Clio in the business school:historical approaches in strategy, international business and entrepreneurship

Abstract

Business history as a subject is now host to a range of competing research agendas in terms of which cognate disciplines to engage with: management studies, economics, or its former institutional home, history. On the back of recent and significant new contributions to debates over the use of history within business and management studies (in particular, organisation studies), this article identifies, and appraises, the criticisms of business and management scholars, and historians, of each other’s respective gaps in approaches. In particular we consider the perception of historians as being anti-theory and of having methodological shortcomings; and business and management scholars displaying insufficient attention to historical context and their own privileging of certain social science methods over others. These are explored through an examination of three subjects where calls for more historical research have recently been made: strategy; international business; and entrepreneurship. Responding to calls in these fields, and extending work in the field of organisational studies, we propose a framework for advancing the use of history within business and management studies more generally through greater understanding of historical perspectives and methodologies.