Centre for Business History – Copenhagen Business School
Paper Development Workshop
The Centre for Business History at Copenhagen Business School will host a paper development workshop (PDW) for scholars conducting research on the uses of history and memory in organizations and organizing on Wednesday, December 9, 2015.
We welcome applications from scholars of all backgrounds conducting research on the question of why, how, and what affects the past is used by managers and organizations. The goal of the PDW is, in part, to support the development of research and foster dialogue among scholars who may be interested in submitting papers to the Special Issue of Organization Studies devoted to the same topic, though neither application nor attendance at the workshop is required for full consideration of papers submitted for the special issue.
More information about the Special Issue can be found here.
Limited funds may be available on a competitive basis for applicants who are unable to get funding from their home institutions.
Deadline for Abstracts: October 13, 2015
To apply, please email an abstract of between 300 and 500 words describing your research, along with a cv or bio to one the PDW organizers below. Applications should be sent by October 13, 2015 to receive full consideration. Please submit your paper to Mads Mordhorst (mmo.mpp@cbs.dk) and Dan Wadhwani (dwadhwani@pacific.edu).
Applicants will get a feedback October 19 and successful applicants will be asked to submit either short papers (approx. 3,000 words) or full papers (8-10,000 words) by December 1 in order for other participants to read them before the PDW.
PDW Organizers:
Mads Mordhorst, Copenhagen Business School, mo.mpp@cbs.dk
Andrew Popp, University of Liverpool, Andrew.Popp@liverpool.ac.uk
Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria, rsuddaby@uvic.ca
Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific, dwadhwani@pacific.edu
There is some great historical context in an important working new paper by Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo AM Ponzetto, and Yimei Zou. “Urban Networks: Spreading the Flow of Goods, People, and Ideas.” (2015). The draws on historical research and discusses differences between the evolution of US and European cities in the course of coming up with policy advice for China.
Should China build mega-cities or a network of linked middle-sized metropolises? Can Europe’s mid-sized cities compete with global agglomeration by forging stronger inter-urban links? This paper examines these questions within a model of recombinant growth and endogenous local amenities. Three primary factors determine the trade-o§ between networks and big cities: local returns to scale in innovation, the elasticity of housing supply, and the importance of local amenities. Even if there are global increasing returns, the returns to local scale in innovation may be decreasing, and that makes networks more appealing than mega-cities. Inelastic housing supply makes it harder to supply more space in dense conÖnes, which perhaps explains why networks are more popular in regulated Europe than in the American Sunbelt. Larger cities can dominate networks because of amenities, as long as the benefits of scale overwhelm the downsides of density. In our framework, the skilled are more likely to prefer mega-cities than the less skilled, and the long-run benefits of either mega-cities or networks may be quite different from the short-run benefits .
On 13 September 1993, the French government issued a decree specifying how the baguette de tradition française should be made. To celebrate the anniversary of the important milestone, Google.fr is today greeting users with the following image.
I find it incongruous that the French subsidiary of a company that is celebrated around the world for its disruptive innovations should commemorate the promulgation of a regulation constraining how bakers can make a particular type of bread. It’s also odd that they are marking the 22nd anniversary, since one normally marks anniversaries in years ending in zero or maybe five.
You can read the actual decree (Décret n°93-1074 du 13 septembre 1993) here.
Dan Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His scholarly works will be familiar to those of us who research international political economy or international business history. Non-academics will know of Drezner through his Washington Post punditry: Drezner has a knack for presenting academic research in an accessible fashion that allows the average reader of a quality newspaper to make sense of the world. Yesterday, he published a great piece on how political scientists can be academically rigorous and policy-relevant at the same time.
Addressing his remarks at younger political scientists considering their career strategies, he writes:
My own piece of advice on this question is simple. The best way for academics to maximize their rigor and their relevance is to focus on those areas where the Beltway consensus is at variance with the academic consensus… If there is a gap, that’s fantastic for political scientists. Because that creates a pretty easy-to-write paper that demonstrates the policy consensus, then discusses the academic consensus, and ideally provides data to explain why the gap persists. Often it’s because the policymakers retain untested assumptions, like China’s holdings of U.S. debt giving China foreign policy leverage. But sometimes it might be because policymakers think about the question differently, which in turn can provoke academic reconsideration of the question. Take, for example, the ongoing debate about the role of reputation in international crises. The overwhelming consensus in international relations theory used to be that it didn’t matter much at all. Now, there’s a reevaluation going on.
With the possible exception of economics, every social-scientific discipline has its own debates about whether there are trade-offs between academic rigour and accessibility. Accessibility in this context means ensuring that academics are being heard by the group of real-world practitioners served by each discipline. The ultimate consumers of academic knowledge vary, but generally speaking they are policy-makers in the case of political science, working lawyers in the case of legal academics, and businesspeople in the case of management academics. (Cass Sunstein, the great US law school professor, recently published a paper on this issue as it pertains to legal journals).
Business historians are currently engaged in a debate about the future research trajectory of our scholarly community (see here and here). Since most business historians work in management schools, we need to give some thought as to the relevance of our research to the ultimate consumers of our academic knowledge. It seems to me that Drezner’s advice about identify gaps between the scholarly consensus and the prevailing ideas among practitioners could be adapted to the needs of the business history community.
I’m currently working with some colleagues on an book about the impact of the First World War on international business. Although the book is aimed primarily at academics, we are striving to ensuring that the manuscript we produce will be readable by and relevant to interested non-academics. I’m working on that book project today and Dan’s piece in the WaPo has intensified my belief that it is really important that we business historians reach out to businesspeople and others who live outside of our ivory towers.
“Sugar philanthropy: Redpath Sugar and Civic improvement in the Dominion Metropolis of Montreal, 1854-1888”
Kirsten Greer, Assistant Professor, Departments of Geography and History, Nipissing University, Ontario
Andrew Smith, Lecturer in International Business, Management School, University of Liverpool
The connection between metropolises such as London and Liverpool in the British Isles and resource-producing islands in the tropics is a major theme in the history of the British Empire. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a city in the British colony of Canada developed similar relationships with the tropics. The metropolis of Montreal experienced rapid industrialization and became Canada’s largest city. Previously, Montreal had been a transit point for Canadian raw materials en route to consumers in Britain. Canada’s industrialization and rapidly evolving relationship with the Caribbean allowed Montreal to join the rank of the Empire’s resource importing cities. This paper investigates the connected geographies of the island of Montreal with the sugar islands of the Caribbean by focusing on the Redpath Sugar Refinery and its reliance on raw sugar from Cuba and Brazil. With increased profits made from slave-produced sugar until the late 1880s, Redpath Sugar Refinery invested in civic improvement projects such as museums, education, and science, all of which helped to position Montreal as the metropolis of the Dominion of Canada in the late nineteenth century. This paper gestures towards makingbroader connections between industrialization, nationalism, race, and slavery in the histories of Quebec, and Canada more generally.
AS: Come be my colleague. The University of Liverpool recently advertised this job.
You should have relevant research experience and be seeking to develop your research and teaching career in the broad area of strategy. For the lecturer position you should have some publications or revise and resubmit, or submitted to journals at least at 3* level. For the senior lecturer post you should have a good record of publication at least at 3* level with the potential to publish in leading business and management journals at 4*, and of obtaining research funding and engaging with the School’s impact agenda. Teaching excellence is also important at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. You should have have (or be about to obtain) a PhD in a relevant discipline and a Masters degree. ULMS has an interdisciplinary ethos that combines international business/management, strategy, institutional theory, entrepreneurship, HRM, OB, services marketing and crisis/risk management. This interdisciplinary approach to research is reflected in our commitment to knowledge platforms (KPs) which cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.
For the last few days, I’ve been testifying as an expert witness in a Canadian constitutional court case that has captured the imagination of the country and which has serious implications for a number of key economic sectors. The court case is about the section of the Canadian constitution that declares that there should be free trade among Canada’s ten provinces. It’s rare for a business historian to be called as an expert witness in a court case. However, since my PhD thesis was on the role of business in the creation of the Canadian constitution, I’m qualified to speak to what the framers of the Canadian constitution intended when they inserted this section (s.121) into the 1867 constitution. My view is that since the creators of the Canadian constitution wanted to create a comprehensive economic union of the various British colonies in North America, the various laws that restrict “imports” of goods from one Canadian province to another should be considered unconstitutional. (This particular “test case” centres on the conviction in 2012 of a man who purchased some beer in Quebec, a Canadian province, and then drove this beer into New Brunswick, another Canadian province, where he was arrested by the RCMP).
I’ve been astonished by the extent to which the Canadian media is discussing this case (see here, here, and here). Last evening, Canada’s 24 hour news channels were abuzz with discussion of the case. For part of yesterday, our case was the most discussed issue in Canadian social media, ahead of the ongoing federal general election. Moreover, the topic has gone viral in ordinary conversations. As I write this I am sitting in a roadhouse in between the location of the trial, the tiny border town of Campbellton, and the nearest international airport, which is in Moncton. The other diners, who don’t know that I am involved in the case, are energetically debating its merit. One of the people I just overheard has speculated that if free trade in beer among Canadian provinces is established, the brewing companies will no longer be required to operate small breweries in each province. This individual, who appears to be of university-student age, is predicting consolidation and rationalization in the industry should the defence win in this trial. (The defence wants the court to declare inter—provincial trade barriers to be unconstitutional). His friend is talking about the implication for dairy products and the other goods that are currently fettered by internal trade barriers. The implication is that if inter-provincial free trade and a Canadian common market is established, a wide range of industries will have to be restructured. I expect that regardless of the decision by the judge, the case will ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
I’ve listened to a number of radio stations, French-language and English-language, during my drive today. Interspersed among the music and weather reports is discussion of the ongoing trial. The DJs are also reference discussion of the trial on Facebook and other social media. A DJ at a radio station said “For anyone who is at the trial today, here is this song”. He proceeded to play a catchy pop song by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars called “Uptown Funk.” I don’t know how much meaning should be read into the DJ’s decision to play this song in honour of the ongoing trial. It would probably be a mistake to ascribe any political significance into the verbal machine-gun fire that is commercial radio DJ blather. However, I do know that the people in the local community I spoke to are uniformly in favour of being able to purchase beer in Quebec dépanneur.
As I prepare to fly back to Europe, I reflect that I am honoured that my academic research has been used in this way in a court case that has important implications for many companies, and individuals, in an important G-20 economy. My guess is that future economic historians may regard this case as the Canadian analogue of the Cassis de Dijon case in EU law. (That court case helped to create the European Common Market).
If you would like to read the Expert Witness Report that was submitted to the court,it will soon be available online.
P.S. I would like to thank the staff of the trial hotel, Campbellton’s Quality Inn, and Brasserie 1026, the adjacent restaurant, for all of their help during my stay in their community.
The BBC recently broadcast a two-part documentary called Britain’s forgotten slave-owners, which is based on a research project at UCL that involved making a statistical portrait of the slaveholders who received compensation when slavery was abolished in 1834. The shows producers have taken the admirable decision to put the entire documentary online, which means that people outside of the UK, including people in the countries most affected by the Atlantic slave trade, can watch it
The terminology used in the documentary is very much a product of our times. For instance, the compensation payments given to slaveowners are frequently referred to as “bailouts” and many of the scenes are shot in London’s financial district. The documentary stresses the linkages between slavery and modern capitalism. This aspect of the documentary has generated considerable debate in the media was denounced by sociologist Frank Furedi.
It is interesting to see how the social memory of slavery is being used by various ideological movements for present-day purposes. History, as always, is being used.
“Banff, Alberta, Canada (230089894)” by Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, United States – Banff, Alberta, Canada. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This conference is sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University and supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech University and the following academic units at the University of Calgary: the Department of History; the Centre for Military, Security, and Strategic Studies; the Faculty of Arts; the Latin America Research Centre; and the Office of the Vice President for Research.
The Past Speaks 