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The historic turn in organization studies has led to greater appreciation of the potential contribution from historical research. However, there is increasing emphasis on integrating history into organization studies, rather than on recognizing how accommodating history might require a reorientation. As a result, key conceptual and methodological insights from historiography have been overlooked or at times misrepresented. We identify four modes of enquiry that highlight distinctions from history about ‘how to conceptualize’ and ‘how to research’ the past. First, historical organization studies research the past primarily through reference to archival sources. Second, retrospective organizational history reconstructs the past principally from retrospective accounts, such as those generated in oral history. Third, retrospective organizational memory uses ethnography and interviews to explore the role of memory in the present. Fourth, historical organizational memory traces the institutionalization of organizational memory through archival research. From the analysis, we argue that historical organization studies are increasingly established, and interest in ‘uses of the past’ has contributed to the rise of retrospective organizational memory. However, historiographical reflexivity – a new concept for organization studies – focuses attention on engaging with both history and collective memory, and on the distinct methodological choices between archival and retrospective methods.

This chapter examines how time and temporality have been analyzed in social and organizational theory. Specifically, it discusses forms of analysis developed prior to the purported synthesizing of conceptual dualities under the “postmodern turn” (Nowotny, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 2002). The chapter reviews some of the main concepts and theories of time developed historically by sociologists and anthropologists, and describes how—when applied in organizational research—they have yielded rich and diverse insights into workplace behavior. By drawing upon some of the major foundational figures in the sociology of time—such as Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Georges Gurvitch, Karl Marx, Pitirim Sorokin—we note not only differences between their positions, but also how such differences, when contrasted systematically, offer a broad basis for appreciating time as reflecting a cyclical as well as linear, heterogeneous as well as homogeneous, and processual as well as structural phenomenon in theoretical and empirical investigation.

Coronatine and related bacterial phytotoxins are mimics of the hormone jasmonyl-L-isoleucine (JA-Ile), which mediates physiologically important plant signalling pathways1-4. Coronatine-like phytotoxins disrupt these essential pathways and have potential in the development of safer, more selective herbicides. Although the biosynthesis of coronatine has been investigated previously, the nature of the enzyme that catalyses the crucial coupling of coronafacic acid to amino acids remains unknown1,2. Here we characterize a family of enzymes, coronafacic acid ligases (CfaLs), and resolve their structures. We found that CfaL can also produce JA-Ile, despite low similarity with the Jar1 enzyme that is responsible for ligation of JA and L-Ile in plants5. This suggests that Jar1 and CfaL evolved independently to catalyse similar reactions-Jar1 producing a compound essential for plant development4,5, and the bacterial ligases producing analogues toxic to plants. We further demonstrate how CfaL enzymes can be used to synthesize a diverse array of amides, obviating the need for protecting groups. Highly selective kinetic resolutions of racemic donor or acceptor substrates were achieved, affording homochiral products. We also used structure-guided mutagenesis to engineer improved CfaL variants. Together, these results show that CfaLs can deliver a wide range of amides for agrochemical, pharmaceutical and other applications.

This article examines the history of British house magazines from 1945 to 2015. It discusses their content, audience and function within companies. From tools of internal public relations, house ma...

Both business historians and organisation studies scholars study institutional change to understand the interactions between business and society. However, research approaches differ fundamentally, with organisational research focusing on theory-driven explanations, whereas historical research is rather theory-informed. The consequence of such disciplinary orientation is that interdisciplinary conversations rarely occur. For this special issue, we invited submissions that address how historical research can contribute to our understanding of institutional change while demonstrating ‘dual integrity’ in terms of being significant pieces of historical research that provide us with new insights into historiography and at the same time addressing important theoretical concerns.

The historic turn in organization studies has given rise to increasing interest in historical methods. In parallel, the cultural turn in business history is associated with concerns beyond narratives of corporate success or failure. But as yet there has been limited historical research on identities in organizations. This chapter sets out historical methods appropriate for examining identities, focusing on exemplars of ethnographic historical research. Whereas corporate history prizes historical sources such as company board minutes, and organizational identity can be researched from corporate communications such as company magazines, it is more difficult to compile a checklist of historical sources for examining identities in organizations. Historical research on clerks and entrepreneurs illustrates the range of sources that could be considered. However, the focus on such literate groups in society also highlights the problem of survivor bias in sources, which historians describe as the silence of the archives.

As a synthesis of organization theory and historiography, the field of organizational history is mature enough to contribute to wider theoretical and historiographical debates and is sufficiently developed for a theoretical consideration of its subject matter. In this introduction to the Special Topic Forum on History and Organization Studies, we take up the question, “What is organizational history?” and consider three distinct arguments that we believe frame the next phase of development for historical work within organization studies. First, we argue that following the “historic turn,” organizational history has developed as a subfield of organization studies that takes seriously the matter of history, promoting historical research as a way to enrich the broad endeavor of organization. Second, if “history matters,” then organization theory needs a theoretical account of the past that goes beyond the mere use of history as a context to test or as an example to illustrate theory. Third, the focus on “history that matters” in the present leads to two important considerations: how organizations can use “rhetorical history” as a strategic resource and the need to engage with historiographically significant subjects that connect organization theory to larger humanistic concerns, such as slavery and racism.

The question of whether and how research quality should be measured, and the consequences of research audits such as the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) – formerly the RAE – are considered in relation to the role of journal ratings such as the Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide (the ABS Guide). Criticism of the ABS Guide has distracted attention from the results of successive RAEs, where the panel for Business and Management has been one of the most selective in its allocation of the highest grades, especially when compared with the neighbouring field of Economics. If the ABS Guide had been used to grade outputs submitted for Business and Management in the RAE 2008 then many more outputs would have received the highest grades, especially in accounting where outputs from journals such as Critical Perspectives on Accounting, which are highly rated in the ABS Guide, appear to have been downgraded by the RAE panel. The alleged bias against accounting in the ABS Guide rests on a particular interpretation of citation impact factors for journals, and a narrow definition of subject fields. Critics of the ABS Guide would be better advised to direct their attention to scrutinizing the results of the REF and considering whether it provides an adequate research ranking for UK business schools. 15% of all full time students in the UK study business and management, including accounting and finance, but only 6.7% of the full time equivalent research active staff submitted in the RAE 2008 were in business and management, or accounting and finance. Research audits are therefore forcing the separation of teaching from research in UK business schools. With an estimated ratio of 71 full time students per research active faculty member in UK business schools, it may be time to consider a more appropriate, inclusive, and economical form of ranking for research in business and management.

Existing narratives about how we should organize are built upon, and reinforce, a concept of 'good management' derived from what is assumed to be a fundamental need to increase efficiency. But this assumption is based on a presentist, monocultural, and generally limited view of management's past. A New History of Management disputes these foundations. By reassessing conventional perspectives on past management theories and providing a new critical outline of present-day management, it highlights alternative conceptions of 'good management' focused on ethical aims, sustainability, and alternative views of good practice. From this new historical perspective, existing assumptions can be countered and simplistic views disputed, offering a platform from which graduate students, researchers, and reflective practitioners can develop alternative approaches for managing and organizing in the twenty-first century.

The historic turn in strategy is predominantly objectivist and preoccupied with the ontology of the past where “history matters” as a constraint on managerial agency in the present. By contrast the...

The discourse of “modern slavery” has been subjected to a sustained critique from a range of disciplines and perspectives. However within management and organization studies, a model of modern slav...

This presenter symposium brings together leading scholars in the field of business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and management history interested in the history of CSR thought and ...

Time and temporality have received a fair amount of cumulative attention in various streams of organizational and management theory over the years. However, until recently, less attention has been ...

Company magazines originated in the United Kingdom and the United States towards the end of the nineteenth century and have been a constant feature of the large-scale corporation in both countries. The paper historically examines the growth and development of company magazines in Britain, studying a broad array of house journals in both the private and the public sector. Its main focus is to examine how company magazines contributed to the development of corporate culture in corporations via the development of the concept of corporate cultural communication. It does so from a process of genealogy and discursive analysis. It argues that company magazines have developed three foundational discourses in British corporations, those of industrial welfare, industrial relations and marketing. The relative mixture of these discourses has been a key ingredient in organizational and corporate cultures. While the emphasis of these discourses have changed over the period, they have remained constant throughout., thus...

There is an increasing interest in historical approaches to management and organization scholarship. The Historic Turn can be traced to the mid 1990s when Kieser and Zald urged scholars to take his...