family business. Edward Elgar Publishing.

De Massis, A., Audretsch, D., Uhlaner, L., Kammerlander, N. (2018). Innovation with limited resources: Management lessons from the German Mittelstand. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 35(1), 125-146.

De Massis, A., Frattini, F., Kotlar, J., Messeni-Petruzzelli, A., Wright M. (2016). Innovation through tradition: Lessons from innovative family businesses and directions for future research. Academy of Management Perspectives, 30(1), 93-116.

Erdogan I., Rondi E., De Massis A. (2020). Managing the tradition and innovation paradox in family firms: A family imprinting perspective. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 44(1), 20-54.

Jaskiewicz, P., Combs, J. G., Ketchen Jr, D. J., & Ireland, R. D. (2016). Enduring entrepreneurship: antecedents, triggering mechanisms, and outcomes. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 10(4), 337-345.

Jaskiewicz, P., Combs, J. G., & Rau, S. B. (2015). Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(1), 29-49.

Kipping, M., & Üsdiken, B. (2014). History in organization and management theory: More than meets the eye. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 535-588.

La Porta, R., Lopez‐de‐Silanes, F., & Shleifer, A. (1999). Corporate ownership around the world. The journal of finance, 54(2), 471-517.

Morck, R., & Yeung, B. (2003). Agency problems in large family business groups. Entrepreneurship theory and practice, 27(4), 367-382.

Poza, E. J., Alfred, T., & Maheshwari, A. (1997). Stakeholder perceptions of culture and management practices in family and family firms ‐ A preliminary report. Family Business Review, 10(2), 135-155.

Sasaki, I., Kotlar, J. Ravasi, D., & Vaara, E. (2020). Dealing with revered past: Historical identity statements and strategic change in Japanese family firms. Strategic Management Journal, 41(3), 590-623.

Sinha, P. N., Jaskiewicz, P., Gibb, J., & Combs, J. G. (2020). Managing history: How New Zealand’s Gallagher Group used rhetorical narratives to reprioritize and modify imprinted strategic guideposts. Strategic Management Journal, 41(3), 557-589.

Suddaby, R., Coraiola, D., Harvey, C., & Foster, W. (2020). History and the micro‐foundations of dynamic capabilities. Strategic Management Journal, 41(3), 530-556.

Suddaby, R., & Foster, W. M. (2017). History and organizational change. Journal of Management, 43(1), 19-38.

Suddaby, R., Foster, W. M., & Trank, C. Q. (2010). Rhetorical history as a source of competitive advantage. Advances in Strategic Management, 27, 147-173.

Suddaby, R. & Jaskiewicz, P. (2020). Managing traditions: A critical capability for family business success. Family Business Review, forthcoming.

Zellweger, T. M., Kellermanns, F. W., Chrisman, J. J., & Chua, J. H. (2012). Family control and family firm valuation by family CEOs: The importance of intentions for transgenerational control. Organization Science, 23(3), 851-868.

BH SI CfP: Gender, Feminism, and Business History

Steph

Business History Special Issue Call for Papers

Gender, Feminism, and Business History: From periphery to centre

 

Guest editors:

Hannah Dean, University of St Andrews, UK

Linda Perriton, University of Stirling, UK

Scott Taylor, University of Birmingham, UK

Mary Yeager, University of California Los Angeles, USA

 

Submission deadline: 15 January 2020.

 

Gender relations represent one of the most significant social issues of modernity, profoundly affecting both women and men’s educational, economic, and political lives. Feminist theory and activism during the last two centuries is the highest profile marker of this, shaping our understanding of gender relations by focusing on equality, social justice, discrmination, inclusion/exclusion, and latterly the intersection of gender with race and ethnicity. The established territory of business history is the global north, after the mid-19th century, focusing on industrial production companies. Despite the changes provoked by feminism and greater recognition of the material and symbolic importance of gender relations, business history as a field maintains a largely gender-free and feminism-free centre. This special issue is designed to change that, by bringing both gender and feminism from the periphery of business history to its centre.

 

Gendered analysis of business history is a considerable field, but perhaps the most prominent challenge it has mounted to date is to the straightforward narratives of great men founding and building large organizations. The simple ‘great man’ narrative may still be a significant staple of the research undertaken in the field, but it is only one possible approach among many. There is empirical and conceptual space for other, very different, narratives of business history and the history of business.

 

This special issue is the first in this field for almost a decade to be dedicated to gender and business and/or organizational history. With it, we want to create a space for research that brings gender and feminism to business history’s centre, to provoke further dialogue and debate about alternative frameworks for research within and beyond the issue itself. We expect contributions to accomplish either or both of the following  aims:

 

  1. To explore the significance of feminist theories and gender in advancing the analysis and understanding of women in particular as business owners, entrepreneurs, or as funders, silent partners, and designers supporting more visible business activity by men;
  2. To advance understanding of women and men working or living on the margins of the established territory of business history – i.e. outside of the global north, before the mid-19th century, outside of established industries, and as critics of masculinised ways of doing business.

 

In order to develop these broad aims, and in keeping with the aims of Business History, contributions to the Special Issue might explore (but is not limited to) the following topics:

 

  • What source materials and archives might offer a more complete understanding of women and feminism in business history?
  • What are the implications of changes occuring in the archive profession, and other developments such as the increase in feminist archiving?
  • How can gender and feminist perspecitves shed new light on the historical analysis of social strucutures inlcuding social, economic and politics systems as well as power?
  • How can gender and feminist perspectives inform business history not only from a Western perspectives but also from other perspectives inlcuding outside of the Anglo-American bubble i,e, Latin America, Africa and Asia?
  • How can gender and feminist perspectives inform business history before the 19th century?
  • How should the corporate archive and the firm in particular be interpreted when thinking about gender, feminism, and business history?
  • What changes to research questions, methods, or narratives, are necessary to enable women and feminism to be more effectively written into business histories as full participants?
  • How can we account for the role that women played in creating the opportunities e.g. as funders, silent partners, or as designers for ‘great men’ to dominate business histories?
  • How can business history contribute to the conceptual development of key feminist analytics such as sexism, patriarchy, or misogyny?
  • How would a gendered analysis of business history classics contribute to our understanding of them? For example, what would a feminist re-reading of Alfred Chandler’s work tell us?

 

Contributions are expected to build on the rich empirical, analytical, and methodological traditions in this journal and in the field more generally. We would very much welcome contributions from scholars located beyond business and management Schools, interdisciplinary work, and from scholars geographically located outside the global north.

 

Submission Instructions

  • This call is open and competitive. All submissions will be peer reviewed following the standard practice of the journal.
  • To be considered for this special issue, submissions must fit with the Aims and Scope of Business History, as well as this call for papers.
  • The guest editors will select a limited number of papers to be included in the special issue. Other papers submitted to the special issue may be considered for publication in other issues of the journal at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
  • This special issue welcomes all contributions that address the broad themes described above. All submissions should be based on original research and innovative analysis.
  • For empirical papers based on sources or data sets from which multiple papers have been generated, authors must provide the Guest Editors with copies of all other papers based on the same data or sources.
  • The maximum submission length is 10,000 words (including graphs and tables).
  • Submissions must not be under consideration with another journal.
  • The submission deadline is 15 January 2020 via ScholarOne, using the drop-down menu to indicate that the submission is to the Special Issue on Gender, Feminism, and Business History.
  • Please ensure that your manuscript fully complies with the publishing style of formatting regulation of Business Historyas per their ‘Instructions for authors’
  • Authors may be asked to use an English language copyeditor before final acceptance.

 

Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to the Editorial Office: [email address].

 

The guest editors of this special issue would be happy to be contacted directly with queries relating to potential submissions:

 

Hannah Dean hd48@st-andrews.ac.uk

Linda Perriton linda.perriton@stir.ac.uk

Scott Taylor s.taylor@bham.ac.uk

Mary Yeager yeager@ucla.edu

 

 

SI on Historical Research on Institutional Change

Steph

Our special issue on Historical Research on Institutional is out digitally and will be fully published shortly as Volume 60, issue 5 of 2018. In advance, here is a link to free offprints of our special issue introduction:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/dkQvEsNj7TXrtT3J7TMa/full

 

 

SMJ CfP: History & Strategy Research

Steph

Call for Papers for a Special Issue – Strategic Management Journal

 

History and Strategy Research: Opening Up the Black Box

Submission Deadline: September 30, 2017

 

Guest Editors

Nicholas S. Argyres, Washington University in St. Louis

Alfredo De Massis, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and Lancaster University

Nicolai J. Foss, Bocconi University

Federico Frattini, Politecnico di Milano

Geoffrey Jones, Harvard University

Brian S. Silverman, University of Toronto

SMJ Advising Editors

Sendil Ethiraj and Constance Helfat

  

Background

Business history and strategy research have traditionally had a close relationship. Thus, Chandler’s seminal research is often seen as key input into the development of strategy as an academic research field. Historical research methods and historical data are used to study a diverse set of strategic issues including industry evolution, technology strategy, dynamic capabilities and diffusion of innovation. More recently, interest has been growing with respect to exploring the nexus between history and strategy.

Historical analysis may be broadly defined as “empirical research that uses remote sensing and a contextualist approach to explanation.” Such analysis can be highly useful in strategy research that seeks to analyze path dependence or understand the origins/evolution of contemporary phenomena, identify sources of exogenous variation, develop and test historically informed theory, and add more detail to existing theories. Historical analysis allows strategy scholars to historically embed the study of how organizations learn, innovate and make strategic decisions over time. Equally important, such analysis enables scholars to understand how actors strategically develop interpretations of historical facts that shape their present behavior and set expectations for the future, and use artifacts from the past to create the basis for strategies in the present.

Aims and Scope

This Special Issue will push forward research at the intersection between history and strategy, to further integrate these two disciplines. We welcome empirical papers that apply established and innovative research methodologies to strategy questions by using historical data and records. In particular, we encourage research that uses novel datasets that support tracing over time how organizations, groups and individuals—by acting in a particular historically embedded context, and by mutually interacting—built, implemented and modified strategies. We also call for theoretical modeling that builds on history and provides new insights into the historical implica­tions of strategy.

Below we suggest two research themes that  illustrate the intersection of strategy and historical analysis. However, many other such themes can be envisaged and would be welcome as submissions to the Special Issue.

  1.  How do firms, groups and individuals use the past to give meaning to the present, inform their expectations about the future, and make strategic decisions? Within this research theme we encourage scholars to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the way in which the past influences how organizational goals are set, how future technology and market trends are forecast, and how new business opportunities are identified, evaluated and exploited. Path dependence suggests that the decisions an organization makes are influenced and limited by the decisions it has made in the past. However, we need more precise explanations of how specific and non-recurrent facts (or actions taken) in the past have led to particular strategic behaviors and to the development of organiza­tional capabilities. Such explanations of how the past somehow acquires cognitive salience and normative force can only be developed in close interplay with actual historical inquiry.
  1. How do firms, groups and individuals use knowledge and resources stemming from the past to trigger and realize acts of organizational change and innovation? Current research tends to portray the past as a constraining force that reduces flexibility and produces resistance to change, thus leading to organizational inertia, competence lock-ins, and escalating commitments to past actions. However, research suggests that firms can create competitive advantage through acts of innovation and organizational renewal by searching for, accessing, and using knowledge created at different points in the past, i.e., through “temporal search.” This opens up a set of timely and relevant research questions. What are the firm-, individual- and group-level capabilities required to successfully search, identify and recombine knowledge resources acquired in the past? How do firms learn to make innovations in their products, services, business models, procedures and strategies from the past? How do innovation processes and practices evolve over time, and how are they shaped by the interactions between firms and the past?

Submission Process

Submitted papers must be in accordance with the requirements of the Strategic Management Journal. Original manuscripts are due by the Submission Deadline of September 30, 2017, and must be submitted using the SMJ Submission system at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/smj. Authors should indicate that they would like the submission to be considered for the special issue “History and Strategy Research: Opening Up the Black Box”. Authors of papers invited to be revised and resubmitted will be expected to work within a tight timeframe for revisions.

Further Information

Questions concerning pertaining to this special issue may be directed to:

For questions about submitting to the special issue contact the SMJ Managing Editor, Sara DiBari (smjeditorial@wiley.com) or visit http://smj.strategicmanagement.net/.

 

 

ToC: BH 58,5 Beer, Brewing and Business History

Steph

As a topic, this seems an area in which business historians are well equipped to do research 😉 Alas, finally, the long awaited special issue on… Beer is out, just in time for the weekend!

Business History, Volume 58, Issue 5, July 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online.

Special Issue: Beer, Brewing, and Business History

This new issue contains the following articles:

Original Articles
Beer, brewing, and business history
Ignazio Cabras & David M. Higgins
Pages: 609-624 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1122713
Articles
From reviving tradition to fostering innovation and changing marketing: the evolution of micro-brewing in the UK and US, 1980–2012
Ignazio Cabras & Charles Bamforth
Pages: 625-646 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1027692

 
Vertical and financial ownership: Competition policy and the evolution of the UK pub market
Julie Bower
Pages: 647-666 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1041380

 
Vertical monopoly power, profit and risk: The British beer industry, c.1970–c.2004
David Higgins, Steven Toms & Moshfique Uddin
Pages: 667-693 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1041381

 
How beer created Belgium (and the Netherlands): the contribution of beer taxes to war finance during the Dutch Revolt
Koen Deconinck, Eline Poelmans & Johan Swinnen
Pages: 694-724 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1024231

 
Happy hour followed by hangover: financing the UK brewery industry, 1880–1913
Graeme G. Acheson, Christopher Coyle & John D. Turner
Pages: 725-751 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1027693

 
A taste for temperance: how American beer got to be so bland
Ranjit S. Dighe
Pages: 752-784 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1027691

 
Death and re-birth of Alabama beer
Richard White
Pages: 785-795 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1024230
Original Articles
New identities from remnants of the past: an examination of the history of beer brewing in Ontario and the recent emergence of craft breweries
Kai Lamertz, William M. Foster, Diego M. Coraiola & Jochem Kroezen
Pages: 796-828 | DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2015.1065819