History & organization studies – Call for Paper EGOS 2016

Historical sources, methods, and theoretical constructs have gained considerable attention in management and organizational studies in recent years (Üsdiken & Kipping, 2014). Researchers have mades a range of notable conceptual (Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2014; Rowlinson et al., 2014) and empirical contributions (O’Sullivan & Graham, 2010; Rowlinson et al., 2014; Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014) that have laid the foundations for a diverse array of approaches to historical research and reasoning in organization studies. Moreover leading journals, such as Organization Studies and Academy of Management Review, have supported these developments by announcing special issues devoted to historical research and theory. Indeed, one could fairly state that the nature and value of historical research has come to be more broadly understood and accepted than when the EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) on “Historical Perspectives in Organization Studies” was formed.

In this, the final year of the SWG 08, we seek a broad range of empirical papers that explicitly build on the foundations that have been established but move the conversation between history and organization studies forward in interesting and novel ways. We also welcome innovative conceptual papers based on previous research. Some of the ways in which this might be done includes:

• Building new bridges between history and other approaches to the study of organizations that are sensitive to time and context, such as process research, institutional theory, and evolutionary theory.
• Extending the work that has been done on history and organization theory to related domains, including strategy and entrepreneurship.
• Introducing new or underused methods for interpreting historical sources related to organizations and organizing.
• Exploring novel types of historical source material.
• Examining new and understudied historical periods or regions.
• Considering new ways in which the past is used in organizations and organizing

Short paper submissions should not only describe the empirical research conducted and elaborate on theoretical claims, but should also explicitly engage the extant work on historical approaches to management and organization studies and point to promising new theoretical, methodological, and empirical directions.