New business histories! Plurality in business history research methods

Decker, Stephanie; Kipping, Matthias; Wadhwani, R. Daniel

doi:10.1080/00076791.2014.977870

Cited by 99 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Our article thus also contributes to the very recent debate about the future direction of historical organization studies (Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014;Maclean et al, 2016;Rowlinson et al, 2014; and business history (Decker, Kipping, & Wadhwani, 2015). Thirdly and finally, we have introduced a particular type of history to B&S scholarship in order to extend the work already done.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Facing the Normative Challenges: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research

Stutz

Sachs

2016

Business & Society

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This article explores methodological problems of qualitative research templates, that is, the Eisenhardt and the Gioia case study approaches, which are relevant for the business and society (B&S) scholarship and outlines a reflexive historical research methodology that has the potential to face these challenges. Building on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, we draw critical attention to qualitative B&S research and frame the methodological problems identified as the normative challenges of qualitative research, that is, to productively deal with both the researchers’ norms and the research subjects’ norms. We then introduce the reflexive historical case study (RHCS), a distinct research strategy to face normative challenges based on philosophical hermeneutics and the interpretive tradition of studying organizations. This research approach aims at theory elaboration while its mode of enquiry is reflexive. By explicating three of its key characteristics and using a case example to illustrate our approach, we demonstrate how B&S scholars can benefit from the “temporal filter” of the historical lens and from reflexive concerns about the nature of theory and empirical material. To tap the potential of historical research, we finally envision a research program for studying issues and debates associated with B&S scholarship.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Facing the Normative Challenges: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research

Stutz

Sachs

2016

Business & Society

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“…The main aim of these studies is to offer a dominant theoretical explanation such as fear, faulty management, or challenging organisational design (Doz & Wilson, 2017), not to study Nokia's history to discover more robust causal relations between doings and undertakings on the one hand and key organisational outcomes on the other. 1 Historical research is relatively distinct from theory-motivated case studies in the management field (Decker, Kipping, & Wadhwani, 2015), especially in terms of causal reasoning. As Mahoney, Kimball, and Koivu (2009, p. 124) characterise, 'Historical explanations […] explain the specific past occurrences; the question of whether and how the resulting explanation might then be generalised is a secondary concern.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013

Lamberg

Lubinaitė²,

Ojala

et al. 2019

Business History

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We investigate how and why the Nokia Corporation failed to develop a successful strategic response to the threats of Apple and Google in the smartphone business and instead worsened its situation through several badly timed decisions. We identify key choices in technology and organisational design that jointly constituted sufficient cause for the abandonment of the mobile phone business. By focusing on choices instead of attributes (e.g. fear or hubris), we make progress in strategic failure research and simultaneously emphasise the strength of oral history methods and the philosophy of history as fruitful starting points for such an inquiry.

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“…As history displays various approaches based on different ontological and methodological assumptions (e.g. Decker, Kipping, & Wadhwani, 2015;Vaara & Lamberg, 2016), Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker (2014) encourage researchers to position their research strategy reflexively to produce plausible explanations. In our research, we follow what they describe as the "analytically structured history," that is, historical research informed by analytic constructs using primary and secondary data.…”

Section: Historicizing Classifications and New Organizational Formsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reintroducing public actors in entrepreneurial dynamics: A co‐evolutionary approach to categorization

Demil

2019

Strategic Entrepreneurship

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Research Summary Categories are important cognitive and social interfaces for entrepreneurs and new ventures. However, the categories forged by the state and public agencies have been largely overlooked by the literature. A historical narrative explores the categorization process to register French mail order companies in an administrative nomenclature. This categorization performs reality by providing legality to a new population and by producing enduring social boundaries. Moreover, the historical reasoning enables to assimilate the emergence of a new category with a co‐evolutionary process, avoiding the reification of categories by considering multilevel interactions. Finally, our narrative highlights the need to consider the interests of entrepreneurs and public actors symmetrically. Managerial Summary How do the state and public agencies categorize new activities? Such categorization can have substantial consequences for entrepreneurs in terms of subsidies, regulation, or control. A historical narrative is built to trace the emergence of the French mail order category in a public nomenclature. This narrative suggests that the categorization results from the convergence of three evolutions over time: a growing interest of public policy in retailing; the development of the French statistical apparatus after world war II (WWII); and the collective entrepreneurship of the mail order companies. Entrepreneurs should consequently dedicate attention to the tools for recording economic activity, be aware of windows of opportunity occurring in the categorization process and eventually take action to influence the way they are categorized.

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New business histories! Plurality in business history research methods

Cited by 99 publications

References 50 publications

Facing the Normative Challenges: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research

Facing the Normative Challenges: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research

The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013

Reintroducing public actors in entrepreneurial dynamics: A co‐evolutionary approach to categorization

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