British Academy of Management 2018 Paper Submission Now Open!

The British Academy of Management (BAM) is the UK's premier management studies conference, attracting scholars from a broad sweep of management sub-disciplines, from supply chain management to strategy!

Kevin has been organizing the British Academy of Management' (BAM) Management and Business History Track, which focuses on promoting Management and Business History work of theoretical importance to the BAM audience, since 2011.  Last year Alex joined him, along with Roy Edwards from the University of Southampton and Joe Lane from LSE, to establish a BAM Special Interest Group for Management and Business History which will continue to help promote the best of Management and Business History to the BAM audience.  

The British Academy of Management's 2018 Conference will take place at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, from 4-6 September 2018.  This year's conference theme is Driving Productivity in Uncertain and Challenging Times.  Paper submission is now open until the 28th February.

The Management and Business History Track will run again this year, in addition to the SIG which is in its second successful year.  We encourage all theoretically motivated submissions in the broad management and business history field.  This year we particularly look to encourage the submission of workshops and symposia around a broad theme, as well as Full (5-7,000 word) and Developmental paper submissions (1-2,000 word).  Submissions from PhD students are also welcome, and we also encourage PhD students to apply to participate in the BAM Doctoral Symposium.  Please note that those submitting papers are also expected to contribute to the paper review process.

Papers on management history in sport are, of course welcome! 

The track CfP is as follows:

BAM Management and Business History Track 2018

This track aims to encourage the growing number of management and business historians who work in business schools and social science departments to engage in constructive debate with a wide range of management scholars. The 2018 conference theme, ‘Driving Productivity in uncertain and challenging times’, is an ideal opportunity to explore the value of historical study for management research. Histories of organizations, industries and institutions give us the opportunity to understand how managers have responded to uncertain and challenging times in the past, whether it be through war, economic crisis, scandal or other disruptions to their activities. Inspired by Fayol, Ford and Taylor managers also attempted to boost productivity, often with mixed results. In this track we specialize in chronologically or longitudinally motivated research. We welcome papers, symposia or workshop proposals either using new and innovative methodologies, or applying archival methodology to a new disciplinary context. We are also interested in context specific papers using more traditional historical methodology but which take innovative approaches to relate their findings to wider social science concerns. In addition, we appreciate papers dealing with the legacy of uncertainty in the past in business and management more generally, and how it has influenced the diversity of experience in present day businesses, regions and communities.

This year we encourage cross-disciplinary papers and workshop submissions that link different Tracks, while the main conference theme ought to feature prominently in all submissions. As a group we are inherently multi-disciplinary and believe in the application of theory to historical analysis, and there is no single epistemology for approaching this. We aim to encourage theoretically orientated social science history with a clear relationship to present day debates in the management discipline.

Some theoretical and empirical examples of the genre of work that we seek to welcome include:

Maclean, M., Harvey, C. and Clegg, S.R., 2016. Conceptualizing historical organization studies. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), pp.609-632.

Cummings, S. and Bridgman, T., 2011. The relevant past: Why the history of management should be critical for our future. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 10(1), pp.77-93.

Edwards, R., 2010. Job analysis on the LMS: mechanisation and modernisation c. 1930–c. 1939. Accounting, Business & Financial History, 20(1), pp.91-105.

Mollan, S. and Tennent, K.D., 2015. International taxation and corporate strategy: evidence from British overseas business, circa 1900–1965. Business History, 57(7), pp.1054-1081.

Tennent, K.D. and Gillett, A.G., 2016. Foundations of Managing Sporting Events: Organising the 1966 FIFA World Cup. Routledge.

More details about this year's conference and venue can be found here goo.gl/nPZLe7 and you can find the paper submission website here goo.gl/V5VTwm.

We hope to see you at Bristol in September!