From data problems to questions about sources: elements towards an institutional analysis of population-level organisational change. The case of British building societies, 1845–1980

Abstract

Institutional analyses of population-level organisational change seem particularly well suited to the task of further incorporating historical concerns into organisational theory, as has been advocated by a growing number of authors, both within business history and management and organisation studies. Such an approach has been applied, in particular, to studies of shifts in organisational forms within the early-twentieth-century US thrift industry. The aim of this article, building on the case study of British building societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is to uncover both the promises and the limitations of this approach in terms of historical epistemology and methodology, and suggest ways to further consolidate the historical grounding of similar approaches to organisational change. In particular, detailed attention paid to sources and to periodisation may point towards improvements in methodology, both within historical institutionalism and neo-institutionalist history.

Keywords:

• Organisational change
• institutional theory
• population ecology
• business history
• historical epistemology
• British building societies

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank John W. Meyer, the editors of this Special Issue, and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful suggestions and comments. The author also thanks Simon Rex and the Building Societies Association for their kind guidance through the BSA archives; and staff at the National Archives at Kew, London.

Notes

1. (Michel Foucault, 1978, 82)

2. Recent examples of such calls include Rowlinson, Hassard and Decker, “Research Strategies”; Suddaby, Foster and Mills, “Historical Institutionalism”; Üsdiken and Kieser, “Introduction”; and Greenwood and Bernardi, “Understanding the Rift.

3. Such, it seems, is the position of Rowlinson and colleagues, see Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.

4. See, in particular, the survey of the literature in Kipping and Üsdiken, “History in Organization and Management Theory.

5. One may mention the following representative (and well-cited) works, which are discussed below: Haveman and Rao, “Structuring a Theory of Moral Sentiments”; Haveman, Hayagreeva and Paruchuri, “The Winds of Change”; Greve and Rao, “Echoes of the Past”; Schneiberg, King and Smith, “Social Movements and Organizational Form”; Schneiberg, “Movements as Political Conditions for Diffusion.”

6. Hannan and Freeman, Organizational Ecology, 10.

7. See, for an early presentation of such models, Hannan and Carroll, Dynamics of Organizational Populations.

8. According to the terminology used in Suddaby et al., ‘Historical Institutionalism’.

9. In fact, organisational ecology has developed precisely in reaction against theories of organisational change that emphasised individual, rational adaptability of flexible organisations to changing environments. As Hannan and Freeman explained first in a series of articles in the late 1970s, then in their seminal 1989 book, theirs was an attempt to analyse change when faced with rigid individual organisations – which led them to focus on population-level dynamics with selection. See Hannan and Freeman, Organizational Ecology.

10. A point often stressed in Hannan and Freeman, Organizational Ecology.

11. As Rowlinson et al. note in their review (“Research Strategies”), Hannan and Freeman explicitly acknowledge ecological research programs to be ‘formally probabilistic’; see Hannan and Freeman, Organizational Ecology, 40.

12. Schneiberg et al., “Social Movements and Organizational Forms.”

13. Haveman and Rao, “Structuring a Theory of Moral Sentiments,” 1614.

14. Such as selection operating as combination between ‘the birth of new organizations embodying novel theories of moral sentiments and the death of existing organizations embodying old ones’, Ibid., 1627.

15. Haveman et al., “The Winds of Change”; Schneiberg et al., “Social Movements and Organizational Form”; Schneiberg, “Movements as Political Conditions for Diffusion.”

16. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism,” 113.

17. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”

18. See the 2012 special issue of this journal on the subject: Bátiz-Lazo and Billings, “New Perspectives.”

19. See Carter, “A Curiously British Story.”

20. For a concise but complete summary of such criticisms, see Rowlinson and Carter, “Foucault and History.”

21. Caldwell, “Agency and Change,” 18.

22. Rowlinson and Carter, “Foucault and History,” 535.

23. See Whittle and Wilson, “Ethnomethodology and the Production of History”; see also Bowker, “Biodiversity Datadiversity.” Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing that article out to me.

24. See Castel, “Problematization.”

25. Mason, “The Rise and Fall of the Cooperative Spirit.”

26. Institutional logics have become an influential perspective in contemporary new institutionalism.

27. Haveman et al., “The Winds of Change,” 118.

28. Schneiberg, “Movements as Political Conditions for Diffusion,” 654.

29. Schneiberg et al., “Social Movements and Organizational Form,” 636.

30. Schneiberg, “Towards an Organizationally Diverse American Capitalism?,” 1412.

31. For instance, Schneiberg et al. historicise their analysis by locating the phenomenon under study in a period when ‘the US shifted from a society of stable communities, local networks and self-governing towns to a more diverse and impersonal society of geographically mobile strangers’ (Schneiberg et al., “Social Movements and Organizational Form,” 636).

32. See, in particular, Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-Institutionalism.”

33. See Suddaby, “Towards a Historical Consciousness.” Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this article. One could of course question whether neo-institutional perspectives are, in fact, peripheral in contemporary organisation studies – but this would not change Suddaby’s argument in favour of qualifying more precisely the incompatible approaches within the two fields.

34. See Butzbach, “The Evolution of Organizational Diversity in Banking.”

35. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies,” 251.

36. Djelic, “Sociological Studies of Diffusion.”

37. Suddaby et al., “Historical Institutionalism,” 110.

38. Hsu and Hannan, “Identities, Genres and Organizational Forms,” 477.

39. Suddaby et al., “Historical Institutionalism.”

40. Foucault, Birth of the Biopolitics, 3.

41. ‘The organization theorist’s secondary or historical data correspond to the historian’s primary sources’ (Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies,” 255).

42. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”

43. Ibid., 258.

44. Ibid., 258.

45. Suddaby et al., “Historical Institutionalism,” 100–101.

46. Ibid., 101.

47. Kipping and Usdiken, “History in Organization and Management Theory.”

48. See Rowlinson and Carter, “Foucault and History.”

49. McKinlay, “Following Foucault into the Archives,” 138.

50. McKinlay, “Following Foucault into the Archives.”

51. Whittle and Wilson, “Ethnomethodology and the Production of History,” 52.

52. Ibid., 53.

53. Bowker, “Biodiversity Datadiversity.” Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for directing me to that article.

54. Bellman, The Thrifty Three Millions.

55. See Cordery, British Friendly Societies, for a recent and convincing work on the friendly societies movement.

56. The responsibility for building societies’ regulation fell to the regulatory agency in charge of Friendly Societies and trade unions, the Chief Registrar.

57. ‘Instructions for the establishment of benefit building societies, with rules and forms of mortgages, &c. applicable thereto’.

58. Benefit Building Societies Act 1836.

59. Platt, Building Societies Not As They Are, 5.

60. Ibid., 6.

61. Ibid., 7.

62. Platt, Building Societies Not As They Are, 8.

63. Davis, Building Societies.

64. This ‘bureaucratic’ view of building societies can be seen in the various pamphlets that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century, either to sustain or to excoriate such a view. The secondary literature on building societies makes ample references to this literature, in particular Bellman, The Thrifty Three Millions; Davis, Building Societies; Price, Building Societies.

65. Haveman et al., “The Winds of Change,” 118.

66. Harold Bellman played an important role within the building societies movement, first as the Managing Director of one of the largest societies, Abbey Road Building Society, and then as an executive within various trade associations within the movement in the 1930s.

67. Price, Building Societies.

68. Bellman, The Thrifty Three Millions, 12.

69. Ibid., 15.

70. Ibid., 15.

71. Davies, A History of Money, no source is provided for this statement

72. ‘The period during which a new population emerges deserves more theoretical attention, because the struggle to carve out a niche involves such strong forces that the events of that period may be forever imprinted on the organizations that persist (Stinchcombe, 1965).’ Aldrich and Ruef, Organizations Evolving, 205; Tolbert and Zucker offer a very persuasive analysis of the differential treatment of periods in their study of the diffusion of civil service reform in early-twentieth century America. See Tolbert and Zucker, “Institutional Sources of Change.” See Greve and Rao, “Echoes of the Past” for an analysis of imprinting in the mutual movement.

73. ‘A period effect is an historical discontinuity that has a similar impact on all organizations or organizational members in a population, without regard to their ages’ (Aldrich and Ruef, Organizations Evolving, 167).

74. Price, Building Societies, 19.

75. Chief Registrar Annual Report, 1953.

76. This aspect will be further explored in the next section.

77. For instance, Cleary’s chapter on the building societies movement in the 1930s, where he gives ample room to a discussion of competition between building societies, is entitled ‘The Consequences of Expansion.’ See Clearly, The Building Societies Movement.

78. See articles in the Building Societies Gazette from January 1929, March 1930, June 1930, December 1930 and February 1931 for early conceptualisations of the ‘competitive problem’ from building societies’ side. The Chief Registrar mentions and devotes full paragraphs to analysing competition among building societies in its annual reports for the years 1931, 1932, 1934 and 1936.

79. Scott and Newton, “Advertising, Promotion and the Rise of a National Building Society Movement in Interwar Britain.”

80. Samy, “The Paradox of Success.”

81. See O’Farrell, “Foucault.

82. Garnett, Molan and Bentley, “Complexity in History.”

83. Source criticism has its equivalent in sociology, where it is constructed data that is critically scrutinised.

84. This may be an interesting topic in and by itself, but is more thinly related to the problem at hand here, and thus will not be further developed.

85. A further problem with data collection on the early history of building societies is that many first, second or third terminating societies shared the same name with permanent societies.

86. Building Societies Gazette, January 1870.

87. National Archives file HO 73–13.

88. Building Societies Gazette, December 1870.

89. The 18 & 19 Vict.c. 63, ‘An Act to consolidate and amend the Law relating to Friendly Societies’; received Royal Assent on 23d July 1855; took effect on August 1st, 1855.

90. First Report of the Chief Registrar for Friendly Societies, dated 21 July 1856. National Archives file FS/32.

91. Suddaby et al., “Historical Institutionalism.”

92. Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers.

93. In the words of James Scott: Scott, Seeing Like a State.

94. Building Societies Gazette, April 1872.

95. McKinlay, “Following Foucault into the Archives,” 141.

96. Ibid.

97. Bowker, “Biodiversity Datadiversity.”

98. Caldwell, “Agency and Change.”

99. De Jong, Higgins and van Driel, “Towards a New Business History.”

100. Suddaby et al., “Historical Institutionalism.”

101. Building Societies Association, Building Societies Management, 9.

102. Or, as Kipping and Üsdinken call it, ‘the limits to generalizability resulting from the use of history’ (Kipping and Üsdinken, “History in Organization and Management Theory,” 541).

103. Steinmetz, “Critical Realism and Historical Sociology.”

104. As an anonymous reviewer has pointed out, our common goal (among business historians and organisational scholars) should be ‘building theoretically rich models that do not take the historically defined organisational forms or the mechanisms of diffusion and institutional change as given’.

105. Here, we may point to an apparent slight disagreement with Steinmetz’s (and Roy Bhaskar’s) brand of critical realism, with particular reference to the advocated primacy of ontology over epistemology. What the data problems discussed in the previous section show is that, precisely, the ontology of the social world, from the perspective of the business historian or the historically-conscious social scientist, cannot be detached a priori from a pre-scientific epistemology. This is one of Foucault’s lessons: there is no social fact independent from knowledge of said social fact. Thus, to construct a scientific knowledge one has to transform this pre-scientific knowledge into object of study as well.

106. Decker, Kipping and Wadwani, “New Business Histories!”