Event Report: The origins and evolution of professional football clubs

On 22nd and 23rd June 2023, the Soccer Mad Boffins were in London to attend a British Academy of Management (BAM) sponsored event at Birkbeck, in University of London's City campus.

The two day event featured eight academic papers as well as a key note by Richard McDermott, company secretary at the Football Association (and Birkbeck graduate).

Our own paper was on the early years of the FA, but others focussed on football clubs in England, Scotland and Brazil, sustainability, regulation, and more. The common approach was to examine the way that club football has evolved, using historical or longitudinal studies.

Special thanks to the BAM Business & Management History Special Interest Group, and to our friends at Birkbeck especially Sean Hamil and Professor Geoff Walters who helped to organise the event with us, and to everyone who chaired sessions.

Here are some photos of our presentation:

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!

Soccer-mad-boffins help to launch BAM SIG!

BAM’s Management and Business History Track was restarted in 2011 by Kevin from with help from Dr Roy Edwards, of the University of Southampton, and John Wilson, now Pro-Vice Chancellor for Business and Law at Northumbria University. The track, which encourages scholars to engage with the historical study of management and business topics, has grown over the years and has also seen many successful PDW sessions associated with it. Now, the SIG is being launched with Dr Tennent and Dr Edwards acting as co-chairs, and joined by Alex as secretary and Joe Lane from LSE as treasurer. The SIG aims to continue the work of raising the profile of historical research within BAM and the wider Management Studies field, representing management historians working in UK business and management schools and working with other SIGs to help illustrate the potential of history as a research method. We also seek to encourage the use of history in teaching "mainstream" business and management disciplines and in particular the development of case studies based on archival material. Every field of management studies has a history and the potential to be researched from a historical perspective, and the SIG aims to bring scholars together from across BAM who have an interest in historical methods.

We presented a soccer-mad-boffins paper at BAM at Newcastle last year and will be submitting a paper this year.  The 2017 conference takes place at the University of Warwick between the 5th and 7th of September.  Both full (5-7,000 word) and developmental (1-2,000 word) papers as well as workshop submissions are welcome.  Find out more here https://www.bam.ac.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=3178 and the Management and Business History Track Call for Papers is reproduced below:

Reconnecting management research with the disciplines: shaping the research agenda for the social sciences (BAM 2017) 

This track aims to encourage 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 2017 conference theme calls for management scholars to re-engage with social science disciplines. This provides an excellent opportunity for management historians to consider the role that history can play in influencing management knowledge and practice, as well as contributing to wider theory in the disciplines of economics, strategy, accounting, finance, law and sociology. In this track we specialise in chronologically or longitudinally motivated research. This year we particularly welcome papers relating to the economic or social history of business or management, 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 the spirit of pluralism we also 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.

Soccer Mad Boffins Summer Conference Activity: British Academy of Management Conference 2016, Newcastle

Having spent recent weeks/months being busy launching our new book, we realised it is now already November and that we've been a bit quiet on the blog lately.

So, better late than never, we thought now might be as good a time as any to provide a quick summary of our conference activities over the previous few months.

Following July's previously reported successful jaunt to the Management History Research Group's workshop in Sheffield (and the tie-in article that we wrote for Sheffield Star newspaper about that cities hosting of World Cup 1966 fixtures) in September we headed North, to the British Academy of Management's 2016 Annual Conference - this year hosted by Newcastle University Business School.

Our paper had received positive comments during the peer review process leading up to the conference and so we looked forward to presenting our work and discussing with other peers our research.

This year the business and management history track was particularly attended and there was a real buzz about the occasion - in attendance were a number of leading academics.  We had some really productive discussions afterwards, and also outside of the seminar room.  Thanks to all who were there and who we spoke to.   It is very encouraging to see our work garnering interest from such esteemed colleagues!

We also had a space on the 'Meet the Authors' desk where our book had a display. This was a really fun thing to do and we hope to participate in more of these at conferences in future. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and spoke to us, picked up a flyer, or had a look at the sample copy of the book.

All in all a really outstanding conference. We'll be back!

Information about next years BAM conference, which will be held at Warwick, is here.