PhD Seminar “Using Historical Approaches in Management and Organizational Research” (Fall 2014)
Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark
3 ECTS Credits
PhD students interested in participating please contact Mads Mordhorst (mmp.mpp@cbs.dk) or Christina Lubinski (cl.mpp@cbs.dk) for further details
Dates
November 17-18, 2014
Faculty
Per H. Hansen, Professor of Business History
Tor Hernes, Professor of Organization
Christina Lubinski, Associate Prof of Business History
Mads Mordhorst, Associate Prof of Business History
Majken Schultz, Professor of Organization
Roy Suddaby, Editor, Academy of Management Review
R. Daniel Wadhwani, Associate Prof of Entrepreneurship
Prerequisites & Requirements
Each participant must submit a working paper or full-length proposal for group discussion or review by November 17th. Students who do not have a working paper or full-length proposal may still take the course but will receive only 2 ECTS credits.
Course Overview
The seminar will provide a broad overview of the uses of history in management and organizational research, and then examine more closely three ways in which historical sources, methods, and perspectives can be used to address organizational research questions. The three approaches are as follows:
The first approach we will examine is the use of history to develop or test theory. Historical sources can provide a foundation for developing and testing theories related to organizational processes in time, including such processes as institutionalization, path dependence, imprinting, and evolutionary dynamics. We will illustrate how this is done using leading examples from the organizational literature, and will discuss the assumptions, strengths, and limitations of such an approach.
Second, we will discuss the uses of history to identify and reconstruct important phenomena that extant theory elides. Theories are necessarily parsimonious abstractions of complex realities, and while theory-driven research has proven itself valuable in management and organization studies, scholars have also gained increasing appreciation for research based on the study of important phenomena, as the recent establishment of Academy of Management Discoveries highlights. We will show how historical approaches can be used to reconstruct organizational developments that theory has elided, and how this can in turn serve as a basis for alternative theoretical perspectives on organizations.
Finally, we will examine the use of history to provide insights into organizational meaning, cognition, and agency. Historical sources and approaches allow insights into how organizational actors understand their world, including their own position in historical time. We will examine how organizational scholars have been employing this approach to examine the uses of history by organizations and actors to formulate organizational strategy, engage in entrepreneurial action, and establish organizational identity.
Participants will not only have the opportunity to learn these approaches by examining leading exemplars of each approach, but also through discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of each and by application of the most appropriate approach to their own research.