Management and Organizational History
A Research Overview
- 114 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
Management and organizational history has grown into an established field of research with competing and contrasting approaches and methods that are relevant for management and organization studies.
This short-form book provides readers with expert insights on intellectual interventions in management and organization history. The authors illuminate the central ideas, works, and theorists involved in forming the link between history, management, and organization studies, particularly focusing on the debates addressing the need for a 'historic turn' in management and organizational studies.
With coverage of nascent schools of thought in management historiography, such as ANTi-History, revisionist history, counter-history, rhetorical history, the Copenhagen School, microhistory, critical realist histories, alongside existing modernist and post-modernist approaches, as well as postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist critiques, the book is essential reading for scholars and students learning or exploring the role of history in management and organization studies.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1 History and authorship
Introduction
Warning: men at work â authorship and historical accounts
History in translation1Feminist studies of history are plentiful, but few have been taken up in management and organizational history. A good starting point is the work of Sonya Rose (2010), who provides a useful overview of historiansâ engagement with gender. Also pivotal is the work of Joan W. Scott (2007), who discusses history-writing as critique and argues that gender is historically produced. In terms of management and organization studies a useful example is the work of Joan Acker and Donald van Houten (1974), who re-examined the Hawthorne Studies (Mayo, 1933; Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939) from a gender lens. Acker and van Houten argue that had the Hawthorne Studies included a focus on gender it would have generated very different results in terms of outcomes for male and female employees and for the way the emergent domain of MOS would have been characterized.There have also been numerous works published over the past three decades that have critiqued history as the outcome of postcolonial thinking addressing the legacy of colonialism. In particular, the work of Edward Said (1978, 1993) has had a profound influence on management and organizational history, as reflected in the work of Anshuman Prasad (2003). More recently, some management and organizational history scholars (e.g., Faria, Ibarra-Colado, & Guedes, 2010) have been drawn to the work of Walter Mignolo (1991) and other Latin American decolonial scholars.There have also been a substantial number of historical accounts that focus on the relevance of class for organizational history. The outstanding examples are Stewart Clegg and David Dunkerleyâs (1980) account of organization, class and control and also Cleggâs (1981) work on history as organizational sedimentation and rules.
Narrative forms of history
History in translationMichael (Mick) Rowlinson (2004) distinguishes between three types of historians, each with its own approach and influences. The factual historian, as typified by the work of Alfred Kieser2 (1994), views âhistory as a repository of factsâ that come to âbe known . . . [through] the work of historiansâ (Rowlinson, 2004, p. 8). The skills of the historian include the ability to select and interpret the facts in contexts of ambiguity and ideological preferences.The narrative historian, exemplified by the work of Hayden White (1984, 1987),3 shifts attention away from archival research per se to âthe conventions and customs of writing that constitute the craft of history. Here the challenge for the historian is to construct a convincing and plausible narrative of historical events.âThe âarchaeo-genealogicalâ historian, typified by Foucault (1972), moves the focus of historical examination even further from the other approaches by decentering human motivation and âthe conscious human actorâ (Rowlinson, 2004, p. 16) to the core of discursive relationships that flow through the thinking of human subjects and of the historian. However, â strangely enough â less attention is given to the thinking of the latter.
History in translationSomewhat paradoxically Callum Brown (2005, p. 10) writes:Any postmodernist historian is not being a postmodernist all of the time. Like every historian, the postmodernist must conduct empirical research, establishing that events occurred and the order of them, checking sources that verify the facts of the case, and making decisions of judgement (balance of probabilities may be the best term) where absolute certainty is not possible.Brownâs account â although contentious in several ways (do postmodernist historians suspend their postmodernist frame for part of the time?) â is primarily directing us to the role of the historian in âhistory-makingâ (Kalela, 2012). In the process, he is arguably ignoring and/or marginalizing the many accompanying acts that go into âhistory-makingâ (Kalela, 2012) prior to/and often without the engagement of the historian. Here we are thinking of the multitude of people, things, and ideas that go into the making of historical accounts. The Finnish historian Jorma Kalela (2012, p. xi) provides some perspective on this when he examples the influence of disciplinary, popular, and public histories on the development of newer histories. For example, if a historian started out today to write a history of the âNew Dealâ (i.e., the policies of the administrations of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt government), he or she would find it hard to escape the influence of numerous history books on the subject (e.g., Hiltzik, 2011), various movies that deal with the era (e.g., Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), the innumerable artefacts (e.g., bridges, roads, airports) that were constructed by the Roosevelt Administration (Taylor, 2008), various archival collections (e.g., the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum), and the very idea of the New Deal itself. The writing of history is also, in itself, a pre-existing influence that shapes how certain accounts are structured (e.g., the use of footnotes), narrated (e.g., told in a particular way and style), and subjected to ideological and political pressures as well as to the governmental sources of funding (White, 1973; Zinn, 1990).In a similar but more complex vein, Munslow (2010) talks about the challenge of history for the historian thus: â[The] beliefs of the historian positing â if the historical expression demands it â be checked against the appropriately contextualized and corroborated data available.â However, he goes on to argue, that âthis logic cannot be extended to the narrative making representational and culturally expressive level of historical understanding, explanation and meaning creation.â Nonetheless, for Munslow, it is the historian who is seen to carry the burden of this approach, but he (2010, p. 3) is quick to make clear that the implications âare devastating for history of a particular kindâ (i.e., the work of modernist historians). This leads him to conclude that âhistorians have to rethink their foundationalist and absolutist dependency on the precepts of common sense, practical realism, induction/inference, the criteria of justification as well as a range of adjacent beliefs that include âthe truthâ, âthe meaningâ, âobjectivityâ, knowable âagent intentionalityâ and that ethics and morality can be learned from historyâ (Munslow, 2010, pp. 76â77).Yet, as Kalela (2012) seeks to remind us, history is not simply the output of designated (professionally trained) historians.4 For Kalela (2012, p. x), âhistory-making is an everyday practice: people continue to make use of their experiences in all sorts of ways.â He then goes on to argue that historians âhave ignored the purposes and social functions of non-academic historiesâ (p. x). Part of the reason for this, according to Kalela (2012), is that although only âone strand of history, the discipline has been elevated to a privileged position, with the implicit purpose of ruling over other kinds of historiesâ (p. x). Kalela (2012, p. 53) goes on to state that his âsuggestion to shift the focus from the historian to practice is intended to have âpeople addressed as creators of their own histories.â
The historian in context
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Table of Contents
- 1 History and authorship
- 2 A starting point: the historic turn
- 3 Not a history: the call for a historic turn in management and organizational studies
- 4 Paradigms and prospects in management and organizational history
- 5 Revisiting the historic turn ten years on
- References
- Index