Adoracion Alvaro-Moya

2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform

Abstract: Drawing on organizational imprinting theory and business-history methods, this article is an attempt to identify what determines an organizational effective response to changes in the business context. Following an analytical structured narrative approach, we look specifically at a knowledge-based industry, such as engineering consulting, in a particular turbulent time for the sector, the decades that followed World War II. The exposure to such an environment provoked three major changes that persisted afterwards: new organizational structures, new services and changes at operational level. To what extent firms were permeable to changes in the environment and were able to successfully adapt their strategy and structure accordingly depended on several factors, as our research preliminary concludes, including access to the world leading consulting firms’ knowledge (via strategic alliances, among other), their ability to internalize such a knowledge, corporate entrepreneurial capabilities and the founder’s vision and entrepreneurial spirit. While research on organizational imprinting has usually focused on companies´ early years, the role of the founder and, to a lesser extent, firms` first steps to go abroad (Stinchcombe, 1965; Hannan et al., 1996; Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013, García Canal et al. 2018) our study highlights the influence of other sensitive periods in organizations, such as economic openness in a formerly protected market, and the first partnerships with leading international contractors.

2022 Mexico City

Abstract: Drawing on the corporate entrepreneurship (CE) theory, this article examines the rise of the Spanish engineering consulting firm Técnica y Proyectos SA (TYPSA), from its foundation, in 1966, as a project office within a larger national-based construction group, until its consolidation as a family multinational in the 2000s. Our research shows how contextual and intra-organizational changes affect the CE drivers identified by entrepreneurship theory, and highlights resilience as a new element reinforcing entrepreneurial orientation over time. The study also enriches the Chandlerian-biased historical debate by focusing on project-based professional services and assessing the role of decentralization and managerial leadership in corporate entrepreneurship.

2022 Mexico City

Abstract: Business historians have paid a great attention in the last forty years to the historical study of management education systems in a wide array of Western countries. The scholarship, however, has tended to put managers and business schools in the centre of the analysis, neglecting how management education was perceived from other professions, like engineering professions (Kipping, Amdam & McGlade 2020; Kipping, Puig & Üsdiken 2004; Amdam et al. 2003, Engwall & Zamagni 1998; Amdam & Dávila 2021). Literature, furthermore, has mainly focused on executive education, while in-company training and undergraduate studies remain under researched (Kipping 1998; Tumbe 2021). This paper contributes to literature by looking at management education at engineering schools and examines the time and content of the courses taught. The paper addresses those issues comparing what happened in two late-industrializing European countries, Norway and Spain, in the second half of the 20th century. The comparison allows us to simultaneously evaluate the impact of national forces on the engineering profession’s perception of the role of management education for engineering practice. The latter changed indeed dramatically in both countries in the years that followed Word War II (Amdam et al., 2003; Puig & Fernández, 2003; Nygaard, 2020). If until the 1960s engineers were deemed qualified for top management positions based on high technical skills as well as practical manager experience, this shifted towards a need for management education in some form. American management models and methods were promoted in both countries by American missions and local productivity centres. But while the American management education and science have been present mainly at a theoretical level in the Norwegian case, Spanish engineers could also witness the American managerial competence in situ thanks to the partnerships created around the construction of American military bases in Spain and American direct investment.

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

Abstract: This paper analyses the origins and first years of the Turkish Management Development Centre (TMDC), founded in 1968 upon an international cooperation project financed by the United Nations, the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development, and the technical and execution advice of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The paper addresses the role of management training, on a broad sense, in international cooperation programs after World War II and, in particular, the role of ILO in the implementation of management training centres in developing economies.

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract: This paper investigates the business of spiritual services and, in particular, the marketing, branding and other promotional policies of pilgrimage shrines. It does so by looking at the spiritual services provided, in the late Middle Ages, by the wealthiest monastery in the Iberian Peninsula at that time, the Monastery of Guadalupe. Only a few years after the young Hieronymite order took over the Monastery, in 1389, it had become a large holding of enterprises devoted to agriculture, stockbreeding, crafts, and charitable and spiritual services (Llopis, 1995 and 1998). The excellent economic results achieved until the mid-sixteenth century can be primarily attributed to the monks' successful branding and marketing practices around the wordship of the Blessed Virgin (Santa Maria of Guadalupe) and all the spiritual services associated with it. The revenue obtained through spiritual services allowed the monks to later increase the sanctuary’s tangible assets (that is, land and cattle) as well. In this paper, we analyse how the Hieronymites were able to develop a differentiated spiritual service around the icon of Santa Maria of Guadalupe, how they fought against imitation and counterfeiting, and how they got the institutional support needed to create their brand. We contribute, therefore, to a better understanding of the medieval pilgrimage business, an issue little explored by the business history scholarship (Bell & Dale, 2011; Jonveaux, 2015). We offer some insights, furthermore, on marketing and branding at preindustrial times and for the service industry, a time period and a sector usually neglected by literature on the topic (Moore & Reid, 2008; Belfanti, 2017; Bastos & Levy, 2012; De Munck, 2012; Maitte, 2009; Richardson, 2008).

2026 London

Abstract: This paper analyses the origins and first years of the Turkish Management Development Centre (TMDC), founded in 1968 upon an international cooperation project financed by the United Nations, the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development, and the technical and execution advice of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The paper addresses the role of management training, on a broad sense, in international cooperation programs after World War II and, in particular, the role of ILO in the implementation of management training centres in developing economies. The analysis shows that management education played a more significant role in post–World War II international cooperation programs than previously acknowledged. As recent studies on Latin America have also noted (Amdam & Lluch, 2024; Lluch & Amdam, 2024), ILO emerged as a key actor in disseminating management practices aimed at boosting productivity and fostering industrial modernization. Through its training and advisory programs, initially targeting business elites and later middle managers and technical staff, the ILO actively contributed to building local capacities in countries such as Turkey. Its work, carried out in close collaboration with national partners and other international agencies, including the Ford Foundation and U.S. official aid programs, highlights a transnational dimension of management education that intertwined economic, political, and social objectives within postwar international cooperation. Ultimately, this study calls for a reassessment of the ILO’s role and management education as instruments of cooperation and development, broadening our understanding of the institutional networks that supported the global expansion of productivity and business models during the Cold War.