The Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2025, held in Copenhagen, confirmed the growing centrality of historical approaches in management research. Across five days, the Management History community demonstrated how history informs theory, methods, and pressing contemporary debates on power, technology, inclusion, and governance.
From the opening day, attention focused on methodological innovation. Professional Development Workshops explored microhistory, event studies, and the evolution of internal communication, showing how fine-grained historical evidence can reshape core organizational concepts. Empirical work addressed corruption and power in emerging markets, nationalism and strategy, and long-term institutional decline.
Midweek sessions expanded the field’s theoretical and geographical horizons. Scholars debated how to integrate historical consciousness into mainstream management theory, introduced Egyptological and Indigenous methodologies, and proposed alternative frameworks such as the Dharmic theory of the firm. Discussions on reconciliation, rematriation, and decolonization highlighted the normative stakes of historical scholarship.
The intellectual peak came with the plenary “The Presence and Absence of the Past,” which examined how history is actively lived through legacy, memory, and material remains. Well-attended paper sessions connected historical analysis to innovation, legitimacy, institutional change, and technological transitions—from guilds and cooperatives to AI and telecommunications.
Later sessions emphasized rhetoric, narrative, and responsibility, including non-Western perspectives in rhetorical history, the evolution of workplace deviance research, and the role of history in management education. The Management History Division Business Meeting marked a moment of consolidation, with updates on governance, awards, communication strategy, and the launch of a new divisional logo.
The final day linked history to contemporary challenges, addressing populism, corporate–political entanglements, gender and inclusive leadership across time, and historical perspectives on finance, governance, and sport.
