HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE PAST IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Abstract

Our goals for this editorial are threefold. First, we contextualize the growing interest of management and organization scholars in matters of history, memory, and the past. Despite the increasing number of historical organization studies, functionalism and functional-interpretivism remain the dominant approaches in management and organization studies (MOS). Moreover, because European and North American scholars are overrepresented in the literature, analysis of the historical impact of global trade and multinational organizations on the relationship between the global North and South is limited. Second, we map the literature that connects history, memory, and the past to organizations and organizing. We provide an overview of MOS scholars’ initial efforts to develop humanist approaches to organization studies and discuss the role history plays in informing epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and empirical conversations in the field. Third, we highlight specifically how the articles in this special issue contribute to the body of historical organization literature.