Emerging from what was a somewhat staid sub-discipline, there is currently a battle for the soul of Management and Organizational History (MOH), at the centre of which is a widespread concern that much recent work has been more about how one should or might do history rather than actually doing historical work. If ever there was a time for a new volume on MOH, this is certainly it.

Provides an international collection of studies on knowledge-intensive organizations with insight into organizational realities as varied as universities, consulting agencies, corporations, and high-tech start-ups.

The coronavirus pandemic of 2019-20 and its associated global economic collapse has bluntly revealed that decision makers everywhere are ill-equipped to identify the innovative capacities of modern societies and, in particular, deploy managers to harness such capabilities. Getting the problem of management right is a voyage to the heart of human experience. Indeed, the perennial questions that haunt our existence almost invariably prompt answers that invoke conceptions of work, transformative effort and realisation of ideas. One way or another, all such endeavour requires management. It is often overlooked that more than any other discipline, management history brings into focus humanity’s most pressing questions. At the time of writing, these queries come with a disquieting urgency. What is management? How do its modern methods differ from those in pre-industrial societies? How does the management that emerged in Western Europe and North America in the nineteenth century differ from forms practiced in the twentieth? In what ways do Asian, African and South American societies have distinctive managerial philosophies? Perhaps most importantly, what don’t we know or don’t do very well? It is to these fundamental questions that the Palgrave Handbook of Management History speaks. The work’s 63 chapters – authored by 27 of the world’s leading management and business thinkers – explore virtually every aspect of management globally as well as across millennia. The series explores the theoretical contributions of classical Western business and management scholars (Adam Smith, Frederick Taylor, Elton Mayo, Peter Drucker, Alfred Chandler, etc.) as well as commentaries from critical theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Hayden White. The Handbook is also practical. For example, its content addresses the day to day experience of management in ancient Greece and Rome as well as the contemporary approaches of China, France, South Africa, India, Denmark, Australia, South America, New Zealand and the Middle East. In short, the Palgrave Handbook provides students of economics, management, business theory and practice, and critical studies with a single comprehensive and in-depth point of reference.

The Handbook of Historical Methods for Management offers an invaluable compendium for researchers seeking to expand their methodological toolkit. It showcases a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of management, provides both practical guidance and conceptual insights and offers a wide-ranging picture of historical techniques for management.

This book provides a valuable review of the disciplines of organizational and management history, illuminating the interconnectedness of these disciplines, identifying gaps in the literature, and sketching a model for a unified field of research and study. This co-authored study is a long-awaited theoretical re-evaluation of organizational and management history. The authors explore the disciplinary advantages of a joint approach to these related fields, noting opportunities for future scholarship, from the wider range of industries and case types to the richer theoretical toolbox. Within this framework, the book investigates interdisciplinary methodologies and surveys and analyzes the most promising of the newest theoretical lenses and empirical approaches in the field. The authors address complex issues from a metacritical perspective, from the emergent theorization of time in the context of organizational identity to the conundrum of case selection for empirical studies. Clear and thorough, the volume creates a compelling theoretical framework for future studies. New Directions in Organizational and Management History inaugurates, and sets the stage for, the new series De Gruyter Studies in Organizational and Management History.

We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive methodological paradigm within the broad field of organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as a key reference tool for researchers and students. For two decades, organization theorists have emphasized the need for more and better research recognizing the importance of the past in shaping the present and future. By historicizing organizational research, the contexts and forces bearing upon organizations will be more fully recognized, and analyses of organizational dynamics improved. But how, precisely, might a traditionally empirically oriented discipline such as history be incorporated into a theoretically oriented discipline such as organization studies? This book evaluates the current state of play, advances it and identifies the possibilities the new emergent field offers for the future. In addition to providing an important work of reference on the subject for researchers, the book can be used to introduce management and organizational history to a student audience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The book is a valuable source for wider reading, providing rich reference material in tutorials across organizational studies, or as recommended or required reading on courses with a connection to business or management history.

This important Handbook explores and evaluates dynamic environments and the appropriate strategic responses to them in the 21st century. Drawing together a collection of 29 original chapters, the Handbook makes an invaluable contribution to theory and practice by stimulating disciplined, rigorous and imaginative enquiry into the relationship between strategy and foresight. Leading scholars in the field of strategic management are brought together to offer innovative and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the past, present and future of strategy formation and foresight. In so doing, they challenge research in four key areas: strategy and foresight processes; strategy innovation for the future; understanding the future; and strategically responding to the future. The Handbook of Research on Strategy and Foresight is a comprehensive resource that will be invaluable for academics, students and practitioners interested in this important phenomenon.