The Past Speaks

 

 

Entrepreneurship and History

Entrepreneurship and History Research Session Type: PDW Workshop. Program Session: 136 | Submission: 18205 | Sponsor(s): (ENT, MH) Scheduled: Friday, Aug 9 2019 12:00PM – 2:00PM at Boston Marriott Copley Place in Grand Ballroom Salon IJK

Chair: Trevor Lyle Israelsen, U. of Victoria (PhD Student)

Participant: David A. Kirsch, U. of Maryland

Participant: Christina Lubinski, Copenhagen Business School

Participant: Rob Mitchell, Colorado State U.

Participant: Daniel Raff, The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania

Participant: Andrew D A Smith, U. of Liverpool

Participant: Daniel Wadhwani, U. of the Pacific

Participant: Ricardo Zozimo, Lancaster U.

History and entrepreneurship are intertwined in multiple, fundamental ways. Recent scholarship has established this connection across a range of topics, modes of inquiry, and as a means for contribution to theory. Here we draw attention to two critical questions requiring additional exploration at the intersection of entrepreneurship and history. First, what constitutes rigorous historical explanation in the context of entrepreneurship? And second, what is the relationship between history and ongoing entrepreneurial processes? To facilitate a collective discussion of these two topics, we bring together leading scholars from a variety of traditions ranging from economics to cultural history and from the history of technological innovation to historical cognition to help stimulate a dialogue with workshop attendees regarding these two critical questions at the intersection between the historiographic tradition and modern social-science-based entrepreneurial studies. The PDW culminates in an activity in which attendees generate and refine research questions and ideas to address these two problems.

 

 

Personalities, Their Foibles and Organizations

 

Session Type: Paper Session. Program Session: 890 | Submission: 20295 | Sponsor(s): (MH) Scheduled: Monday, Aug 12 2019 8:00AM – 9:30AM at Boston Marriott Copley Place in Yarmouth

 

Discussant: Jeffrey Muldoon, Emporia State U.

 

MH: Performing Intersection Identity Work Over Time; Historic Case of Viola Turner

Authors: Madison Portie Williamson, Hiscox Insurance ; David Ross Marshall, U. of Dayton; Milorad Novicevic, U. of Mississippi; Albert J. Mills, Saint Mary’s U., Canada/U. of Eastern Finland; Caleb Lugar, U. of Mississippi

Through the analysis of an exemplary historic case, we show how an individual alters their underlying moral foundations in order to align them to intersecting identities and changing social contexts over time. Using computer aided text analysis software, we analyze interviews conducted with Ms. Viola Turner, an African-American insurance executive in the early 1900’s. We find that Turner consistently adapted her configuration of moral foundations to her intersecting identities most prevalent and useful at each given time period. In this way, we shed light on how people perform intersection identity work over time.

 

 

Best Paper MH: Mayo’s Beacon: How Hawthorne, Logical Positivism, and Psychology Shaped Social Exchange Theory

Author: Jeffrey Muldoon, Emporia State U; Yaron J. Zoller, Lakeland U.

John F. Mee Award for Paper with the Best Management History Division Contribution

Social exchange theory (SET) by Homans (1958) is one of the most researched, validated, and influential theories in the field of sociology. This paper provides a historical review to trace the disciplines, scholars, organizations, studies, and research methodologies that influenced Homans in creating SET. In addition, it investigates the mostly ignored role of the Hawthorne studies and Elton Mayo in shaping the development of SET. Our contention was that Homans, through the use of various methods, sought to explain how spontaneous cooperation emerged in groups. This goal was set early by Elton Mayo.

 

 

MH: Coming Together after a Tragedy – How the S.S. Eastland Disaster of 1915 Helped Shape Hawthorne Theme-oriented

Author: Yaron J. Zoller, Lakeland U; Jeffrey Muldoon, Emporia State U.

By conducting an historical study of the social conditions of the community of employees at Hawthorne Works before and after the S.S. Eastland disaster of 1915, this paper argues that the Eastland disaster resulted in expanding welfare capitalism practices by Western Electric in the 1920s-1930s and establishing the social and communal conditions which made the Hawthorne Studies (1924-1933) possible. The Eastland disaster likely steered Western Electric towards expanding its practice of welfare capitalism, a forerunner to the Human-Relations school of management, and taking a more humanistic approach. Expansion of welfare capitalism by Western Electric was partially designed to take advantage of the cultural and ethnic isolation of the community and to deflect attention from Western Electric’s involvement in the Eastland disaster. Linking the Eastland disaster and the Hawthorne Studies can help explain the importance of trust development during the famous studies.

 

 

MH: The Creation and Decline of an Ethics-Driven Market Category: The Case of Free-Grown Sugar International-oriented Research-oriented

Author: Andrew D A Smith, U. of Liverpool; Jennifer Johns, U. of Bristol

This paper uses a historical case study to integrate the theoretical work on category creation (Durand and Khaire, 2017) with the management research on the ethics of slavery. It documents the rise and fall of the ethics-driven market category of “freegrown sugar”. Between 1790 and 1890, the United Kingdom imported sugar produced by slaves and sugar that had been produced by free labourers. The market category of free-grown sugar existed during the first fifty years of this period, enabling consumers who were opposed to slavery to pay a premium for a more ethical product. After circa 1840, this market category disappeared, even though considerable quantities of slavegrown sugar continued to arrive into the UK. Our paper makes a number of theoretical contributions, including the introduction to the business-ethics literature of the concept of the ethics-driven market category. Our research also challenges the linearprogressive historical metanarrative that many business ethics scholars use to interpret data. The paper also refines our understanding of category creation and category disappearance. In addition to making these theoretical contributions, our research findings will be of interest to scholars of Modern Slavery and to social activists who seek to eradicate forced labour from the economy.

 

 

Corporations across the World

Session Type: Paper Session Program Session: 1771 | Submission: 20296 | Sponsor(s): (MH) Scheduled: Tuesday, Aug 13 2019 9:45AM – 11:15AM at Boston Marriott Copley Place in Yarmouth

 

Chair: Jay J. Janney, U. of Dayton

 

MH: Are Corporate Governance Theories Relevant to the History and Long- Term Survival of Catholic Orders?

Author: Peter Wirtz, U. Jean Moulin Lyon III

Despite extensive research efforts, the causal link between various corporate governance practices and the long-term performance and survival of organizations is still largely unexplored. Various theoretical approaches aim at explaining a governance system’s influence on organizational performance and sustainability over the long run, but few contemporaneous corporate organizations have experienced long enough lifespans to examine the underliyng assumtions consistently in a sound and consistent empirical setting. Catholic orders are among the oldest still existing organizations and hence present a unique opportunity to test theoretical assumptions about governance systems’ capacity to influence long- term survival. This paper presents a structured inventory of the current state of research on the form and functions of the governance systems of three old Catholic orders (namely the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits) in historical perspective and confirms the relevance of this kind of approach.

 

 

MH: Corporate Archives, History-as-Sensemaking: Evidence from Banking International-oriented Research-oriented

Author: Andrew D A Smith, U. of Liverpool; Wim Van Lent, Montpellier Business School; Ian Jones, U. of Liverpool

The emerging literature on how organizations use history focuses mainly on the rhetorical use of strategy to give sense to stakeholders, neglecting history’s potential for strategic sense- making. This study employs a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative data about archival usage by senior decision-makers at Barclays Bank during the Global Financial Crisis. The analysis demonstrates how history was used for both sense-giving and sense- making and that these practices eventually improved financial performance. Our findings enrich the theoretical foundation of the “Uses of the Past” literature and reinforce an agent-based approach to the role of history in strategy. We discuss the implications of our research for researchers, managers, and management educators in the conclusion of the paper.

 

 

MH: Trademarks and Competitiveness in the Global Ugg Boot Industry, 1979- 2017 International-oriented

Author: Amanda Budde-Sung, U. Of Sydney

Journal of Management History Award for Best International Paper

When intellectual property (IP) is covered in the international business literature, it usually focuses on competitive advantages conferred upon a firm or industry by new technology. Less discussed is the historical role of intellectual property, particularly when the intellectual property giving the competitive advantage is not new. This study considers the impact on competitive advantage of culturally distinctive, but not new, IP through the lens of the Australia-US battle over the UGG boot trademark. Court documents and trademark applications from 1984 to 2017 indicate that Australian firms underestimated the cultural differences between the US and Australia, and thus failed to adequately protect the generic word “ugg” in foreign markets where it was considered to be distinctive, rather than generic. The in-depth analysis of the development of the UGG brand highlights the importance of intangible barriers in global business. The impact on the competitive advantage these intangible barriers gave US firms over Australian firms in the worldwide sheepskin boot market is discussed.

 

 

MH: Following the Old Road: Organizational Imprinting and Regional Development of Russia

Author: Nooa Nykänen, U. of Jyväskylä

Russia’s strategy for regional development has taken an authoritarian direction during the recent decades, despite simultaneous pressures to modernize economic structures and generate innovative growth in regional agglomerations. In this paper, I study the impact of historical and organizational imprinting within Russian economic geography on the contemporary forms of regional policy, highlighting specifically the paradigmatic and path- dependent role of Soviet regional economic system, based on territorial-production complexes (TPCs). Analysis based on the dynamics within framework of imprinting suggest that the TPC model presents a cognitive institutional paragon for contemporary Russian decision-makers in administrating regional development. The results contribute to the literature of socialist imprints by demonstrating how imprints may influence organizational communities and invoke features of socialist economic management in contemporary regional strategies.

 

 

MH: Self-Help or Vassal? State Ideology and Discursive Legitimization of Turkish Cooperatives, 1934-1960 International-oriented Research-oriented

Author: Cemil Ozan Soydemir, Istanbul Technical U;   Mehmet Ercek, Istanbul Technical U.

The emergence of cooperatives as distinct economic forms has been associated with either social movements or with entrepreneurial works of local elites. The aim of this study is to unveil how cooperative forms emerge in the Turkish setting and to question the role of the state in the initial constitution and subsequent legitimization of cooperative forms. Contrary to the existing literature, this study revealed that the Turkish state constituted and instrumentally used cooperatives as an extension of its apparatus to legitimize its ideology. Shifts in the external conditions required the state to configure new cooperative forms and delegitimize or silence existing forms. Besides, alteration of the state ideology also resulted in the inception of new forms and modification of the existing ones. The use of rhetorics, frames and narratives in the discursive legitimation of each form varied as contextual and temporal conditions unfolded.