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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...

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.

This article reviews the evidence presented by those alleging bias in the rating of accounting journals in the ABS Guide to Journal Quality in Business and Management Studies. Drawing upon a wider range of citation metrics and international journal ranking schemes, the analysis presented covers all the accounting journals listed in the current 2010 version of the ABS Guide. The evidence of bias based on the mean RAE 2008 GPA scores for institutions and on the ‘world elite count’ as published in the guide is rejected. The simplistic comparison of the proportion of grade ‘4’ journals in accounting relative to other subject areas is rejected as evidence of bias and the preferred method reveals that the ABS Guide provides the accounting subject area with one more grade ‘4’ journal and seven more grade ‘3’ journals than might otherwise be expected. There is no evidence that the use of Thomson-Reuters citation data in the process of constructing the ABS Guide has been detrimental to accounting journals. The accounting journals in the ABS Guide have lower mean scores on almost all citation metrics when compared to other subject area journals with the same ABS grade. A detailed comparison of the ranking of accounting journals in seven international journal ranking lists fails to find evidence of bias against accounting journals and suggests that grade ‘3’ accounting journals have been favorably rated. In a detailed comparison of accounting and business history journals, there is little evidence from any source reviewed to suggest that Accounting History is of the same quality rank as Business History or that Accounting History clearly warrants a higher ABS Guide rating. The conclusion is that the evidence presented supports the view that the ABS Guide has not been biased in its rating of accounting journals.

This Rejoinder responds to criticisms made by Simon Hussain (2011) about the construction and operation of the Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide. In this paper the broad purposes of journal lists and guides are outlined before an account is given of the long history and multiple forms of these lists, particularly in the field of Accounting. Having described the main features of different types of journal list, the advantages and benefits of the approach adopted in the compilation of the ABS Journal Quality Guide is outlined. The paper then ends by noting that one of the copy-editing mistakes identified by Dr Hussain has been rectified, but the remaining concerns about the rating of accounting education and accounting history journals reflect the absence of these titles from journal citation reports and international journal lists. Furthermore, the lower rating of Accounting & Finance research in the RAE2008 in comparison with Business & Management Studies research in th...

The ABS list is one of the most widely used journal quality lists available. It is pluralistic and comprehensive, and is widely seen as capturing the consensus in relation to journal ratings. As editors of the ABS list we are concerned at recent calls for a moratorium, or even the abolition of journal quality lists. These calls reinforce the elitist view that the tacit knowledge of where to publish should not be made explicit in lists.

How is it that a collection of working class drifters, sociology graduates, and ex-leftist politicos have ended up teaching in UK business schools? Understanding the predicament of these ‘critters’ helps to explain the ironic contingencies that provide the conditions of possibility for institutionalizing critical management studies (CMS), in particular the historic ‘defeat of the Left’ and the lack of more practical activities for radical management academics. Unlike labour process theory (LPT), CMS has come to terms with its institutional location within business schools and has taken the opportunity provided by the continued expansion of research oriented UK business schools to institutionalize itself as a recognized business school constituency. This has even led to the creation of one or two critically oriented business schools in the UK, where the contradictions of CMS are played out. One such contradiction is that having provided an opening for a wider academic and leftist intellectual community to enter the business school, CMS now finds itself faced with an autonomist critique which insists that the mainstream management curriculum is ‘worthless’ and calls for nothing less than the abolition of business schools. Consideration of this critique provides an opportunity to explore the identity of critters and the cultural performativity of CMS in providing a sign for their disaffiliation from the business school.

PurposeThis paper seeks to identify and define the genre of corporate history within the pervasive historical discourse produced by and about organizations which tells the past of an organization across a multiplicity of texts: published works – commissioned and critical accounts, academic tomes and glossy coffee‐table books – as well as web pages, annual reports and promotional pamphlets.Design/methodology/approachThe approach takes the form of systematic reading of historical narratives for 85 mainly British and US companies from the Fortune Global 500. For these companies, a search was carried out for US printed sources in the British Library and a survey was conducted of historical content in web pages.FindingsFrom extensive reading of the historical discourse, recurrent formal features (medium, authorship, publication, paratext and imagery) and elements of thematic content (narrative, characters, cultural paradigms and business success), which together define the genre of corporate history, have been identified. Such a definition provides competence in the reading of historical narratives of organizations and raises questions regarding the role of history in organizational identity, memory and communication. In conclusion it is argued that the interpretation of corporate history cannot be reduced to its promotional function for organizations.Research limitations/implicationsThe list of the formal features and thematic content of corporate history detailed here is by no means exhaustive. They are not variables, but signs, which, in various combinations, compose the narrative and signify the genre.Practical implicationsIt seems likely that coffee‐table books will increasingly replace academic commissioned histories, with consultants professionalizing the discourse and formalizing the genre of corporate history.Originality/valueThe genre of corporate history has hitherto been neglected in organization theory, where the linguistic turn has led to a preoccupation with talk as text. The use of genre to analyse corporate history represents a textual turn to literary organizational texts as text.

The debate over ownership and control of corporations is one of the most enduring in social science. It is a debate that continues to influence, and is informed by accounting and accountability research as well as labor process theory, and it is a debate that is vital for understanding the relation between accounting and the labor process. This paper offers a roadmap for locating alternative perspectives concerning ownership and control. First, ‘mainstream anti-managerialism’ maintains that corporations remain answerable to their owners. Second, ‘mainstream managerialism’ argues that corporations are one form of organization and that organizations in general are shaped by inter-organizational factors. Third, ‘radical managerialism’ views corporations as self-perpetuating bureaucracies. Finally ‘Marxist anti-managerialism’ views corporations as constrained by the interests of an identifiable capitalist class.

This article focuses on the friendship and shared beliefs of Frederick W. Taylor and Scudder Klyce. During his lifetime, both friend and foe noted Frederick W. Taylor's tireless efforts to dissemin...

There is an increasing call for an historical perspective in organization studies. Clegg, Jacques and Burrell in particular combine this call with a Foucauldian reformulation of organization studies. But Foucauldians in organization studies have largely ignored the criticisms of Foucault from historians. We rehearse six main criticisms of Foucault from historians: (1) impenetrable style; (2) avoidance of narrative; (3) ambivalence to truth; (4) errors in historical facts; (5) neglect of relevant historiography; and (6) questionable historical explanations. We then apply these criticisms to the work of Clegg, Jacques, and Burrell. Clegg makes serious historical errors, and neglects criticisms of labour process historiography. The historical sources and historiography cited by Jacques are insufficient. Burrell's interpretation of the connection between modernity and the Holocaust is questionable in the light of recent historiography. We conclude that so far, the invocation of Foucault has exacerbated the problematic treatment of history in organization studies.

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...

Stephen Procter, John Hassard and Michael Rowlinson investigate the introduction of cellular manufacturing in two units of a large British engineering group. They explore the reasons for its introduction – in both cases it was the cumbersome, functionally-based system of production that precluded quick and easy reaction to changes in conditions – and the effects such as the flattening of the organisational structure and the new role of the cell leader. A comparison of the two companies shows the difficulties involved in trying to enhance discretion by means of a process that was explicitly low-trust in nature. In one case an open and participative style was used which appeared to meet with success. In the second case, management adopted a closed and uncommunicative style which induced indifference and, at worst, resistance. Stephen Procter and Michael Rowlinson are Lecturers in the School of Management and Finance at the University of Nottingham, and John Hassard is Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Keele.

New evidence from a British electronics plant on the experience of a harmonisation programme is presented and questions the generally accepted favourable image of moves towards single status working. The presentation is novel in that instead of offering a traditional literature review followed by the empirical data, the article develops two forms of case description. The first case is a fictional “Composite” account derived from previously published materials in which we have assembled the key themes into a single narrative to convey an image of harmonisation as it is presented in the literature. This can then be compared with the more contradictory experience of harmonisation found during ethnographic research at the Collaborating Company, where management was more constrained and the process was not conflict free. The two cases can be read as a contrast between image and reality which then needs to be explained.

The debates about the significance of the corporation in contemporary societies have often taken place without sufficient reference to historical and comparative studies of the emergence and development of the corporation. In part, this is a result of the view that the modern corporation is merely a contemporary manifestation of bureaucratic tendencies. Weber (1991, p. 204) saw the ‘large modern capitalist enterprise’ as simply a purer form of the bureaucratic ideal type found at various times and places in history since ancient Egypt. Galbraith (1987, p. 42) has portrayed organisations such as the British East India Company, which lasted from 1600 to 1874, as antecedents of the modern multinational corporation. Business historians, notably Chandler and Daems, have dismissed much of the literature on the modern corporation, typified by Galbraith’s The New Industrial State, as ‘factless theorizing’ (1980). Chandler (1962, 1977, 1990), along with other business historians such as his colleague, Lazonick (1992), have produced detailed histories dealing with the rise of the modern corporation. Their studies draw upon both survey and case study research based on internal company documents.

According to Maxine Berg, author of The Age of Manufactures (1994), a major reconsideration of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, it is largely due to the influence of Marglin and Braverman that, ‘economists and economic and social historians can no longer write of industry and labour without consideration of the labour process’ (1984, p. 165). However, their influence has been felt in the debates concerning two fairly separate historical transformations in work organisation. Marglin’s account of the origins of capitalist hierarchy refers to the emergence of the ‘factory system’ during the period in British history from 1760 to 1830 commonly known as the ‘Industrial Revolution’ (Ashton, 1968). This is the period analysed by Marx (1976), following Engels’ classic study, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1969a).