Historicity in Organization Studies

An important book raising the often-unspoken ontologies of historical work in the realm of business and organizations. From questioning the chronological nature of historical narrative and its implied causalities to tracing the innovations in employing historical approaches in business management since the millennium, this collection of chapters offers insights into the practical and fundamental way in which philosophical considerations matter to research.

—Stephanie Decker, Professor at University of Birmingham


As soon as we go beyond the borders of our present and begin to explore remote pasts and futures, management and organization scholars are exposed to two dangers. The first is the exaggeration of continuities and anachronism about the past. The second is the projection of present ordinariness into the future. So how can we describe long-term processes of entrepreneurship, accounting, marketing, finance, information systems or innovation? This edited volume gathers a team of leading interdisciplinary scholars inspired by process philosophy, phenomenologies, and critical schools. After presenting issues, debates, and perspectives likely to inspire and guide historical description, several examples of historical work in entrepreneurship, accounting, and organization studies are used to show situations in which researchers have had to tackle this resonance between ontology and methodology in their historiography. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of management and organization studies.


François-Xavier de Vaujany is Professor of Organization Studies at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL (DRM), France. His research focuses on the societal and political dimensions of work organization and its management from the 1930s to the present, in particular in the US and the French contexts.


Kätlin Pulk is an Associate Professor of Organization Theory at Estonian Business School, Estonia. Her research focuses on time and temporality in organizations and in organizing, organizational change, outsourcing, backsourcing, innovation, commitment, continuity and an event-based view of time.


Pierre Labardin is a Professor at La Rochelle University, France. He specializes in accounting and management control history. He is a founding member and, from 2021 to 2023, President of AHMO, the French Business History Association.