Book review: Organizations in Time, edited by R Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Stephanie Decker

Research output: Contribution to journalBook/Film/Article review

Abstract

Book review: Organizations in Time, edited by R Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli, Oxford University Press, 2014.

The title of this edited volume is slightly misleading, as its various contributions explore the potential for more historical analysis in organization studies rather than addressing issues associated with time and organizing. Hopefully this will not distract from the important achievement of this volume—important especially for business historians—in further expanding and integrating business history into management and organization studies. The various contributions, elegantly tied together by R. Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli in their substantial introduction (which, by the way, presents a significant contribution in its own right), opens up new sets of questions, especially in terms of future methodological and theoretical developments in the field. This book also reflects the changing institutional location of business historians, who increasingly make their careers in business schools rather than history departments, especially in Europe, reopening old questions of history as a social science. There have been several calls to teach more history in business education, such as the Carnegie Foundation report (2011) that found undergraduate business education too narrow in focus and highlighted the need to integrate more liberal arts teaching into the curriculum. However, in the contemporary research-driven environment of business and management schools, historical understanding is unlikely to permeate the curriculum if historical analysis cannot first deliver significant theoretical contributions. This is the central theme around which this edited volume revolves, and it marks a milestone in this ongoing debate. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should add that even though I did not contribute to this volume, I have coauthored with several of its contributors and view this book as central to my current research practice.)
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)333-337
Number of pages5
JournalBusiness History Review
Volume90
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2016

Bibliographical note

The final publication is available via Cambridge Journals Online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680516000386

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Book review: Organizations in Time, edited by R Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli, Oxford University Press, 2014.'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this