What Constitutes a Historical Contribution? A creative synthesis between History and Organization Studies.

Organisation Studies

Further details

The forthcoming Special Topic Forum of the Academy of Management Review on History and Organization Studies represents an opportune moment to consider the prospects for the historic turn in organization studies. Leading organization theorists from the dominant perspectives of new institutionalism and evolutionary theory, along with critical and interpretive studies, are engaged in an ongoing dialogue with business historians and have identified exemplars of historical research. These exemplars illustrate the distinctions that can be made between research that uses history to illustrate or advance theory, and research that draws on theory to contribute to historiography. They also illustrate the differences between established theoretical perspectives such as path dependence which emphasize how history matters for understanding the present and future possibilities, and emerging perspectives such as ANTi-history which focus on the rhetorical nature of history as narrative. However these differences within and between organization studies and history should not obscure the convergence of interests in relation to topics such as entrepreneurship, memory, and historical responsibility. There are also common methodological concerns with narrative analysis and interpretation, as well as a shared interest in techniques such as topic modelling.