Abstract

"Critical Business History Studies? Is it worth it?"

OSCAR MONTIEL, Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez (oscar.montiel@uacj.mx)

There have been critiques on the way business history (BH) has evolved, its uses, and abuses (Coleman, 1987). Recently, some calls have been emerging on reimagining business history (Scranton & Fridenson, 2013), viewing it from diverse angles. Although there have been critical writings series (Yeager, 1999) on it, it appears there is a lack of a formal body where, under a critical lens, business history can be enriched and better position itself in front of other academic or public contexts.
How best can we critically apprehend the nature of the organization itself, its structure, and to the lived experience on its foundation, work, expansion, reorganization or failure, the whole entrepreneurial processes within?
Taking ideas from the Critical Management Studies (CMS) school (Alvesson & Wilmott, 1992), willing to challenge the taken for granted assumptions and institutional prerogatives upon which management has founded its apparent hegemony (Parker, 2002), eclectic by design (Hancock & Tyler, 2004), CMS has combined various schools of post marxism, post-structuralism and contemporary feminist theory for a discernible approach to analyzing management, systematically interrogating its philosophical assumptions, the imperatives, and techniques associated with its practice (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992). There are experiences in pulling CMS into other areas, like family business (Fletcher, 2013), advertising (Hamilton, Bodle & Korin, 2019).
The present paper has the purpose of exploring how to adapt the main premises of CMS to BH, where the results should suggest to open new research opportunities to advance in the understanding of management, history, and for the development of public policies.