History Historiography and Organizational Studies - The Chanllenge and The Potential - Roy Jacques

Management & Organizational
History
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History, historiography and organization studies: The challenge and the potential
Roy Stager Jacques
Management & Organizational History 2006; 1; 31
DOI: 10.1177/1744935906060628
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MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY Vol 1(1): 3149

DOI: 10.1177/1744935906060628
Copyright 2006 Sage Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
http://moh.sagepub.com
M&OH
History, historiography and organization

studies: The challenge and the potential
Roy Stager Jacques Auckland University of Technology
Abstract
What justification is there for a new organizational journal devoted to history? First, it is to be
hoped that a contribution can be made in creating dialogue between the poorly connected
fields of business history and organization studies. Secondly, Management & Organizational
History can stimulate awareness within organization studies of the mainstream importance
of historical perspective to theoretical understanding.This will require nurturing a community
of practice within which historiography is actively debated and taught.The organizational culture movement of the 1980s is offered as an example for comparison.
Key words Business history history management history organization and management
theory organization studies organizational behaviour organizational culture
Yet another new journal in organization studies? Might we not ask, in sympathy with
famed business practitioner Ebenezer Scrooge, are there not workhouses enough for the
masses labouring in organizational knowledge production? Would it not be better to let
more die and decrease the surplus population? Certainly, it is incumbent on any editors
who might wish to add to the present journal proliferation1 to account for our actions. To
what purpose, then, Management & Organizational History?
Were this journal to become merely another outlet for the business historian, it
would indeed be redundant. There are already better-established outlets for business history written for business historians. However, what of the history of management, as
opposed to that of business and what of the use of history in the development of management
theory? The story of commerce, the effects of industrialization and the emergence of the
large organization do not, in themselves, enlighten us about that particular manner of
channelling capital and ensuring the production of goods and services which we have
come to call Management. Some would argue that this mode of organizing appeared late
in the history of enterprise, late even in the history of the industrial firm (Hollway 1991;
Jacques 1996). Presently, where this history is not ignored completely, it is usually trivialized into a teleological argument for the necessity and sufficiency of contemporary
organizational science as the quasi-natural evolution (Chandler 1977) of a timeless
activity: Although problems of administration were of interest in ancient Greek,
Egyptian, and Biblical times, preindustrial societies were largely biased against the concept of managing efficiently and effectively (Bowditch and Buono 2005, 5).
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MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)
This citation from Bowditch and Buono is a favourite of mine precisely because A
Primer on Organizational Behavior, currently in its 6th edition, is both a popular and a generally excellent summary of research in that field, one I have selected many times for a
classroom text. A claim as shockingly nave as that cited above would be glaringly out of
place if made regarding the real content of the book, e.g. leadership, motivation, communication, etc. Only in the de rigeur historical introduction can it pass without comment. As with historical introductions in organizational behaviour (OB) in general,
Bowditch and Buonos teleological history of the evolution of management introduces
history only to illustrate its irrelevance. History is the desert in which we have wandered
for 40 years; paradigmatic science is the promised land just over the next hill. In this
story, the past need not be considered except to illustrate the superiority of present day
knowledge, since the field is (allegedly) held together by the explanatory power of
hypotheses, not by the interested actions of social groups through time. Bowditch and
Buonos sole reliance on the authority of Wren (1979) and George (1972) underscores
both the need for and the dearth of informed scholarship and debate in this area. Is it possible to imagine addressing any other aspect of OB on the basis of so few sources while
citing nothing done since the 1970s? If, Authors of principles of management, organizational behaviour, and human resources textbooks reflect that management history
coverage is decreasing as a part of these courses (Gibson et al. 2005)2 perhaps it is
because history, as presently used, contributes nothing substantive to these courses.
This morbidity of conventional management history implicitly illustrates the potential contribution Management & Organizational History can make as a conduit between historically informed research on management and the development of management and organizational
theory. The subtitle of the symposium was reflections on Chapter 2, the stereotypical
ghetto for history in these texts. One might look at Hollway (1991) as a concrete example that the teleological, epiphenomenal non-history of OB texts need not be the only
way to tell the story of the person in the modern organization. Work Psychology and
Organizational Behaviour illustrates that what we believe we know about the person at
work can be intimately related to how we have come to know it. Similarly, Gillespies
(1993) study of the Hawthorne experiments shows how distorting is the textbook story
of the discovery of the informal organization and the iconic, mythical Hawthorne
effect. Presently, the point is not whether Hollway is more right or wrong than
Bowditch and Buono. More fundamental is the lack of debate on this issue. Before one
can argue the relevance of any particular historical interpretation, one must argue the relevance of historical perspective.
The Relevance of Historical Perspective: Some Examples
McGregor and Theory Y
Douglas McGregor (1960/1985, 245) wrote of Theories X and Y that this was merely
one mans interpretations, which he expected to be modified possibly supplanted by
new knowledge within a short time.
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STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL
The purpose of this volume is not to entice management to choose sides over
Theory X or Theory Y. It is, rather, to encourage the realization that theory is
important, to urge management to examine its assumptions and make them
explicit. (McGregor 1960/1985, 246)
Forty-five years later, Bowditch and Buono (2005, 65) are representative of the field
in discussing Theories X and Y only in the present tense, as timeless variables modified
only through the superfluous introduction of contingency theory.3 What does this
change about McGregors work? Well, everything. That Theory X/Y seems to sum
things up demonstrates the degree to which this work was eviscerated even before we
encountered it. The Human Side of Enterprise is only peripherally about two variables. More
substantively, it is an invitation to reflect in a historically informed manner upon the
basis for authority in organizations and the effective use of that authority:
Over the long sweep of history there have been two major transformations with
respect to the central means of controlling human behavior in organizational
settings. The first was the transition from sheer physical force to reliance on
formal authority. It took centuries The second transition has been under way for
at least a century, and it has its roots deep in the past. But it is far from complete
today authoritarianism is suspect A major difficulty is that we are not at all
clear what we are trending toward. It is becoming evident after some trial-anderror learning that abdication is not an appropriate antithesis to authoritarianism,
nor is there an answer in the simple compromise position halfway between the
extremes. Only if we can free ourselves from the notion that we are limited to a
single dimension that of more or less authority will we escape from our
present dilemma Authority is perfectly appropriate as a means of influencing
behavior under certain circumstances. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad
about giving an order or making a unilateral decision. There are many
circumstances, however, when the exercise of authority fails to achieve the desired
results. Under such circumstances, the solution does not lie in exerting more
authority or less authority; it lies in using other means of influence. (McGregor
1960/1985, 301, italics in the original)
The Human Side of Enterprise invites the reader to participate in considering the implications of what might have later been called a paradigm shift in a Kuhnian (1962/1970)
sense or an epistemic discursive rupture in a Foucauldian (1972) sense. It is easy to draw
connections between McGregors search to describe the operation of a new form of what
he described frankly as organizational control and subsequently influential streams of
inquiry related to knowledge work and knowledge management, profound shifts in the
problematic of management knowledge which have raised questions about fundamental
relationships such as that of post-heroic leadership (Fletcher 2004). Yet, McGregors
participation in the development of this stream of thought is nil, perhaps because he is
thought of not as a reflective theorist, but as a tester of trivial hypotheses designed to
show whether there is a statistically significant difference in effectiveness between the
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group using Theory X and the group using Theory Y techniques. McGregors presence
in the hypothesis-testing literature is a construction connected to The Human Side of
Enterprise only marginally and en travestie. His absence from the critical literature on
knowledge, authority and organizing is a loss. Both are equally embarrassing to organizational scholarship, as the text upon which both the sin of commission and that of
omission are based is still readily available.
The disappearance of McGregor from contemporary theory development about
knowledge, control and organizing illustrates clearly enough the contribution historical
perspective can play in helping to better understand the forces producing todays problems of organizing, but there is a second historical task implied by McGregors systematic evisceration. I have elsewhere referred to this phenomenon as a procrustean
transformation (Jacques 1996). In this situation, the apparent revolution indicated by
the appearance of the knowledge worker/organization/economy masks a procrustean
transformation of prior knowledge in which that which fits with conventional wisdom
(not, significantly, with the empirical evidence) is preserved while the rest is truncated.
In an attempt to describe some of the basic concepts (or sets of assumptions) that
managers have about people, Douglas McGregor identified two contrasting
perspectives, which he labelled Theory X and Theory Y These orientations are
not, as they are sometimes referred to, managerial strategies as such. Rather, these
assumptions are the basic determinant of the ways in which managers prefer to
control people at work [McGregor argued that] the central task of management
should be to arrange organizational conditions to create opportunities for people,
provide guidance, remove barriers, and encourage growth. Although McGregor
injected his own values into this explanation and implied that Theory X
assumptions inevitably led to authoritarian management while Theory Y led to
participative management, the relationship between these beliefs and managerial
styles has been clarified within the context of a contingency approach Theory Y
can be viewed as a situational approach. (Bowditch and Buono 2005, 65)
Bowditch and Buono go on to suggest that the main difference between X and Y
managers is that the former are more rigid and the latter more diagnostic and realistic.
Thus, Theory Y is reduced to the contingency (and also tautology) that a manager should
use authority when it is more effective than the alternative. This begs the question, what
is the alternative? How did McGregors invitation to search for a form of organizational
control other than authority turn into a contingency theory for the use of interpersonal
authority? How did a reflection on emerging methods of organizational control devolve
into a story about managerial assumptions or style? What might constitute the means of
influence which is not authority, whose emergence over at least a century McGregor
sought to understand? It is insufficient to suggest that the field has not yet finished considering the issue. The conventional wisdom repeated more or less passively by Bowditch
and Buono can be refuted by anyone who cares to read a few pages of the source they discuss. There is a second history relevant to Theory X and Theory Y, the history of how
McGregors thoughts have come to be systematically truncated, distorted and stuffed
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harshly into a space in the conventional wisdom which does violence to McGregor, but
preserves the reassuring story of the evolution of organizational knowledge as a science.
As Foucault once laughingly noted, A real science is able to accept even the shameful,
dirty stories of its beginning4 (Foucault 1983, 15). What might we learn, then, from
telling the shameful, dirty story of McGregors procrustean transformation?
Behaviourism as Heresy
The central defence of the mainstream of organization studies as a form of knowledge

production superior to mere storytelling, such as historical or interpretive analysis, is
that it is an applied science and, as a science, its development is based on evidence and
falsifiability of measurable correlations and causation. Given this legitimating argument,
one might think behaviourism would occupy a central place in the micro organizational
literature, since it is the stream of research in behavioural psychology that most closely
approximates this idealized view. Instead, one finds less than two pages about behaviourism in the 458 pages of Bowditch and Buono which, again, is representative of this
literature. Behaviourism is reduced to simply the work of B. F. Skinner and despite the
acknowledgement that Skinners theory remains very influential (Bowditch and Buono
2005, 81), the reader is cautioned that operant conditioning must be
tied directly and unambiguously to desired behaviours Many of the criticisms
aimed at reinforcement theory focus on ethical concerns about worker
manipulation. Other critics argue that while such attempts to shape behaviour
may work well with animals, they are less effective with people the existence of
conflicting stimuli in the workplace might lead to both rewards and penalties
time lags between acts and rewards raise questions Finally, operant
conditioning and reinforcement theory emphasize the environmental conditions
that influence individuals to behave in certain a way, virtually to the exclusion of
the broader social context. (801)
Bowditch and Buono are relatively generous. In Lawlers canonical Motivation in

Work Organizations (1973/1994), Skinner, Watson and behaviourism are not even mentioned. This silencing raises more questions than it answers, however. If one accepts the
legitimating argument of this social science at face value, the disappearance of behaviourism must be related to a failure of explanatory power relative to the empirical evidence. Yet, when one watches behaviourism in action in any Las Vegas casino, the data
powerfully support the theory of operant conditioning, not merely in the payout schedules of the games, but in the design of buildings, restrooms and amenities. Beyond Las
Vegas, transportation systems produce dependable consequences from the behaviours
they positively and negatively reinforce. Social policy has predictable consequences.
Organizational design is studied because of its effect on organizational behaviour. It is
quite beyond imagining that operant conditioning is simply an inferior empirical predictor of behaviour when compared to the less strongly empirically supported theories
which do fill the texts on Motivation and Organizational Behaviour. As Webster and
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Starbuck (1988) note, the field as a whole is built on contestable evidence from studies
which on average explain less than 10 percent of the variance studied and whose implications theorists find ambiguous.
More to the point is how the exclusion of the broader social context can be levelled
at behaviourism by textbook authors who, themselves, fail to even cite Beyond Freedom
and Dignity (Skinner 1971), which asks, as its central question, who is to construct the
controlling environment and to what end?..[Man, sic] is indeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making
(19, 205).
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood
himself as well as any other part of his world. Today he is the thing he
understands least. Physics and biology have come a long way but there has been
no comparable development of anything like a science of human behaviour [N.B.
This is in 1971, when the classical period in organization studies was
substantially complete]5 [W]e have made immense strides in controlling the
physical and biological worlds, but our practices in government, education and
much of economics have not greatly improved Intelligent people no longer
believe that men are possessed by demons but human behaviour is still
commonly attributed to indwelling agents Careless references to purpose are
still to be found in physics and biology, but good practice has no place for them
[yet] almost everyone who is concerned with human affairs continues to
talk about human behaviour in this prescientific way (37)
The target of Skinners critique was autonomous man:

the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon His abolition has long
been overdue. Autonomous man is a device used to explain what we cannot
explain in any other way. He has been constructed from our ignorance, and as our
understanding increases, the very stuff of which he is composed vanishes. Science
does not dehumanize man, it de-homunculizes him To man qua man we readily
say good riddance. Only by dispossessing him can we turn to the real causes of
human behaviour. Only then can we turn from the inferred to the observed, from
the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable. (Skinner
1971, 191)
At virtually the same time that Lawler was publishing the first edition of Motivation
in Work Organizations, Skinner was arguing that almost all of what is called behavioral
science continues to trace behaviour to states of mind, feelings, traits of character, human
nature, and so on. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and advanced only
when they discarded them (Skinner 1971, 22). The supreme irony of behaviourism is
that it has been marginalized and silenced by a field whose mainstream dogma was followed to the letter by behaviourists while those claiming this legitimation have clung to
an empirically unverifiable view of the humanistic self. Such a bias might be expected in
the humanities, but in an organizational science, Skinner was arguing the party line. The
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extreme to which Skinner goes in Beyond Freedom and Dignity is simply the reductio ad
absurdem of the fields mainstream legitimating argument.
The point is not that Skinner was right, but that his disappearance from a nominally
empirical field is not the result of empirical refutation. More to the point, how did
behaviourism come to be reduced to Skinner and Skinner to a footnote? Why does a field
which accepts that, The essence of management is influencing behaviour (Lawler
1973/1994, 253) reject a causal study of stimuli and responses in the manner of the physical sciences they nominally emulate? How does Skinners attempt to initiate dialogue
about the nature of human nature and the legitimation of social control come to be distorted into a failed attempt to prescribe stylistic choices for individual managers?
As with the marginalization of Hadzi (1963) in invertebrate evolutionary biology
or Velikovsky in cosmology (Bauer 1985), the relative explanatory power of competing
theories does not help one understand what has become part of the fields knowledge
base and what has been discarded. Neither does interpretive difference between experts
account for such gross and systematic distortion as the suggestion that behaviourism
was ethically suspect as a path toward an Orwellian future [cf. Bowditch and Buono
above]. Quite the contrary, Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a statement that such techniques are already embedded in society. It is an explicit attempt to stimulate discussion
regarding the best ways to control these forces to produce the greatest social good. It
condemned the status quo policy of leaving operant conditioning to the casino owners
and corporate marketers, parties who can afford to reinforce peoples free choice to buy
Budweiser, drive a Lexus and replace the perfectly functional business suit whose lapels
are a centimetre too wide or narrow for this years organizational fashion reality.
Historical analysis is the best starting point for asking, not where Skinner has gone, but
where have gone the quite relevant and central questions that Skinner attempted to put
on the table.
The Generality of the Problem
These examples are not picaresque. Analogous critique can be applied to virtually every
topic in management and organization studies. Students who know only the thumbnail
history of leadership research know that trait theories were discredited decades ago.
Careful summaries of research (e.g. Yukl 2002) are less black and white, generally noting a recent resurgence of interest in this area, but the dominant story is one in which
putatively nave leadership theory based on character traits is progressively replaced
with a technology of leadership based on contingent situational responses which can be
mastered by the ordinary person. When teaching leadership, I am fond of asking students to imagine a situation in which they were an effective leader or they were effectively led. I then ask them to summarize in groups what made that example of
leadership powerful for them. The answers invariably centre on qualities of character. In
the most recent exercise, about 70 percent of the answers offered were qualities related
to character:
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Initiative
Fairness
Empathy
Respect
Ability
Inspiration
Empowering
Passionate
Determined
Persuasive
Vision
Charismatic
Honest
Committed
When asked, On a scale of 110, to what degree would you say leadership is
about character? the consensus was about 8, or 80 percent. This nave understanding could be incorrect, of course. But the extreme difference between the valorization
of character in the organization members perception of leadership and its marginalization by the research literature on leadership suggests an interesting story to be
told, since leadership is, pretty much by definition, whatever is salient to followers. I
have previously referred to a phenomenon that I term procrustean transformation
which is applicable to this topic and to virtually the entire field of organizational
knowledge.
In Greek Mythology, Procrustes was a somewhat less than customer-centered host
who either stretched or amputated his guests to fit the length of the bed in which
they were to sleep. If one is seeking a metaphor for understanding organizational
knowledge, the myth of Procrustes may be more timely than the myth of
evolution [I]n the last several decades one can trace several procrustean
revolutions incorporating the new, but only after stretching and/or truncating
it so that what is incorporated retains the shape of the old. This procrustean
transformation is literally a revolution [in that] it continues to revolve around
the same issues and continues to present the same limited range of potential
solutions. (Jacques 1996, 1545)
As Kuhn (1962/1970) powerfully argued, there is no evidence that paradigmatic

frameworks such as the dominant-discourse versions of Theory Y, behaviourism or leadership are ever falsified by contradictory data. Rather, these frameworks determine the
meaning the data will be interpreted to have. Only through historical analysis of the construction of these frameworks can debate about their adequacy be engendered. Without
such analysis, they become tautologically self-perpetuating and science becomes a faithbased pursuit. Ahistorical scientific knowledge is not a commitment to objectivity, but
to superstition.
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What Counts as History?

Having made the argument for historically informed inquiry, I will now be a dog in the
manger and complain about much of what has been done in this area to date. If the value
of historical inquiry is to be established, it will be necessary to more rigorously scrutinize
our production with an eye toward method and methodology. Every story in the past tense is
not history.
For instance, the boilerplate history of management knowledge the chapter two
of textbooks (Gibson et al. 2005) is closer to a folk tale than to history because
Few scholarly sources are cited. The small number of usual suspects6 reflect only the
theory that management thought has evolved in a Darwinian manner as a quasinatural historical inevitability. This silencing of other perspectives (cf. Rowlinson
2004) creates the sense that there is only one explanation.
Sources that are cited are generally accepted uncritically as valid.
The organization of knowledge is topical rather than chronological (e.g. Weber does
not follow Taylor historically, only topically; trait theories of leadership were rapidly
transcended only in the official story of leadership, not in the popular literature or in
management practice).
Historiography discussion of the methods of historical scholarship and their adequacy is absent.
What is left, then, is not scholarship but a folk tradition within which students take
a position within discourse by showing that they can repeat verbatim the sacred knowledge of the scribes of yore. For the most part, an excellent compendium of what history
is not and a cautionary example to heed can be found in the programs of the Management
History division of the Academy of Management.7 Looking back a decade and a half,8
one sees these programs to have been primarily composed of:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Amateurs and dilettantes

War stories
Antihistorical anachronisms
Teleological evolution
Snapshots
Longitudinal studies
Amateurs and Dilettantes
The mere existence of amateur dilettantism is not necessarily a problem. Indeed, both
terms originated to designate one who engages in a pursuit for love (amo) or delight
(delectare). The question is not whether amateur historians should use history, but how.
One might draw an analogy to the early days of qualitative research in organization
studies. It was then sometimes suggested that, because one was not producing results
with measurable reliability and validity, that there are no rules one need follow. Of
course, there have always been relatively concrete methodological guidelines for
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interviewing, observation and participation, as well as methodological guidelines for

ethnographic, ethnomethodological, symbolic interactionist and other schools of
research. Only when all of these differences are uncritically merged into the mainstream
fiction qualitative research9 does it appear that there are no rules governing inquiry (cf.
Prasad 2004 for one corrective perspective). Similarly, in the absence of explicit discussion between historians about differences of theoretical perspective and standards of
method and methodology, it can appear that historical scholarship is a public party, open
to anyone of any background who wishes to attend.
War Stories
Is the history of Proctor and Gambles TQM efforts, as told in personal reflection by a
company executive, the then Director of Corporate Quality Improvement (Kinney
1994), historical or would it more appropriately be called a reflective case analysis? There
is a place in management education and training for the timely war story, but this should
not be confused with history. I have often relied on the anecdotes of Dale Carnegie
(1936/1981) for instance, or on Alfred Sloans account of his dealings with Charlie
Kettering and the quandary of Ketterings insistence on the development of the copper
cooled engine (Sloan 1964). In this context, though, these stories function as aphorisms;
they are not historical scholarship. I judge their usefulness based on their ability to help
illustrate a point. Like Ali Baba or Aesops animals, these historical vignettes work or fail
to work based on verisimilitude, the impression of truthfulness they create. This has
nothing to do with whether they really happened. I might equally well have learned my
lessons from The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus, a prescriptive text that is, presumably,
not historically based (Harvey, Cottrell and Lucia 2003).
Were I, for instance, to seek to understand the Sloan/Kettering encounter over the
copper-cooled engine from a historical perspective, I would first have to be suspicious of
the adequacy of an account written (or even ghost-written?) by one of the key protagonists. It is not surprising that Sloan sees Sloan as having behaved wisely and successfully.
This is a de rigueur feature of the executive memoir. I would have to seek other sources to
better understand what Sloan may have left out, fabricated or remembered in a convenient manner. I would also have to assess the other sources credibility. Are they archival
sources? What was their degree of access to knowledge? What may have happened to the
archive over time that affected the information? What was the partys interest in that
knowledge? Engineers might have drawn systematically different inferences from those
drawn by managers and both would probably have diverged from interpretations made
by United Auto Workers representatives. If my sources are not archival, how scholarly are
they? Sloans biography and an industrial history might be written from vastly different
planes of expertise. What is the theoretical filter through which the writer sees this
event? Chandlers evolution (1977) and Bravermans deskilling (1974/1998) both view
the auto industry at this period, but there is little compatibility between the conclusions
they draw from the same body of data.
Ultimately, for me to learn from Sloan and Kettering in a historical manner, I would
have to determine the meanings of the story from the archive and from those who have
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interpreted the archive. This is a fundamentally different standard of meaning from that
of the aphorism. To repeat, war stories are not inherently bad; they simply are not history.
There is a place in the practice of management for folk wisdom such as How to Win
Friends and Influence People as long as one does not confuse such knowledge with historical scholarship.
Antihistorical Anachronisms
To what extent can the ancient Phoenicians be said to have practised international management (Moore and Lewis 1999)10 or, better yet, keiretsu capitalism (Moore and Lewis
1998)? Were Theories X, Y and Z practised in ancient China (Rindova 1994)? Despite
Max Webers careful argument to the contrary, did the bureaucratic organization emerge,
not in industrializing Europe, but 3200 years ago in the ancient world (Garvey and
Kuperman 1994)? Does the field of strategic management have lost roots in the sacred
books of Hindu tradition (Jain and Eisner 1994)? Would you believe that organization
theory issues were addressed in the Bible? (Robbins 1990, 36). No, I emphatically
would not.
Clearly, certain people have dealt with problems of organizing, even large-scale problems, for at least the span of recorded history. This does not, however, mean they were
managing or developing organization theory. To imagine so imposes relationships and
meanings from one time on a prior time in which those concepts did not exist. More perniciously, by creating false continuities into the lost past, such anachronistic writing constitutes an obstacle to understanding, discussing and reacting to the features that make
the relationships of our times specific to our times. Presently, one can practice anachronistic scholarship in organization studies with seeming impunity. I recently reviewed a
manuscript for a conference which presented events in the American Civil War as a case
of organizational turnaround. Accepting an invitation to review a book on management
history, I was sent a contemporary treatise on corporate leadership illustrated using
events in the life of Alexander the Great.
Such anachronism can be useful, or at least a mixed benefit, if it is understood to be
aphoristic, as noted above, and not presented as history. Perhaps the Civil War illustration could liven up a classroom discussion about organizational turnaround. The danger
is that if one believes these historical anachronisms really represent cases of modern phenomena, it is true that the more things change, the more they remain the same (Garvey
and Kuperman 1994). This attitude is anti-historical in the sense that it reduces history
to illustrating putatively timeless phenomena. If everything always existed, it has no
story of development. History is just a colourful scrap bag from which we can pull eyecatching quelque choses, if we choose, to dress up whatever new frock we are preening in
before the reviewers. At the extreme, such analyses freeze time into the archetypal
(Delbecq 1994), or orientalize historical texts using methods that are not even related to
historiography (e.g. Aupperle 1993). Rather than being examples of management history, this common genre of anachronistic writing trivializes history because, since everything has always been the same anyway, what can the past offer except exotic examples to
illustrate todays mundane issues?
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Teleological Evolution
The language of evolution so pervades the mainstream story of management (e.g.

Reeves and Bednar 1994) that it has lost its specificity. Did the Gantt chart develop or
can it be said to have evolved (Petersen 1988)? We must remind ourselves that evolution is not merely a synonym for change; it is a specific theory of change driven by a
systematic mechanism of mutation and selection. This has been addressed marginally in
organization theory by population ecological theorizing (Hannan and Freeman 1977),
which has had some influence within institutional theorizing, but such theory appropriately restricts itself to populations, a specific organizational form which analogizes to
a biological species. Whatever the practical limitations of this widely criticized school of
thought, it is epistemologically and theoretically sound. Whether it is historical scholarship or simply longitudinal data collection is a pertinent question, but that is taken
up below.
The evolution of management thought tout court is another story (e.g. Hannon
1997). This treatment of history, which is endemic to virtually all mainstream textbook
introductions, embodies two flaws, either of which would be fatal. One is that the
metaphor of evolution, by naturalizing the emergence of managerialism as a form of
organizational control, implicitly suggests that such control is the best and/or the only
way to organize todays institutions. In Panglossian logic, it presents what exists as representing the best of all possible worlds; the evidence for this claim is the fact that it exists.
Such a tautological representation stifles the contested and bloody history of the emergence of industry, the modern corporate form and management itself. The most damning
passages in Capital, Volume One are not the ones written by Marx, but the ones in which
Marx quotes from Parliamentary Blue Book investigations regarding the increase in
working hours, decrease in education, impoverishment, morbidity and utter destitution
brought about by industrialization. It is fair to attempt to frame this data within an evolutionary argument. It is grossly inappropriate to assume change came through evolution
and to bypass the argument. If one is to cast these events as evolution, the interesting
question is what, then, constitutes mutation, what constitutes selection and the question which makes this inquiry of any value what can be done within the socially constructed systems of social evolution to influence mutation and/or selection for social or
personal benefit. The naturalization of evolutionary thought inappropriately silences
these questions.
The second problem is that this evolution of management thought is Lamarckian,
not Darwinian. That is, were the evolution of management told as a story consistent with
evolutionary theory, it would have to lose the teleological gloss suggesting that management knowledge moves in the direction of increasing perfection that paradigmatic science the faithful still await (e.g. Starbuck 2003; Pfeffer 1993). Species do not improve;
they change endlessly as the environment changes, with no goal, no ultimate purpose.
That the evolution of management has become more integrated, more systematic, that
convergence of various schools of thought (Bowditch and Buono 2005, 29) is putting
the field on the verge of being established as a paradigmatic science as is suggested in
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the standard textbook history incorporates a teleological reasoning that is inconsistent

with scientific thought.
One might develop a theory of managements evolution as legitimate history. While
I would disagree that this explanation fits the data, I would accept it as scholarship if it
avoided the flaws stated above. First, as with the population ecologists in OT, the evolution of theory must not be discussed with respect to its approaching a final goal, but with
respect to the environment that is selecting some theory and/or practices while leading
others to extinction. The second criterion such stories would have to meet is that, as
scholarship, they would have to acknowledge the existence of competing theories (e.g.
Rowlinson 2004) and seriously assess the relative explanatory power of the available
alternatives. While hypothetically possible, such a framing would require radically
reconstructing most stories of managements evolution.
Snapshots
If I know merely that Fred J. Miller contributed to the Scientific Management movement (Petersen 1993) or that Maggie Walker built the Consolidated Bank and Trust
Company (Trinkaus and Puryear 1993), does this change my understanding of management practices today? If carried out well, I would concede that such work deserves to be
called historical. The question, in terms of its relevance for organization studies, is
whether it is anything but history. That is, does it connect to present-day issues in a manner that may lead one to look at these issues differently? Over the years, a great proportion of the historical research presented at the Academy of Management meetings has
fallen into this category. Many presentations are not even archival, but consist merely of
senior scholars reminiscing about figures they once knew.
As with all of these categories, I do not deny that these snapshots can be interesting,
nor do I advocate that they cease. I do advocate that two distinctions be made in this
body of work. First, they should be subjected to historiographical scrutiny to separate
credible historical studies from reminiscences; the two genres have different purposes,
different legitimating narratives, different scholarly weight. A second distinction must
be made between history for historys sake and history undertaken to inform contemporary organizational theorizing. The former is legitimate scholarship, but it is the latter
that the editors of this journal seek to foster.
Longitudinal Studies
When is a longitudinal study history and when is it not? Admittedly there is no clear
point of demarcation, but the question must be considered. By virtually any account,
Braudels (19811984) trilogy Civilization and Capitalism, covering five centuries, beginning nearly a millennium ago, is not merely history, but exemplary history and a great
deal of it rests upon longitudinal, quantitative data. On the other hand, does a 20-year
study of events internal to one corporation (Spencer 1999) constitute a historical study or
a contemporary case? Is strategic management old enough to have a history (Martinsons
and Everett 1998)? The issue is not method; probabilistic inquiry is not inherently ahistorical. For instance, holding Chandlers theories to the test of financial data (Aupperle,
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Acar and Bhatnagar 1988) is a potentially valid project. It would be satisfying to be able
to suggest clear standards for distinguishing what longitudinal data should be excluded
as history, but I doubt they exist. More dialogue is needed on this point. I would suggest
consideration of two criteria as initial guidelines:
The span of time and the object of analysis should illustrate change in the societal
form of the relationships under consideration. For instance, 10 years of financial performance data before and after an organizational redesign would not imply consideration of historical forces.
The contribution of the study should do more than merely confirm or refute the efficacy of some contemporary causal relationship. It should have the potential to lead us
to look at presently accepted theories and relationships in a new light.
For Historiography
To date, historical research in organization studies has been more or less an open club. For
every example of methodologically and theoretically sound work (Hollway 1991;
Gillespie 1993), there have been many more efforts informed by little more than good
intentions. If a useful body of historically informed theorizing is to emerge, it is essential
that some level of rigour regarding methodology and theoretical framework be established as a condition of participation. This cannot be imposed by fiat; it must emerge
through the development of a community of practice. What is most needed at this point
in time is active dialogue. For instance, I have been fortunate to have had my own historiography criticized from numerous perspectives (Rowlinson and Carter 2002; Hodgson
and Carter 2004). It is my intention to continue this dialogue by writing an article
assessing where these authors have noted genuine deficiencies (as they sometimes have, to
my benefit) and where they identify areas of theoretical and paradigmatic divergence. We
must hold each others feet mercilessly to the fire if we are to get anywhere.
I hope the launching of Management & Organizational History will be auspicious as one
spot around which this community of practice can coalesce. Scanning the field, I think
building such a community is going to require nurturing at both ends of the pipeline.
Among those presently doing historiographically rigorous organizational research, it is
not the norm to ask what use can be made of this by organizational theorists. On the supply side, we must actively cultivate a feeder system of historical knowledge which can
inform debate and theorizing. On the demand side, not only is historical perspective not
required of organizational theorists, it is not expected. Much work needs to be done to
demonstrate the constructive role historical research can play in helping theorists to
develop more informed views of practice and, thus, more effective theories. This can be so
whether by effective one means explanatory, useful or emancipatory. At neither end
of the knowledge pipeline will these relationships spontaneously evolve; those of us who
value them must evolve them.
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Organizational Culture: A Historical11 Lesson

Rowlinson and Proctor (1999) draw a substantive connection between the areas of organizational culture and business history, examining the as yet unrealized potential for culture to make organization studies more historical and to provide theoretical relevance
for business history. An analogue can also be drawn between the history of the organizational culture movement, if it can be called that, and the present status of history in
organization studies (hint: there is an article to be written here).
The culture people came into organization studies with a strong grounding in
ethnographic research based largely on anthropology and sociology. Like them, the history people have the opportunity to bridge between a presently marginal reference discipline, which can offer major new insight, much as the work of Frost, Smircich, Van
Maanen and others did around 1980 (cf. Frost et al. 1985). Like the culture people, we
presently face a lack of understanding and a lack of debate related to theory, method and
methodology historiography. At its emergence, the culture movement faced dismissal
on the grounds that qualitative research was not valid. Morgan and Smircich (1980) is
a useful refresher, arguing the case for qualitative research (1980, 491). A quarter
century on from publication of this article, it is possible to draw at least two lessons: one
positive, one cautionary.
On the positive side, todays researcher who wishes to use ethnographic observation,
participant research or open-ended interviewing has a virtual library of methods and
methodology books available to help them establish that they are following a structured
approach with concrete standards and not merely playing with the net down.
Admittedly, the quality of these publications varies widely. On the whole, technique is
treated well and with more consistency than are paradigmatic issues, but there is a wide
range of credible sources to cite. This is a lesson those of us wishing to foster a historical
turn (Clark and Rowlinson 2004) should heed. One of the central artefacts around which
informed research, debate and knowledge sharing will coalesce is a historiographical
library that does not yet exist. In part, we must borrow diligently from our reference discipline, but we must also contribute theoretically. For instance, what does it mean to use
historical knowledge as a reference discipline in research that claims to be organization
studies, not history? This is a question that has interested me for some time and which
we will not find answered by historians.
On the cautionary side, space has been made for interpretive organizational culture
theorizing largely through the procrustean transformation of multiple interpretive and
critical paradigmatic positions into qualitative research. This has been a mixed blessing.
On the one hand, mainstream journals now solicit qualitative research (Gephart 2004).
On the other, the institutionalization of the oxymoron qualitative research obscures key
issues of methodology and paradigm which one cannot address by considering method
the point Morgan and Smircich (1980) sought to make early on. Can a historically
informed perspective rather, a cluster of historically informed perspectives both
provide historiographical anchoring, as the culture people have done with their
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methodological and paradigmatic publications, while resisting the procrustean distortion

that has left us with the white elephant of qualitative research mucking up informed
discussion of theoretical and epistemological differences?
If we do our work well today, some organizational historian of the future will have
the tools necessary to investigate that very question.
Notes
1.
The increasing number of titles in the field is exacerbated by the increasing number of annual issues of
many of the more popular journals.
2. Indeed, if these reflections on management history were less ahistorical, they might reflect that every
major treatise on management through Barnard (1938) includes a historically informed (if generally
managerialist) apologia for management as a function and for the arguments that follow, while, as management coalesces as a distinct field following the Second World War, these arguments largely disappear in the classic OB/OT of the 1950s1970s (Jacques 1996). Is the problem, then, the disappearance
of history from textbooks in the last decade or is it one of the progressive removal of history from the
scientific discourse of management over a century and a quarter? A historically informed question one
might pursue is whether the management history that is presently disappearing is a bowdlerized one
that can disappear without loss because its only role in the first place was to legitimate the Lamarckian
evolution of management as a science, a role that disappears as the institutions and teachings of this
science sediment into the common sense of the times.
3. Which is more hand waving than theory, as any problem in which the response is situational can be
made theoretical by calling it contingency theory. How this label adds to the contingencies laid out by
McGregor in 1960 is unclear.
4. Often ignored is [Laughter] inserted in brackets following this quote. This is important in that it indicates that it was not meant severely, but with a degree of irony.
5. This is explained in more detail in Stager Jacques (2005).
6. e.g. Chandler (1962, 1977), Wren (1979).
7. My recent perusal of management history presentations from Academy of Management programs
19882005 suggests that there may be change underway. In the last decade, presentations in this group
have shown increasing historical depth increasing attention to historiographic method and theory and
there are more frequent attempts to link findings with contemporary management theorizing. This
must be stated cautiously, however, as a subjective impression. This would be a useful topic for a systematic research study.
8. A convenience sample. My programs begin with the 1988 conference.
9. That is to say, there are qualitative methods, and there are paradigms of research within which such
methods hold a more central place, but to conflate method with paradigm is a serious epistemological
error, as has been articulately argued since at least Burrell and Morgan (1979).
10. Paper presented in a paper session entitled International Perspectives on Management History.
11. Or is this just a reminiscence or longitudinal perspective and not real history? This is a good example
of some of the questions which need to be debated.
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Roy Stager Jacques MBA PhD has recently returned to academia after several years spent successfully creating, building and selling a business. This experience as the practitioner has re-affirmed his
belief in the practical need for historical perspective in organizational theorizing as argued in his 1996
polemic Manufacturing the Employee (London: SAGE).
49

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MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY Vol 1(1): 3149

History, historiography and organization

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

The central defence of the mainstream of organization studies as a form of knowledge

Bowditch and Buono are relatively generous. In Lawlers canonical Motivation in

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

The target of Skinners critique was autonomous man:

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

As Kuhn (1962/1970) powerfully argued, there is no evidence that paradigmatic

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

What Counts as History?

Amateurs and dilettantes

Amateurs and Dilettantes

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

interviewing, observation and participation, as well as methodological guidelines for

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

The language of evolution so pervades the mainstream story of management (e.g.

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

the standard textbook history incorporates a teleological reasoning that is inconsistent

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

Organizational Culture: A Historical11 Lesson

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

methodological and paradigmatic publications, while resisting the procrustean distortion

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY 1(1)

STAGER JACQUES: THE CHALLENGE AND THE POTENTIAL

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