Stable category meanings act as institutions that facilitate market exchange by providing bases for comparison and valuation. Yet little is known about meaning construction in new categories or how ...meaning translates into valuation criteria. We address this gap in a descriptive study of these processes in an emerging category: modern Indian art. Discourse analysis revealed how market actors shaped the construction of meaning in the new category by reinterpreting historical constructs in ways that enhanced commensurability and enabled aesthetic comparisons and valuation. Analysis of auction transactions indicated greater intersubjective agreement about valuation over time as the new category institutionalized.
Research Summary
We explore multinational strategy formation in the context of rising economic nationalism. Specifically, we examine how firms develop strategies to capitalize on the historical and ...aspirational attributes of national identity. Analyzing the histories of two German multinationals in late colonial India, we find that these firms engaged in “geopolitical jockeying” to delegitimize rival multinationals and position themselves as complementary to the economic and political goals of the host nation. Toward that end they employed “aspirational political practices,” addressing the inherently future‐oriented character of nationalism, and invested in the development of political capabilities to gather information and shape perceptions of national contexts. The paper contributes to a more robust conceptualization of nations and nationalism and their role in the formation of international competition and strategy.
Managerial Summary
Rising economic nationalism can create political and economic opportunities as well as threats for multinational firms. Through a historical analysis of the emerging strategy of two German companies—Siemens and Bayer—in late colonial India, we show how firms can engage in “geopolitical jockeying” to delegitimize rival multinationals and position themselves as complementary to the economic and political goals of host nations. To do so the companies engaged in “aspirational political practices,” addressing the inherently future or goal‐oriented aspects of nations, and created political capabilities designed to both gather intelligence on and shape the nationalist movements. The paper uses history as a mirror for reflecting on the causes and consequences of economic nationalism for international strategy in our own time.
This article draws on historical institutionalism as an approach to studying the relationship between business institutions and major social problems. Using the historical case of the emergence of ...savings banking as an organizational response to poverty in the nineteenth‐century United States, I develop three conceptual claims about how social problems shape the processes of institutional and organizational change. First, I show how the ‘historical framing’ of social problems shapes the processes of problematization, design, and legitimation related to institutional change. Second, I demonstrate how the dynamics of cooperation, competition, and alignment between an emerging organizational field and other fields shape the evolution of institutional responses to social problems. And finally, I illustrate how historical revisionism as a methodological approach can help management scholars re‐consider settled empirical and theoretical claims in a way that takes social problems into account.
Theorizing with Microhistory Hargadon, Andrew B.; Wadhwani, R. Daniel
The Academy of Management review,
10/2023, Letnik:
48, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Management and organization studies have long been interested in the social contexts and enduring consequences of individual and collective action. Yet, empirically observing both the situated nature ...of actions and their ultimate consequences remains challenging. In this paper, we describe microhistory as a complementary approach to grounded and longitudinal studies that reconciles situated action in time with its broader consequences over time. Microhistorical research involves the reflexive use of dual temporal frames: a microtemporal frame suited to an empirically grounded study of individuals in time and a macrotemporal frame accounting for processes of continuity and change in social structures over time. We describe the epistemology, method, and form inherent in theorizing with microhistory and consider its potential for management researchers. Microhistory's approach, we recognize, is well-suited to several phenomena that remain elusive to contemporaneous and longitudinal studies, such as exceptional normal actions, unintended consequences, nonlinear and emergent processes, contingent processes, and unobserved or inconceivable processes. Finally, we consider how microhistory's reflexive temporality offers management scholars opportunities to situate ourselves and our own theorizing in time and to account for evolving consequences over time.
While conventional historical narratives of entrepreneurship education focus on its rise in business schools since the 1970s, this paper traces its roots to the early 19th century and chronicles its ...evolution within the field of higher education more broadly. Using a comparative history design, we show how changing social imaginaries of entrepreneurship education in Germany and the United States were based on divergent and evolving justifications of entrepreneurial autonomy and its relationship to the common good. Our narrative explores how these social imaginaries shaped the moral and political legitimacy of entrepreneurship and the aims, practices, and organizational forms of entrepreneurship education. We draw out the implications of this deeper history for entrepreneurship education today, including (a) its current social imaginary, (b) the character of entrepreneurial knowledge, and (c) the relationship of entrepreneurship education to the modern university.
Research on the “uses of the past” in organizations and organizing is flourishing. This introduction reviews this approach to integrating history into organization studies and explores its paths ...forward. We begin by examining the intellectual origins of the approach and by defining why and how it matters to the study of management and organizations. Specifically, we emphasize the performative role of history in making and unmaking organizational orders. Next, we elaborate on how the articles in the special issue demonstrate the uses of the past in shaping organizational identity, strategy, and power. We also highlight how this work contributes to our understanding of the socially embedded character of history in organizations by accounting for the role of materiality, intertextuality, competing narratives, practices, and audiences in how the past is used. We conclude by considering four research frontiers particularly worthy of further exploration—the influence of temporal form, the role of non-rational knowledge, the range of methods, and the integration of ethics—in studies of the uses of the past in organizations.
We agree with de Jong et al.'s argument that business historians should make their methods more explicit and welcome a more general debate about the most appropriate methods for business historical ...research. But rather than advocating one 'new business history', we argue that contemporary debates about methodology in business history need greater appreciation for the diversity of approaches that have developed in the last decade. And while the hypothesis-testing framework prevalent in the mainstream social sciences favoured by de Jong et al. should have its place among these methodologies, we identify a number of additional streams of research that can legitimately claim to have contributed novel methodological insights by broadening the range of interpretative and qualitative approaches to business history. Thus, we reject privileging a single method, whatever it may be, and argue instead in favour of recognising the plurality of methods being developed and used by business historians - both within their own field and as a basis for interactions with others.
Reinventing Entrepreneurial History Wadhwani, R. Daniel; Lubinski, Christina
Business history review,
2017, Letnik:
91, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Research on entrepreneurship remains fragmented in business history. A lack of conceptual clarity inhibits comparisons between studies and dialogue among scholars. To address these issues, we propose ...to reinvent entrepreneurial history as a research field. We define “new entrepreneurial history” as the study of the creative processes that propel economic change. Rather than putting actors, hierarchies, or institutions at the center of the analysis, we focus explicitly on three distinct entrepreneurial processes as primary objects of study: envisioning and valuing opportunities, allocating and reconfiguring resources, and legitimizing novelty. The article elaborates on the historiography, premises, and potential contributions of new entrepreneurial history.
Research Summary
We articulate the value of historical methods and reasoning in strategic entrepreneurship research and theory. We begin by introducing the papers in the special issue, ...contextualizing each within one of five broader methodological approaches, and elaborating on the applicability of each to other topics in entrepreneurship research. Next, we use the papers to induce a framework for integrating history into entrepreneurship theory. The framework demonstrates how historical assumptions play a formative role in operationalizing time and context in entrepreneurship research. We then show how variations in these treatments of time and context shape theoretical claims about entrepreneurial opportunities, actions, and processes of change. We conclude by discussing why this may be a particularly opportune time for strategic entrepreneurship research to develop a deeper historical sensibility.
Managerial Summary
History can serve as an especially important guide to understanding entrepreneurship during moments of change. We draw on articles from the special issue on “Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Research” to illustrate different forms of historical reasoning and research about entrepreneurship. Moreover, we use the articles to develop a framework for understanding how historical context and time shape entrepreneurial opportunities, actions, and processes of change. We emphasize, in particular, the value of history in understanding variations in entrepreneurial practices.
Conceptual metaphors, like Galambos and Amatori’s “entrepreneurial multiplier,” play a pivotal but largely unexamined role in historical interpretation. They do this by allowing historians to see one ...set of historical associations or relationships in terms of another, more familiar, one. I highlight this interpretive role by comparing Galambos and Amatori’s construct to Joseph Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” and Arthur Cole’s “entrepreneurial stream” as metaphors that attempt to explain the relationship between entrepreneurship and historical change. I also point out the risks that taken-for-granted metaphors can have in narrowing room for interpretation, and argue that reflexivity and playfulness are essential to keeping conceptual metaphors alive as interpretive devices. I conclude by suggesting that metaphors are an intrinsic form of theorizing in historical interpretation, and illustrate my argument by briefly examining “industrial revolution” as a construct in business and economic history.