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RESEARCH STRATEGIES FORORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY: A DIALOGUE

BETWEEN HISTORICAL THEORY ANDORGANIZATION THEORY

MICHAEL ROWLINSONQueen Mary University of London

JOHN HASSARDUniversity of Manchester

STEPHANIE DECKERAston University

If history matters for organization theory, then we need greater reflexivity regardingthe epistemological problem of representing the past; otherwise, history might beseen as merely a repository of ready-made data. To facilitate this reflexivity, we setout three epistemological dualisms derived from historical theory to explain therelationship between history and organization theory: (1) in the dualism of explana-tion, historians are preoccupied with narrative construction, whereas organizationtheorists subordinate narrative to analysis; (2) in the dualism of evidence, historiansuse verifiable documentary sources, whereas organization theorists prefer con-structed data; and (3) in the dualism of temporality, historians construct their ownperiodization, whereas organization theorists treat time as constant for chronology.These three dualisms underpin our explication of four alternative research strategiesfor organizational history: corporate history, consisting of a holistic, objectivist nar-rative of a corporate entity; analytically structured history, narrating theoreticallyconceptualized structures and events; serial history, using replicable techniques toanalyze repeatable facts; and ethnographic history, reading documentary sources“against the grain.” Ultimately, we argue that our epistemological dualisms willenable organization theorists to justify their theoretical stance in relation to a rangeof strategies in organizational history, including narratives constructed from docu-mentary sources found in organizational archives.

Organization theorists increasingly agreethat “history matters,” both for understandingourselves (Brown & Härtel, 2011) and for under-standing organizations (Sydow, Schreyögg, &Koch, 2009). New institutionalists in particularhave continually affirmed the importance of his-

tory for understanding organizations (Tolbert &Zucker, 1983: 36). But even new institutionalistshave a tendency to become ahistorical (Suddaby,Foster, & Mills, 2014), and organization theoristsin general tend to share the general social sci-entific skepticism toward archival narrative his-tory (Sewell, 2005: 225). It has even been sug-gested that consulting organizational archivesis “not properly a method of empirical organiza-tional research because data and informationare collected, rather than being directly gener-ated in the course of the organizational re-search” (Strati, 2000: 133-134). Or history is re-garded as prosaic storytelling, with theimplication that we can relax our critical, skep-tical faculties when reading history (Down,2001), and historical narratives can simply beincorporated to illustrate theoretical arguments.

We thank Frances Bowen, Andrew Brown, Nancy Camp-bell, and Sadhvi Dar, as well as editor Roy Suddaby, asso-ciate editor Rick Delbridge, and three anonymous AMR re-viewers, for their constructive comments on earlier versionsof this manuscript. We received valuable feedback on ourwork in progress from the Management History ResearchGroup, the EGOS SWG on Historical Perspectives in Orga-nization Studies, the Centre for Management and Organiza-tional History Workshop (2011) at Queen Mary University ofLondon, a Newcastle University Business School seminar(2012), and the OAP Workshop on Time, History and Materi-ality in Management and Organization Studies (2013) at theLondon School of Economics.

� Academy of Management Review2014, Vol. 39, No. 3, 250–274.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.2012.0203

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Organization theorists have yet to acknowl-edge the implications from historiography, as“the writing of history and the study of historicalwriting,” that there are many different kinds ofhistory (Jordanova, 2006: 228). The “historic turn”(McDonald, 1996; Sewell, 2005: 81–82) has openeda dialogue between the humanities and widersocial sciences, including organization theory(Booth & Rowlinson, 2006; Clark & Rowlinson,2004; Wadhwani & Bucheli, 2014; Zald, 1996). But,to paraphrase Hayden White (1987: 164), a lead-ing philosopher of history, if we are going to turnto history, we need to have a clear idea of thekind of history we mean and whether it canaccommodate our values as organization theo-rists. According to White, “The function of theoryis to justify a notion of plausibility” (1987: 164).Therefore, we need a theoretical stance that canjustify the plausibility of any history we con-struct from historical sources; otherwise, thepossibility for a conversation with historical the-ory will be precluded by a “common sense” def-inition of organizational history. Without a the-oretical stance, organization theorists may beseen as unwelcome tourists, “wandering aroundthe streets of the past” (White, 1987: 164) lookingfor a set of data. Or, as Kuhn put it, history needsto be seen as more than merely a repository for“anecdote and chronology” (1970: 1).

In order to reflect on what we mean by “orga-nizational history,” we need to have a betteridea of the varieties of history that are feasiblefor organizational research and writing. Philos-ophers of history have highlighted the variety ofhistory as a response to what Paul Ricoeur callsthe epistemological “problematic of the repre-sentation of the past” (2004: xvi). According toChris Lorenz (2011), the epistemological prob-lems for history mainly concern the status ofnarrative, the nature of evidence, and the treat-ment of time. Responding to this problematic, inthe first part of our article we propose threeepistemological dualisms—that is, differentways of “knowing” the past that tend to differ-entiate historians from organization theorists.These dualisms explain the reluctance of orga-nization theorists to research and write narra-tive history derived from primary documentarysources found in organizational archives.

In the dualism of explanation, historians arepreoccupied with the epistemological problemsof narrative construction, whereas organizationtheorists subordinate narrative to analysis. In

the dualism of evidence, historians use narra-tive history derived from eclectic but verifiabledocumentary sources, whereas organizationtheorists prefer data constructed from replicableprocedures. And in the dualism of temporality,historians continually construct periodizationfrom sources and historical contexts, whereasorganization theorists tend to treat time as con-stant or else import periodization as given fromhistoriography. These dualisms provide a tem-plate that we can use to assess alternative strat-egies for historical research and writing.

In the second part of the article, we use ourepistemological dualisms to identify and ana-lyze four alternative strategies for research andwriting organizational history derived from or-ganizational archives: corporate history, con-sisting of a holistic, objectivist narrative of anamed corporate entity; analytically structuredhistory, in which conceptually defined struc-tures and events are narrated, such as Chan-dler’s (1962) accounts of structural reorganiza-tion; serial history, using replicable techniquesto analyze repeatable facts; and, finally, ethno-graphic history, derived from reading sources“against the grain” in order to recover practicesand meanings from organizations. These fourstrategies illustrate the variety of research thatis feasible using historical sources generated byorganizations themselves. This serves to counterwhat we see as the reluctance to use “organiza-tional archives” in organization studies, whichis not to say that organizational history can onlybe written using such archives. But in our vieworganizational archives are not only underuti-lized for constructing data in organization stud-ies; as documentary sources, they also representevidence that remains largely unexplained byorganization theory.

This article thus contributes to organization the-ory by identifying a range of theoretical stances inrelation to organizational history. We also set outthe epistemological problems that organizationtheorists need to consider when deciding how toconstruct, incorporate, or analyze historical narra-tives derived from archival sources. From our epis-temological dualisms, organization theorists willbe able to articulate why it is that history matters,and from our research strategies for organiza-tional history, they will be able to answer thequestion “What kind of history am I writing?” or“What kind of history am I reading?”

2014 251Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker

HISTORICAL THEORY ANDORGANIZATION THEORY

There have been repeated calls for more his-tory in management education (Cummings &Bridgman, 2011; Madansky, 2008; Smith, 2007;Van Fleet & Wren, 2005) and a historical per-spective in organization theory (Aldrich, 1999;Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2014; Kieser, 1994; Üsdiken& Kieser, 2004; Zald, 1993). Stager Jacques (2006:44) has argued that “historically informed theo-rizing” requires a more rigorous approach tohistorical methodology. But historiography hasyet to receive the same systematic analysis inorganization theory as, for example, theorizingfrom case studies (Eisenhardt, 1989), process(Langley, 1999) or narrative (Pentland, 1999) data,and other interpretive approaches (Prasad &Prasad, 2002). While those using these approachesoccasionally incorporate historical data con-structed from organizational archives, they re-main skeptical toward historical narratives, andthese approaches are not predicated on the kind ofdialogue with historical theory that we propose.

We cannot look to practicing historians for aguide to historically informed theorizing in thesame way that we might look to practitioners inother disciplines. History in general is more “craft-like” than the social sciences, which means thatexplicit theoretical or methodological statementsare not necessarily required for historical writing(White, 1995: 243), especially for narrative history.There is indeed a long-standing “resistance to the-ory” from practicing historians (Lorenz, 2011: 15–16;see also Fulbrook, 2002: 25). But in the relativelyseparate field of historical theory, the implicit the-oretical assumptions that underpin the “craft” ofhistory have been explicated, either to providelegitimation for accepted historiographical prac-tice or to critique it (e.g., Clark, 2004; Jordanova,2006; Lorenz, 2011: 15).

From the outset, we recognize that dualism isimplicit in history. According to Hegel, “Theterm History unites the objective with the sub-jective side, . . . it comprehends not less whathas happened, than the narration of what hashappened” (1956, quoted in White, 1987: 11–12). Itis generally accepted, therefore, that historycovers “(1) the totality of past human actions,and (2) the narrative or account we construct ofthem now” (Walsh, 1967: 16, quoted in Callini-cos, 1995: 4; see also Sewell, 2005: 327). As aresult of this “double meaning,” we can make a

distinction between ontological theories that re-fer to “history as an object” and epistemologicaltheories concerned with “knowledge of that ob-ject” (Lorenz, 2011: 20). Organization theoriststend to assume that a theory of history refers tothe ontology of history, whereas historical theo-rists are generally more concerned with the im-plications of historical epistemology. So to saythat “history matters” in organization theoryusually means that past human actions are seenas ontologically significant for path dependence(e.g., Sydow et al., 2009). Equally, it could be saidthat “history matters” epistemologically for un-derstanding how the past can be known or rep-resented, either directly, through organizationalresearch and writing, or through historiography.

Previous proposals for historical research inorganization studies (Goodman & Kruger, 1988;Kieser, 1994; Lawrence, 1984) have been predi-cated on a definitive, unitary statement of his-torical method. But we maintain that alternativestrategies for research and writing organiza-tional history need to be located in relation tothe range of ontological, epistemological, andmethodological assumptions identified by his-torical theory (Lorenz, 2011). As a starting point,our three epistemological dualisms locate orga-nization theory in relation to historiography.

Dualism 1: Explanation (Narrativeand Analysis)

The renewed interest in history from new in-stitutionalists (Rowlinson & Hassard, 2013;Suddaby et al., 2014; Suddaby, Foster, & Trank,2010) is associated with increasing attention toactors and agency in institutional work (Law-rence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2009) and in institu-tional logics (Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury,2012). New institutionalists recognize the diffi-culty of restoring a role for actors and agencywithout reverting to “powerful, heroic figures”who can transcend institutional constraints(Lawrence et al., 2009: 3). Similarly, theoreticallyoriented historians and sociologists, following aself-conscious logic that posits “intentionality,contingency, and meaningful human action”(Lorenz, 2011: 21), are mindful that they risk li-censing a resurrection of the “great man” theoryof history (Sewell, 2005: 316). This is the unstateddefault theory for most historians who claimthey “have no time for theory” (Fulbrook, 2002:125). A shift of emphasis from structure to

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agency is associated with a return to narrativein historiography (Stone, 1979; see also Fulbrook,2002: 53), although historians recognize that the-oretically informed history is supposed to “avoidnarrative” in favor of “thematic analysis” (Ev-ans, 1997: 152).

Following the example of Giddens (1984: 355–363) in historical sociology, a convergence inrelation to the dualism of action and structurecould be held as evidence that there is no logi-cal or methodological schism between organi-zation theory and history: organization studiesare, or can be, historical, and vice versa, andtherefore organizational history simply refers toa unified field. However, from the historians’side, it would be difficult to see such a synthesisas anything but another imperialistic incursioninto history (Evans, 1997: 182). Furthermore, theontological dualism of action and structureshould not be conflated with the epistemologi-cal dualism of narrative and analysis in expla-nation, not least because, according to Ricoeur(1990: 197), structural history often turns out to bea narrative of quasi-characters such as nations,classes, or organizations intentionally pursuingtheir own interests.

The objections to narrative construction havebeen rehearsed by such historical theorists as Al-lan Megill, who has argued that the “scientisticform of anti-narrativism” prevalent in social sci-ence insists on “the language of law and theory,not the language of narrative” (2007: 68–69; seealso Sewell, 2005: 225). Whether or not organiza-tion theory can be characterized as anti-narrativ-ist, major organizational research programs, suchas organizational ecology, are “formally probabi-listic” (Hannan & Freeman, 1989: 40) and mostlyexpressed in a theoretical rather than narrativeform. This is not to say that narrative and proba-bilistic reasoning are mutually exclusive, sincethey can offer complementary accounts of thesame phenomenon (Megill, 2007: 126).

Popper argued that history is concerned with“the causal explanation of a singular event,”whereas for “theoretical sciences, such causalexplanations are mainly means to a differentend—the testing of universal laws” (2002/1957:133). Similarly, but from a completely different his-torical perspective, the classicist Paul Veyne as-serted that we can treat a fact as an event “be-cause we judge it to be interesting,” or we can lookfor its “repeatable nature” as a “pretext for discov-ering a law” (1984: 3). In organization theory, nar-

rative explanations of singular historical eventsare usually seen as stepping-stones toward thedevelopment of generalizable theories (cf. Eisen-hardt, 1989; Langley, 1999), and even supposedlyidiographic case studies are seen as a vehicle foridentifying “generative mechanisms” (Tsoukas,1989). Popper (2002/1957: 90), of course, was clearthat the “method of generalization” holds littleinterest outside of theoretical sciences, and it isnot the kind of history he wished to write. But thatdoes not preclude the use of general theories inthe construction of narratives to explain singularevents. There is no reason why theories of organi-zation, such as new institutionalism, should not bepromoted more widely for constructing narrativeorganizational histories.

Narrative history also faces what philoso-phers of history call the “impositionalist objec-tion,” according to which “recounting the past inthe form of a story inevitably imposes a falsenarrative structure upon it” (Norman, 1998: 156;see also Carr, 1998). The resistance to writing upqualitative social science research in a narra-tive form (Riessman, 2011: 314) derives from theimpositionalist objection to narrative. Martin,for example, consciously “avoids narrativestructure and other forms of textual seduction”in her writing (1992: 25). Taking more account ofagency and meaning in organization theory, asin new institutionalism, has led to increasingrecognition that narratives are amenable to de-construction (Boje, 1995) or analysis as data(Barry & Elmes, 1997; Hardy & Maguire, 2010;Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006: 240; Pentland, 1999).Organization theorists also recognize the onto-logical status of narrative as constituting ob-jects, or “artifacts” (Venkataraman, Sarasvathy,Dew, & Forster, 2013), that “enable and con-strain” individuals and organizations (Pentland,1999: 721). But since narrative analysis takes sto-ries as the “object of investigation” (Riessman,1993: 1), it has, if anything, reinforced the impo-sitionalist objection to narrative construction inorganization theory.

Unfortunately, the default position for crafthistorians can be characterized as a form ofobjectivism, or “historical realism,” where his-tory is seen as an “untold story” that exists in-dependently and prior to being discovered andtold by the historian (Norman, 1998: 155). PeterNovick’s acclaimed history of objectivity in theAmerican historical profession starts with anoutline of “objectivism” rather than objectivity


itself. Objectivism consists of “a commitment tothe reality of the past, and to truth as correspon-dence to that reality; a sharp separation be-tween knower and known, between fact andvalue, and, above all, between history and fic-tion” (Novick, 1988: 1–2). Objectivists assumethat historical facts exist “prior to and indepen-dent of interpretation,” and “whatever patternsexist in history are ‘found,’ not ‘made’” (Novick,1988: 1–2). Objectivist history is clearly inimicalto the kind of reflexivity that would be requiredto counter the impositionalist objection to narra-tive through a self-conscious account of the the-oretical and methodological assumptions thatunderpin its own narrative construction. Objec-tivism therefore provides a convenient straw-man for critics of historical practice (e.g., Barrett& Srivasta, 1991; Munslow, 2012), and objectivisthistory unwittingly supplies the kind of narra-tive that is amenable to analysis as “rhetoricalhistory” (Suddaby et al., 2010).

Organization theorists (e.g., Hardy & Maguire,2010: 1368) and historical theorists (e.g., Ful-brook, 2002) share a minimal definition of narra-tive, derived from narrative theory (Cobley,2001), as a sequence of logically and chronolog-ically related events organized by a coherentplot. This does not mean that events have to bepresented in chronological order, and a simplechronological sequence of events is often seenas insufficient to constitute a narrative, beingdescribed as a “chronicle” (White, 1987: 17) or “astory without a plot” (Czarniawska, 1999: 63). Ifthe story consists of all the events depicted andthe plot is the chain of causation linking them(Cobley, 2001: 5), then the question for historicalnarratives is whether either or both the story orthe plot are found or imposed. Historical theo-rists have focused on “emplotment” in historicalnarratives, with the plot determining the selec-tion of “facts” and the construction of eventsfrom the archives, and an acceptance that thesame “historical facts” can be emplotted in dif-ferent forms of narrative (Fulbrook, 2002: 8).

Megill has noted that narrative history hasalso been criticized for being excessively de-scriptive (2007: 86) or having too much story andnot enough plot (Czarniawska, 1999: 69). Lang-ley, for example, acknowledged the value ofnarrative for capturing the richness of a contextbut argued that research needs to “offer moreexplicit theoretical interpretations” (1999: 697).She therefore cautioned against reliance on nar-

rative in organizational research, because “anidiosyncratic story” makes for “a rather thin con-ceptual contribution” (1999: 697). Furthermore,Langley maintained that the most interestingnarratives are not “purely descriptive. Theyknow where they are going” (1999: 697).

Megill has attributed the “debasement of ‘de-scription’” to “hermeneutic naïveté,” which ig-nores “the hermeneutic insight that all percep-tion is perspectival” (2007: 86–87). Organizationtheorists share the social scientific consensusthat “data are not theory” because theory re-quires “causal arguments” (Sutton & Staw, 1995:374; Weick, 1995: 387). Against this Megill hasargued that “every ‘description’ is already per-meated by ‘theory’” (2007: 87). In particular,“thick description” of “a context” (Geertz, 1973:14), purged of plot, represents a form of analysisin its own right, even if it deliberately lackscausal argument. From a self-consciously “an-gular perspective” (Megill, 2007: 110–111), suchas Foucault’s (1977), pure description can beseen as theoretical. It is also worth noting thatWeber’s (2009) ideal types largely consist of con-ceptual descriptions rather than causal argu-ments (Megill, 2007: 233, note 13). If alternative“styles of theorizing” (Delbridge & Fiss, 2013) areaccepted in organization studies, then historicaltypologies, such as Weber’s ideal types, as wellas clearly articulated perspectives for descrip-tion in organizational history, are more likely tobe recognized as theory.

Analysis lends itself to the standard format fora social science article (i.e., introduction, theory,methods, findings, conclusion), where the theorysection may be presented as a narrative(DiMaggio, 1995) but not the findings. The “ana-lytic narratives” proposed by rational choicetheorists (Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, & Wein-gast, 1998; Pedriana, 2005) and other forms of“narrative positivism” (Abbott, 1992) tend topresent attenuated narratives, often derivedfrom narrative analysis, and generally lack theliterary features we usually expect from narra-tive, such as suspense (Carpenter, 2000; Sewell,2005: 262–270). The difficulty with making themode of emplotment explicit in narrative history isthat in literature the reader usually infers the plot.Spelling out the plot in the theory section of anarticle, or subordinating it to rigorous logic, risksundermining the literary form of a narrative,rather like a comedian trying to explain why ajoke is funny before actually telling the joke.


Dualism 2: Evidence (Sources and Data)

Along with an aversion to historical descrip-tion, qualitative organizational researchers arealso wary of using historical data. Again, wecan take the example of Langley, who sees “cur-rent data collected in real time” as “richer andfiner grained” than “historical data collectedthrough the analysis of documents and retro-spective interviews,” which she has character-ized as “sparse and synthetic, focusing on mem-orable moments and broad trends,” and only tobe used out of necessity in combination withcurrent data (1999: 693). This is understandableinsofar as Langley associates historical datawith “coarse-grained longitudinal time series”(1999: 691). We find that organization theoristsrefer to “archival data” as if they are an alter-native to “qualitative research” (Shipilov, 2009:93), and they assume that “retrospective” re-search using historical data is quantitative(Denrell & Kovacs, 2008), so much so that quan-titative longitudinal studies are seen as synon-ymous with history (Kipping & Üsdiken, 2008).Quantitative researchers appear to be morecomfortable using historical sources as second-ary data, whereas qualitative researchersclearly prefer primary data that they have con-structed themselves (Strati, 2000). The qualita-tive objections to using historical data thereforeprovide our focus for exploring the dualism ofsources and data as evidence.

The terms sources and data are often usedinterchangeably, but we can make a distinctionbetween them because it is clear that organiza-tion theorists prefer what they call primary dataover secondary or historical data, whereas his-torians prefer primary to secondary sources. Theorganization theorist’s secondary or historicaldata correspond to the historian’s primarysources, and the terminological difference is notpurely semantic since it reveals a deeper epis-temological dualism in relation to the treatmentof evidence and the notion of what constitutes acumulative contribution to knowledge.

We can explore the reservations regarding ar-chival data in organization studies further,given that with the renewed interest in historyfrom new institutionalism (Suddaby et al., 2014),organization theorists have made occasionalforays into archival historical sources for quali-tative research. But as Rojas illustrates, when“organizational archives” are consulted, their

“disadvantages” have to be rehearsed in a waythat would not be expected, say, for interviews:first, “organizations vary in what is saved andwhen it is saved”; second, “archives tend to berich in documents from leaders, but they havefewer materials about other actors”; and third,“actors can selectively record what transpires inan organization. Meeting minutes, for example,may address only major points and omit impor-tant contextualizing discussions” (2010: 1268). Asa result, Rojas argues, “archival sources shouldbe supplemented, when possible, with newspa-per accounts, interviews, memoirs, and othermaterials” (2010: 1268).

Organization theorists appear to believe thatthe “validity and reliability” of documentary ar-chival sources must be questioned more thanconstructed data, such as interview transcripts(Strati, 2000: 159). As a result, even when they areused, archival sources are cited sparingly (e.g.,Rojas, 2010) and are generally relegated to pro-viding “background information about an orga-nization” (Strati, 2000: 158) or validating retro-spective accounts (Golden, 1997), as in most casestudies (Eisenhardt, 1989; e.g., Smets, Morris, &Greenwood, 2012).

Historians are more likely to rehearse the ar-gument that, when possible, interviews shouldbe supplemented with documentary research soas not “to accept one’s informants’ statements atface value. . . . Documentary research providesan excellent means to test the accuracy of dif-ferent images and perceptions of the organiza-tion and to compare espoused and actual val-ues” (Dellheim, 1986: 20). But, more important,history is equated with the use of primarysources, produced at the time of the events be-ing researched (Jordanova, 2006: 95), whichmeans that the more contemporaneous a sourceis with the past in question, the higher its valuefor historians (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009: 113).Even if the distinction between primary and sec-ondary sources is difficult to justify at a theoret-ical level, it is indispensable as a “methodolog-ical rule of thumb” (Megill, 2007: 50). Forhistorians, retrospective interviews count as“testimony,” which is notoriously unreliable andalmost by definition cannot constitute a primarysource, especially when it is collected yearslater (Megill, 2007: 20, 50). Historians thereforehave a strong preference for “nonintentional ev-idence,” by which they mean “anything remain-ing from the past that was not made with the


intention of revealing the past to us, but simplyemerged as part of normal life” (Megill, 2007: 25,29; see also Howell & Prevenier, 2001).

Since historians cannot directly observe thepast, they have to reconstruct it, mainly fromdocumentary sources (Callinicos, 1995: 65). Or-ganization theorists might argue that organiza-tional history is no different from other subfieldswhere constructs are not directly observable.However, constructs can be inferred from obser-vations generated in the present, such as re-sponses to questions. Historians are dependenton the observations that historical actors havemade, which then find their way into the ar-chives. With the exception of oral history, whichmainly concerns the recent past, history standsapart from social science because historianscannot produce evidence; instead, they have tofind it (Megill, 2005: 456).

From an epistemological point of view, histo-rians can be seen as “explaining present evi-dence” (Megill, 2005: 454)—constructing an ac-count of the past that can best explain thesources that have been found so far, rather thanexplaining the past through the sources (Megill,2007: 246 note 15). From a historical perspective,then, the problem is not so much how to gener-ate theory from organizational archives but,rather, how to generate narratives or theoriesthat can explain the sources found in organiza-tional archives. As part of the explanation forthe extensive archives held by so many organi-zations, often tended by highly qualified archi-vists, we need to understand what the philoso-pher of history Michel de Certeau (1988) calledthe “historiographical operation.” In the contextof organizations, this refers to the processwhereby the bureaucratic files are set aside andtransformed into historical “documents,” or, asan archivist might say, certain “records” are se-lected for preservation as “archives.”

As Alvesson and Sköldberg (2009: 107) pointout, organization theorists have largely ignored“source criticism,” which constitutes a rigorousmethod for interpreting sources that could coun-ter the skepticism toward organizational ar-chives. Source criticism distinguishes betweensocial “documents” and narrative or literary“texts” (Howell & Prevenier, 2001: 20–21). As re-cord-keeping bureaucracies, organizations pro-duce social documents, such as board minutesand personnel records, as well as narrativetexts, such as annual reports and in-house mag-

azines, which have been used to examine cul-ture and change in organizations (e.g., Mills,2006; Neimark, 1992). Yates’s (1989) historical ac-count of communication in American manage-ment from 1850 to 1920 represents an innovativeexplanation for the form of evidence found inorganizational archives.

Historians are also used to reading sources“against the grain” (Clark, 2004: 126; Evans, 1997:143; Gunn, 2006: 169), inferring a meaning be-yond, or even opposed to, what the sources wereintended to mean. Even testimony can be “madeto reveal what it doesn’t itself say” (Dray, 1986:34). As Ginzburg explains in the preface to hiscelebrated study of sixteenth-century Italianpopular culture, “The fact that a source is not‘objective’ . . . does not mean that it is useless. Ahostile chronicle can furnish precious testimonyabout a peasant community in revolt” (1992/1976:xvii). Prohibition can be taken as evidence ofpractice. Or, as Boje (2008: 24) puts it, all textscan be read as “an answer to something,” withthe aim of recovering what the text was an an-swer to. So when we read in the Bible that Tim-othy would “suffer not a woman to teach, nor tousurp authority over the man, but to be in si-lence,” a historian of Christianity assumes thatthere must have been women who were any-thing but silent (MacCulloch, 2010: 120). Since wecan no longer hear their side of the argument,we have to reconstruct it from those who si-lenced them. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak(1988), the postcolonial theorist, argued, partlyon the basis of research in the archive of theEast India Company, if the subaltern presencein history is to be recovered, then the silence ofthe archives needs to be recognized—what thesources do not say may be as important as whatthey do say (Decker, 2013).

The objections to using organizational ar-chives can be attributed to confusion over thenature of sources and how they can be read.When historians refer to archival sources, theyusually mean the unique, noncirculating socialdocuments that they have diligently found, oftenin an archive that can only be consulted at aparticular location by special permission (Hill,1993: 22–23). Most social documents bear littleresemblance to narrative literary texts (Evans,1997: 111). But qualitative organizational re-searchers seem to assume that historicalsources mainly consist of published narrativetexts, such as books, magazines, and newspa-


pers (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Historical researchis then equated with a detailed analysis of asample of these narrative texts (e.g., Arndt &Bigelow, 2005; Shenhav & Weitz, 2000), whichcan then be treated as if they were constructeddata, such as interview transcripts.

Organization theorists may argue that organi-zational archives are “collected, processed andexpounded according to the organization’s crite-ria and for the purposes of social legitimation”(Strati, 2000: 158). However, this objection ap-plies more to the narrative texts preferred byorganization theorists rather than to the “nonin-tentional” social documents produced in theprocess of running an organization. We cannotsay that social documents are always morevaluable than narrative sources (cf. Alvesson &Sköldberg, 2009: 113). Nevertheless, we can saythat a narrative constructed in the first instancefrom primary social documents, such as the min-utes of meetings and their accompanying files,is less susceptible to incorporating a narrativefrom the past as if it were an original historicalnarrative of the past. Narrative historicalsources themselves are emplotted—that is, theytell a story (Zieman & Dobson, 2009: 10)—andtherefore it is difficult to avoid the problem of“narrative contagion” (Alvesson & Sköldberg,2009: 115), whereby the plot from narrativesources is imported into the construction of ahistorical narrative. On the other hand, narra-tive sources, such as periodicals, are moreamenable to the replicable procedures of nar-rative analysis (Shenhav, 1999) than socialdocuments. Whether qualitative or quantita-tive, the use of coding and content analysisobjectifies sources as data and represents anepistemological attempt to ground historicalinterpretation in a systematic analysis of se-lected texts (Scott, 1990: 32).

Given that, epistemologically, historians are“explaining the evidence,” it follows that theyare obliged to put their evidence and reasoning“on the table” (Megill, 2007: 124), and they do thisby following the “rules of verification” (Evans,1997: 127). Unfortunately, as historical theoristsadmit, these rules are “unexplicated” (Fulbrook,2002: 186), but they are usually manifest in thecopious footnotes that characterize historicalwriting (Hexter, 1998). Historical theorists gener-ally reject the argument that these are merely“rhetorical devices,” designed to give history aspurious “reality effect” (Fulbrook, 2002: 56). His-

torians maintain that detailed citations “reallydo enable the reader to check the sources onwhich a historian’s statement is made and towhether or not they support it” (Evans, 1997: 127).They are a hallmark of accepted practices forhistorical writing, rather than an actual methodfor conducting research. Nevertheless, we mustremember that verification of sources does notconstitute validation of a narrative (Wertsch,2011: 26), which requires further epistemologicalreasoning.

Historians appear to see historical theory andmethodology as being analogous to the plumb-ing in a building, where the form should concealits function (Gaddis, 2004: xi). They assume theplumbing is there and in good working order,but they do not want to be confronted with it in“regular historical works” (Megill, 2007: 150). Ifhistory is to be written in the form of a socialscience article for organization theory, then theplumbing needs to be exposed for inspection.This means that the tacit practices of “sourcecriticism” (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009: 107–116)used to identify and interrogate sources wouldhave to be made explicit in a dedicated discus-sion of methods prior to the actual historicalaccount, instead of being obscured in crypticfootnotes (Grafton, 1997).

If we accept that there is a “literary” or “fic-tive” element in all historical (Megill, 2007: 185)and scientific writing (Bedeian, 1997), then wecan see that it takes different forms. Objectivisthistorians still hold to the “fiction of an objectivenarrator” (Megill, 2007: 87). But the “rules of ver-ification” in history preclude the fictionalizedtypicality permitted for organizational casestudies, which rest on very different expecta-tions of verisimilitude where researchers areless constrained to put their evidence on thetable. As Czarniawska observed, researchers of-ten present findings for an organization that“may not exist, and yet everything that is saidabout it may be true,” which is taken to meanthat “it may be credible in the light of othertexts” (1999: 38). So in a typical real-time, longi-tudinal, qualitative case study (e.g., Jarzab-kowski, Matthiesen, & Van de Ven, 2009), all datathat might reveal the identity of the case studyorganization, such as “specific dates, names,products, and other contextual features” (Jarzab-kowski et al., 2009: 290–291), are disguised inorder to preserve anonymity. We are assuredthat “the nature and temporal sequence of


events are faithfully reproduced” (Jarzabkowskiet al., 2009: 290–291). However, nothing can beverified from the actual text of the case study.

To clarify the difference between data andsources, we can say that organization theoristsoften tell us exactly how their data were con-structed for case studies but offer no clues as towhere the sources for the data are located,whereas narrative historians generally tell us ex-actly where their sources are located but give noindication of how they found or emplotted them. Atypical organizational case study may use ar-chives, but it is predicated on a “replication logic”(Eisenhardt, 1989), whereby the procedure for con-structing the data has to be specified so that it canbe replicated to test the findings in another casestudy. In contrast, a typical narrative history ispredicated on a verification logic, whereby theexact location of sources has to be given so thatthey can be consulted to verify whether they sup-port the historian’s emplotment. A generalizablecontribution to organization theory requires repli-cable data, even if its fictionalization precludesverification, whereas a contribution to historiogra-phy requires verifiable sources, even if it comes ina literary narrative form without explicit theory ormethods.

Dualism 3: Temporality (Periodizationand Chronology)

Organization theorists recognize that time, orthe timing of events, represents “an importantcontingency factor” that is neglected in “cross-sectional research designs” (Haveman, 1993:867). The “time elapsed” between specifiedevents in an organization and the timing of thoseevents in the “organizational life cycle” allow formodels that “investigate history dependence”(Haveman, 1993: 867). But these models tend toequate history with time, which means that evendistant historical settings are chosen because acomplete data set has been found to test the gen-eralizability of a theory (Haveman, 1993: 869–870),and not because of questions arising from histori-ography. As Aldrich put it, in organizational lifecycle models, “‘time’ runs on a universal clockrather than being historically situated,” whichmeans that the models “implicitly treat one yearin the 19th century as equivalent to one year in the20th century. Problems are problems, regardless ofthe century in which they are encountered” (1999:205).

In the treatment of time, therefore, a dualismcan be discerned that separates history fromorganization theory. Dates are obviously a hall-mark of most historical writing, but dating anevent is not only a matter of specifying its tem-poral relation to other events in the same ac-count, which could be done by referring to t0, t1,t2 . . . tn (cf. Langley, 1999; Ricoeur, 1990: 154).Instead, a date can substitute for a more de-tailed account of the historical context, which istaken as given depending on the assumed back-ground knowledge of readers (Dray, 1986: 28). Inaddition, particular years, such as 1865, 1945, or1968, resonate in national collective memories.

Saying that time matters is not the same assaying that history matters. Time often mattersfor social scientists only in terms of specifyingthe chronological order of events in an accountof processes such as path dependence (Abbott,2001; Pierson, 2004), whereas history matters tohistorians for an understanding of events intheir historical context (Tosh, 2008). Time in or-ganization theory is therefore generally ab-stracted as clock time, or “analytic time” (Pedri-ana, 2005)—that is, as a consistent measure forthe sequencing of events. But the historical con-text is attenuated and can be chosen withoutregard to its salience in historiography or col-lective memory. Historians generally take it asgiven that events are embedded in what sociol-ogists call “temporal and spatial contexts” andin “particular social times and places” (Abbott,1997: 1169).

The dualism of temporality differentiateschronology, where physical time is taken as con-stant, from periodization, where divisions of so-cial time and space are defined from sourcesand historiographical context in the process ofresearch and writing. As part of his effort tomake organization theory more historical, Al-drich (1999: 206) suggested the possibility of ex-tending evolutionary models to take account of“period effects,” when “historical discontinuity”has an impact on a population of organizations.This led him to recognize the difficulty of decid-ing what constitutes a “period,” especially whenthe boundaries between periods consist of“unique events.” Aldrich neatly summarized theproblem of identifying “discrete segments inhistory as ‘periods,’” given that “different ob-servers view the same events from diverse per-spectives on their significance” and, in practice,“period labels” are created on the basis of dif-


fering “research objectives and working hypoth-eses” (1999: 207).

When divisions of time and space are nottaken as given, historians face the continualproblem of devising criteria for partitioning thepast into “manageable chunks” (Jordanova,2006: 107). For a named entity, such as an orga-nization, there is always the problem of where tostart. It is necessary to distinguish between thebeginning and the origin of an organization. A“beginning consists in a constellation of datedevents” (Ricoeur, 2004: 139) that can be con-firmed from the sources, whereas the origin orbirth of an organization is a mythic event thatrequires a single, readily identifiable date and,preferably, an identifiable founder. This illus-trates the problem that events that come to beseen as historical, as opposed to mere occur-rences, are typically “composed of a series ofevents,” with the delimitation of a historicalevent requiring judgment of what a narrative isattempting to explain (Sewell, 2005: 260–261).Moving from narrative to analysis can be facil-itated by a periodization derived from socialparameters that remain unchanged, such as rit-uals or structures (Abbott, 2001: 211). But peri-odization in history cannot be reduced to chro-nological clock time because it has to take intoaccount both historical context and historio-graphical debate.

Organization theorists tend to see “retrospec-tive case histories” as inherently biased (Van deVen, 1992: 181; see also Eisenhardt & Graebner,2007: 28) and prone to reinforcing the myths thatmore disciplined longitudinal analysis can dis-pel (Hannan & Freeman, 1989: 40). Real-time re-search may therefore be preferred to historicalresearch because process outcomes are notknown when the research commences (Van deVen, 1992: 181). Teleology cannot be completelyavoided when it comes to writing up real-timeresearch, but history is distinguished by an in-evitable irony and teleology because the endingis usually known at the beginning. For example,when we start to read a historical account of anorganization, we usually know whether that or-ganization still exists. “History appears once thegame is over,” as Ricoeur (1990: 157) put it, andthe “retrospective intelligibility” of history can-not be predicted at the time events occur. Forhistorians, “temporal distance” is a requirementfor deciding which singular events are historio-

graphically significant beyond the subjectiveperceptions of actors (Lorenz, 2011: 31).

Periodization also reflects the ontologicalcommitment of historians to defining their ob-ject in time and space, or in a specific historicalcontext, with the standard subdivisions of histo-ry’s specializations being defined by period andgeography (Lorenz, 2011). The specification ofthe object in historical time and place derivesfrom an ontologically holistic view of history, inthe sense that history is generally perceived,albeit with increasing irony, as a “singular, uni-fied process of development” (Gunn, 2006: 172),consisting of “the entire human past” that deter-mines or shapes “the human present and future”(Sewell, 2005: 327). This holism lends itself to anepistemological view of history as an unendingaccumulation of historically specific knowledgethat can be integrated within a totality, equiva-lent to the aspiration for a unified theory insocial science. In terms of temporality, therefore,history produces situated concepts of a period oran event, whereas organization theory usesclock time as a chronological measure for se-quences of predefined events.

RESEARCH STRATEGIES FORORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY

From our epistemological dualisms we canconstruct a template that counterposes two styl-ized forms of history at opposite ends of a spec-trum (summarized in Table 1). On the one hand,we find a conventional narrative organizationalhistory, with detailed citations to primary docu-mentary sources, and a periodization derivedfrom sources with reference to historiographyand the historical context. On the other hand, wehave historically informed organization theory,derived from a clearly stated method for con-structing a chronological data set from histori-cal sources. Using this template, we can assessthe potential for reconciling epistemological du-alisms in alternative strategies for historical re-search and writing.

We have identified four historical strategies(viz. corporate history, analytically structuredhistory, serial history, and ethnographic history)to highlight the potential for producing theoret-ically informed “organizational history,” bywhich we mean the history of organizations assuch, with a focus on individual organizationsrather than fields or populations. Of these strate-


gies, corporate history and ethnographic historyare already recognized as historiographicalgenres, although our analysis underscores theirdistinctive characteristics. In addition, we haveconstructed the categories of analytically struc-tured history and serial history, not only for thepurpose of comparison but also to counter the im-pression that organizational history can or shouldbe synonymous with any particular strategy.

We have selected two exemplars that illustratethe limits and possibilities for each of our fourstrategies (cf. Langley, 1999: 695). To facilitate afocused comparison of exemplars, we have se-lected journal articles (Anteby & Molnar, 2012;Cheape, 1988; Childs, 2002; Chuang & Baum, 2003;Freeland, 1996; Jones, 2002; McKinlay, 2002), ratherthan books, although in one instance we havechosen a key chapter from Chandler’s (1962) clas-sic, Strategy and Structure. The exemplars for ourstrategies can be summarized in terms of theirapproach to explanation, evidence, and temporal-ity (see Table 2), which we expand on in the syn-optic review below.

Corporate History

Organization theorists’ reservations regard-ing organizational archives are understandable,given that most research and writing derivedfrom such archives take the form of corporatehistory. We define corporate history as a holisticobjectivist narrative of a named corporate en-tity. It is holistic in two senses: first, it generallyencompasses the whole history of the entity, orat least it emphasizes continuity of the entityfrom its founding to the present; second, it isconceptualized as a contribution to the totalityof history, filling an important gap.

The aspiration to produce a holistic continu-ous narrative for a corporate entity makes itnecessary to search an eclectic collection ofsources, with primary documentary sourcesgiven precedence whenever they are accessible.Survivor bias favors coverage of successful ex-isting organizations enjoying relative longevityand with sufficient sources available. Corporatehistory also entails a teleological anticipation offuture success, or occasionally failure, of thecorporate entity. Although sources may be foundthat have theoretical significance, almost bydefinition it can be said that an organizationis not selected for a corporate history on thebasis of its potential contribution to theory, un-like an organizational case study (Eisenhardt,1989). The focus on a named entity, rather thanan event or institution, emphasizes the agencyof a series of named individuals, even if corpo-rate history transcends the individual agency ofbiography. Corporate history therefore repre-sents the form of organizational history thatmost closely resembles a stylized conventionalnarrative history, combining narrative with doc-umentary sources and a periodization derivedfrom the corporate entity itself.

An important characteristic of corporate his-tory, from the point of view of historical episte-mology, is its objectivist narrative literary form,which constitutes a constraint on the ability orwillingness of historians to provide a reflexiveaccount of their perspective (Megill, 2007: 103).We find an inadvertent expression of this con-straint in a well-known article by the Britisheconomic historian Donald Coleman, who ar-gued that the only way historians can normallygain access to the archives held by extant busi-ness organizations “is to be commissioned to

TABLE 1Epistemological Dualisms

Dualisms Stylized Narrative Organizational History Stylized Historical Organization Theory

Explanation Narrative of logically and chronologically relatedevents organized by a coherent plot

Analysis of relationships between concepts andcategories—for example, 2 � 2 matrices ofvariables

Evidence Sources cited from an extensive search ofmultiple documents and texts with verifiablelocations in archives; verisimilitude throughverification logic

Data constructed from specified replicableprocedure for analyzing a predefined anddelimited set of sources; verisimilitude throughreplication logic

Temporality Periodization of events as defined by actors orhistoriography in historical time derived fromhistorical context and sources

Chronology of predefined regular occurrences, withsequences measured against clock/analytictime—for example, event history analysis


TABL

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write company histories” (1987: 142). As a result,Coleman maintained that no matter how “schol-arly, accurate, fair, objective and serious thatcompany history is, its content is necessarilyshaped by the need for the author to give his clientsomething approaching what he wants. And whathe normally wants is a narrative history . . . wartsand all maybe,” but “not a comparison” with otherorganizations and “not an analysis” of how theorganization’s “behavior supports or refutes thetheories of X, Y, or Z” (1987: 142). Coleman’s com-ments reveal an interesting paradox, which is thatthe objectivist economic historians who are mostlikely to write a commissioned corporate historyare, in many cases, reluctant narrativists who aremost unlikely to be reflexive about questions ofemplotment.

The self-imposed constraints of objectivismprevent corporate historians from reflecting ontheir own imposition of a narrative. This becomesobvious when considering the role of founders incorporate history. Most corporate historians wouldconcur with Schein’s (1985) view that an organiza-tion is created by a founder whose actions shapethe culture of the organization. But if it is stated atall in a corporate history, rather than simply as-sumed, this view is expressed as a self-evidentfinding rather than a theoretically contested con-cept (Martin, Sitkin, & Boehm, 1985). Any discus-sion of the “founder’s role” as a mode of emplot-ment in corporate history is precluded by theobjectivist presumption that the plot has beenfound rather than imposed. Objectivism is there-fore a sine qua non for corporate history, andwhether commissioned or not, objectivism con-strains corporate history from reflecting on theimposition of a narrative, such as a founder-centered emplotment, or the possibility of anycounternarrative.

As organization theorists recognize, historycan confer legitimacy on organizations (Linde,2009: 85; Suddaby et al., 2010; Suddaby & Green-wood, 2005). The objectivist view is that legiti-macy is more likely to be secured from a com-missioned corporate history if it strives for“objectivity” because “reviewers and the gen-eral reader are inherently skeptical about theobjectivity and balance in ‘management-sanc-tioned’ corporate histories” (Campion, 1987: 31).As a prominent academic historian who wrote acommissioned history of the Rothschild bank(Ferguson, 1998b), Niall Ferguson (1998a) madethe point that neither his own reputation nor the

Rothschilds’ would have been enhanced if hehad written a “whitewash.”

Geoffrey Jones, a professor of business historyat Harvard Business School and the author of acommissioned corporate history of Unilever, theAnglo-Dutch multinational (Jones, 2005), hasconsistently made a distinction between “criti-cal,” “objective” commissioned histories, suchas his own, and the numerous public relationscompany histories, which may be “readable” ina popular sense but lack “scholarly depth”(Jones, 2005: v, 323; Jones & Sluyterman, 2003:113). Jones (2012: 232) also appears to be a some-what reluctant narrativist, as an advocate ofusing archives more critically, including theconstruction of databases for hypothesis testing.For his history of Unilever, Jones (2005: v) wasgranted “unrestricted access to archives andpeople,” and his reputation appears to have al-lowed him to stretch the limits of what a com-missioning organization might expect. He di-vides his book into two parts. The first part offersa chronological history, and the second exploreskey themes such as brands, human resources,and corporate culture, which are obviously seenas replicable and envisaged as a cumulativecontribution to a thematic totality (cf. Jones &Zeitlin, 2008).

As a by-product of his commissioned history,Jones’s (2002) article on Unilever’s subsidiariesin the United States (1945–1980) addresses theirpoor performance in relation to theories of mul-tinational enterprise. There is a discernible nar-rative in the article, and as an accomplishedhistorian with the benefit of temporal distance,Jones is able to reveal information that actors atthe time were not aware of. However, even in thecontext of a theoretically informed article—andpresumably with Jones freed from the con-straints of his commission—there is no discus-sion of methods such as we would expect inorganization theory. Even though Jones “drawsextensively on the confidential business re-cords” held by Unilever and claims to provide“rich new empirical evidence” on “the function-ing of multinationals” (2002: 438, 478), with copi-ous citations to internal committee minutes,memos, and reports, there is no dedicated dis-cussion of sources.

While Jones deliberately stretched the con-straints of narrative, Cheape (1988) was distractedfrom the conventional concerns of corporate his-tory while researching his commissioned history


of Norton, the American manufacturer of grindingwheels and abrasives (Cheape, 1985). His discov-ery of “unusual inside data” in the archives con-cerning the manager of Norton’s German sub-sidiary from 1937 to 1959 prompted Cheape toexplore the historiography of relations betweenbusiness and the Third Reich between 1933 and1945. Although Cheape’s (1988) article does nothave a recognizable methods section, it doesinclude a brief account of the author’s approachto source criticism through an intertemporalcomparison of letters and reports written in Ger-many before 1942 and those produced for themanager’s denazification hearings in 1946.Cheape realized the significance of his find inthe archives from his awareness of the historicalcontext and historiographical debate over therole of business in the Third Reich (see e.g. Nic-osia & Huener, 2004). Business schools and orga-nization theorists have been criticized by histo-rians for ignoring this particular debate(Berghahn, 2004: 139).

Corporate history demonstrates, therefore, thedifficulty of reconciling our epistemological du-alisms. Jones’s (2002) move toward replicablethematic analysis is presented as if it is the onlyalternative to a common-sense founder-centerednarrative. But thematic analysis tends to sup-press historiographical debate, such as thatover the role of business in the Third Reich, orthe epistemological significance of contingentfinds in the archives, such as Cheape’s (1988).Organization theorists might suspect that com-missioned corporate history lacks balance, andthere is obviously an ideological bias in favor ofparticular types of academic historian, such aseconomists who see entrepreneurs as central toeconomic progress (Church, 1996). It should benoted, however, that many well-known corpo-rate histories were not commissioned or autho-rized and only use sources in the public domain(e.g., Delamarter, 1986; Pendergrast, 2000). But interms of historical theory (e.g., Novick, 1988;White, 1987), it can be argued that the ideologi-cal content of corporate history is contained inits objectivist form and founder-centered em-plotment, which would be compromised by anyhint of distortion or lack of independence. Thecontent of the form of corporate history is inim-ical to explicit theoretical considerations of his-torical epistemology.

We can see from the discussion above that theword “objectivity” tends to be used as a polemic

device, with little analysis of its meaning (Me-gill, 2007: 112). We tend to agree that judgingwhether a work of history is objective or not is“an empty observation” (Novick, 1988: 6). We can,of course, observe whether a history puts itsevidence “on the table” by following the rules ofverification, as do all of the corporate historieswe have cited, and then assess whether thesources cited are compatible with the emplot-ment. Whether or not holism and objectivismoriginate from commissioning, they are perva-sive in narrative corporate history, most ofwhich is not commissioned. The sheer volume ofcorporate history, in books and academic arti-cles, makes it appear as if only a particular kindof narrative can be constructed from organiza-tional archives, one that is of relatively littleinterest for organization theorists except as anobject of narrative analysis. In order to dispelthat impression, we need to identify and assessalternative strategies for using and explainingthe abundant sources available in organiza-tional archives.

Analytically Structured History

On entering an organizational archive, orga-nization theorists confront a choice of “whetherto theorize processes within a narrative orwithin a generalizing, analytic schema” (Whipp& Clark, 1986: 17–18). Instead of lapsing into ei-ther a common-sense founder-centered narra-tive or an analysis purged of narrative, we pro-pose that it is possible to situate historicalresearch and writing “on the bridge betweennarrative and analytic schemas” (Whipp &Clark, 1986: 17–18). A narrative can be conceptu-alized as analytically structured history prior toentering an archive. For example, from a “struc-ture-event-structure perspective,” the periodiza-tion is derived from the sources, rather thanimposed from an external historical context, andevents in an organization constitute the turningpoints between one period and the next, “whennovel elements are introduced and subse-quently institutionalized in the new structure”(Whipp & Clark, 1986: 19).

As a classic narrative account of organiza-tions derived from primary documentarysources, Chandler’s (1962) Strategy and Struc-ture can be seen as an exemplar of analyticallystructured history, and it remains one of the beststarting points for understanding historical re-


search in organization theory (Kipping & Üs-diken, 2008: 113). Chandler’s historical narra-tives are in no sense holistic corporate histories;they are instead highly focused and based on acareful selection of sources. Nevertheless, hisnarratives have the literary quality expectedfrom a well-written corporate history, with aneclectic range of sources marshaled to constructa seamless and satisfying narrative and with alarge number of actors named (Stinchcombe,1990: 109). Although Chandler was no less objec-tivist than most corporate historians, Strategyand Structure represents an important breakwith corporate history because named corporateentities are subordinate to concepts.

According to Stinchcombe, if Chandler hadsubmitted an article on the multidivisionalstructure to a leading journal in managementand organization theory, “a page or two aboutthe histories of Du Point, General Motors, JerseyStandard, and Sears might have been in theoriginal draft as motivation, to be cut by theeditors as not science but anecdote” (1990: 104).But this dismissal of Chandler’s historical nar-ratives assumes that it was obvious what strat-egy and structure meant before Chandler pro-vided historical illustrations for them. Aninteresting historiographical question iswhether it was the extended descriptions inChandler’s historical narratives that providedus with the enduring definitions of strategy andstructure. We maintain that Chandler’s narra-tives established the causal link between strat-egy and structure, and his long descriptive sec-tions were not anecdotal but necessary forconstructing these concepts. Chandler’s narra-tives are thus emplotted by the analytic con-structs of strategy and structure.

Chandler himself gave few clues as to hisown theory of history or actual working meth-ods. We have to rely on commentators for anexposition of his functionalist theory of history(Mayhew, 2009; Roy, 1990; Stinchcombe, 1990)and his use of sources (McKenna, 2006), as wellas a close reading of the text itself. Chandler’s(1962) chapter on General Motors (GM) is proba-bly the best illustration of analytically struc-tured history and is the focus for later historio-graphical debate (Freeland, 1996). Chandlerused a range of narrative or secondary sourcesto recount GM’s strategy of diversification up to1920: “annual and other corporation reports, gov-ernment documents, magazine articles, and the

few pertinent business histories and biogra-phies” (1962: viii). He accepted that changes instrategy can be gleaned from a general surveyof these sources but maintained that “only astudy of a company’s internal business docu-ments and letters can accurately reveal the de-tails of structural reorganization” (1962: 380). Inother words, Chandler only used primary socialdocuments, such as minutes from GM’s board ofdirectors’ meetings, to narrate an event—thestructural reorganization of GM during 1920and 1921.

Freeland’s (1996) analytically structured his-tory starts where Chandler’s narrative leavesoff, with the adoption of the multidivisionalstructure by GM in 1921. Freeland (1996: 497)argues that for most of the forty-year period be-ginning in 1924, GM did not have “a textbookM-form,” and he highlights the differences inoperation of what was ostensibly the samestructure in a series of defined periods. UnlikeChandler, however, Freeland (1996: 493) outlineshis theoretical orientation at length and gives abrief account of his methods, highlighting hisuse of newly available archival documentarysources, especially the correspondence betweenAlfred Sloan and the owners of GM. He ad-dresses the problem of bias in accounts by ex-ecutives but argues that their consistency overtime is an indication of reliability. Freelandpresents a sparser linear narrative for GM overa longer period than Chandler by narrating theorganizational structure as a “quasi-character”at the expense of named actors or events. Free-land retains narrativization, but by focusing onthe clearly stated periods between the turningpoints, he places much less emphasis thanChandler on a narrative account of events.

Analytically structured history thus uses ana-lytic constructs—such as “strategy” and “struc-ture”—to search archival sources, enabling theconstruction of a narrative of structures andevents that may not even have been perceivedas such by actors at the time. Hence, althoughanalytically structured history retains narrativeas the main form of explanation, it is driven byconcepts, events, and causation, whereas corpo-rate history focuses on a corporate entity andleading individuals. Analytically structured his-tory may draw on secondary sources and narra-tive texts, but that is not the same as a rework-ing or an analysis of the narratives alreadycontained within those sources. Analytically


structured history is therefore a form of narra-tive construction from organizational archives,not merely the reconstitution of a narrative fromnarrative analysis. We suggest that historicallyoriented theories of organization, such as newinstitutionalism, institutional work, and insti-tutional logics, are amenable to analyticallystructured history, with the construction of his-torical events from organizational archivesproviding a potential focus for actors andagency. Self-consciously emplotted analyti-cally structured history is also more defensi-ble than corporate history against objectionsto narrative construction.

Serial History

For historical theorists who focus on the epis-temological status of narrative, serial historyrepresents a standard alternative to narrativehistory (Clark, 2004: 121; cf. Langley, 1999: 691).Serial history is predicated on finding a series of“repeatable facts” (Ricoeur, 1990: 106) that canbe analyzed using replicable techniques, usu-ally in a predefined set of chronologically con-tinuous sources, if not an actual quantitativedata set. As the preferred strategy for history inorganization studies, serial history constantlythreatens to eclipse narrative—to use Ricoeur’s(1990) term—through continual advances in suchmethods as event history analysis. However,while serial history does not necessarily pre-clude analysis of primary social documents de-rived from organizational archives, such as min-utes of meetings, these sources would requirelaborious processing in order to construct “re-peatable facts” that could be usable as data.Secondary data sets may occasionally be foundin organizational archives (Payne, Finch, &Tremble, 2003), but research using such archivaldata makes no real claim to be historical in ourterms (e.g., Dokko, Wilk, & Rothbard, 2009). It ishardly surprising, therefore, that we have foundlittle or no serial history that attempts, in ourepistemological terms, to explain the evidencefound in a particular organizational archive.Hence, these rich sources, which are a mainstayfor corporate history and analytically structuredhistory, remain largely unexplained by the dom-inant historical strategy in organization theory.

Serial history mainly focuses on organiza-tional fields or populations, rather than individ-ual organizations. Occasionally, as Chuang and

Baum (2003) have demonstrated, data coveringthe “life histories” of multiple organizations canbe constructed from the archive of an associa-tion or a licensing or regulatory organization, asopposed to the archives of the organizations thatare the object of investigation. Chuang andBaum compiled data on 557 nursing homes op-erating in Ontario between 1971 and 1996 from“two archival sources: the Ontario Ministry ofHealth (MOH) licensing records and the OntarioHospitals’ Association (OHA) Directory” (2003:42). They used their data on nursing homes totest a series of hypotheses regarding the adop-tion of common names for components of multi-unit chains. What is interesting from our per-spective is that although Chuang and Baum’sserial history represents a valuable contribu-tion to the growing literature on organiza-tional name changes, the subordination ofnarrative to analysis is such that there is nodiscussion of the history of naming for nurseryhomes, and the actual names are not revealed.We are only told whether nursing homesshared their names with others that identifiedthem as part of a chain. Finally, Chuang andBaum appear to have chosen the period 1971 to1996 for the availability of chronologicallycontinuous archival sources rather than forany historiographical significance.

For a more interpretive form of serial history,“content analysis of archival documents com-posed of qualitative textual data” (Sonpar &Golden-Biddle, 2008: 795) can be applied to nar-rative sources in an organizational archive. Asan example of such serial history, Anteby andMolnar’s (2012) research stands out for its con-tent analysis of 309 internal bulletins from theFrench aeronautics firm Snecma, covering thenearly 50 years from 1953 to 1999. Anteby andMolnar use their data to show how there was a“structural omission” of contradictory elementsfrom the firm’s official historical record. Thisdemonstrates how corporate cultural communi-cations, such as internal bulletins or companymagazines, represent primary narrative sourcesthat are amenable to quantitative narrativeanalysis in serial history. These sources are partof an organizational archive since they areclearly generated by the organization itself. AsAnteby and Molnar (2012: 521) point out, the in-ternal bulletins they analyzed can reliably betaken to represent an official view because theywere “approved by Snecma’s top management,”


which turns the alleged weakness of suchsources into a strength. It is also worth notingthat Anteby and Molnar’s historical researchrepresents a novel contribution from organiza-tion theory to the field of collective memorystudies, in which both serial history and organi-zational history have been neglected (Rowlin-son, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, & Procter, 2010; cf.Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011).

Ethnographic History

For our final strategy, ethnographic history,we note initially how organizational ethnogra-phy has been defined by three criteria: (1) eth-nographic methods, with a requirement for ob-servation and “talking to people”; (2) a narrativeform of writing; and (3) an “ethnographic sensi-bility that would convince the reader of thetrustworthiness of the author” (Yanow & Geui-jen, 2009: 254). The emphasis on fieldwork andthe construction of data for generating theory re-flect the need to gain legitimacy in organizationstudies (Zickar & Carter, 2010). Nevertheless, wecan deploy the criteria used to define organiza-tional ethnography to consider its similarities toand differences from ethnographic history.

Historical researchers obviously cannot bepresent, with notebooks, tape recorders, andcameras, at the events they describe, but occa-sionally they discover a cache of sources fromwitnesses that can “tell us what it was like to bethere” (Stone, 1979: 14). More important, histori-ans have interpreted cultural anthropology, andespecially Geertz’s (1973) notion of “thick de-scription,” to mean that culture can be under-stood as a text (Gunn, 2006: 63), with an empha-sis on how texts can be read, rather than as amethod for constructing texts. Van Maanen(1988: 76) has claimed that ethnographers haveto construct their texts from the field, whereasthe texts used by historians and literary critics“come prepackaged.” Even if it were true thathistorical sources came prepackaged, and any-one who has ever worked on an organizationalarchive will know that they do not, it is not clearwhy the interpretation of cultures should privi-lege texts constructed by ethnographers. Be-sides, historical researchers often enter into re-lationships with regard to their sourcescomparable to those of an ethnographer enter-ing the field, especially when the documents areheld in the “living archive” of an extant organi-

zation (Hill, 1993: 54; Howell & Prevenier, 2001),so the contrast with fieldwork may be overdone.

In fact, ethnographic history—also known asethnohistory, anthropological history (Green &Troup, 1999), or microhistory (Clark, 2004: 75–79)—is now widely accepted by historians, re-flecting the rise of cultural history (Megill, 2007:203). The most celebrated example of ethno-graphic history is the international bestsellerMontaillou, in which Le Roy Ladurie (1980) usedthe records of the Inquisition to interpret theculture of medieval peasants (see Sewell, 2005:69, and Stone, 1979). As an example of readingsources against the grain, Le Roy Laduriewas not so much interested in the Inquisition, orthe nature of the peasants’ heresy, but, rather, inusing the Inquisition’s records as if they wereethnographic field notes recording peasantculture.

If we accept that ethnography consists of aperspective as much as a method, then we cansee that organizational archives contain sourcesthat can be read as texts for an interpretation ofculture. But in comparison with corporate his-tory, ethnographic history requires a self-consciously “angular” theoretical perspective(Megill, 2007: 110–111). Childs (2002), for exam-ple, adopts a Bakhtinian (Bakhtin, 1968) perspec-tive in his account of a gold mine operated bythe British-owned St. John d’el Rey Mining Com-pany in the Brazilian tropics during the nine-teenth century. In this account Childs focuses ona particular ritualized display of power, inwhich “on Sundays nearly 1,500 slaves from themine, separated by sex, lined up in columns infront of the Casa Grande (big house) for a cere-mony called the Revista (review)” (2002: 43). Likean ethnographer, Childs interprets the meaningof this ritual as a way to explore broader socialrelations between masters and slaves. Follow-ing Bakhtin’s emphasis on the carnivalesque inearly modern Europe (Gunn, 2006: 68), Childs isalert to the pride and shame of the slaves and inparticular to any opportunity they took to ridi-cule their masters.

As a historian, Childs is interested in the his-torical legacies of slavery and racism in shap-ing the modern world, which has been largelyneglected in organization theory (Cooke, 2003).The “industrial slavery” at the gold mine in Bra-zil involved a seemingly modern organization oflabor, with up to 1,700 slaves, most of themrented from other slave owners, “working at nu-


merous individualized tasks as miners, borers,strikers, surface laborers, carpenters or masons,but rarely in the large work gangs common toplantation slavery” (Childs, 2002: 49; cf. Crane,2013). Childs’ primary sources are from the St.John d’el Rey Mining Company Archive, held bythe University of Texas at Austin, which Childsreads against the grain. In response to criticismin the British press for the company’s use ofslave labor, long after the abolition of slavery byGreat Britain in 1833, the directors of the St. JohnCompany commissioned an “independent” re-port on the condition of “the Negroes.” The fifty-page Circular to the Proprietors of the St. Johnd’el Rey Mining Company was sent out to stock-holders in 1850, assuring them of the “humaneand generous . . . measures already adopted . . .to render them [the slaves] as contented andhappy as men can be expected to be, whose lotis to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow”(quoted in Childs, 2002: 48). The narrative text ofthe Circular is one of Childs’ main primarysources, along with the company’s annual reportsand social documents, such as the minutes ofboard meetings. But Childs’ angular theoreticalperspective is nothing like an objectivist narrativecorporate history explaining the longevity or per-formance of a multinational mining company.

As an ethnographic history, McKinlay’s (2002)analysis of clerks’ careers in the Bank of Scot-land before the First World War relies on docu-mentary sources found in an organizational ar-chive. But whereas Childs follows Bakhtin,McKinlay follows Foucault (1977) into the ar-chives. McKinlay points out that his reading ofthe modern banking career is very different froma “conventional” or corporate history. In his de-scription of how the clerks were disciplined bythe emerging concept of a career, McKinlay’smain sources are staff ledgers, in which annualappraisals were recorded. While searching thebank ledgers, however, McKinlay found hun-dreds of drawings hidden in a secret “Ledger99,” produced by a clerk, Robert Shirlaw, whoworked for the bank from 1899 (aged 16) until hisdeath in 1930. A talented cartoonist, Shirlaw car-icatured the bank’s employees and their worksituations, regularly depicting the bank’s man-ager as Napoleon (McKinlay, 2002: 603, Figure 1).McKinlay’s analysis brings the clerks’ occupa-tional world to life with a series of microstoriespieced together from ledgers that illustrate, for

example, the bank’s tight surveillance and con-trol of behavior.

This returns us to the definition of organiza-tional ethnography as narrative. Organizationalethnographers are understandably anxious notto be constrained by the “succinct textual form”that prevails in organization studies, and, there-fore, they emphasize the narrative aspect oftheir own writing (Yanow & Geuijen, 2009). But inthe context of history, and in comparison to cor-porate history, ethnographic history representsa conscious refusal to impose a plot in a movetoward a “non-event worthy history” (Veyne,1984: 54), one that is wary of metanarratives anduniversalizing theories. With their angular the-oretical perspectives (Megill, 2007), both Childsand McKinlay distance themselves from themetanarratives that emphasize functional oreconomic logic in the demise of slavery and therise of modern careers. Childs’ account in par-ticular is thematically structured, exploring, forexample, the role of overtime and religion in theslaves’ Sunday routines. Routines and rituals ofpower are presented as relatively constantwithin an extended period, starting with thecommencement of operations by the St. JohnCompany in the 1830s and ending with theemancipation of the slaves during the 1870s(Childs, 2002: 62). Even if written as a microstory,ethnographic history tends to avoid the implica-tion that the events recounted are “historical” inthe sense of changing the course of history.

Like much historiography, then, ethnographichistory owes a lot to the serendipity of findingsources (Ginzburg, 1992/1976: xi; Jordanova, 2006:37). But ethnographic researchers recognize thesignificance of the intriguing sources they find inorganizational archives because they know whatkind of sources they are looking for (McKinlay,2013). Researchers writing a corporate historywould not normally look for such sources and,even if they found them, would probably discardthem as a distraction. Recognizing the signifi-cance of such finds in an archive therefore re-quires an “ethnographic sensibility” and an “an-gular” theoretical perspective.

DISCUSSION

We have demonstrated that corporate history,analytically structured history, serial history,and ethnographic history are as different fromone another as are other strategies for research


and writing in organization studies. Therefore, ifhistory matters for organization theory, it makesno sense to try to find a unified ontological orepistemological foundation, let alone a unitary“historical method” for organizational history.The epistemological dualisms in explanation,evidence, and temporality that we set out in thefirst part of this article highlight the similaritiesand differences between alternative strategiesfor organizational history (see Table 3). We haveidentified these strategies with the intention ofdemonstrating that serial history, with its repli-cable procedures for constructing data, is notthe only alternative to narrative corporate his-tory. Ethnographic history also represents an al-ternative to the narration of historiographicalevents in response to the impositionalist objec-tion to narrative. And analytically structuredhistory offers the possibility of constructing his-torical narratives using theories of organizationthat can be defended against social scientificobjections to narrative construction.

We have made the case that organizationalarchives are not merely an underutilized sourceof data; in historical terms they also representlargely unexplained evidence. The sheer vol-ume of corporate history, whether commissionedor not, suggests that many organizations con-sider this evidence worthy of retention and ex-planation. However, for the epistemological rea-sons we have given, we do not believe that weshould leave it to corporate history to explainthe evidence in organizational archives. Wewould like to promote greater use of organiza-tional archives with alternative strategies forresearch and writing. This will require episte-mological reflexivity in order to counter reserva-tions regarding the use of organizational ar-chives in organization theory.

We should point out that much material fromorganizational archives is in the public domain,as was the case for several of our exemplars

(Anteby & Molnar, 2012; Chandler, 1962; Childs,2002; Freeland, 1996), which means that re-searchers do not need special permission froman organization before consulting the archives.However, having gained access to an organiza-tional archive, organization theorists then needto know what to look for. Corporate history tendsto follow the narrative embedded in the “con-ventional hierarchy” of an organizational ar-chive (McKinlay, 2013), which is partly why cor-porate historians are unable or unwilling to writeup their theory and methods. Analytically struc-tured history and ethnographic history, though,require a degree of epistemological reflexivity, asis expected from interpretive organization theo-rists (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009), and which ourepistemological dualisms facilitate.

An understanding of historical theory is alsodesirable if organization theorists are to becomemore sophisticated consumers of historiogra-phy, even if they do not intend to conduct archi-val historical research themselves. It seems un-likely that an organization theorist would becommissioned to write a corporate history; nev-ertheless, corporate histories represent valuablesecondary sources, which offer vicarious accessto a wealth of primary sources. When we readcorporate histories, therefore, we need an appre-ciation of how they are emplotted by their objec-tivism and founder-centered narratives.

Epistemological reflexivity is necessary be-cause, like most nonhistorians who rely on sec-ondary sources, such as corporate histories, orprepackaged primary sources (Jordanova, 2006:38; O’Sullivan & Graham, 2010), organizationtheorists often use historiography as if it repre-sents an unproblematic “historical record.”Many of the best known histories in organiza-tion studies, such as The Visible Hand (Chan-dler, 1977) or Scale and Scope (Chandler, 1990),are, in fact, masterpieces of historiographicalsynthesis, which rely mainly on secondary

TABLE 3Examples of Research Strategies for Organizational History

Strategies

Dualisms Corporate History Analytically Structured History Serial History Ethnographic History

Explanation Narrative (corporate entity) Narrative (conceptual construct) Analysis AnalysisEvidence Sources Sources Data SourcesTemporality Periodization Periodization Chronology Periodization


sources, such as corporate histories (Kobrak &Schneider, 2011). We cannot expect organiza-tional researchers to refer constantly to theirhistorical writing as an interpretation of com-mentaries on the traces of past events. However,if they did so more often, this would lead to agreater appreciation of the craft skills requiredto interpret primary sources.

A more fundamental concern is that organiza-tion theorists, compared to theorists from otherfields, have little to say about the significance ofhistorical events for understanding our presentand future. Take, for example, Sofsky’s “thick de-scription” of “power in the concentration camp” inThe Order of Terror (1999), which we would char-acterize as an ethnographic history of an organi-zational form. Sofsky makes no mention of orga-nization theory, because organization theory haslittle to offer by way of research concerning con-centration camps (Lammers, 1995). It would be un-seemly to ask how studying concentration campscould advance organization theory (Clegg, 2002),but if understanding the past is central to ourhistorical human condition (Ricoeur, 2004), thenwe should ask how organization theory can helpto explain singular historical events or organiza-tional forms. In other words, it may be self-defeating to insist that organization theory is syn-onymous with the relentless subordination ofidiographic history to nomothetic social science.

A clear conclusion from our epistemological du-alisms and alternative strategies is that there isno prospect of a unified field of organizationalhistory. History is no less fragmented than orga-nization theory, and historical theorists (e.g., Me-gill, 2007) are no less suspicious of any attempt toimpose paradigm consensus than organizationtheorists (Van Maanen, 1995). Nevertheless, if weare to realize the potential for a plurality of histor-ical perspectives in organization theory, weshould consider the prospects for dialogue withhistorians, as historical sociologists such asSewell (2005) have done. In order to facilitate sucha dialogue, we should try to recognize what it isthat organization theorists know or need to know,and what it is that historians know or need toknow. Whereas organization theorists need to un-derstand theory and methods, historians need toknow their historical contexts and sources. There-fore, we cannot regard historians simply as un-trained theorists awaiting analysis to replacetheir narratives or replicable methods for con-structing chronological datasets.

We are aware that historians tend to dismisstheoretical interventions from anyone who hasnot “dirtied their hand in the archive” (Fulbrook,2002: 25), so we should stress that our strategiesare partly derived from reflection on our ownexperience of theoretically informed historicalresearch and writing (Decker, 2010; Hassard,2012; Rowlinson, 1988). Even though we wouldlike to encourage organizational researchers toventure into organizational archives, we recog-nize that most of us are restricted to examiningthe relatively recent past by our preferred meth-ods, as well as by our limited knowledge ofhistorical contexts and sources. Only a few or-ganization theorists have looked at organiza-tions before the nineteenth century (Kieser, 1987,1989; Newton, 2004; Ruef & Harness, 2009), andthe further back we go, the more dependent weare on historiography and an appreciation ofhow historians work. Historical sociologists look-ing at the Reformation (Wuthnow, 1989), for exam-ple, know they need an appreciation of how his-torians work with sources if they are going to readand theorize from historiography.

Finally, we should note that historians nowseem more willing to articulate and share theirknowledge of the craft skills required in organiza-tional archives (see Adorisio & Mutch, 2013, andBucheli & Wadhwani, 2014). McKenna’s (2006) rev-elations of Chandler’s research in the archives ofGeneral Motors, along with McKinlay’s (2013) in-triguing account of how he traced the books anddocuments ordered by Foucault in the BibliotequeNationale, tell us more than Chandler or Foucaultthemselves did about their working methods.However, before we decide to follow Chandler orFoucault into organizational archives, we needto know which of their very different kinds ofhistory best reflect our own theoretical stance,and for that we need more than a methodologi-cal toolkit. We have signposted some of the phi-losophers of history and historical theorists whocan help us to discover our own reflexive theoret-ical stance in relation to history. Our exposition ofthe epistemological dualisms of explanation, evi-dence, and temporality, as well as our identifica-tion of corporate history, analytically structuredhistory, serial history, and ethnographic history asalternative strategies for research and writing or-ganizational history, represents a contribution to-ward mutual understanding among organizationtheorists, historical theorists, and practicinghistorians.


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Michael Rowlinson ([email protected]) is professor of organization studies atQueen Mary University of London in the School of Business & Management. Hereceived his Ph.D. at Aston University. His current research interests are in organiza-tional history and organizational remembering, focusing on how organizations rep-resent history in the present.

John Hassard ([email protected]) is professor of organizational analysis at theUniversity of Manchester. He received his Ph.D. at Aston University. His currentresearch interests are in organizational history, corporate restructuring, and themanagement of healthcare.

Stephanie Decker ([email protected]) is senior lecturer in international businessat the Aston Business School, Aston University. She received her Ph.D. at the Univer-sity of Liverpool. As a historian working at a business school, her research is con-cerned with the nexus between organization theory and business history.


research strategies for organizational history: a …...see also fulbrook, 2002: 25). but in the...

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