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  • The historic (wrong) turn in management and organizational studies

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    Bowden444111-Accepted.pdf (268.8Kb)
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    Accepted Manuscript (AM)
    Author(s)
    Bowden, Bradley
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Bowden, Bradley
    Year published
    2020
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    Abstract
    Purpose Management history has in the past 15 years witnessed growing enthusiasm for “critical” research methodologies associated with the so-called “historic turn”. This paper aims to argue, however, that the “historic turn” has proved to an “historic wrong turn”, typically associated with confused and contradictory positions. In consequence, Foucault’s belief that knowledge is rooted in discourse, and that both are rooted in external structures of power, is used while simultaneously professing advocacy of White’s understanding that history is fictive, the product of the historian’s imagination. Design/methodology/app ...
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    Purpose Management history has in the past 15 years witnessed growing enthusiasm for “critical” research methodologies associated with the so-called “historic turn”. This paper aims to argue, however, that the “historic turn” has proved to an “historic wrong turn”, typically associated with confused and contradictory positions. In consequence, Foucault’s belief that knowledge is rooted in discourse, and that both are rooted in external structures of power, is used while simultaneously professing advocacy of White’s understanding that history is fictive, the product of the historian’s imagination. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the intellectual roots of the historic (wrong) turn in the idealist philosophies of Nietzsche, Croce, Foucault, White and Latour as well as the critiques that have been made of those theories from within “critical” or “Left” theoretical frameworks. Findings Failing to properly acknowledge the historical origin of their ideas and/or the critiques of those ideas – and misrepresenting all contrary opinion as “positivist” – those associated with the historic (wrong) turn replicate the errors of their theoretical champions. The author thus witnesses a confusion of ontology (the nature of being) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge) and, consequently, of “facts” (things that exist independently of our fancy), “evidence” (how ascertain knowledge of a fact) and “interpretation” (how I connect evidence to explain an historical outcome). Originality/value Directed toward an examination of the conceptual errors that mark the so-called “historic turn” in management studies, this article argues that the holding contradictory positions is not an accidental by-product of the “historic turn”. Rather, it is a defining characteristic of the genre.
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    Journal Title
    Journal of Management History
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-06-2020-0037
    Copyright Statement
    © 2020 Emerald. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
    Note
    This publication has been entered as an advanced online version in Griffith Research Online.
    Subject
    Business and Management
    History and Philosophy of Specific Fields
    Marketing
    Social Sciences
    Business & Economics
    Foucault
    Management history
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/400927
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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