Change of referencing style

We are now inviting manuscripts to be submitted with in-text references from 2018 onwards, as Business History will change its citation format from endnote to in-text author–date from 2019. There were a number of reasons for our decision to make this change. Business History is an interdisciplinary journal, and this is reflected by the subject and nature of our manuscripts, as well as the institutional affiliations of our authors. We are proud of this diversity of views and approaches, but realise this comes with some trade-offs in terms of shared disciplinary standards. The most basic of those is how to reference the work of others.

Business History has for several years employed endnotes in order to ensure that references to archival material which has diverse formats that are not always easy to cite unambiguously, could be accommodated. However, this lost some of the immediacy of being able to identify authors or archives directly in the text while reading the article. We appreciate that different communities have different preferences in terms of citation formats, and as an editorial team we represent different constituencies of business historians in terms of disciplinary affiliation and nationality. In 2016, we decided to change the citation system to an in-text, author–date system (also known as ‘Harvard system’) and we have since then liaised with our publishers to ensure a smooth transition to a referencing style that will be still better suited to a historical journal whose authors and readers are drawn from such a wide congregation. We will outline our reasons for doing so below, and discuss how the new system will work for citing literature and archival sources.

We based our decision to revise the format of references on a review of the institutional affiliation of our authors for articles published between 2013 and 2015. These were the most recent full volumes available to us when we conducted the review in 2016. The results were quite surprising:

•	Only 13.5 percent of our authors were in history departments, and of those more than half (7 percent) were in economic history departments.
•	More than half of our published authors (52.6 percent) were in Business (29.2) or Management Schools (10.5), or departments of Accounting, Finance or Economics (12.9).
•	The remainder of authors belonged to wide range of departments, including anthropology, entrepreneurship, organisation, law, industrial engineering, medieval and modern Greek studies, and hazard, risk and resilience. The majority of those subjects were in the social sciences.

With this strong representation of the social sciences, in particular subjects allied to business, management and economics, comes a preference for the citation styles in these fields, which are predominantly author–date.

From the point of view of the editorial team, in-text citations have another advantage. They are the standard format in the social sciences, which has consistently higher citations than history and other humanities. Arguably, in-text citations prompt authors and readers to immediately engage with the work and the ideas of others, and helps to sharpen contributions and cumulatively advance the field of business history. Some of our recent initiatives, such as the decision to invite proposals for perspective papers, have already highlighted the need for a more clearly defined‘state of the art’ for different research debates in business history.¹ We believe that this is necessary for an interdisciplinary field, and we aim to make not just our perspective articles and introductions to special issues important reference points that define where research debates in their respective areas are headed.

Finally, we discussed the issue of archival citations for in-text citations. We understand that authors may be concerned about how to cite archival documents in the new format. We believe that a seamless integration is possible, and examples of extensive citations of archival sources are available in a number of special issues on historical research in management and organisation journals in recent years, such as the Journal of Management Studies in 2010 and Organization in 2014, and in terms of individually published articles in social science journals.² We will work with authors to ensure that archival documents are appropriately referenced in the new format. In terms of editorial processes, our publishers Taylor & Francis already manage a journal that uses in-text citations for historical articles that reference archival sources: Management & Organizational History.

We will use a version of APA style (American Psychological Association), as it is very widely used in the social sciences, and guidelines on how to adapt it to citing archival sources exist already. For example, Daniel Godfrey notes that APA advises that researchers can modify the format of the citation ‘in order to properly document the work. APA also directs that it is better to provide more information than not enough’.³ When adapting archival references to this citation system, two principles are important:

(1)	Present sufficient information so that the archival source can be located.
(2)	Present archival references in a consistent style.

Whenever possible, the author of the correspondence or memorandum should be used, with the business archive substituting for the place of publishing:

Seebohm, F. (1960). Diaries ‘Visit to Nigeria’. 29 January to 16 February, entry for 29 and 30 January, Barclays Group Archive (hereafter BGA) 277/3.

In text this would be cited as (Seebohm, 1960). APA allows historians to clearly identify the author and the organisation in addition to the call number of the document, and can be used even in cases where documents are not dated (Wathen, n.d.):

Wathen, J. (not dated). ‘Reminiscences’. BGA 1189/1.

In the case of documents where the author cannot be identified, the organisation can substitute for the author, as in World Bank (1975). Where sources are from large organisational archives, with multiple documents per year, APA style can also be adjusted for the list of references as follows:

World Bank Archive. (1975a). ‘WB1424179: Memorandum to Devbratt Dutt, July 17.’

World Bank Archive. (1975b). ‘WB1424179: Report by J Burke Knapp, March 4.’

World Bank Archive. (1975c). ‘WB1424179: Memo by Gary Hyde, August 4.’

In text this would be referenced in this way (World Bank Archive, 1975a, 1975b, 1975c), which is unambiguous even where a large number of files is concerned.

For different types of business records, Godfrey suggests the following options to adapt archival references to APA style:

Business records, where possible, should include the name of the author/content control person and an exact date. If, however, the author and the exact date are uncertain, the record can be identified by the title of the work and the approximate date.

The history of Farnsworth. (c. 1948–1952). Business pamphlet (ITT Library Farnsworth Papers). ITT Aerospace/Communications Division, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, Fort Wayne, IN. Hereafter referred to as ITT Papers.

In text: (The History of Farnsworth, 1948–1952)

Proceedings of the annual meetings of stockholders. (1931, May 5). Annual RCA stockholders report (p. 7; Sarnoff Corporation Library). Princeton, NJ.

In text: (Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of Stockholders, 1931).⁴

This flexibility in the use of in-text author–date references allows historians to adapt the format to the specific requirements of the archival collection that they researched. We look forward to working with authors on adapting their references to ensure that the two key principles – clear identification of source for future reference and consistency in style – are in place for all manuscripts.

Stephanie Decker
Aston Business School, UK
[email protected] Stokes
University of Glasgow, UKAndrea Colli
Bocconi University, ItalyAbe de Jong
Erasmus University Rotterdam, NetherlandsPaloma Fernandez Perez
University of Barcelona, SpainNeil Rollings
University of Glasgow, UK

Notes

1. Abe de Jong et al., ‘Perspectives Articles for Business History,’ Business History 59, no. 1 (2017): 1–3.

2. Stephanie Decker, ‘Postcolonial Transitions in Africa,’ Journal of Management Studies 47, no. 5 (July 2010): 791–813; Stephanie Decker, ‘Solid Intentions: An Archival Ethnography of Corporate Architecture and Organizational Remembering,’ Organization 21, no. 4 (2014): 514–42; Mairi Maclean et al., ‘Living up to the Past? Ideological Sensemaking in Organizational Transition,’ Organization 21, no. 4 (2014): 543–67; Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, and Robert Chia, ‘Sensemaking, Storytelling and the Legitimization of Elite Business Careers,’ Human Relations 65, no. 1 (2012): 17–40; Michael Rowlinson and John S. Hassard, ‘The Invention of Corporate Culture: A History of the Histories of Cadbury,’ Human Relations 46, no. 3 (1993): 299–326; John S. Hassard, ‘Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric Research in Its Social, Political and Historical Context,’ Human Relations 65, no. 11 (2012): 1431–61; Alistair Mutch, ‘Practice , substance and history: reframing institutional logics logics,’ Academy of Management Review in press (2017); Alistair Mutch, ‘Reflexivity and the Institutional Entrepreneur: A Historical Exploration,’ Organization Studies 28, no. 7 (2007): 1123–40; Marcelo Bucheli and Ruth Aguilera, ‘Political Survival, Energy Policies, and Multinational Corporations: A Historical Study for Standard Oil of New Jersey in Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela in the Twentieth Century,’ Management International Review, 2011; Mukti Khaire and R. Daniel Wadhwani, ‘Changing landscapes: the construction of meaning and value in a new market category--modern Indian art.,’ Academy of Management Journal, 2010.

3. Daniel G. Godfrey, ‘Adapting Historical Citations to APA Style,’ Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49, no. 4 (2005): 544–47.

4. Ibid., 545–46.