Apparently, the online world refers to it as a blood sport.

Like many things in academia, that sounds somewhat overwrought, but there is no question that these conflicts can become very bruising and end academic relationships.

It’s tricky to list an even remotely comprehensive list of the sources of conflict:

• Author order

• Who gets to be first or corresponding author

• Failure to contribute

• Failure by the first/corresponding author to act and contribute

• Disagreement over direction

• Incom…

Read more

1. Management Consultancy Network: Coffee Chat - 18 November 2026

2. Free event: Conspiracy Without Theory? (London)

Read more

These days, the United States has become the source of excellent screwball comedy, and that is just the political and business news. Hard to compete even for SNL, I imagine. It does mean that my rather serious podcast fare is far more amusing than it has any right to be.

And then, inured as I now feel from all the drama, real life and legacy media suddenly wakes up to the fact that all of this might mean something for academics, too.

Read more

1. CfP for 4th Historical Entrepreneurship Symposium in LA in 2027

2. My brand new British Journal of Management Crossroads piece

1. The Moral Foundations of Entrepreneurial Societies

Fourth Historical Entrepreneurship Research Symposium (HERS 2027)

January 29–30, 2027

Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies,
University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Submission deadline: December 15, 2026

Format: Extended abstracts of 1–2 pages

Submit at: https://hers-2027.lovable.app/

About the Symposium

Over the past two decades, the historical turn in entrepreneurship and management research has shown how historical sources, methods, and reasoning can reshape theory. HERS 2027 invites scholars to carry this agenda into new terrain: the use of historical scholarship to deepen moral and political reasoning about the relationship between entrepreneurship, organizations, and society.

Entrepreneurs are celebrated for creating opportunities, challenging incumbents, and imagining futures others cannot yet see. Entrepreneurial freedom, innovation, and competition are widely regarded as engines of prosperity and societal progress. Yet the very qualities that make entrepreneurship celebrated have also made it a source of public concern. The disruption that drives innovation unsettles institutions and livelihoods, and the freedom that fuels experimentation resists easy accountability. Debates over social media platforms, artificial intelligence, and environmental sustainability turn on the societal consequences of entrepreneurial activity, how responsibility for those consequences is attributed, and the institutions through which societies respond.

At the heart of these debates are competing moral understandings of entrepreneurship. When does seizing an opportunity become exploitation? When is breaking the rules innovation, and when is it misconduct? How did independence, risk-taking, disruption, and growth come to look like virtues? Such questions direct attention beyond the ethical judgments of individual entrepreneurs and their organizations to the moral foundations of entrepreneurial societies: the historically constituted values, justifications, and institutional arrangements through which entrepreneurial activity becomes desirable.

What, then, are the moral foundations of a good entrepreneurial society?

HERS 2027 invites scholars to investigate this question through humanistic research and theoretical inquiry, with particular emphasis on the historical construction of entrepreneurial virtues and moral boundaries. Qualities such as independence, ambition, risk-taking, and disruption are historically constituted ideals through which entrepreneurial conduct is justified, and distinctions between entrepreneurial freedom and social responsibility rest on deep-seated

and often unarticulated moral assumptions. Examining how these virtues and boundaries emerged, and how they have been contested, offers an opportunity to reconsider the categories through which entrepreneurship and its relationship to society are understood—and to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of contemporary theories of entrepreneurship.

The symposium welcomes a plurality of intellectual traditions and normative perspectives, including political philosophy, business and economic history, classical liberalism and Austrian economics, institutional and evolutionary economics, historical sociology, organization theory, science and technology studies, and critical perspectives on entrepreneurialism. These traditions offer different understandings of entrepreneurial agency, market processes, freedom, responsibility, and societal progress. We seek to bring them into productive conversation, examining the historical experiences and moral assumptions that inform their respective perspectives.

While HERS 2027 centers on this theme, we will also consider submissions that advance the use of historical sources, methods, and reasoning in entrepreneurship, management, and organization studies more broadly.

Themes and Questions

We welcome historically grounded empirical and conceptual contributions addressing questions such as:

Submission Guidelines

We invite extended abstracts of 1–2 pages (references excluded) outlining the research question and expected theoretical or conceptual contribution; the theoretical perspective and relevant literature; the historical context, sources, and methodology; and the expected or preliminary findings.

Submission deadline: December 15, 2026

Notification: December 31, 2026

Submit to: https://hers-2027.lovable.app/

Format and Participation

HERS 2027 will take place in person at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, CA, USA, on January 29–30, 2027.

About HERS

The Historical Entrepreneurship Research Symposium (HERS) is an ongoing forum for scholars working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, history, organizations, and society. Building on earlier gatherings in 2019, 2021, and 2025, the symposium brings together an interdisciplinary community committed to advancing historically informed entrepreneurship research and fostering conversations across disciplinary and theoretical boundaries. HERS 2027 continues this conversation by turning attention to the moral foundations of entrepreneurial societies and the contribution of historical scholarship to contemporary debates about entrepreneurship and the public good.

Organizers and Contact Information:

• Christina Lubinski, cl.bhl@cbs.dk, Copenhagen Business School

• R Daniel Wadhwani, dwadhwani@marshall.usc.edu, University of Southern California

• Christian Garmann Johnsen, cgj.bhl@cbs.dk, Copenhagen Business School

The symposium is a collaboration between the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California and the Rethinking Entrepreneurship in Society research project at Copenhagen Business School, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

We look forward to continuing the HERS conversations and advancing research on historical entrepreneurship as a resource for reimagining the possibilities of entrepreneurial societies.

2. How Assumptions About Time Divide and Connect Epistemic Communities in Business and Management

Cheeky, I know, but, as it has been a quiet week, I almost did not send out a Newsround this week. So you know for the future — no Monday, no relevant news.

Anyway, I thought I’d mention my advance online piece because it

a) places Business and Management History into the wider context of the highly interdisciplinary business school world,

b) it’s open access, and

c) it’s short!

BJM Crossroads

I’m resending the media review as I had not realised that I had not completed the second suggestion - largely because I started to wonder whether I should even include it. So many reasons, but the below offers a bit of an explanation why I got sidetracked by second thoughts…

This week’s media review

I try to curate the interesting reads of the week, because there is so much; it can be difficult to find. This week, a bit of a focus on research integrity and an enjoyable podcast:

• The Times Higher reported on the glut of recent retractions at a range of journals, focusing on Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN), an AJG-rated journal, which has now been delisted from the Web of Science database. I serve on the AJG Scientific Committee, and our current process flags journals that have significantly increased their output and have high levels of self-citation. STOTEN is not in my remit, but the final discussions should be interesting.

• The LSE Impact blog summarised two papers on re…

Read more

In my experience, this is a good use of AI. And in contrast to even last year, AI is now pretty good at this. But like all things AI, they do often look AI.

In what way, you may ask? AI-generated slides tend to be a bit overengineered, with many different elements on the slides. If you try to animate them, it is a bit crazy, because boxes, circles, numbers and text will all be layered on top of each other in different colours.

AI also manages to put an impressive amount of information on a slide - often well organised with offset boxes, but definitely often more than I would put on a slide.

As I use Claude, I recognise Claude slides. They look professional in a very Claude way. It’s like a smarter Manus, which is a tool I tried last year when the main Chatbots were not so impressive yet.

If you want your slides to be really visually interesting and look less corporate, go wit…

Read more

1. Role-playing game: Cost of living during medieval famine

2. Fellowships at the Social History Archives

3. List of EGOS sub-themes available

1. Cost of Living in a Medieval Society

If you are in Birmingham, UK, some of my business school colleagues are running a role-playing game as part of the ESRC Festival of Science centred around economic history:

Step into medieval England and navigate the Great Famine of 1315 in an interactive role-playing workshop exploring inequality, crisis and decision-making.

Wednesday, 4 November 2026 (18:00 - 20:00) (UK)

This even is in-person only and our University of Birmingham Edgbaston campus you can Register for this event.

ESRC Festival of Social Science 2026

Join a participatory role-playing workshop in which members of the public take on the roles of different social classes in medieval England and collectively navigate the Great Famine of 1315. The workshop uses the medieval grain crisis as an accessible politically neutral lens through which to explore questions that are urgently contemporary: how do external economic shocks affect different social groups unequally? Why are the poorest households hit hardest, even when they produce essential goods? And what role do institutional responses — government intervention, market behaviour, community solidarity — play in cushioning or compounding a crisis?

2. Applied History Fellowships at the Social History Archives

As the academic year gathers pace, there’s plenty happening at The Social History Archive, and we’re pleased to share some of our latest news with you.

We’re excited to announce that applications are now open for the second year of our Applied History Fellowships, delivered in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society. It’s hard to believe how quickly the past six months have passed with this year’s Fellows, Sadie Levy-Gale and Matthew Stephens. Their contributions have been invaluable, and we would like to thank them both for their enthusiasm, insight and hard work.

Find out more about the programme and how to apply for this year’s fellowship below.

Applied History Fellowship application

We are delighted to launch a new programme in conjunction with The Royal Historical Society

The RHS / The Social History Archive Partnership provides historians who are Fellows and members of the Society with six months’ free access to online primary source materials through The Social History Archive. The scheme is designed for researchers at all career stages who require access to these resources for their research but do not have access through an existing institutional affiliation or subscription.

Calls for the Partnership take place twice a year, with up to 30 researchers receiving free access to The Social History Archive for a 6-month period in each round. The first call opened on 21 September and runs to 30 October 2026, with access beginning for six months from 1 January 2027.

Apply here

3. Getting ready for EGOS 2027

The EGOS sub-theme list and overview is now available!

Overview PDF

List of Sub-Themes

Guidance for short papers

Deadline: January 15, 2027 (no extensions)

Don’t forget, we are Sub-theme 62: “All Work and No Play” - Conceptions of Work, Organizing and Business in Historical Perspective

Today, we have a guest piece by Omeghie Okoyomoh, one of the doctoral researchers I supervise, in which she shares the lessons she's learned over her three years of study. She discusses how to develop a healthy attitude towards the PhD and offers a counterweight to the doctoral drama that dominates social sites.

And imagine my relief when she says she didn't write from the perspective of a toxic supervisor (cheque’s in the post :-) ).

You don’t have to romanticise burnout to earn your degree.

It’s Day 1 of your PhD, and you’ve made it! Through the cold emails to supervisors, rewriting your writing sample, the scholarship applications (I finished mine between hair and nail appointments on the eve of my best friend’s wedding), and the endless admin involved in finally getting admitted. Or maybe, like I am, you’re already three years into the journey.

If you’re anything like me, you spend hours on r/PhD (Reddit community), follow a bunch of PhD influencers, and watch 2,400 TikToks a month about the PhD experience. Most tell you how your supervisor now owns your soul. Many creators wear their mental breakdowns like a badge of honour, while others are trying to sell you some tool that you absolutely must have to survive the next 3–8 years of your life.

Let me cut through the noise for you. Based on my personal experiences and countless conversations with other PhD students, both within and outside the UK, here are 10 no-nonsense tips for surviving your PhD.

1. This is a job, not your identity.

You must learn to compartmentalise and understand the difference between who you are and the work you’re doing. This ensures that every problematic stage of your research doesn’t begin to feel like a personal failure.

No, you’re not a bad PhD student because you’ve written seven versions of your literature review and there are still ninety comments. Sometimes you’re navigating a complex area, and it takes a little time. Don’t take the bad days personally. That way lies frustration and extreme burnout.

2. Embarrassment is a useless emotion. Let it go now.

Not everything you try will work. In fact, you’ll probably encounter more dead ends than successes. Shake it off and move on. Try a new theory. Build a different experiment. Rewrite the paper from scratch.

Having to do something over isn’t failure; it’s evidence that you’ve learnt something new. That theory you spent three months working on may not work for this paper, but it’s in your toolbox now. You’ve got a long career ahead of you and enough time to whip it out again.

3. Be intentional about enjoying your experience.

There is no reward for misery. You don’t get an award for being “the most intense PhD student”. Get out of the office and go touch grass.

Guilt around rest and recreation is such a common theme in conversations with PhD students, particularly when progress isn’t following the ‘efficient PhD’ timeline you’ve set for yourself.

I know it’s hard. I do it too. I spent half my holiday in Albania wondering whether I should have stayed behind to focus on that journal article due in a month. But being tired in the office isn’t going to get you to that deadline.

Before I left for my trip, I was ready to print my paper out and burn it in the bathtub. By the time I returned, I was clear-headed enough to try something else. It worked, and the paper is finally back on track.

4. Build the community that works for you.

Figure out who you need and actively work to find them. If you need accountability partners, go out and find them. If you need cheerleaders, do the same. Some people are lucky enough to find everything they need in their supervisors or their lab. Others need to be a little more intentional.

Don’t whine about it. Don’t pretend you don’t need anyone. Go out and find the people you need.

5. An idiot in motion will go further than a genius at rest.

I have a love-hate relationship with this axiom. But, boy, does it work!

The biggest mistake I keep making is waiting until everything makes sense before I start writing. It’s the perfect excuse to keep delaying that first word for months on end.

Write the nonsense draft. Even better, send it out for feedback. I’ve received some pretty hilarious comments on my writing drafts. I love them! And it’s incredibly satisfying when the next round of feedback addresses something else entirely. Previous issues fixed; on to the next. Progress!

Don’t be afraid to look idiotic. It’s better than having absolutely nothing to show.

6. Move on!

I’ve seen colleagues lose weeks to frustration because of roadblocks in their work. There’s a reason resilience is always on the list of skills a PhD is supposed to teach you.

So, things didn’t work out. Take a moment to acknowledge how much it hurts. Then show up again the next day and find another route. A friend spent half a year and a lot of money chasing data in an actual jungle that was not worth so much in the end. She sat with her supervisors; they re-strategised, and she’s moving forward.

7. Make use of all the resources available to you, and I mean as many as you need.

Go to the library for writing and research support. Join community groups and apply for mentorship schemes. My university offers a subscription to The PhD Lifecoach. I finally signed up in my third year. I should have done it in my first!

Find the resources available at your university and use them. Never do things the hard way if there’s an easier way.

8. Advocate for yourself!

I write from the perspective of someone who has never had to seek anonymous advice on how to survive a terrible supervisor or a toxic lab.

However, if this is your experience, please take advantage of the resources available at your university to advocate for yourself.

You do not deserve to suffer for years in pursuit of this degree.

9. DO NOT COMPARE!!!!

Just don’t.

10. Never lose sight of your why.

That mental breakdown everyone talks about? It seems to begin when you start questioning why you’re doing all of this in the first place.

Your undergraduate classmates now have ‘manager’ in front of their names. Someone just bought their first house, while another has sent you an invitation to a destination wedding in France. You can’t go because you can’t afford it. Also, you’re reading the sixtieth journal article on some vague theory, and your brain is glitching almost audibly. You’re in no mood to smile at old classmates and join a conga line.

This is where the difficulty hits hardest. It’s also where you need to remind yourself what a PhD is and why it matters.

In these moments, remember that when your training is complete, you’ll get to join a community of people whose work can, and often does, change society.

Every piece of research, in big or small ways, provides the intellectual foundation upon which we build society. You will stop being a PhD student soon enough, and whether you go into academia or industry, the skills you’ve learnt will form the tools that inform policy, education, development, healthcare, technology, and so much more.

Imagine a society where nobody does the work we do. Imagine how broken and uninformed it would likely be. Reconnect with your why and keep going. Your work matters!

Overall, your PhD is a deeply personal journey, and you get to design it. Many things will be out of your control, but for most of us, the journey is what we make it. So choose to enjoy your PhD. Choose to balance work and life. Choose to make the best of an intense experience.

It’s okay. You’re allowed to.

Hope you enjoyed that!

If you did, why don’t you check out Ome’s TikTok?

For full subscribers, some resources for doctoral researchers and their supervisors.

And, of course, hopefully some of the resources on History in Organizations are helpful, too.

Hope this helps!

Leave a comment

1. CHARM conference deadline approaching! Navarra, Spain

2. Qualitative Restudies at EURAM 2027, Amsterdam, Netherlands

3. EHS free in-person event: AI in Economic and Social History

4. European Business History Association Annual Conference 2027, Berlin, Germany

5. Aston University (Birmingham) “A Pint of Culture” public events

1. Marketing History in the Age of AI: Understanding the Past, Interpreting the Present, Imagining the Future

Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM)

23rd Biennial Conference: May 26 to 29, 2027

Host University: Public University of Navarre

(Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa), Pamplona, Spain

Submission Deadline: November 15, 2026. Decisions will be made by February 15, 2027.

We invite business, marketing, social science, and humanities scholars from all disciplines to join us for a friendly, collegial, and interdisciplinary research conference focused on the history of marketing and advertising. CHARM typically includes likeminded scholars and graduate students from around the globe, who share an interest in historical approaches to markets, marketing practices, advertising, consumption, and marketing thought.

Dr. Maria Elena Aramendia-Muneta and Dr. Sara Cano-Rodríguez, our Arrangement Chairs, welcome attendees to UPNA (Universidad Pública de Navarra), a public research university in Pamplona, Spain. The conference will take place at Campus Arrosadia in Pamplona. For detailed information: https://www.unavarra.es/charm or https://charmassociation.org/.

To contact the Arrangement Chairs email them at charm2027@unavarra.es

In these challenging times, we call on delegates to explore the insights offered by marketing and advertising history. AI is often framed as a decisive break with the past, yet many of its core concerns: automation, prediction, profiling, targeting, and data-driven decision-making, have longer histories in marketing and advertising. We welcome papers that have a specific focus on the historical development and use of technology in marketing companies, by consumers and in society, along with those that explore marketing history in practice or as theory. However, papers, special sessions, or panels could explore any aspect of marketing history, historic marketing, and the history of marketing thought in all geographic areas and time frames. We encourage historical submissions that discuss methodological, pedagogical and historiographical questions, as well as research on the impact of marketing and advertising in the broader social, cultural, historic, political, and economic environments.

Topics may include but are not exclusively restricted to the following:

• Historical role of technologies in reshaping relationships between brands, consumers, retailers, and media intermediaries

• Evolution of media technologies and their impact on advertising formats, messages, and audiences

• History of the development and evolution of the marketing discipline

• Impact of different cultures on the development of marketing history

• Hindsight: unintended consequences of communication, marketing and advertising technology

• Marketing history “from below”; How consumers and citizens responded to, and interacted with organizations and brands

• Lessons from brands that stood the test of time. Reviving timeworn brands

• Distribution and packaging history

• Exploring the historical role of relationships and networks in marketing

• Historical marketing as part of establishing and projecting identities

• Illuminating the past: marketing histories around gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic diversity that has been less studied, or understood

• Sector case studies with a historical focus such as: technology, luxury fashion, transportation, ecology, science fiction

• Marketing pioneers and leaders

• History of public relations and sales

For information about paper submission, the proceedings, or arrangements please contact the people below:

Program Chair

Dr. Joanne McNeish Associate Professor, Marketing
Ted Rogers School of Management
Toronto Metropolitan University CANADA

Co-Proceedings Editors

Tianrong Lu
Assistant Professor, Marketing Institut Français de la Mode PhD Candidate, DRM
Équipe de Recherche en Marketing et Stratégie Université Paris Dauphine–PSL FRANCE

Rodica Muravetchi
Assistant Professor, Marketing Institut Français de la Mode PhD Candidate, Université Paris Nanterre FRANCE

Arrangement Chairs

Dr. Maria Elena Aramendia-Muneta
Associate Professor Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales
Universidad Pública de Navarra SPAIN

Dr. Sara Cano-Rodríguez Assistant Professor Facultad de Ciencias
Económicas y Empresariales Universidad Pública de Navarra SPAIN

Email: 2027charm@gmail.com

Email: tlu@ifmparis.fr rmuravetchi@ifmparis.fr

Email: charm2027@unavarra.es

FORMAT OF SUBMISSIONS

For questions, or to submit your full paper or extended abstract please email the Program Chair, Dr. Joanne McNeish at: 2027charm@gmail.com.

Your submission should include a cover page with the following information:

• Paper title (Shorter titles are preferable).

• Paper vs. extended abstract.

• Author(s) name and title.

• ORCID identifier, if you have one.

• Contact information, including email address.

• Corresponding author (for co-authored works).

• Author(s) status (student, faculty or independent scholar).

• One or two recommended reviewers.

• If a special session or panel is proposed: please include the names of associated authors.

The cover page must include the following statement: “In the event this submission is accepted for presentation and publication in the CHARM Proceedings, I (or a co-author) intend to present our work at CHARM 2027.” Please use the “Properties” function in Word to remove author information from the document file.

All submissions will be double-blind reviewed. Authors of full papers may choose to publish their full paper or create an extended abstract for conference proceedings. Note that submitting a full paper to the Proceedings does not preclude a submission of your paper to a journal. The copyright of a paper published in the CHARM proceedings remains with its authors. Over the years many CHARM conference papers have been published in marketing, historical, sociological and other journals, such as the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.

Authors may choose to submit full papers or extended abstracts:

• Full paper length is 8,000-12,000 words (including references, figures and tables).

• Extended abstract length is 1,200-1,500 words (including references, figures and tables)

Note that only full papers are eligible to be considered for the Stanley C. Hollander Best Paper Award (best overall paper) or the David D. Monieson Best Paper Award (best paper by a graduate student). The David D. Monieson Award eligibility requires that the paper be authored solely by a graduate student(s) and that student authorship be noted on the cover page upon submission.

Full Paper Abstract

The abstract should be single-spaced and no more than 200 words. Font size is Times New Roman in 12-point. Full papers should begin with a structured abstract as follows:

• Purpose

• Research Method/Source Material

• Findings

• Conclusions/implications/limitations (for further research/practice/society)

• Keywords (no more than five)

Extended Abstract

Extended abstracts (1,200-1,500 words) should include a one paragraph abstract and the following headings: Purpose and Research Method/Source Material, Preliminary Findings, and Key References.

Body and Spacing

• All submissions (full papers and extended abstracts) should be single spaced.

• Margins should be set at 1” (2.54 cm).

• Paper size should be set for 8.5” by 11” (2.16 by 2.54 cm).

• Use Times New Roman in 12-point size font.

• Double space between paragraphs, and first level subheadings.

• Don’t indent paragraphs.

• All text should be justified.

Headings Within the Body of the Text

• First level headings should be left justified, all caps and bold.

• Second level headings also should be left justified, first letter of each word in caps and words in bold.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures should be included as part of the manuscript, at the correct location. Use clear titles. Figures should be numbered consecutively, as should tables.

Images

Photographs and other images should be included in the text at the appropriate location. Please ensure that images are of sufficient quality and size so as to be easily viewed by readers.

References

• Please use APA style for references

• The word References should appear as a first level heading.

• Entries must appear in alphabetical order separated by a space.

We welcome proposals for specials sessions or panels. Please submit those to the Program Chair, Dr. Joanne McNeish, by July 31, 2026 to 2027charm@gmail.com Decisions on proposals will be made by September 1, 2026.

FINAL SUBMISSION

Once your paper has been accepted and you have made the changes suggested by the reviewers, please submit your revised final paper or extended abstract as a PDF file. Please email it to Tianrong Lu, tlu@ifmparis.fr and Rodica Muravetchi, rmuravetchi@ifmparis.fr by April 30, 2027. Papers/extended abstracts received after this date cannot be guaranteed publication in the Conference Proceedings.

Note that for the final submission, the cover page should be removed. The paper title should be printed on the first page of the paper along with author affiliations. The title should be printed in

upper case, 14-point Times New Roman font, and centered. Using 12-point font, the author(s) and affiliation(s), email addresses and ORCID identifiers, if available, should be centered, single spaced, with the first author typed on the second line below the title, and then each author below the first. The abstract should follow the last author as part of the first page.

By submitting a paper/extended abstract for consideration, if accepted for presentation at the conference, you agree to have it published in the 2027 CHARM Conference Proceedings, hosted by Carleton University Library on an open access platform. The copyright of the work published in the CHARM proceedings remains with its authors. CHARM is permitted to publish the work as part of the conference proceedings, and others will be permitted to download the work and share them with others as long as they credit the author (s), but they can’t change the work in any way, or use the work commercially (Creative Commons License: CC BY- NC-ND).

2. EURAM 2027: SIG 12 - RM&RP - Research Methods and Research Practice

We invite you to submit your research to explore the theme of

RISING ABOVE

Embracing Resilience, Reimagining History, and Rethinking Management for a Sustainable Future

for the EURAM 27^th Conference.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Qualitative Restudies: Retheorizing Organizations in a Changing World (T12_ 05)

Proponents:

• Stephanie Decker, University of Birmingham

• Tine Köhler, The University of Melbourne

• Maria Rumyantseva, University of Sydney

Short description:

We invite submissions that are qualitative restudies: empirical studies designed for systematic comparison with the data, findings, and field setting of a prior study. Building on the four restudy designs of Köhler, Rumyantseva, & Welch (2025)—reanalysis, revisit, revision and repurposing—we seek contributions that return to established cases and theories to ask what has changed, and why our earlier conclusions may no longer hold. It speaks directly to the conference theme by treating restudies as a route to more relevant theory and is directly connected to a call for papers in Organization Studies (submission deadline January 31^st, 2028).

Long description:

A restudy is an empirical study designed to enable a systematic and critical comparison with the original data and analytical results of a prior study. By returning to established studies and their original sites, qualitative restudies allow us to examine how interpretation and theorizing are shaped by methodological traditions, historical context, institutional structures and researchers’ backgrounds. Acknowledging the situatedness of inquiry opens the way to more critical and sustained engagement with the phenomena and theoretical legacies on which our field builds (Köhler, Rumyantseva, & Welch, 2025; Rumyantseva & Welch, 2023).

The track is organized around four restudy designs that are already used by organization scholars:

1. Reanalysis reuses an existing dataset to develop a new theoretical reading.

2. Revisit returns to the original site or participants to collect additional data and theorize what has changed.

3. Revision applies an alternative lens to produce a rival explanation of the original events.

4. Repurposing links to an earlier site or participants to inform a new study.

We also welcome restudy designs that fall outside this typology, provided authors make their methodological reasoning explicit.

This focus fits the remit of the RM & RP SIG, which exists to advance debate and innovation across the research process. It also answers two live debates: (1) how to renew and advance theorizing by returning to fieldwork, and (2) how qualitative research can respond to the replication debate on its own terms (Pratt, Kaplan, & Whittington, 2020; Pratt, Köhler, Welch, & Rumyantseva, 2024). Qualitative work does not repeat a study to test whether a result recurs. It returns to existing work expecting a different theoretical result.

The track connects to the EURAM 2027 theme “Rising Above”. Reimagining history, questioning inherited assumptions and building more resilient and sustainable theory are exactly what restudies do, since ‘we can no longer theorize with taken-for-granted assumptions’ (Quattrone & Zilber, 2025: 1090).

Sessions will combine competitive paper presentations with a developmental workshop by the guest editors of the special issue call in Organization Studies, which will introduce the special issue’s aims and support authors in developing potential submissions, providing a clear route from conference feedback to publication. We particularly encourage doctoral and early-career researchers, and work that brings restudies to bear on contemporary debates, methodological innovations, seminal contributions in OS, previously inaccessible datasets and epistemic shifts.

Keywords:

• qualitative restudies

• retheorizing

• qualitative methods

• reflexivity

• management & organizational history

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

Goal 17: Partnerships for the goals

Publication Outlet:

Organization Studies -Submission deadline: January 31^st, 2028

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10944281231216323

For more information contact:

• Stephanie Decker, University of Birmingham, s.decker@bham.ac.uk

• Tine Köhler, University of Melbourne, tkoehler@unimelb.edu.au

Proponents and short bios

Stephanie Decker – University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Stephanie Decker is Professor of Strategy at the University of Birmingham and Vice Dean of Fellows and Doctoral Symposium Convenor at the British Academy of Management (BAM). Her research bridges organization studies and business history, focusing on qualitative, digital and archival methods in management. She has held senior editorial roles at Business History and serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Business History and Accounting History.

Tine Köhler – University of Melbourne, Australia

Tine Köhler is Professor for International Management at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include cross-cultural management, group processes, qualitative research methods, research design, and regression. Dr Köhler is Co-Editor-in Chief at Organizational Research Methods and previously held Associate Editor roles at ORM and Academy of Management Learning and Education. She is incoming Associate Editor for qualitative methods papers at Academy of Management Journal. She serves on the editorial boards of Small Group Research, AMLE, Journal of Management Scientific Reports, and Journal of Management Education. She is a member of AIB’s Ethics Policy Committee and Reviewer Training Committee.

Maria Rumyantseva

Maria Rumyantseva is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Fellow in Innovation Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. She has a strong track-record of publishing interdisciplinary research that extends and challenges the current theoretical understanding of innovation management, and its interactions with related fields, including strategy and international business. Maria uses process-based research methodologies to reveal new patterns of how innovation works in practice and to critically revisit established theories. She has published in Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, and Organizational Research Methods among others.

References related to the Topic

Köhler, T., Rumyantseva, M., & Welch, C. (2025). Qualitative restudies: Research designs for retheorizing. Organizational Research Methods, 28(1).

Rumyantseva, M., & Welch, C. (2023). The Born Global and International New Venture revisited: An alternative explanation for early and rapid internationalization. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(7).

Pratt, M. G., Kaplan, S., & Whittington, R. (2020). Editorial essay: The tumult over transparency: Decoupling transparency from replication in establishing trustworthy qualitative research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(1).

Pratt, M., Köhler, T., Welch, C., & Rumyantseva, M. (2024). Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research: Reconsidering Replication. In Flick, U. (Ed.), Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality (ch. 30, 451-468). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Quattrone, P., & Zilber, T. B. (2025). Theorizing in times of crisis, fragmentation and disorder. Organization Studies, 46(8).

3. AI in Economic and Social History: Opportunities and Pitfalls

EHS Women’s Committee In-Person Training Event

Friday, 30 Oct 2026, 10:00 – 16:30

IAS Common Ground (G11) (First Floor)
South Wing
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Schedule

10:00 – 10:15 - Welcome (Alka Raman)

10:15 – 11:00 - Jennifer Aston on the EHS AI usage policy

11:00 – 11:30 - Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:45 - Roundtable: AI in Economic and Social History: Opportunities and Pitfalls.

Panellists: Stephanie Decker (Birmingham), Meredith Parker (Oxford), Noah Sutter (LSE) Alexis Litvine (Cambridge). Moderators: Alka Raman and Joshua Rhodes (UCL)

12:45 – 13:45 - Lunch

14:00 – 16:15 - Hackathon – Using AI on a real economic history question

This workshop-style activity will involve splitting into teams of about 8 each (depending on numbers) and choosing from two topics plus accompanying sources to work, using AI, on a historical problem. By 15:45 teams would need to have produced a poster to present to the workshop. The aim is to take ‘raw’ historical data (i.e. untranscribed images, or alt option of a dataset), transcribe, clean, analyse, and then create a poster on set research question. Participants will need to bring their own computers, we will facilitate access to Claude/Gemini. Please indicate in the booking form if you will be staying on for the hackathon.

Facilitators: Joshua Rhodes, Alka Raman, Anna Molnar, Noah Sutter

16:15-16:30 - Close (Alka Raman)

4. European Business History Association 2027: “Business History and Geopolitical Challenges”

On behalf of the Programme Committee, we are pleased to announce the EBHA Conference 2027. Under the theme “Business History and Geopolitical Challenges”, the conference will take place from Thursday, 26 August, to Saturday, 28 August 2027, in the main building of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The conference will examine the effects of geopolitical tensions and the complex challenges they pose for businesses. Topics will include the politicisation of marketing activities, colonial dependencies and processes of independence, as well as the consequences of disruptions to or diversions of trade flows, shortages of raw materials or labour, and other forms of political intervention.

We cordially invite you to contribute to the conference by presenting a paper. The full Call for Papers, including further details, is attached and available at the following link:

https://unternehmensgeschichte.de/EBHA2027#CfP

We would also be grateful if you could share the Call for Papers with interested colleagues in your network.

The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2027. Applicants will be notified of the Programme Committee’s decision by 15 March 2027.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to welcoming you to Berlin for three days of stimulating discussion in August 2027.

5. Aston University Public Events

On Wednesday 4 November the Department of Communication and Culture will inaugurate a new talk series entitled “A Pint of Culture.” Attached is a flyer with the first two.

You can sign up here:

Experiencing Youth, Then and Now

Language and Feelings

These events are free and open to the public, please join us and encourage others to do the same!

Calling this part 3 of a series is a stretch. Basically, this is me backtracking substantially on what I wrote before. Not everything, but still a lot. If you haven’t read the first two parts, check them out here:

• Should you use AI to write your LinkedIn posts? - Part 1

• How AIs might help you overcome the “Curse of Knowledge” - Part 2

Not sure if you saw this one?

Oops…

A Harvard professor bot-shamed by the FT - well, I never.

I hadn't planned to write a third part of the series about academics using AI for public engagement, but since I wrote parts 1 and 2, I have had ample opportunity to reflect on what happens when it’s done badly … because it. Very. Often. Is.

Harvard prof up there is not at all unusual. I edit another blog (Business Research Unpacked), and I get quite a few AI-generated submissions. Sadly, those often require less work than the ones academics write without assistance, because they avoid most academic pitfalls: big words, classic research sentences and structure, lots of hedging and a lack of clear, punchy insight… well, I could go on. And I should make clear: they are by no means botshit, as they are usually based on academic research, only rendered through AI prose; they have substance, just with the AI lingo that gives everyone the ick by now

They are still work because I have to revise them. Substacks can now be scanned by any reader with Pangram, and it would be quite embarrassing for all concerned if that came back with the shame-badge of the 100% AI-generated label. (Of course, you could disable it, thereby signposting that it is clearly AI-generated…)

Funnily enough, like the Kennedy School professor in the FT, many of our colleagues don't realise that. I was recently asked to review a grant application that was clearly entirely AI-generated and frankly on the less substantial side. I mentioned it to the research support office, but I remain unclear whether anyone did anything about it.

The rise and rise of the meat proxies

UK universities are curiously blasé about all the AI-generated slop. I also marked dissertations… wow, sometimes I could identify with pinpoint accuracy which model iteration they used (I know the Claude Opus range too well). I politely pointed out that their chances of landing a consultancy role after graduation may be much lower if all they can offer is AI-generated insights… Seriously, what employer would pay six (or even five) figures for that?!

Our universities' deeply laissez-faire attitude is even more puzzling given the significant online ire about AI-generated text. As you know, I don't share this, but even I now feel ground down by the constant botshit I am expected to read and comment on. People: Use a decent model, learn to set up a good harness, know that prompting guides are bs, and for god’s sake, REVISE THE TEXT AFTERWARDS!!

The internet rage granted me a boon, nevertheless, in the form of an amazing new word:

“meat proxy”

I shall deploy this from now on.

You may ask why a relative AI advocate like me is suddenly siding with the haters.

Truth is, I have also reached my “too much.”

There are good reasons to use it: information retrieval, summarisation, research assistance. Claude is a great aide.

But not a great writer.

Read this LinkedIn offering:

If you cannot see the AI tells, let me tell you:

• The “not the” opening repeated for cadence.

• Quietly.

• Honestly.

• Weird meta-commentary: “something that does not get said enough”

  ---

Another thing AIs endlessly do is tell you what something isn't, then what it is. Or the other way round. Which is completely redundant. One presupposes the other. (Using it sometimes for emphasis is fine. Using it all the time in dry academic writing that normally aims for brevity over expressiveness, not so much.)

If you still think it’s all about em dashes and “delve”, you are so 2025. And I can use my favoured en dash again (which sadly doesn't work on Substack). Claudish lexica are now online, in case you want to catch up with the frontier.

But while AIs are not great writers, they write excellent copy. So I stand by my earlier claim: they provide a great counterweight to the curse of knowledge. Just see the amazing engagement that this arguably clickbait piece on LinkedIn had:

Substack, for all its collaboration with Pangram, just promoted a fully AI-generated piece to me today. It always seems to be some loosey-goosey psychological stuff that meat proxies favour:

People love botshit

Trained on vast swathes of the internet, LLMs know how to frame pithy attention-grabbers. Hollis Robbins provided a great analysis of why their prose is so loved by so many: the aphorism.

But if you work with LLMs fairly regularly, you spot that type of prose pretty quickly. I find myself in a similar position to Johan Fourie, who uses AI himself but keeps rejecting papers because they are AI-generated. And crap.

Our Long Walk

AI and academic publication

Over the last two months, I have accepted almost every invitation to review academic papers. On almost every one, I recommended rejection. Nearly all had been written with a large language model, which is fine by me, since I, too, use Claude Code or Codex for every paper I write. The trouble was that they were terrible in the same way, with an abstract …

Read more

3 months ago · 8 likes · 4 comments · Johan Fourie

Actually, I refused to review a piece for a major management journal after spotting AI prose in the abstract. And I just don’t have the time to read another piece of junk. Sure, it may not be junk. But why would I donate my time for free if I am already getting a whiff of the stuff in the first 100 words??

This is even more ironic because I hate composing abstracts. I am bad at it. So I use AI. Because it is good at it. And then I revise the text…

Universities seem to be in cloud-cuckoo-land…

The general attitude in UK HE seems to be that AI use is permitted because we cannot clearly determine whether someone is using it.

Nonsense. By now I can spot AI-generated text a mile off. AI use is, of course, another matter. (But then I don’t think that is always bad.)

If only we had a Turnitin for AI… which Turnitin would like to be good at because nobody needs it anymore. Plagiarism has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but that’s a subject for another day.

But wait, we do! It’s called Pangram.

And yes, you might remember me saying it did not work. Claude and I could fool it with light revision. Well….

It’s changed. VERY quickly. As of last month, Pangram is so good that I would call it nearly foolproof. (It’s not reliable on really short texts, like under 50-100 words.) In all my tests, it’s like a spaniel sniffer dog.

Gone are the days when a light revision fooled it. Now, when I generate any text with AI, I either use it for background research or (re-)write each paragraph from scratch.

I got a free 7-day trial with Pangram, and wow…

… it is like X-ray vision for AI botshit

What I hadn't realised is that it runs in your browser and automatically scans your social feeds. So my LinkedIn now looks like this:

Who’s been swimming without their gear now the tide is out? But THEY DON’T KNOW THIS YET!! Yikes.

Personally, I still don’t care much if people post AI-generated stuff on LinkedIn and other socials, because the human-generated stuff there ain’t so great either. Also, academic LinkedIn remains reassuringly human-to-mixed, so my feed is ok.

Should you live in fear that you're one ill-advised step away from being slop-shamed if you regularly use AI-generated text without disclosing it? Probably. And thinking that you can get away with denying it because you still think AI detection doesn’t work? Well, that will soon be very 2025, too.

My money is on 2027 being the year AI detection becomes the new plagiarism detection.

And if you are telling me LLM text can never be detected because it was trained on human writing and therefore cannot be disambiguated, then, sadly, you don't understand how LLMs generate text.

If you don’t believe me, try Pangram for free on their website. Or, if you follow this (affiliate) link or QR code, you get 20% off the paid version.

But if you want to avoid bot-shaming and learn how to write with AI without losing your voice, you'll want the excellent resources full subscribers get below. ;-)

Thanks for reading (I know it’s a long one today) and have a great weekend!

Leave a comment

Too much, not everything relevant to your interests?

Manage which types of content you receive from History in Organizations:

1. Go to substack.com/settings (on the app: tap your profile picture, then Settings).

2. Under Subscriptions, click on History in Organizations.

3. You’ll see a toggle next to each section. Switch off the ones you don’t want. Grey means off. You can change your mind any time.

There’s a shortcut, too: the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email will offer to unsubscribe you from individual sections rather than the whole newsletter. So if one post too many lands in your inbox, use that link to drop the section.

1. AIB Journals Webinar: Historical Approaches to IB

2. Australia National University celebrates 70 years of business history research

3. CfP: Beyond Centres New Perspectives on (Post)Colonial Business History Workshop, Vienna, Austria

1. AIB Journals Webinar: Integrating Historical Approaches in International Business

26 October @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm UTC

Register now

Date & Time: 26 October 2026, 13:00 UTC (View Local Time)

Hosts: Journal of International Business Studies and AIB Research Methods Shared Interet Group

Point of Contact: Carl Fey (cfey@fas.harvard.edu)

Event Recording Access: Current AIB members will be able to access a recording of this event in the “AIB Video Archive” section of our login portal. New webinar recordings are typically posted within five business days of the original event date.

Event Overview: Join us for a stimulating webinar on the potential of historical research and historical methodologies to contribute to international business theory. To do so, we will be discussing three recent publications from a special issue of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) on this topic. Each publication approached the integration of a historical perspective in a different way, providing inspiration for future research seeking to bridge history and international business.

The webinar will be introduced by series moderator Carl Fey (BI Norwegian Business School and Harvard) and moderated by guest moderator Stephanie Decker (University of Birmingham) and will take the following format:

• An author of each article will present the highlights of their article.

• Guest editors will also be present at the webinar to comment on the novelty of each paper and how the author teams approached and resolved the challenges of interdisciplinary research.

• At the end of the webinar, we will have a panel discussion where the audience can ask questions to the paper presenters.

This webinar is part of the JIBS/JIBP Webinar Series, which is currently run by Carl Fey from BI Norwegian Business School and Harvard and Stephanie Wang from Indiana University.

ARTICLES TO BE DISCUSSED

Kano, L., Ciravegna, L., Johnston, A. et al. Success and failure in family firm internationalization: The case of Rothschild (2026). Journal of International Business Studies, 57, 477–498. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-025-00786-y

Silva, A.F., Gomes, E., Vendrell-Herrero, F. et al. (2026). Revisiting the Uppsala model from a history-to-theory perspective: New lessons on network positioning from a global electric company . Journal of International Business Studies, 57, 577–596. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-026-00863-w

Zhang, S., Lu, J.W. (2026). Artificial states, ethnicity, and the survival of private participation infrastructure projects in Africa. Journal of International Business Studies, 57, 536–554. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-025-00772-4

2. Celebrate 70 years of business history research at the Australian National University

Tuesday 20 October 2026, McDonald Room, ANU Menzies Library, 5:00-6:30pm

You are invited to a celebration of the study of business history at the ANU. Join the ANU Noel Butlin Archives Centre and the ANU Centre for Economic History for a celebration of the study of business history at the ANU.

In 1950 Noel Butlin started research at Joseph Schumpeter’s Research Centre in Entrepreneurial History at Harvard University in 1950. At the Centre he developed a firm-perspective on Australia’s economic history. After Butlin took up an academic position at ANU in 1951, he started the acquisition of the first historical records of Australian companies.

In 1956, now 70 years ago, Butlin published the booklet Business Records at the Australian National University. It identified the purpose and requirements of a repository of business records at the ANU.

At that time, Butlin’s ideas for a repository were riding a wave. Australian companies mobilised historians like Geoffrey Blainey to write their histories. Firms saw value in learning from their past. The Business Archives Council of Australia had been established in 1954.

At the ANU, Noel Butlin’s repository became the Archives of Business and Labour and after Noel’s passing in 1991 the Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC). By the 1960s, ANU business historians such as Alan Barnard, Alan Hall and Helen Hughes published seminal studies.

70 years later, the NBAC has become an institution at the ANU and in Australia. Its many treasures tell stories that contribute to shaping Australia’s heritage. The Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre supports its work and accepts tax-deductible donations that help preserve the NBAC collection of company records for posterity.

On Tuesday 20 October 2026, join us at the ANU Menzies Library for three events:

• up to 5:15pm: explore the NBAC-curated exhibition on Australian shipping company Burns Philp;

• 5:15pm-5:45pm: Andrew Leigh MP launches the recently published book Global Enterprise in Australia: International Business Down Under since Federation. The book draws on the NBAC record holdings and is co-authored by Australia’s business historians Simon Ville, Pierre van der Eng, André Sammartino, David Merrett and Monica Keneley;

• 5:45-6:30pm: three business historians will celebrate Noel Butlin’s initiative and provide an overview of 70 years of business history in Australia and at the ANU: Professor Simon Ville (University of Wollongong), Professor Mark Wilson (ANU) and Associate Professor Pierre van der Eng (ANU).

After 6:30pm, join us for discussion and drinks in the newly re-opened Fellows Garden of ANU University House and/or a meal at the ANU University House bistro.

Location: McDonald Room, Menzies Library, 5:00pm - 6:30pm

Organisation: ANU Noel Butlin Archives Centre and ANU Centre for Economic History

Everyone welcome. No participation fees, but please register your participation via Humanitix.

Hard copies of the book Global Enterprise in Australia: International Business Down Under since Federation will be for sale. Or order your copy online.

3. Call for Papers: Beyond Centres New Perspectives on (Post)Colonial Business History

Organisers: Anka Steffen (University of Vienna) | Gijs Dreijer (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Location: Vienna (Austria), 15-17 April 2027

The business history of colonialism, imperialism and decolonisation has largely been written from the perspective of the centres of the “classical” colonial powers, rather than from territories that are not usually associated with colonial rule.

As a result, the (post)colonial dimensions of businesses based in, for example, Central European regions stretching eastwards from the Oder-Neisse and Moldau rivers to the Balkans, or in parts of Central Asia, have received comparatively little attention. Many of these regions were themselves under foreign rule or subject to strong forms of occupation and external influence. In practice, a growing body of literature on the business history of colonialism in the early modern period has focused on major chartered companies such as the Dutch and English/British East India Companies. For the modern period, the British Empire has often served as the proverbial gold standard against which other cases have been measured. In recent years, however, historians have increasingly moved beyond these established cases by highlighting the transnational dynamics of European colonialism and imperialism between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as its aftermath in the postcolonial period. Nevertheless, this (post)colonial business history still tends to overlook the many cases in which actors – entrepreneurs and their businesses – from the so-called “margins”, “hinterlands”, or “peripheries” contributed to, facilitated, or profited from colonial and/or imperial expansion.

This workshop seeks to broaden this debate and to rethink what may constitute (post)colonial/imperial business history beyond the established framework of the “classical” colonial empires, particularly Britain, France, (West) Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium and their activities in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. It explicitly asks whether, and in what ways, entrepreneurs and businesses located outside the conventional centres of colonial power can be integrated into the study of (post)colonial business history. We therefore welcome paper proposals that explore (post)colonial/imperial business histories from “noncentres”, broadly understood. This may include actors from “smaller” states who participated in the well-studied processes of European (post)colonialism/imperialism in the Global South. It may also include actors in or from regions and countries that are not commonly understood as (post)colonial/imperial in mainstream academic debates, such as Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, or Central Asia. Papers may be empirical, based on specific case studies, or theoretical, for example addressing the question of what should be understood as “(post)colonial”. We particularly welcome contributions that challenge established geographical, conceptual, or historiographical boundaries. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, or Central Asia and their business and entrepreneurial relationships with (post)colonialism and imperialism, and/or the region’s relationship with its own history from below, including the legacy of serfdom, as well as its imperial heritage;

• Business actors from smaller states/understudied regions in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, or Central Asia operating within, and in relation to, (post)colonial/imperial structures of other powers;

• The applicability of the concepts of (post)colonialism beyond the Global South, including the concept of “(post)colonial business history”, and its potential development;

• Decolonisation and its impact on actors and institutions located in the “noncentres” of global economic systems;

• Historiographical and theoretical interventions into the conceptualisation of (post)colonialism and imperialism, including questions of how these concepts can be applied beyond their conventional geographical and historiographical frameworks.

Practical information

To facilitate discussion and ensure that all participants have the opportunity to engage with each other’s work, the workshop will be kept small, with approximately 10–12 participants. Participants will be asked to submit a draft paper approximately one month before the workshop, by 15 March 2027. We may also invite senior scholars to serve as discussants for individual sessions.

The workshop organisers envisage that selected papers will be developed for submission as a special issue to a leading journal specialising in global and/or imperial history. Further information will be provided during the workshop.

The workshop will take place at the University of Vienna, Austria. Accommodation and refreshments during the workshop will generally be covered by the organisers. In some cases, we may also be able to contribute towards participants’ travel expenses. Priority for travel funding will be given to participants from underrepresented backgrounds and from the Global South. Applicants who wish to be considered for travel funding should indicate this in their submission and provide an approximate estimate of the amount required.

Please submit an abstract of 300–350 words together with a brief biographical statement by 10 December 2026 to the organisers, Anka Steffen (anka.steffen@univie.ac.at) and Gijs Dreijer (dreijer@eshcc.eur.nl).

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by 10 January 2027.

Key dates

• Submission of abstracts: 10 December 2026

• Notification of acceptance: 10 January 2027

• Full paper due: 15 March 2027

• Workshop: 15–17 April 2027

We are back with a new reading club video! If you want to watch previous instalments of our recorded webinars, check them out here:

• Natalya Vinokurova on her Strategic Management Journal article on establishing new categories

• Rohin Borpujari on his Organization Science article on secrecy in the Manhattan Project

• Chris Hartwell on his Journal of Management article on managing political networks under dictatorship

1. University of Luxembourg advertises three PhD positions in economic & financial history

2. University of Vienna, Austria, advertises one PhD position in international business

3. Hagley Fellowships Awards

4. CBHA offers undergraduate research grants

1. Three doctoral positions in Luxembourg

I would like to draw your attention to the opening of three PhD positions in economic and financial history at the University of Luxembourg, within the ERC project DIGSHELL – Digital Archaeology of Shell Companies: Infrastructures of Global Connections and Local Networks.

DIGSHELL investigates the history of shell companies and the infrastructures that enabled their development throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The project focuses in particular on the actors who contributed to the emergence of financial centres – including lawyers, accountants, banks, fiduciaries, and public administrations – as well as on the transnational circulation of practices, capital, and expertise. It combines economic and financial history, global history, and digital methods within a comparative framework.

We are currently recruiting three doctoral researchers who will focus respectively on:

• British Virgin Islands (BVI)
  https://www.uni.lu/en/jobs/doctoral-researcher-in-economic-and-financial-history-with-focus-on-the-british-virgin-islands/

• Panama
  https://www.uni.lu/en/jobs/doctoral-researcher-in-economic-and-financial-history-with-focus-on-panama/

• Singapore
  https://www.uni.lu/en/jobs/doctoral-researcher-in-economic-and-financial-history-with-focus-on-singapore/

The doctoral researchers will join an international and interdisciplinary team at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg.

I would be very grateful if you could circulate these opportunities among students and early-career researchers who might be interested.

Best wishes,

Benoît Majerus

Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
University of Luxembourg
w: https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/people/benoit-majerus/

2. Doctoral Position in Vienna, Austria

I would be very grateful if you could help us circulate and promote a new PhD position in International Business at the University of Vienna, starting in March 2027.

The position offers an opportunity to join our International Business research team and pursue a PhD while contributing to research, teaching, funding activities, and third-mission initiatives. Our research focuses particularly on the internationalization of SMEs, family firms, and MNEs, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Further information about the Chair of International Business can be found here:

https://international-business.univie.ac.at/

We are looking for a highly motivated and intellectually curious candidate with a relevant Master’s degree, a strong interest in International Business research, and a collaborative and proactive approach.

If you know of strong potential candidates, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the position with them or encourage them to apply. Further details about the position can be found here:
https://jobs.univie.ac.at/job/University-assistant-predoctoral/1442818633/

Many thanks in advance for your help and support.

With best wishes,
Emmanuella

--------------------------------------------------

Univ-Prof. Dr. Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki

Chair of International Business
University of Vienna
https://international-business.univie.ac.at

3. Hagley Fellowships recipient announced

The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware is pleased to announce the recipients of grants and fellowships awarded July 2026. Please note that the next deadline for applications for the exploratory grant and Henry Belin du Pont Fellowship is October 31st. Here is the link on Hagley Museum and Library’s website for further info and to apply….https://www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

Exploratory Grant

Julia Fine | Ph.D. Candidate | Stanford University | Empire and Brimstone: The Sulfurous Origins of Britain’s Global Food System

Carey Gibbons | Assistant Professor | University of North Texas |Visualizing Women in Typewriter Advertising

Angelica Martinez | Lecturer | University of Texas at Dallas | Minding the Nitroglycerin:Transnational Governance, Spatial Enclosure, and the Capitalization of Cane in DuPont’s Company Town (Dinamita, Durango) 1925-1950

Kelly Van Acker | Ph.D. Candidate | University of Washington | Constructing the Airwaves: Radio and Listening in the Philippines, 1870-1950

Dana Zuk | SID candidate (law) | Harvard University | Consumption and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement

H. B. duPont Fellowship

Lu Cheng | Ph.D. Candidate | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Contructing Textile Futures: DuPont, Plant Based Fibers and Nitrogen Chemistry

Julia Fournier | Ph.D. Candidate | University of North Carolina | The Price of Parenthood: US Childcare Policy and the Limits of Liberalism, 1969-1996

Lisa Jacobson | Professor | University of California, Santa Barbara |Tough Sells and Acquired Tastes: Drinking and the Business of Peruasion in Postwar America

Martin Mabire | Ph.D. Candidate | Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University | US Chamber of Commerce and the American Foreign Relations, 1912-1941

Krystie Pew | Assistant Professor | University of Alabama | The Tobacco Industry’s Corporate Strategy, Civil Rights Organizations, and the Structural Contribution to Medical Mistrust in Black Communities, 1950s-1990s

4. Funding Opportunity - Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program

For C$1,500, the Canadian Business History Association funds a full Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

Our ongoing pilot at the University of Windsor shows what’s possible: with modest support, students produce original research that would not otherwise exist. This initiative seeks to document knowledge about local firms, industries, and economic history at risk of being lost.

We’re now looking to fund additional fellowships.

Your support directly enables:

• original, student-led research

• new contributions to Canadian business history

• a stronger pipeline of future scholars

We are now a registered charity and can issue tax receipts for all contributions.

If this is of interest, we’d be happy to share more. Reach out to Joanne at ed@cbha.ca or click the link below to donate.

Our thanks to our newsletter reader, Robert Tamilia, for his generosity in supporting a student fellowship!

A bit of a different one today, as I have been busy writing for The Conversation - something I’ve wanted to get back to for a while. It’s part of me thinking about how some of the issues and topics we research in great detail, with close attention to method and theory, might also matter to a wider audience. But writing for a non-academic audience, not for specialist journals, is a very different skill.

Here are some examples of me thinking about what that might look like:

• Love a good spreadsheet? Me too, and so do punters discussing AI

• Making your writing more accessible - with some help from AI? Part 1 and Part 2, and Part 3 (my personal reckoning of the limits of AI in the age of detection) will be out next Friday!

So, turns out my piece about nuclear accidents and what that tells us about AI safety has been the gift that keeps on giving. I am not entirely surprised, to be honest. It’s like when we realised we had a rat under the house. You never just have one. Or fleas - same thing.

Yes, it is a charmed life in bin-strike Birmingham (nearly two years now; that must be some sort of record…)

Anyway, I digress - since early summer I have been thinking about what kind of historical analogies are relevant to the current developments in AI. By relevant, I mean: how does history help us make sense of the present moment and feel better informed, rather than permanently bewildered, by the perma-drama that the Silicon Valley AI-Trump complex keeps delivering with surprising regularity.

At some point I thought about - oooh, has anyone looked at nuclear? Oh yes, they have. Nuclear is a much-belaboured analogy in the AI governance and safety world, and a borderline puff piece likened Altman to Oppenheimer… (I would have thought the analogy was more Dario until recently, but ok).

In fact, there have been so many analogical uses that there is a preprint on ArXiv about nuclear analogies. So, a lot.

They tend to focus on international, intergovernmental aspects. On regulation and non-proliferation agreements. Not on organizational dimensions.

I love a good analogy. Especially if I can twist it just so much that it makes you think about the stuff that the original analogies are trying to distract you from.

The worst name ever for a company

I think I was gardening and listening to a tech podcast when I learnt about the Hugging Face incident in early August.

Do you know why they called the company Hugging Face? After the movie Alien, where the facehugger jumps out of the egg at John Hurt. If you still do not know what I am talking about, you need to brush up on your sci-fi film knowledge URGENTLY.

Anyway, as I wrestled with the clematis, I thought this would be a great time to write that historical analogy about nuclear and AI technology. I had a few days off and went down a complete rabbit hole researching the history of safety and security at Los Alamos and around nuclear weapons more generally (Supercritical! Spies! Unexploded warheads!).

The resulting piece may have been a bit unfocused:

But boy, was it fun to research. Lots online; Birmingham University library had a good collection of online books, and on my day off I ventured into our lovely library to hunt the stacks for the big tomes that were not online. (It’s the definition of a busman’s holiday, and I really enjoyed it.)

Aussie rage

And then more incredible yet utterly predictable news started hitting the feeds in quick succession. People resigned and posted about it; fears about the end of humanity (ok, really?) followed after a few days of media frenzy, by a very angry Aussie prime minister who had been casually informed by OpenAI that their agents hacked their government health portal, Medicare.

Was it Civilisation 3? We do not know. We now know that a much larger number of private and public organizations were hacked, though most of them did not want to go public.

So I agreed to send a much shorter, rewritten version to The Conversation - and I was still way over the 800-word mark, but really couldn’t bear taking out any more historical detail.

To my delight, a few days later, a version appeared that put a lot of detail back in, including a close account of the Slotin incident. I had taken out the blue flash; here it was back in, with more detail on the plutonium-beryllium assemblage, etc.

I was so pleased.

Also, I had really restrained my references, but this version is rich in hyperlinks, so I added a few more, just in case!

I’m very pleased with this version. No more Soviet spies in this version, but a more focused account of why responsible organizations should have a well-developed approach to managing accidents. And why they don’t need regulation or international agreements to do this. The organizational design knowledge that makes your company and products safer and more responsible already exists, and it is not rocket science!

Read the full piece here:

Leave a comment

1. Tenure-track positions at CUNEF, Madrid

2. CFP AGI Symposium: Business History in Austria, Germany and Italy

3. Discount code (30%) for Spare Parts by Phil Scranton

1. Tenure-track positions at CUNEF, Madrid, Spain

The Department of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) at CUNEF Universidad (https://www.cunef.edu/) invites applications for three Tenure-Track Assistant Professor positions in Political Science, and Economic and Business History, starting in the academic year 2027–28.

Requirements

Candidates are required to hold a PhD in Political Science, Economic History or a related field (completed, or expected before appointment) and to demonstrate a strong ability — or clear potential — to publish in the top journals in the field (e.g., APSR, AJPS, JOP, and comparable general-interest and field outlets).

What we offer

CUNEF Universidad is a private university based in Madrid, Spain with a strong focus on excellence in teaching and research in the social sciences. Knowledge of Spanish is not required. It is an interdisciplinary department with a very active group of economic and business historians.

We offer a very competitive salary, together with support for research and conference travel and administrative assistance for grant applications. Successful candidates will join a modern, growing university with an ambitious, research-driven culture and an international, interdisciplinary, English-language research environment.

How to apply

Applicants should submit:

1. CV

2. Cover letter — stating the reasons for applying and fit with the department

3. Teaching statement — stating teaching experience, including teaching evaluations where available

4. Job market paper

5. Three reference letters.

Applications should be submitted through: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo?joblst---6313 before 4 October 2026.

But also through Econjobmarket (econjobmarket.org) before 15 November 2026: https://econjobmarket.org/positions?show=all&type=reg&searchType=quick&saved_search_id=0&cutoffDate=2007-01-01&position_type_id=&category_id=&iso2=&oid=375

We will begin reviewing applications on October 4, 2026 and continue until the positions are filled. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview.

Questions can be directed to Agustín Casas (ssh@cunef.edu).

2. Call for Papers: Business History in Austria, Germany and Italy AGI-Symposium

Thursday, April 1st 2027 Deutsche Handelskammer in Österreich / German Chamber of Commerce in Austria Schwarzenbergplatz 5 Top 3/1, 1030 Vienna

Friday, April 2nd 2027

Vereinigung der Österreichischen Industrie / Federation of Austrian Industries

Schwarzenbergplatz 4, 1030 Vienna

For the second time, a regional conference will invite the three countries Austria, Germany and Italy (AGI) to a thematic exchange in the field of business history. The format envisages three to four sections, which will take place one after the other and not in parallel, so that all participants can hear all the presentations. Thematically, this symposium is focused on specific topics of this region.

The conference will comprehend on the current state and current trends in business history research in Austria, Germany and Italy. Comparative aspects between these countries form an essential component in this context.

Submissions on the following topics, among others, are welcome:

I. Theoretical and methodological approaches

II. Thematic topics include

■ Entrepreneurship and dictatorship

■ Business history and tourism

■ Business history and the Marshall Plan

■ State influence on entrepreneurial activities and operational processes

■ Economic transformations after the Second World War

III. Archival Collections

We explicitly invite colleagues from business archives to present their collections on one of the above mentioned topics to encourage researchers as well as young scholars to present their work. Applications, consisting of an abstract and CV, should be sent by October 30, 2026 at the latest to:

ahschneider@unternehmensgeschichte.de.

The organizers will decide on participation by the end of November 2026 and inform all participants.

For any upcoming questions please contact:

Walter Iber (walter.iber@uni-graz.at),

Luciano Renato Segreto (lucianorenato.segreto@unifi.it), Thomas Krautzer (thomas.krautzer@uni-graz.at)

Andrea Schneider-Braunberger (ahschneider@unternehmensgeschichte.de).

We are very much looking forward to receiving your proposals. Please include beside your abstract a short CV.

3. Discount code: Spare Parts

A Global History of a Modern Problem, 1940–1980 by Philip Scranton

When machines break, entire systems are exposed. Spare Parts tells the global history of replacement components and shows how their absence—or abundance—has shaped warfare, industry, and everyday life in the twentieth century. Philip Scranton traces the production, distribution, and use of spare parts across capitalist, socialist, and postcolonial economies from World War II through the Cold War.

Available 11/10/2026

$64.95 • Paperback • 9781421455440

Also available as an ebook

“Spare parts make the modern world go round-yet we have so far lacked a history of them. Well, here it finally is! Scranton’s book is a wild and wonderful ride, full of delightful twists and turns.”

—Lee Vinsel, Virginia Tech

Consensus, for example, positions itself as a tool researchers deploy under their control. It’s one I want to try out a bit more in the future. But this summer, Claude launched “Claude Science”, and it is, well, quite science-y.

And I do not need no AlphaFold and protein, RNA, whatever thingies. So what can someone like me do with this “Claude Science”? Without being a “scientist” (in the English sense).

What if a new tool was launched and nobody noticed it?

It’s been a while now since Claude Science launched, and I started to play with it. I am not sure if there has been a massive buzz around it — if so, not in my neck of the woods. So what I am writing about here is me trying it in the summer.

Since then, they released a desktop version and probably multiple updates, so this might be out of date, but I doubt it because… It's clearly not designed for social scientists. The setup makes this obvious: I kept toggling off all sorts of protein-folding, medical research standards, and god knows what the rest of them were… It’s probably a very powerful tool for someone.

But because most of our contemporary and historical data doesn't live in accessible online spaces, the only real research I felt I could do with it was literature research. There are probably other applications I haven’t thought about - if you can think of one or more, do let me know!

The state of management and organizational history

Testing out new AI tools works normally best if they have them do some research for you on something that you know and understand well. So I asked it to map the recent literature in my subfield (business history, historical approaches to management/organizations, including "uses of the past," organizational memory, and qualitative-historical methods).

Claude Science worked through way too many results from that initial search and began scoping by journal and domain, which was a reassuring step a human researcher would take. It came back with some leading journals:

It then began a thematic mapping, with “momentum, " which, in practice, means developing an early vs recent period split. Based on this it created a rising and falling set of themes:

Here’s the bibliographic portrait the tool developed:

“I built this from a bibliometric corpus pulled live from OpenAlex — distinctive subfield phrases (”uses of the past,” “rhetorical history,” “historical organization studies,” “organizational memory,” “corporate heritage,” etc.) plus a full sweep of the four specialist journals, scoped down to a management/organization/business-history core of 3,534 works (2015–2025). Data and figures are saved as artifacts.

Annual output holds steady at roughly 290–440 works/year with no strong secular trend — a mature, stable subfield rather than a booming or contracting one. The specialist journals form the backbone: Business History (1,037 works), Enterprise & Society (883), Journal of Management History (346), and Management & Organizational History (205) together dominate output, with the historical turn also surfacing in generalist outlets (Organization Studies, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies).”

By title-keyword tagging, the largest themes are industry/sector studies (527), institutions & imprinting (249), entrepreneurship & family firms (224), and organizational memory/forgetting (192). Comparing 2015–2018 with 2022–2025:

• Rising: historical methods & sources (ratio 1.55) and entrepreneurship/family-firm history (1.33) — the methods debate (ANTi-History, microhistory, historiographic approaches, source criticism) and the family-firm strand are the two clearest growth areas.

• Cooling (relatively): corporate heritage/brand (0.73) and general industry/firm studies (0.75), suggesting a shift away from descriptive sector histories toward theory- and method-driven work.

• Stable core: institutions/imprinting, identity/narrative, uses-of-the-past, and colonial/decolonial history all held roughly constant.

So far, so good - at a general level, this did not surface anything that seemed off-topic, and the trends analysis is genuinely interesting. It then offered up a more analytic take:

Landmark and most-cited works

The foundational theory pieces of the “historic turn” anchor the citation landscape — including Maclean/Harvey/Clegg on Conceptualizing Historical Organization Studies, Suddaby/Foster and colleagues on rhetorical history and historicizing, Rowlinson/Hassard/Decker on organizational history methods, and Coraiola/Suddaby/Foster on organizational memory and forgetting.

Most active authors

The prolific-author list reads as a who’s-who of the field: Albert J. Mills (34), Andrew Smith (31), Andrew Popp (29), Roy Suddaby (22), William Foster (22), John Balmer (21) — and notably your own name (Stephanie Decker, 18) sits squarely in the top tier, alongside Christina Lubinski, Diego Coraiola, Mairi Maclean, and Simon Mollan.

All the names checked out and the most-cited works surfaced roughly who I would have expected.

It then offered me a menu of further analytical options: a coauthorship/collaboration network, a citation-based map of which foundational works are converging into a canon, or a focused review of the fast-rising "historical methods" strand. So I asked for more, and also highlighted, since it already identified me in the data, to avoid any “smarminess” or “bs” around that in particular.

Interestingly, Claude Science repeats instructions in its own words, which helps confirm the message was received correctly. Another cool aspect was that when the token budget ran out, the tool held the query and asked if I wanted to continue when my token budget reset. That was much easier than in Co-Work, and I wish I could do it there.

Working its way through the analyses, Claude Science provided some interesting commentary:

The journal-esteem table reveals the key structural fact: the field's home venues (Business History h=74, Enterprise & Society h=40) sit far below elite generalist management journals (AMR h=600, Organization Studies h=258) on citation-based metrics — history is a book-oriented, slow-citation discipline. To assess author esteem fairly, I need to see who breaks into the elite generalist venues. Let me compute elite-journal reach per top author.

Now that is an interesting find - not that we did not know this, but that this can be read back by a tool from the data, and also: just how large is that chasm in citations?! Blooming heck…

But what came out of the citation network analysis was even more interesting:

OK, very flattering. Maybe too flattering? We have all heard about AI sycophancy by now, so I had it change and expand the entire publication corpus in later iterations, which lowered my Betweenness Score somewhat but did not significantly change this order.

More reassuring was this diagram, which is perhaps the more significant statement about the role and standing of different authors in our field (though you might have different views, and I am equally inclined to say the purely bibliographic calculation has its limitations while still being really interesting):

This diagram is what Claude Science developed this research question:

Anyone assessing esteem by raw h-index alone will systematically under-rate historians. So the meaningful esteem question is: who breaks into the elite generalist venues while remaining a historian?

Now, Roy’s position at the top of the diagram, far away from everyone, is certainly deserved. But would he identify specifically as a “historian”? He is still credited mostly as an institutional theorist, and deservedly so. The structural advantage of those scholars moving from management and organizational studies into history rather than from history into management is pretty obvious here. The outliers are, of course, Charles and Mairi, though their lower productivity also made me wonder whether the corpus needed expanding (which I asked for in the next iteration).

Leave a comment

1. Major discounts on key textbooks

2. Women’s entrepreneurship on Hagley History Hangout

3. Schildt on AI in qualitative research (OS)

4. Bucheli reviews The Nationalist Dilemma (JIBP)

1. Major discounts on the Handbook and Encyclopaedia of Management & Organizational History

Edward Elgar is still offering major discounts on the Handbook of Historical Methods for Management (70 per cent!) and the newly released Encyclopaedia of Historical Organization Studies (35 per cent!). They are running out at the end of September, so time to get your copy now!

• Handbook discount: HHMM70 redeemable at https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/isbn/9781800883734

• Encyclopaedia discount: DEAL35 redeemable at https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/isbn/9781035332922

Don’t forget that if you are an Elgar author, you also get a big discount (normally 50 per cent).

All deal details are available on the Perks page.

2. Hagley History Hangout Podcast - New Episode - She’s The Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship Since World War II with Debra Michals

Tune in here or wherever you find your podcasts: https://www.hagley.org/research/history-hangout-debra-michals

Women own over 40% of businesses in the United States and are responsible for a large majority of new business startups. How did this come to be?

Dr. Debra Michals, associate professor and chair of the humanities department at Merrimack College, answers this question in her book She’s the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship Since World War II (Rutgers University Press, 2025). Contrary to popular misconceptions about feminism pushing women into business, Michals finds that economic need drove women into business. More surprisingly, Michals finds that sexism and racism increased the numbers of women entrepreneurs by limiting their access to economic resources by other means.

In support of her work Dr. Michals received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit Hagley’s donations page.

3. New OS article on AI in qualitative research

Henri Schildt, who launched his own AI qualitative analysis tool (Skimle) has a piece in Organization Studies making the case for using AI in qualitative analysis. This issue has obviously been highly controversial, and personally, I am not sure I want AI to be involved in my interpretive practice. But with so much negativity around and plenty of situations where you may want to use such tools as first filter, it is worthwhile considering Henri’s point of view:

Schildt, H. (2026). The Case for Artificial Intelligence in Qualitative Research. Organization Studies, 47(9), 1501–1505. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406261452993

Worth pairing with this other new article:

O’Sullivan, D., & Ravasi, D. (2026). Prompt-making and sensemaking: Using generative artificial intelligence to interpret empirical patterns in qualitative research. Strategic Organization, 14761270261476963. https://doi.org/10.1177/14761270261476963

4. Marcelo Bucheli’s book review of The Nationalist Dilemma

The Journal of International Business Policy continues its series of historical book reviews. I reviewed Stern’s Empire Incorporated a while back, and Marcelo now published his review of a global history economic nationalism in the journal. Check it out:

• Bucheli, M. (2026). The nationalist dilemma: A global history of economic nationalism, 1776–present. Journal of International Business Policy. https://doi.org/10.1057/s42214-026-00240-2

5. Forthcoming BAM MBH Publishing Webinar

Last but not least, we are having a brand new publishing webinar coming up - freely available to all BAM members, and doctoral students only pay £20 for annual membership and have access to a wide range of training and events through BAM.

• 1 October 2026, 10am – 11.30am BST, online

We will be joined by Dr Anastasia Sergeeva, whose research focuses on entrepreneurial reasoning and value-laden aspects of innovating and organizing.

Anastasia is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Bath School of Management.

Her co-authored article in the Strategic Management Journal is available open access here: https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.3727. Please read the article in advance of the webinar for an in-depth discussion with the author and other participants.

Register for the event here.

The discussion covered many interesting issues, but at some point the panellists noted that the business and management community in the 1980s and 1990s focused on improving research quality. Panellists agreed that this phase was over, and that quality was now very high - much higher than other disciplines. Gerard Hodgkinson reflected that someone he knew started studying history, and through this he found out that all historians do is root around in archives.

I kid you not:

The audience started to murmur.

Some people turned to look towards me (seated conveniently right in the middle).

I had planned to make a comment to Gerard after, but then I just went:

“But that’s not what the historians in the business school do, Gerard.”

And Gerard, bless him, went:

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

And while this is a lovely anecdote, I am also relaying it here because I think he is right. Being in the business school has really forced historical researchers to think more deeply about what we do and how we can make it transparent.

And the article I co-authored with Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki and Elena Giovannoni about historical imagination has been an important part of this journey for me.

So today is part 2 of my longer post about historical imagination.

In part 1, we looked at the three-step process of gleaning meaning from sources, through interpolation, interpretation, and understanding.

And yet, for the resulting narrative to be considered historically rigorous, there are four important standards that Collingwood set out.

The four standards

While we based this on Collingwood’s criteria for a rigorous historical narrative, these are somewhat adapted and brought up to date:

1. The narrative makes sense, and is continuous and coherent.

2. The narrative is localised in time and space.

3. The narrative is consistent with other historical accounts.

4. The narrative is based on evidence.

Some of these may look straightforward (sure, evidence), others have raised questions when we presented this (particularly 3). They go together with the three practices that form the basis of historical imagination.

For full subscribers:

A short, common-sense description how to implement this.

But the underlying article is available open access, so check it out!

• Our paper: Stephanie Decker, Elena Giovannoni and Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, “A microhistory of architecture historical imagination and the Bauhaus”, Management & Organizational History 20 (4), 2024, 453-477.

In terms of the History in Organizations readership, three in ten of you are in the UK. Another two in ten are in the EU. The rest of you are spread across seventy-odd countries, with sizeable groups in the US, India, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Italy and South Africa. The funding landscape in our field is lopsidedly British and European, but for more generalist funders, you may have other national or institutional funders not listed here. Many of the funders below accept (collaborative) bids from international candidates.

But eligibility varies:

• UK only: you need a post at a UK institution, and usually UK residency.

• Europe-hosted: any nationality, but your host institution must be in the EU or an associated country. The UK counts here as an affiliated country (same for Switzerland, etc.).

• Open worldwide: no nationality or location bar, though you may have to travel.

Many competitions are annual or biennial (every two years) and fall in the same month each year, which means a deadline you miss is a date to put in next year’s calendar rather than a lost opportunity. Full subscribers can download a funding calendar at the end.

The one thing to read if you read nothing else

ESRC is permanently closing its three core applicant-led schemes on 4 November 2026. Responsive mode research grants, new investigator grants and secondary data analysis all shut that day and do not come back. This is not a round closing. It is the schemes ending.

Two replacements open the following morning, 5 November 2026, both with no closing date:

• Grow, £100,000 to £500,000 FEC, eighteen to sixty months, for people establishing research independence, pivoting into a new social science discipline, or building advanced methodological expertise. This is roughly where new investigator grants went, with a wider remit and a higher ceiling. ukri.org/opportunity/esrc-applicant-led-grow-awards

• Explore, £300,000 to £2 million FEC, up to sixty months, for curiosity-driven work that pushes disciplinary, methodological or conceptual boundaries. Individuals or teams of up to four core members. This is roughly where responsive mode research grants went. ukri.org/opportunity/esrc-applicant-led-explore-awards

• Challenge, £2 million to £10 million, follows in early 2027 for large collaborative programmes. ukri.org/opportunity/esrc-applicant-led-challenge-awards

Together with the React and Connect pilots already running, that makes five.

ESRC is running a virtual town hall on 30 September covering all three new calls. Town hall sign-up: ukri.org/events/economic-and-social-research-council-virtual-town-hall

Open now, with a deadline

Ordered by closing date.

Marketing Impact Research Grant 2026 · British Academy of Management and the Marketing Trust

Maximum £6,600 per project across up to three projects, one of which is ringfenced for an early career academic as lead applicant (early career defined as within five years of the doctorate). Open to researchers at any career stage. The remit is marketing broadly defined, including its interface with any other field of business and management: brand heritage, advertising, consumption and corporate communication. Members of the BAM Executive, the Marketing Trust Board and the awards committee are excluded. Deadline: Wednesday 23 September 2026, 14:00 UK. Institutional approvers have until 30 September, 17:00.

Nine days from publication, so this is the one to look at first. Applications go through BAM institutional approval, which in practice means a UK institution; BAM does not state this as a formal nationality rule, so ask if you are elsewhere. Cycle: annual, launching in June and closing in September.

bam.ac.uk/grants/marketing-impact-research-grant-2026.html

Postdoctoral Fellowships, Outline Stage 2026-27 · British Academy

Three years, starting autumn 2027, non-renewable. The Academy funds 80% of salary and directly allocated and indirect costs under FEC. Eligibility is narrow: your viva must fall between 1 April 2024 and 1 April 2027, and anyone who has ever held a permanent academic post is out. Success rate has rarely exceeded 10%. Nationality rules are a bit complex; make sure to check the website. Deadline: Wednesday 30 September 2026, 17:00 BST. UK-hosted, with nationality conditions. Cycle: annual, opening 1 July and closing 30 September, with an invited second stage the following January. Unsuccessful outline applicants cannot reapply unless invited.

thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/schemes/postdoctoral-fellowships

Pasold Research Project Grants · Pasold Research Fund

Between £751 and £2,500 for textile, dress and fashion history, including preliminary work towards a larger bid. Research expenses only, no salaries, no retrospective applications. Deadline: 1 October 2026. Open worldwide for research grants; workshop applications restricted to UK universities and museums. Cycle: twice a year, 1 March and 1 October. The Fund also runs MA, PhD, publication and Raine grants, plus Pasold Research Fellowships and the Neaverson Pasold Postdoctoral Fellowship.

pasold.co.uk/research-project-grants

Talent Development Awards 2026-27 · British Academy

Maximum £10,000 for skills acquisition rather than a research project: advanced quantitative methods, data science, digital humanities, languages. Around twenty-six awards expected. It will not fund a research project, time buy-out for the lead applicant, computer hardware, books, institutional overheads or payment in lieu of salary, and it will not fund activity that only applies skills you already have. Co-applicants may be based overseas. Deadline: 7 October 2026, 17:00 UK. UK only for the lead applicant, who must hold a long-term appointment at a UK HEI or IRO and be ordinarily resident in the UK. Cycle: annual, opening in July and closing in October.

thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/schemes/talent-development-awards

React Awards (pilot) · ESRC

Short, time-critical work of up to six months, assessed on a rolling basis with a target decision inside ten working days. Awards run £50,000 to £100,000 from a £1.5 million pot, at 80% FEC. Read the eligibility: you need a confirmed partnership with at least one public sector organisation that can use the outputs within six months, and the project must start within a month of funding confirmation. Deadline: 8 October 2026, 16:00 UK. UK only. Cycle: pilot, so no guarantee it repeats. The companion Connect pilot, £50,000 to £150,000 for testing novel ideas and building collaborations, closed on 10 June 2026.

ukri.org/opportunity/esrc-react-awards-pilot

ERC Starting Grant 2027 · European Research Council

€1.5 million over five years, with up to €1 million more available for relocation and equipment, rising to €2 million for researchers moving from a non-associated third country. Your PhD must have been defended no more than ten years before 1 January 2027, with no minimum; the ERC now counts from the certified date of the successful defence rather than the award date. The call opened 22 July 2026, earlier than its predecessors. Deadline: 14 October 2026, 17:00 Brussels. Europe-hosted, any nationality. Cycle: annual, though the calendar moves.

erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/starting-grant

Bursary for Business History Research · Business Archives Council

The annual fund is around £1,000 in total, awarded as one or more grants, for researchers who need to get to business or organisational archives in England and Wales and have no other way of paying for it. The BAC is explicit that it is aimed at people without permanent contracts and at widening who gets into the archives, and that the sums suit scoping and pilot work rather than a full project. Application is a Google Form, and the panel draws on academics at Essex, Newcastle and Henley. Deadline: midday, 16 October 2026. Open by archive location rather than by nationality: the archives must be in England or Wales. Cycle: annual, autumn.

businessarchivescouncil.org.uk/activitiesobjectives/bursary

Chandler Travel Grants for BHC 2027 annual meeting, call for papers · Business History Conference

Sheraton Mexico City Maria Isabel, 18 to 20 March 2027, on business history and political economy. The programme committee has flagged particular interest in corporations from emerging economies and in Latin American material, given the venue. Not funding as such, but the Chandler travel grants for graduate students and the postdoctoral travel awards both follow from acceptance, so this deadline is the gate. Deadline: 16 October 2026. Open worldwide. Cycle: annual, with the call closing in mid-October for a spring meeting.

thebhc.org/2027-bhc-call-papers

Exploratory and Henry Belin du Pont Research Grants · Hagley Museum and Library

Hagley holds one of the best business and technology history collections anywhere. Exploratory grants fund a one-week scoping visit at $400; du Pont grants run up to eight weeks. Anyone may apply, and Hagley encourages you to talk to library staff before you do. The stipends are modest, so most people pair them with other travel money. Deadline: 31 October 2026. Open worldwide, but you have to get to Delaware. Cycle: three times a year, 31 March, 30 June and 31 October. Decisions within 45 days of the deadline.

hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships

Carnevali Small Research Grants · Economic History Society

Up to £5,000, explicitly for pilot studies that seed larger applications, or small-scale work with a defined publication goal. It will not cover conference attendance, equipment, publication costs, subsistence, administration, salary buy-out or teaching cover, indirect costs, or room hire at your own institution. Successful applicants cannot reapply for three years. Decisions in six to eight weeks. Deadline: 1 November 2026. UK institution, and you must be an EHS member. Cycle: twice a year, 1 May and 1 November.

ehs.org.uk/award/carnevali-small-research-grants

Responsive mode, new investigator and secondary data analysis: final call · ESRC · UK only

See the section above for why this is the last one. All three close 4 November 2026, 16:00 UK, permanently. Research grants £350,000 to £1 million FEC over up to sixty months; new investigator grants £100,000 to £350,000, ruling you out if you hold a professorship or have previously led an ESRC or UKRI research grant, postdoctoral fellowships excepted; secondary data analysis up to £300,000. All at 80% FEC, all requiring social science to be more than half the research focus and effort, which an organisation studies framing carries comfortably even when the material is historical. Talk to your research office about their internal cut-off before you do anything else.

Research Fellowships · Leverhulme Trust

Tenable for three to twenty-four months, for experienced researchers who have been kept from a programme of original research by routine duties. Value up to £70,000. Deadline: 5 November 2026, 16:00. UK post and UK residency. Cycle: annual, autumn deadline.

leverhulme.ac.uk/research-fellowships

BAM and SIMA Collaborative Research Grant 2026 · UK lead, Italian partner

Maximum £4,000 for one project. At least one lead or co-applicant at a UK higher education institution and at least one at an Italian one, with the Italian applicant holding active SIMA membership in scientific sector ECON07/A. Register your application in the BAM Grants Portal now, deadline for applicants to submit applications in the BAM Grants Portal: Thursday 12th November 2026 at 16:00 (UK time). If you have an Italian collaborator, email BAM’s grants manager directly rather than working from any of those. Cycle: annual, intended. BAM has said equivalent schemes with ANZAM in Australasia and IAM in Ireland will launch in 2027.

bam.ac.uk/grants.html

Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History · Business History Conference

$500 and a plaque, for dissertations completed in the three calendar years before the annual meeting and written in English. You may submit only once, so choose your year. Nominations and self-nominations both accepted, consisting of a cover letter, the abstract and a CV. Finalists present at the annual meeting. Deadline: 14 November 2026. Open worldwide. Cycle: annual, 14 November.

thebhc.org/krooss

General research grants · Gerda Henkel Foundation

German foundation funding the historical humanities, naming history, history of science and history of law among its fields. Deadline: 20 November 2026. Committees meet in April 2027 and funding can start from May 2027 at the earliest, so build the lead time into your plans. Open worldwide. Cycle: twice a year. Worth knowing: the deadline does not apply to applications of €30,000 or less, which go through a simplified procedure, can be submitted at any time and are decided in roughly three to four months. Note also that the Foundation amended some funding regulations on 1 July 2026, so double-check the details.

gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/en/grants

Alfred D. Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar · Harvard Business School

Established business historians based outside the United States spend two to six months in residence at HBS. $7,000 stipend paid at the end of the visit, plus office space, computer, ID card and full library access. You must be in residence during the fall semester and participate in the Business History Seminar, which runs from late September through November. Application is a cover letter, CV, a two- to three-page proposal and two references via Interfolio. Of everything on this list, this is the one most precisely aimed at a mid-career or senior business historian outside the US, and it is not widely advertised in the UK. Deadline: 1 December, recurring. The page has shown 1 December 2025 since last winter and the current cycle is not posted, so treat December as the pattern and confirm before you write anything. Open worldwide except the United States. Cycle: annual, 1 December.

hbs.edu/businesshistory/fellowships

Thomas K. McCraw Fellowship in U.S. Business History · Harvard Business School

The sibling scheme. Established scholars from anywhere in the world whose primary interest is the business and economic history of the United States, in residence for a minimum of two months during the fall semester, researching in Baker Library or other Boston-area archives. $7,000 stipend and the same facilities. Deadline: 1 December, recurring, same caveat about the year shown. Open worldwide. Cycle: annual, 1 December.

hbs.edu/businesshistory/fellowships

ERC Consolidator Grant 2027 · European Research Council

€2 million over five years, with up to €1 million more in justified cases. PhD defended between five and fifteen years before 1 January 2027, counted from the certified defence date. Opens 24 September 2026. Deadline: 12 January 2027. Europe-hosted, any nationality. Cycle: annual.

erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/consolidator-grant

Coleman Prize · Association of Business Historians

£500, sponsored by Taylor & Francis, for a PhD dissertation in business history either on a British subject or completed at a British university. Dissertations completed in 2025 and 2026 are eligible for this round. The ABH reads business history broadly. Shortlisted finalists must present in person at the annual conference, and are entitled to apply for a Francesca Carnevali grant of up to £200 towards costs. The ABH site gives 19 February 2027 for nominations, 19 March 2027 for full dissertations from the longlist, and 7 May 2027 for finalist notification. Those dates went up before the formal 2027 call, so re-check when it appears. Open worldwide by subject or institution, not by nationality. Cycle: annual, February.

theabh.org/prizes-and-workshops

History at HBS Postdoctoral Fellowship · Harvard Business School

A twelve-month appointment running July to June, for a PhD completed within the past five years in business and economic history or cognate fields including political economy, economics, management and history. Residence required, with duties supporting the Business History Seminar series and possibly the Business History Review. Deadline: rolling, with early March the recurring point for full consideration. The 2026-27 round asked for applications by 8 March 2026; the 2027-28 date is not yet posted. Open worldwide. Cycle: annual, early March.

hbs.edu/businesshistory/fellowships

Alfred D. Chandler Jr. Travel Fellowships · Harvard Business School

$1,000 to $5,000 for library and archival research in business or economic history. Three categories of applicant, including graduate students or non-tenured faculty at any university, in the US or abroad, whose research requires travel to Baker Library and other Boston archives. Deadline: 15 March, recurring. The last stated date was 15 March 2026 and the 2027 date is not yet posted. Open worldwide, graduate students and non-tenured faculty. Cycle: annual, 15 March.

hbs.edu/businesshistory/fellowships

Open continuously, with no deadline at all

ESRC Explore and Grow · UKRI · UK only · Cycle: continuous, from 5 November 2026, 09:00

Explore £300,000 to £2 million FEC over up to sixty months, for curiosity-driven work pushing disciplinary, methodological or conceptual boundaries, from a project lead plus up to three co-leads. Grow £100,000 to £500,000 FEC over eighteen to sixty months, for establishing independence, pivoting into a new social science discipline, or building advanced methodological expertise. Both at 80% FEC, both requiring social science to be more than half the focus and effort, both assessed on a rolling basis with regular decision points. Challenge, £2 million to £10 million, follows in early 2027.

AHRC applicant-led mode · UKRI · UK only · Cycle: consecutive rounds, effectively continuous

Standard research grants £300,000 to £1.5 million at 80% FEC, requiring a project lead plus at least one co-lead, up to five years, with projects starting at least nine months after submission. AHRC runs these in consecutive rounds and the round numbering shifts, so check which round is live before you start writing, and check the Catalyst and Curiosity pages for their own terms. The standard grant opportunity carries a technical closing date of 22 September 2026 while AHRC updates its systems, after which a new application link goes up.

ukri.org/opportunity/ahrc-responsive-mode-standard-research-grant

Gerda Henkel small grants · Open worldwide · Cycle: continuous

Applications up to €30,000 sit outside the November and spring deadlines, go through a simplified procedure and can be submitted at any time, with a decision in roughly three to four months.

gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/en/grants

Between rounds, and when they return

ERC Advanced Grant · up to €2.5 million over five years · Europe-hosted, any nationality

The 2026 call closed on 27 August 2026. Up to €1 million more is available for relocation and equipment, rising to €2 million for researchers moving from non-associated third countries. There is no eligibility window, so career stage is judged on the record rather than years since PhD. You need to commit at least 30% of your working time to the project and spend at least half your working time in an EU member state or associated country. The 2027 round opens 27 May 2027 and closes 26 August 2027. Cycle: annual, one Advanced call per Work Programme.

erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/advanced-grant

Mid-Career Fellowship · British Academy · UK only

The 2026-27 round closed 26 August 2026, with awards starting between 1 September 2026 and 1 January 2027. Buys out up to 100% of your time for six to twelve months, to a maximum around £152,000 at 80% FEC. The guidance suggests applicants are usually within fifteen years of the doctorate, with allowance for career breaks, then makes clear this is not strictly enforced and that anyone who can justify mid-career status is welcome. Public engagement is weighted heavily alongside research quality. Previous holders cannot reapply. Cycle: annual, opening in June and closing in late August. Re-check the detailed terms against the 2027-28 guidance when it appears in June.

thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/schemes/mid-career-fellowships

Postdoctoral Fellowships · Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

The 2026 call closed 9 September 2026; the 2027 call should open around April and close in September. European Fellowships run twelve to twenty-four months and are open to any nationality. Global Fellowships, which send you outside Europe with a mandatory twelve-month return, carry additional nationality and long-term residence conditions. Up to eight years of research experience since the PhD. The 2026 call carried an indicative budget of €399 million and was expected to fund close to 1,600 projects. You apply jointly with a host. Cycle: annual, opening around April and closing in September.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu

Leverhulme Research Project Grants · up to £500,000 over up to five years · UK only

Open to Outline Applications from 21 September 2026 with no deadline. Detailed application deadline: 1 July 2026 (decision: Mid-October 2026), application deadline: 1 September 2026 (decision: Late-November 2026).

https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-project-grants

Later ERC calls · Europe-hosted · Cycle: annual, one call each per Work Programme

· Synergy 2027 opens 17 February, closes 11 May, up to €10 million for groups of two to four investigators.

· Advanced 2027 opens 27 May, closes 26 August.

· ERC Plus opens 1 June, closes 1 September.

Confirm all of these against the 2027 Work Programme when it is published rather than against this listing.

Cataloguing Grant · Business Archives Council · UK archives and organisations

It funds cataloguing work on business collections rather than a researcher’s own project, so the applicant is the repository. The 2026 round closed 5 August 2026 after an extension.

businessarchivescouncil.org.uk/news

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants · up to £10,000 · UK lead, co-applicants anywhere

The 2026 round opened 8 April and closed 3 June. Cycle: annual, spring. A 2027 round has not been announced.

Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowships at the IHR · Economic History Society · early career, UK-affiliated

Up to three one-year fellowships in economic or social history, run with the Institute of Historical Research. Stipends were £22,780 outside London and £24,780 for London-based fellows in the 2026-27 round, which closed 31 January 2026 at 11:00. You need a recently completed doctorate, or a thesis to be submitted by 1 October of the fellowship year, plus an informal mentoring arrangement with a British university. Cycle: annual, January, with the exact 2027 date to follow.

ehs.org.uk/award/economic-history-society-fellowships

Arthur H. Cole grants-in-aid · Economic History Association · up to $5,000 · open worldwide, EHA members

For PhD holders, with preference to recent recipients. Higher amounts in exceptional cases. The 2026 round closed 1 March 2026. Cycle: annual, 1 March.

eh.net/arthur-h-cole-grants

Hoare’s Bank Research Grant · Economic History Society · up to £10,000 · EHS members

Funded by C. Hoare & Co. for work in the bank’s own archives on the economic and social history of finance, wealth, investment and consumption in Britain between 1860 and 1938. Narrow, and unusually well-funded for a learned society award. Tenable for up to two years. Same exclusions as the Carnevali grants, and you owe a 2,000-word report, a public presentation with a blog post, and an annotated outline of further research possibilities in the archive. Deadline: 1 May, annually, with outcomes in six to eight weeks.

ehs.org.uk/award/hoares-bank-research-grant

Tony Slaven Doctoral Workshop and Francesca Carnevali Grant · Association of Business Historians · doctoral

The ABH site gives 26 March 2027 for the Slaven Workshop, issued alongside the main conference call, and 10 June 2027 for the Carnevali Grant, with £2,000 shared out at up to £200 a head and applicants required to be paid-up ABH members. Cycle: both annual.

theabh.org/prizes-and-workshops

Smaller and stranger

Small Grants Scheme · Newcomen Society · £500 to £10,000

For the history of engineering and technology. Read the eligibility carefully before you get excited: applicants must be registered charities, voluntary organisations or registered archives holding relevant collections, not individual academics or universities. Researchers can apply as a named collaborator on an application led by a partner archive, with the grant used as match funding. Applications start with an expression of interest by email, after which you are assigned a Trustee as a contact. Cycle: not annual, and no fixed deadline. It runs for one year from 25 February 2026 and is then under review, so do not assume there is a 2027 call.

newcomen.com/the-newcomen-society-small-grants-scheme

Henry Kaufman Financial History Fellowship · Business History Conference

Dissertation fellowships for PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellowships for those within five years of receipt of the degree. Multiple tracks, check websites for deadlines (normally three per year).

thebhc.org/grants

Not relevant for you?

Manage which type of content you receive from History in Organizations:

1. Go to substack.com/settings (on the app: tap your profile picture, then Settings).

2. Under Subscriptions, click on History in Organizations.

3. You’ll see a toggle next to each section. Switch off the ones you don’t want. Grey means off. You can change your mind any time.

There’s a shortcut, too: the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email will offer to unsubscribe you from individual sections rather than the whole newsletter.

The new archives were opened in a ceremony at Lever House by the CEO of Unilever, Fernando Fernandez, Chief of Global Business Services, Juan-Carlos Parada, and, of course, Claire Tunstall, the Global Head of Art, Archives and Records Management.

Apart from being a great event, all participants got a bespoke tour of the new archives, and the post today is largely images of the great stuff they have in Unilever’s corporate archives.

Check out the gallery below to get a sense of what the new archives space is like. Also spot the Colman’s Mustard Club advertising in there. Apparently they had 2,000 new applications every week when it ran in the newspapers and on the sides of buses.

But there were some special gems in there, and I’ve left those for the full subscribers as a special treat!

And don’t forget, companies like Unilever actually allow vetted researchers to access their archives by prior agreement. But even if not, it is always worthwhile checking out their website for information about the archives and seeing their digitised collections here: https://www.unilever.com/our-company/our-history-and-archives/.

For full subscribers, some highlights from the archives, and a reflection on the strategic narratives that Unilever is weaving around its archives and history.

Leave a comment