Historical Organization Studies

Theory and Applications

Mairi Maclean, Stewart R. Clegg, Roy Suddaby, Charles Harvey, Mairi Maclean, Stewart R. Clegg, Roy Suddaby, Charles Harvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000259520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive methodological paradigm within the broad field of organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as a key reference tool for researchers and students.

For two decades, organization theorists have emphasized the need for more and better research recognizing the importance of the past in shaping the present and future. By historicizing organizational research, the contexts and forces bearing upon organizations will be more fully recognized, and analyses of organizational dynamics improved. But how, precisely, might a traditionally empirically oriented discipline such as history be incorporated into a theoretically oriented discipline such as organization studies? This book evaluates the current state of play, advances it and identifies the possibilities the new emergent field offers for the future. In addition to providing an important work of reference on the subject for researchers, the book can be used to introduce management and organizational history to a student audience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The book is a valuable source for wider reading, providing rich reference material in tutorials across organizational studies, or as recommended or required reading on courses with a connection to business or management history.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

PART I

Introduction

1
HISTORICAL ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Advancing new directions for organizational research

Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, Roy Suddaby and Stewart R. Clegg

Introduction

Historical organization studies is ‘organizational research that draws extensively on historical sources, methods and knowledge to promote historically informed theoretical narratives attentive to both disciplines’ (Maclean, Harvey and Clegg, 2016: 609). Put simply, it seeks to blend history and organization studies. The present status of historical organization studies is that of an emergent academic movement rather than an established community of practice. For more than two decades, organization theorists have pointed to the need for more and better research that recognizes the importance of the past in shaping the present and influencing the future (Kieser, 1994; Zald, 1993). Some have identified a distinct ‘historic turn’ in organization studies, an epistemological shift led by scholars who perceive the field to have been constrained by its orientation towards contemporary cross-sectional studies covering limited periods of time (Clark and Rowlinson, 2004; Mills, Suddaby, Foster and Durepos, 2016). By historicizing organizational research, it is argued, the contexts and forces bearing upon organizations might be more fully recognized and analyses of organizational dynamics might be improved.

How, precisely, might organizational research be historicized? How might a traditionally empirically oriented discipline such as history be incorporated into a theoretically oriented discipline such as organization studies? How might the power of history be harnessed to advance the explanatory potential of organization theory? What might history tangibly contribute to our knowledge of management and organizations (Clegg, 2006; Clegg and Courpasson, 2007)? We are now embarking on a new stage in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive epistemological and methodological approach that develops a historical research strategy within the broad field of organization studies. This book makes a timely intervention that advances the discussion while extending and deepening what has already been achieved. Hence, it offers a mixture of conceptual and theoretically informed empirical papers that help to define the field and to orient it further in future. In this way, the book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as an important milestone in building an emergent and strengthening community of scholars. It thereby contributes to the reimagining of historical organizational studies while advancing new directions for organizational research. This chapter takes stock by evaluating the current state of play, explores recent scholarly exemplars on theorized history, while looking at the possibilities offered for future research.

Advancing new directions

The integration of history with organization studies has been the topic of extensive debate in recent years. Indeed, the genesis of the present book lies in the European Group for Organizational Studies’ (EGOS) sub-theme on ‘Historical organization studies: Realizing the potential’, held at the EGOS colloquium in Edinburgh in July 2019. The sub-theme was so successful and attracted so many papers that it ran as two parallel streams. It continued the momentum established by an EGOS standing working group on organizational history, in which participants, alongside members of the Management History division of the Academy of Management, worked energetically for several years. The fruits of that work have found expression in a number of ground-breaking publications and avenues for future exploration (Bucheli and Wadhwani, 2014; Kipping and Üsdiken, 2014; Maclean et al., 2016; Rowlinson, Hassard and Decker, 2014). These activities have been accompanied by a flurry of special issues in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Management Learning, Organization, the Revista de Administração de Empresas and the Strategic Management Journal. The notion of historical organization studies emerged from this scholarly fulcrum.

The first main contribution of this literature has been to specify the problems inherent in reconciling disciplinary traditions. In terms of history and organization studies, these are summarized by Rowlinson et al. (2014) as three epistemological dualisms: in organization studies, the prioritization of analysis, self-generated data and simple chronology differ fundamentally from the prioritization by historians of narrative, documentary sources and periodization. The second main contribution of this foundational literature is to demonstrate how these differences might fruitfully be overcome. Kipping and Üsdiken (2014) suggest three modes of correspondence between history and organization theory: history as a means of testing theory, history informing theoretical perspectives and history lending complexity to theorization.

Building on these insights, Maclean, Harvey and Clegg (2016; 2017) elaborate the idea of historical organization studies – organizational research that embeds organizing and organizations in their socio-historical context(s) to generate historically informed theoretical narratives attentive to both disciplines. These authors point out that there has been a good deal more longitudinal research in organization studies than is commonly acknowledged. They propose a typology entailing four differing conceptions of history in organizational research. First, history as evaluating, where history is used as a means of testing and refining theory and arguments. Such an approach recognizes that theory testing can benefit from a greater focus on context and temporality. It also acknowledges that, over time, events may be subject to reinterpretation and re-evaluation, the nature of history being that it is constantly open to debate. Second, history as explicating, where history is used in applying and developing theory to uncover the operation of transformative social processes. This entails employing historical data to probe theories that unearth causal mechanisms. Third, history as conceptualizing, where history is employed to generate new theoretical constructs, seeking to ‘stretch the scope of explanations’ (Lippmann and Aldrich, 2014: 128) by drawing lessons and generalizing inductively from empirical data and particular historical cases. Fourth, history as narrating, where history is used to explain the form and origins of significant contemporary phenomena (Maclean et al., 2016: 612). History as conceptualizing arguably offers the most scope for demonstrating conceptual originality in historical research, where theorization becomes more explicit, promoting the development of rich, robust historical scholarship. History as narrating nevertheless remains perhaps the most frequent mode of employing history in organizational research. As White (1987: 169) observes, ‘Getting the “story” out of “history” was … a first step in the transformation of historical studies into a science’. For Ricoeur, narrative is humanizing, with history being a humanizing endeavour. So profound is the connection with narration that, for Ricoeur (1983: 177), history cannot depart from narrative ‘without losing its historical character’. The production of a historical narrative is thus a composite process that implicates characters, events and authors in generating a unified, theoretically sensitive narrative analysis, in which theorization is largely implicit (Taylor, Bell and Cooke, 2009). Such an approach illuminates the nature of organizational history as historically constituted through language, replacing any conception of an objective historical reality with another, more open to social construction (Heller and Rowlinson, 2019; Maclean, Harvey, Sillince and Golant, 2018).

To accomplish historical organization studies, Maclean, Harvey and Clegg (2016; 2017) further identify five principles of historical organization studies designed to promote a closer union between history and organization theory. These are: dual integrity, pluralistic understanding, representational truth, context sensitivity and theoretical fluency (Maclean et al., 2016: 617). Dual integrity underscores the importance of both historical veracity and conceptual rigour, extending mutual respect to history and organization studies in uniting the two, such that each discipline informs and enhances the other without either becoming the driver of the other. We contend that historically informed theoretical narratives cognizant of both disciplines, the authenticity of which inheres in both theoretical interpretation and historical veracity, make a strong and singular claim to scholarly legitimacy. Given its centrality, dual integrity serves as an overarching ‘master principle’ for the remaining four. Pluralistic understanding signals an openness to alternatives and new ways of seeing, such that other kinds of understanding are accommodated in historical studies, embracing and reclaiming space for alterity within them and recognizing the richness that different perspectives bring. Representational truth denotes the congruence between evidence, logic and interpretation, to which authenticity and its construction are key, underlining the importance of ‘ringing true’ (Judt and Snyder, 2013). Representational truth underlines the vital relationship of trust researchers have not only with their audience but also with the subjects of their research (Taylor et al., 2009). As Rowlinson et al. (2014) observe, the fictionalization of organizations which is commonplace in organization studies prevents verification, emphasizing the importance of historical veracity in historical organization studies. Context sensitivity highlights attentiveness to historical specificities to promote a more contextualized appreciation of organizations which recognizes that these are moulded by the particular situational genesis from which they emerged (Aldrich, Ruef and Lippmann, 2020). The uniqueness of contextual conditions need not preclude generalizability. As Collingwood (1993: 396) argues persuasively, ‘we learn by experience how to handle cases of influenza, without being held to the doctrine that all cases of influenza exactly resemble each other’. Finally, theoretical fluency points to the importance of mastering the relevant conceptual terrain, making more and better sense of historical cases by viewing them through an appropriate cognitive lens which enables scholars to see and understand better. Theoretical fluency encourages a more explicit theorization of temporal elements to develop insightful, substantive understanding of organizations and organizing, while recognizing that abstract concepts might be associated with case-specific, contextualized historical understanding.

We are now entering a new phase in establishing historical organization studies as a distinctive epistemological and methodological approach within the wide-ranging field of organization studies, concerned above all with putting historical organization studies into a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Conceptual advances
• PART III Theoretical applications
• PART IV Conclusion
• Index