AS: The recent Academy of Management conference attracted 10,000 scholars from around the world. There were a number of panels that are of interest to business historians.
Program Session #: 142 | Submission: 13414 | Sponsor(s): (OMT, MH, ENT)
Scheduled: Friday, Aug 1 2014 3:15PM – 4:45PM at Pennsylvania Convention Center in Room 120 C
Historical Approaches to Management and Organization Studies: Sources and Methods
History & Organization Studies
Research-oriented
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Speaker: JoAnne Yates; MIT Sloan;
Coordinator: R. Daniel Wadhwani; U. of the Pacific;
Speaker: Steven Kahl; Dartmouth College;
Speaker: David A. Kirsch; U. of Maryland;
Speaker: Michael Rowlinson; Queen Mary U. of London;
Facilitator: Marcelo Bucheli; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;
In recent years, management researchers have begun to use historical sources and methods in their study of management, organizations, and markets. Building on earlier pleas for an engagement with historical reasoning about organizations (Zald, 1993; Kieser, 1994; Clark and Rowlinson, 2004), these more recent developments have included efforts to develop historical approaches to organizational and institutional theory (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2009; Marquis, 2003), strategy (Kahl et al, 2012; Ingram et al, 2012), innovation and entrepreneurship (Tripsas, 1997; Forbes and Kirsch, 2010; Wadhwani and Jones, 2014), and critical management studies (Rowlinson and Proctor, 1999), among other subfields. The turn towards history, however, has also raised a number of complex questions for researchers about the nature of historical knowledge, how it might be employed to address organizational questions, and how to analyze historical sources and data (Bucheli and Wadhwani, 2014; Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, forthcoming). This PDW will introduce participants interested in historical sources and research methods to the core theoretical and methodological issues involved in historical research, and discuss the variety of ways in which history is being used in organization and management studies today. Led by an interdisciplinary group of historians and management scholars, the PDW will provide participants with both a broad orientation to the theoretical and practical issues involved in historical research, and an opportunity to apply it to their own research using smaller breakout groups based on the specific ways they are seeking to engage history.
Program Session #: 225 | Submission: 10041 | Sponsor(s): (MH)
Scheduled: Saturday, Aug 2 2014 8:00AM – 9:30AM at Loews Philadelphia Hotel in Parlor 2
New Tools for Old Data: Data Visualization
New Tools
Research-oriented
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Organizer: James M Wilson; U. of Glasgow;
Data visualization uses a variety of graphic tools to enhance the exploration, development, understanding and presentation of historical data and information. These tools are effective alternatives and supplements to purely textual or statistical approaches and the workshop focuses on introducing them to researchers in business history topics. Applications from the presenter’s own research will form the foundation for the presentation along with suitable other historic examples; and where appropriate modern analyses may be shown to have parallel applications to historic cases. The session will take two popular expressions as starting points: “A picture is worth a thousand words” and “Seeing is believing” revealing that a graphic representation can incorporate a great deal of information in a compact, readily comprehensible format. This is true not just for presenting information but even more so in exploring research questions where identifying relationships and behaviour over time, or along other dimensions may be problematical to perceive in numerical data, but graphs and other visual representations may more readily clarify relationships and help in hypothesizing relationships and interactions, and revealing their nature. The objective is to familiarize attendees with visualization techniques and the spreadsheet tools commonly available for implementing them; and so their research may benefit from these improved skills, and their seminar and teaching presentations may be more effective. Data visualization tools offer a great variety of powerful analytical and presentation techniques, and this workshop will describe and show their application in researching historic management topics, with clear parallels and applications to current topics.
Search Terms: Management History , Data Collection , Data Analys
Paper Session
Program Session #: 855 | Submission: 18539 | Sponsor(s): (MH)
Scheduled: Monday, Aug 4 2014 8:00AM – 9:30AM at Loews Philadelphia Hotel in Regency Ballroom C2
Economics Lessons from History
Economics Lessons
Practice-oriented
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Chair: John Norman Davis; Hardin Simmons U.;
An exploration of lessons learned from historical economic events.
Search Terms: Economics , History , Lessons
MH: “Results of the Decade” and Bond Rating Stability During the U.S. Great Depression Practice-oriented Research-oriented
Author: John Donnellan; New Jersey City U.;
Author: Berry Wilson; Pace U.;
This study analyses Moody’s railroad bond ratings over the period: 1925-1933 to examine the stability of Moody’s ratings during this critical period in U.S. economic history. One core principal applied by Moody was “results of the decade,” under which Moody derived quantitative measures from a 10-year moving average of the underlying credit data. Although related to “rating through the cycle,” “results of the decade” was a more explicit way of capturing secular trends in bond quality. Moody decomposed the ratings construction process into two components. The first constructed a statistical rating from two risk factors. These were: (1) security, a measure of a bond’s solvency, and (2) salability, a measure of a bond’s liquidity. Moody then combined these two factors with his personal judgment to construct the final rating. Our study analyzes the stability of both the statistical rating and Moody’s judgment. Our results contradict the “results of the decade” principal, and show that Moody made substantial changes in the rating process during the Great Depression.
Search Terms: security , salability , rating through the cycle
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MH: The New Deal for Management & Organization Studies:Lessons, Insights and Reflections Theme-oriented: The Power of Words Research-oriented
Author: Albert J. Mills; Saint Mary’s U.;
Author: Terrance G. Weatherbee; Acadia U.;
Author: Jason Foster; Athabasca U.;
Author: Jean Helms Mills; Saint Mary’s U.;
In this paper, drawing on ANTi-History (Durepos and Mills 2012), we set out to recover the New Deal and some of its leading figures for the field of management and organizational studies. In so doing we do not simply seek to add New Deal studies to existing histories of MOS but rather our aim is to show how MOS histories have served to narrowly define the field and constrain what is considered a valid area of study. Through exploration of the neglected phenomenon of the New Deal, we conclude that MOS needs be more imaginative in its choice of stories and exemplars when dealing with the broad range of economic, behavioral, social and political factors that confront humankind’s ability to organize and manage its affairs.
Search Terms: New Deal , ANTi-History , Management History
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MH: The 2008 Financial Crisis: A historical rethinking of a predictable evolutionary disaster Practice-oriented Theme-oriented: The Power of Words Research-oriented
Author: Michael G. Jacobides; London Business School;
This paper revisits the 2008 financial crisis, considering how we can draw on the historical record not only to revisit our understanding of what really drove the problems, but also to help inform theory. It looks at some relatively neglected factors which can be fruitfully documented through historical methods: the nature of the selection environment, the agency of actors, and the influence of structure (industry architectures and business models), which are discussed in detail, theoretically and empirically. On the basis of that evidence, as well as the promise that feedback, rather than foresight, drives behavior, we come to a fresh set of conclusions on what drove the crisis, and to an exciting opportunity for historical methods to inform theory. This potentially challenges some of the current policy views in terms of the current focus on “Too Big To Fail” and the direction of regulatory energy; it also helps us revisit the lessons that we should take from this crisis, taking us away from macro-economic factors on the one hand and on individual malfeasance on the other, highlighting structure instead. In all, the analysis suggests that a theoretically based, historical institutional and evolutionary analysis can add a fresh perspective.
Search Terms: financial crisis , evolutionary theory , business history
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Paper Session
Program Session #: 1706 | Submission: 18538 | Sponsor(s): (MH)
Scheduled: Tuesday, Aug 5 2014 11:30AM – 1:00PM at Loews Philadelphia Hotel in Congress Room B
Learning from a Re-examination of the Past
Re-examining the Past
Research-oriented
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Chair: Matthew Sargent; California Institute of Technology;
Authors look back at historical contexts to learn new lessons for the field of management.
Search Terms: Historical Research , Context , Lessons
Selected as a Best Paper MH: Integrating Libertarian Paternalism into Paternalistic Leadership: H.J. Heinz as Choice Architect Research-oriented
Author: John Humphreys; Texas A&M U.-Commerce;
Author: Brandon Randolph-Seng; Texas A&M U.-Commerce;
Author: Stephanie Pane Haden; Texas A&M U.-Commerce;
Author: Milorad M. Novicevic; U. of Mississippi;
Extant theory suggests that paternalistic leadership is not a unified construct and that benevolent paternalistic and exploitative paternalistic leader styles are independent. However, this representation ignores the emerging concept of libertarian paternalism. In order to explore this prospective style of leader paternalism, we performed a historiographically-informed examination of prominent paternal capitalists from the era of industrial paternalism in the United States. We discovered that the paternalistic leadership of H.J. Heinz lacked the degree of coercion and intrusion found in other paternalistic leaders of the period, even when compared to those motivated by benevolence. As this resonated well with current notions of libertarian paternalism, we analyzed the paternalistic leadership style of Heinz alongside contemporaneous archetypical exploitative (George Pullman) and benevolent (Henry Ford) paternalistic leaders. We interpret the historical evidence to integrate emergent ideas of libertarian paternalism into a more comprehensive typology of paternalistic leadership.
Search Terms: paternalistic leadership , libertarian paternalism , H.J. Heinz
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MH: Contributions of Lillian M. Gilbreth to Management Theory through the Context of Critical Biography Practice-oriented Research-oriented
Author: Jane Whitney Gibson; Nova Southeastern U.;
Author: Russell W. Clayton; Saint Leo U.;
Author: Jackie W. Deem; Kaplan U.;
Author: Jacqueline Einstein; Nova Southeastern U.;
Author: Erin Henry; Harvard U.;
In this paper, the lens of critical biography is used to examine the life and contributions of Lillian M. Gilbreth, widely known for instilling the human factor into scientific management theory. This paper looks at Lillian Gilbreth’s background, the important work and family roles she held, the turning points in her life, and the societal context in which her contributions to management thought were made. Against this backdrop, Gilbreth’s key contributions to management theory are discussed including those relating to the human element of scientific management, the application of scientific management to homemaking and the conceptualization of women as intelligent consumers and workers. The authors comment on how Gilbreth’s life experiences interfaced with her key contributions in these areas.
Search Terms: Lillian Gilbreth , Management History , Critical Biography
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MH: Management as fantasy. The managerial work of Catherine Cappe and Faith Gray, 1782-1820.
Author: Linda Perriton; U. of York;
Sage Publishers Award for Best Management History Division Paper in Leadership
In the years between 1782 and 1820, Catharine Cappe and Faith Gray, with the help of an extended kinship and social network of middle-class women, managed two progressive philanthropic organizations in York, England. The work of Cappe and Gray and their wider network of managing women is used as the subject of an analysis of management as fantasy, adapting Joan Scott’s (2001) ideas about the significance of psychoanalytic concepts within gender history. The paper explores how the historiography of management and organizational history could respond to this analytical frame.
Search Terms: Gender , Philanthropy , Desire
Paper is NOT Available: Please contact the author(s).
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MH: Genesis of Management Thought: Comparison between Early American & British-Indian Railroads
Author: K.V. Mukundhan; Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode;
The contribution of early American railroads to the development of management thought is a topic that has been heavily researched and written about. The need for managerial governance in the American railroads sparked off a revolution in thought creation that cascaded to the other industries of the American economy. The conditions that existed in America in the years that followed the industrial revolution were conducive to the creation, documentation and dissemination of management thought. There is prima facie evidence to believe that the economic context of India under British imperialism provided a fertile ground for management thought creation and development. Though the colonial Indian railroads were established by the British as early as 1853, their contribution to the development of management thought is either conspicuous by its absence or has lacked academic interest to bring it to the fore. In this paper, I have attempted to explore this historical anomaly by comparing the economic, social and political climate that existed in America with that of India during the period of this study (1850-1925). By comparing the contexts on three parameters that are necessary for the development and proliferation of management thought, I have tried to account for the void in the contributions of British Indian railroads in this paper.
Search Terms: Railroad , History , Management
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The Past Speaks 