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Abstract
The focus of the article is the relationship between history and strategy. Although little interest can be found in mainstream management journals, the hidden relationship between history and strategy is looked for here in a double sense. On the one hand, the article will try to historicise strategy, questioning the alleged discontinuity that is normally used to explain the emergence of the notion itself. More than changes at the ontological level, it is changes at the perspectival level that explain the establishment of the new area of research. The article also discusses possible implications for broader historical research when taking into account some of the hidden distinguishing features of strategy studies and strategising history.
Acknowledgments
The paper has benefited from the intensive discussions that took place during a workshop on Qualitative Historical Methods in Management and Organization Studies held at the Centre for Management & Organizational History, Queen Mary University of London, 8-9 September 2011.
Notes
1. Zan, “Toward a History”; Zambon, “Accounting and Business”; Engwall and Zamagni, “Management Education”; Üsdiken, Kieser and Kjaer, “Academy, Economy and Polity.”
2. Augier, March and Sullivan, “Notes on the Evolution.”
3. Zan, “Interactionism” and “Future directions”; Kipping and Üsdiken, “Business History.”
4. van Fleet, “Wren Daniel” and “Doing Management History.”
5. For a short review in English language see Mulligan, “The Great Divide.” For implications on the Business History tradition, see Toninelli, “The Atlantic Divide.”
6. Kipping and Üsdiken, “Business History.”
7. Craig, “The Strategic use”; O'Sullivan and Graham, “Moving Forward”; Carter, “The Ages of Strategy”.
8. For instance, a new track on history is now available at the Egos Congress; a plenary session on "Rediscovery history in management" was run at Euram in 2011 (http://www.economia.uniroma2.it/euram/sarea.php?p=10&sa=116). See also the debate at the 2011 AoM annual conference: "The Concept of Strategy 40 Years Later: What Happened to Andrews's Vision for Business Policy?" (http://program.aomonline.org/2011/submission.asp?mode=showsession&SessionID=351).
9. Warren and O’Toole, “How Business”; Smith, “Management History”; Bisoux, “A Return”; Clegg, Jarvis and Pitsis, “Making Strategy.”
10. Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment”; Booth and Rowlinson, “Management and Organizational History”; Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Methods”; Durepos, Mills and Weatherbee, “Theorizing the Past.”
11. Kieser, “Why Organization”; Leblebici and Shah, “The Birth”; Caswill and Wensley, “Doors and Boundaries”; Berthod, “Using Historical”; Kroeze and Keulen, “The Relevance”; Thomas, Wilson and Leeds, “Constructing.”
12. Ansoff, Implanting Strategic Management.
13. For a criticism see Zan, “Interactionism.”
14. Pfeffer, “Reinaissance.”
15. Whitley, “The Fragmented”; Zan, “Writing Management.”
16. Abrahamson and Fairchild, “Management Fashion”; Carmona and Gutierrez, « Vogues in Management.”
17. e.g. Huber and Van de Ven, “Longitudinal Field Research.”
18. Zan, “Future Directions.”
19. While critical studies are right in addressing issues of power in the strategy discourse within the ‘real’ world, within organisations, this element in the construction of disciplinary jurisdictions amongst professionals (academics, consultants, ‘experts’) tends to be overcome.
20. E.g. Newton, “From Freemasons.”
21. Ruef and Harness, “Agrarian Origins,” is one of the few exceptions. In the newly established track on history at Egos in Barcelona, 2010, a discussion emerged about the relevance of studying situations prior to the industrial revolution. That management/organisational historians themselves are not hundred per cent in agreement about the relevance of renaissance period for the development of knowledge in doing business is in itself very telling.
22. Booth and Rowlinson, “Management and Organizational.”
23. Knuuttila, “Memory, Anachronism.”
24. Ashplant and Wilson, “Present-centred History.”
25. BBC, “Ice Mummies.”
26. Loasby, “Choice, Complexity and Ignorance.”
27. Simon, Administrative Behaviour, “Rational Decision-making” and “Bounded Rationality”; Cohen, March and Olsen, “Garbage Can”; March, Decisions and Organizations. For a review see March, “Epilogue.”
28. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences”; Popper, “Predictions and Prophecy”; Hayek, The Counter-revolution.Though I am sympathetic with tentative reconstructions of broader evolutions – e.g. the linguistic turn by Kroeze and Keulen, “The Relevance”; or Brown and Thompson, “A narrative approach” – I must confess I have some troubles in connecting Merton, Hayek and Popper to postmodernism. Moreover, I am interested in impacts that are more direct in our day-to-day work on historical research.
29. Pettigrew, The Politics.
30. Weick, “Enactment Processes.”
31. Ropo, Eriksson and Hunt, “Reflections on Conducting”; Rehn and Strannegard, “Processual Approaches.”
32. Normann, Management for Growth; Pettigrew, The Management; Mintzberg, “Patterns in Strategy Formation”; for a reconstruction see Zan, “Looking for Theories.”
33. Gherardi, “La struttura del campo.”
34. Of course, there are indeed serious differences as the ontological level. However, more than uncertainty, discontinuity or turbulence, what is interesting is the increase in the variety of competitive and organisational solutions, with more degrees of freedom in ‘making business’. This in turn makes the competitive field more opaque, hard to understand, and makes a notion such as strategy useful in cognitively dominating the differences at play.
35. Axelrod, The Evolution.
36. Mintzberg and Waters, “Of Strategy.” See also Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall.
37. Chandler, “Strategy and Structure.”
38. Miles et al., “Organizational Strategy”; Boschken, “Strategy and Structure”; Amitabh and Gupta, “Research in Strategy.”
39. Mintzberg, “Patterns in Strategy Formation” and “The Design School”; Normann, Management for Growth; Miller, “Configurations of Strategy”; Mintzberg and Waters, “Does Decision”; Pettigrew, “Studying Strategic Choice.”
40. Zan, “Interactionsim,” 269.
41. See for instance Mueller et al., “Politics and Strategy Practice,” 1168.
42. Zan, “Interactionsim,” 269.
43. Rumelt, “Toward a Strategic Theory.”
44. Zan, “Interactionism,” 270
45. Zan, “Interactionism,” 276.To better illustrate the specific ways in which a strategic management approach would work in terms of analytical and relational complexities, the example of Robinson Crusoe can be taken back. ‘My impression is that talking about Crusoe's strategy would be helpful first of all in understanding the logic in the human/ natural system relationship (i.e., focusing on the systemic view): how he made sense of the context, of its way of functioning, and how he made sense to survival and found possible sustainable patterns of relationships with the context. The sense of what he thought and did, can be summarised as his 'strategy'. The further aspect, that is, the interactionist view, only came in a second phase, when Robinson met Friday, thus enriching his 'strategy' with a human/human relationship.’ (Zan, “Interactionism,” 269)
46. Miles and Snow “Fit, Failure”; Miles et al. “Organizational Strategy”; Venkatraman and Camillus “Exploring the Concept”; for a recent reconstruction see Garlichs, The Concept of Strategic Fit.
47. i.e. Engwall and Zamagni, Management Education; Caswill and Wensley, “Doors and Boundaries”; Tienari and Laurilla, “Editorial”; Wensley, “Getting Too Close.”
48. Engwall, “Research Note.”
49. Zan, “Toward a History”; Zambon, “Accounting and Business”; Biondi and Zambon, Accounting and Business.
50. e.g. Carnegie and Napier, “Exploring Comparative.”
51. Crozier and Friedberg, L’acteur et le systeme.
52. This was the topic that with a colleague of mine (L.M. Sicca) we wanted to address at a track on "Criticizing CMS" for the 7th CMS International Conference, 2011. "The aim of the track is to investigate to what extent a similar language domination/imperialism is characterising CMS as well. Problematising the problematisers, criticising the criticism, we would like to focus on forms, ways and degrees of Anglophone domination in the field, looking at reasons and consequences. In short, what are the potential developments, future possibilities of CMS when/if the strong ethnocentric focus is questioned (Anglo-Saxon first of all, and Westerner second)." Though the track was accepted, unfortunately, we got just two submissions.
53. Üsdiken et al., “Academy, Economy and Polity.”
54. Zan, “Future Directions.”
55. e.g. De Roover, “New Perspectives” and Business, Banking and Economic.
56. Forsellini, “L’oragnizzazione” (The economic organization of the Arsenal).
57. e.g. Lane, Venetian Ships. About the role of Lane see Bullard et al., “Where History.”
58. From the point of view of academic politics, the weakness of each of these areas in mainstreams economics, management, organisation and accounting would suggest a more careful attitude towards bridging and overlapping more than working in isolated towers. From the methodological point of view, similar processes and debates that are taking place in various areas are ignored.
59. Kipping and Üsdiken, “Business History.”
60. Wren, The History of Management; Booth and Rowlinson, “Management and Organizational History.”
61. O’Sullivan et al., “Business History”; O’Sullivan and Graham, “Moving Forward.”
62. Jones and Zeitlin, “Introduction,” 1.
63. Kipping and Üsdiken, “Business History.”
64. Hambrick, “The Field.”
65. See footnote 14.
66. Hambrick, “The Field,” 1346.
67. von Krogh, Rossi-Lamastra and Haefliger, “Phenomenon-based Research,” 291.
68. Kipping and Üsdiken, “Business History.”
69. According to Kieser (“Why Organization”) not only OT could benefit from historical research, but there are rooms to ‘use of organisational Theory in Historical analysis’.
70. "A different attitude of organisational historians and a renewed interest in combining organisational and historical theories with practical historical studies is necessary": Kroeze and Keulen,“The Relevance,” 10.
71. Thomson, “The Case,” 99.
72. Thomson, “The Case,” 107.
73. Thomson, “The Case,” 108.
74. Zan, “Toward a History.”
75. Masi, “La Ragioneria.”
76. See also Augier et al., “Notes on the Evolution”; Bottom, “Before the Ford Foundation.”
77. Whitley, “The Fragmented.”
78. e.g. Besta, Bilanci Generali, I and III.
79. Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse”; Zambon and Zan, “Controlling Expenditure.”
80. Lane, Venetian Ships; Concina, L’Arsenal; Davis, Shipbuilders.
81. A few years ago, a previous director of one of the most prestigious journals in strategic management asked me with innocence: ‘Can you please elaborate on what you know regarding the origin of the term management … have long wondered!’ Indeed the term ‘maneggio’ as a substantive of the verb ‘maneggiare’ (literally: handling) was widely used at that time. The translation and diffusion of Pacioli’s book since 1494 throughout Europe is likely to have been a vehicle of the migration of the terms in other languages. While the terms have later on assumed different meanings in Italian (maneggio now only means horse-riding stables), the old meaning is preserved in Spanish ‘manejo’. Yet, the English synonymous ‘handling’ still echoes the original etymology of the Italian term.
82. Lane, Venetian Ships, 213.
83. Concina, L’Arsenal, 175.
84. Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse” and “Future Directions.”
85. For instance, referring to the Edwards Report about the British Museum in 1996, it is not so easy to trace back to this text what happened later with the hiring of a ‘managing director’. Indeed this was an argument used by some of the actors to legitimise this decision (starting from the government), though this is more an issue of rhetorical stratagem. More than linear cause-and-effect, it is an issue of conversation about managing, which addressed issues and concerns not necessarily in a consistent way. For an in-depth analysis, see Zan, Managerial Rhetoric, Chapter 2.
86. see Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse.”
87. as in Hoskin and Macve, “The Genesis.”
88. See the abstract of the paper by Miller and Napier, “Genealogies of Calculation” (emphasis added): "The delineation of the domain of traditional accounting history is illustrated by reference to three sets of issues: the links between double-entry bookkeeping and capitalism in the writings of Weber and Sombart; the links between bookkeeping practice and decision-making in the writings of Yamey; and the quest for examples of “early management accounting” in the writings of those such as Edwards and Fleischman & Parker. In contrast to such concerns of accounting history, four genealogies are presented: the promotion of discounted cash-flow techniques for investment decisions in the U.K. in the 1960s; the emergence of costs in the late eighteenth century; the accounting for value added event in Britain in the late 1970s; and the construction of standard costing in the early decades of the twentieth century".
89. Lusiani et al., “Change and Continuity.”
90. Zan and Xue, “Budgeting China.”
91. McCloskey, “The Rhetoric of Economics.”
92. For an overview see Deng, “A Critical Survey”; Vries, “The California School.”
93. Zan et al., “Searching for Managerial.”
94. Üsdiken et al., “Academy, Economy and Polity”; Biondi and Zambon, Accounting and Business.
95. Another curios example, a join result of "inner ethnocentrism" and time parochialism is the phenomenon of double translation that can be found in Italy; we are now importing the term management from English (actually we are using it in English) after it was invented in Italy (maneggiare) and then "imported" in English as management, as seen above.
96. As mentioned, very few of us in the management as well as in the accounting field are full time historians; but even more interesting, in the rest of our time – though contradictory it may seem – all in all even as a “critical” management scholar I still teach management and planning, budgeting etc. It is another kind of planning, what Normann would refer to as “process view” as opposed to the “goal view”; but still, it is planning. As management scholar, the focus is on potential consequences, whatever unintended they may be (indeed, more unintended they might be).
97. The notion of fit seems indeed something that distinguishes strategy within the strategic management field. It is alien to the definition of strategic behaviour as taking into account the other actors' behaviour, typical of a game theory approach, both in sociology and economics; but it is alien also to the over emphasis on power that often characterises critical studies, paradoxically with results not that different from a game theory approach: the issue of making sense of (analytical) complexity is not addressed.
98. Allison, Essence of Decisions.