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History, a Useful “Science” for Management? From Polemics to Controversies1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Eric Godelier
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Abstract

The aim of this essay is to analyze the way management sciences and practices use history or at least the kind of research which they define as history. This reflection will lead to discussing the possibility and the opportunity that an historical approach might have in creating management knowledge, especially “workable” know-how. A quick look at present-day exchanges between the two communities could lead us to the conclusion that there were tensions in the past that have not entirely evaporated. Might they explain the relative modesty of the dialogue, at least in France?

Type
Forum
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 791 - 807
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

1.

A scientific controversy opposes individuals who speak the same language and share the same system of norms, whereas a polemic opposes individuals whose criteria of judgment belong to separate universes. See NoirielG., Sur la “crise” de l’histoire (Paris: Belin, coll “Socio-histoire,” 1997), 43. An earlier version of this article was published in CohenY., “History, a Useful “Science” for Management? From Polemics to Controversies1,” Cahiers du Centre de recherches historiques, Paris EHESS, no. 25, October 2000, 135–48.

References

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3. I define “management historians” as academics who are educated in management, but also use the field of history.

4. I regard “Professional Historians” as those educated and trained in the field of History.

5. Especially marketing or inance but also positivist researchers from other fields (human resources management and strategic management, for example).

6. This can be evaluated through the growing number of unsolicited papers that are received by the editors of the French business history review Entreprises et Histoire.

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16. A special university for Commerce and Industry of Paris. In 2008, it will become the third-ranked Business School in France, the ESCP-EAP near the Place de la Republique in the center of Paris. Today’s top French business school, HEC, was created in 1881. In the late eighteenth century, only two schools existed: one was launched by Koechlin and Thierry in the city of Mulhouse in 1781. At the same time, the other was the farm-school of Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. I thank Andre Grelon for this information. One may read more about the French Business schools in the special issue: Entreprises et histoire, no. 14–15, June 1997.

17. In Great Britain, one of the irst teachers in management was Andrew Ure with his course in Principles of Manufacturing at the University of Edinburgh starting in 1804. He probably influenced another French Teacher, Charles Dupin, Wren, D., The Evolution of Management Thought, 4th ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1994), 63.Google Scholar

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31. D. Wren, op. cit., 10ff.

32. Sociology has already started this historical work on the birth of the discipline through the controversies that opposed Durkheim to historians like Fustel de Coulange. See Berthelot, J.-M., “La sociologie: histoire d’une discipline,” in La sociologie, Van Meter, K., dir. (Paris: Larousse, coll. “les textes essentiels,” 2000), 11–26.Google Scholar

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35. G. Noiriel, op. cit., 41.

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41. For instance, Mintzberg, H., Grandeur et decadence de la planification strategique (Paris: Dunod, 1994), 24.Google Scholar

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43. Ronan, C., Histoire mondiale des sciences (Paris: Seuil, coll. “Points,” 1988).Google Scholar I am thinking, as an example, of the way French management sciences present bibliographies and footnotes, giving better visibility to recent authors instead of older ones, or favoring quantity over quality with a long list of references that are not always integrated by the researcher thanks to a critical appropriation of their core themes and concepts.

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