The Past Speaks

Stephanie Decker of Aston Business School is currently managing an ESRC-funded seminar series in Management & Organizational History.  Although managed out of Birmingham’s Aston Business School, the seminar series is really a joint venture of a number of management schools, including Manchester, Queen Mary, and Copenghagen Business School.

The ESRC-sponsored seminar series provides a platform for international research on historical analysis of organizations, heritage and reflective societies. All events revolve around three interlinked themes: archiving and archival research as resources for organizational analysis, organizational remembering, , and emerging methodologies that challenge organizational histories. Leading international scholars will discuss current research initiatives.

In conjunction with this series, Aston have created a website that is intended to become a hub scholars who work in this area. At the moment, the website is still a little sparse, but it waiting to be filled with announcements, links to interesting content and news stories from you.

There is also a facility to sign up with a small profile, with links to their institutional websites where appropriate.

To access this platform, please see visit here.

The first event in the seminar series, “Managing the Past: The Role of Organizational Archives” will take place at Aston Business School Wednesday 18 March 2015, 10 am to 5pm. Free registrations are now closed, further places are available for £35, including refreshments, three course lunch, and tickets for the cocktail reception at 5pm. You can register here. Registrations will close Friday 13 March 2015. Here is the programme for the day:

10:00-10:15 Refreshments and welcome by seminar series organizers Stephanie Decker, Michael
Rowlinson and John Hassard
10:15-11:30 Roy Suddaby (University of Victoria & NUBS), “The Professionalization of the
Corporate Archivist” Note that Suddaby is the Francis G. Winspear Chair of Business at University of Victoria
11:30-12:30 Maria Sienkiewicz (Barclays Group Archives), “The Role of Archivists in Creating
Organizational Memory Assets”
Andy Mabett (Wikimedian), “Working with Wikipedia and its sister projects”
Discussants: Alistair Mutch & Margaret Procter
12:30-14:00 Buffet lunch
14:00-15:00 Alistair Mutch (Nottingham Business School), “Potential and perils of electronic
access to the archive”
Susanna Fellman (University of Gothenburg) and Andrew Popp (University of
Liverpool), “Owners, archivists and historians: allies or enemies in creating
organizational memory?”
Discussants: Maria Sienkiewicz & Stephanie Decker
15:00-15:30 Refreshments
15:30-16:45 Roundtable “The Practice of Archiving and the Future of Corporate Heritage”
Speakers: Michael Anson, Margaret Procter & Michael Rowlinson
17:00-19:00 Cocktail reception (MBA lounge)

The next events in the series are:

Organizational remembering as an alternative framework Date: 15 July 2015 Location: Queen Mary University, London Organisers: Michael Rowlinson & Andrew Hoskins

The Narrative construction of memory Date: 11 November 2015 Location: Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Organizers: Michael Rowlinson & Mads Mordhorst

Organizational ethnography and phenomenological approaches Date: 27 January 2016 (tentative) Location: Manchester Business School, Manchester Organiser: John Hassard

Challenging organizational histories Date: 13 April 2016 (tentative) Location: Aston Business School Organiser: Stephanie Decker

Organizations as heritage and history as a useful resource Date: July or September 2016 (tentative) Location: Queen Mary University, London Organiser: Michael Rowlinson

I would also encourage my readers to check out the CFP for the Special Issue of Management & Organizational History Special issue on “Revisiting the Historic Turn 10 years later”, closing 31 March 2015. You can download the Special Issue Call For Papers here.