The Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023, held in Boston from August 3–8, marked a year of consolidation and methodological depth for the Management History Division. The program underscored history not as background, but as a way to address enduring organizational, political, and societal questions.
Across paper sessions, scholars examined management history through international, political, and industrial lenses, exploring origin stories of managerial practice, the historical analysis of industries and corporations, and the evolving relationship between management, the state, and politics. Several sessions explicitly positioned history as a source for theory and research design, reinforcing its analytical and explanatory value in management studies.
Professional Development Workshops formed the backbone of the Boston meeting. PDWs tackled archival research, critical biography, storytelling, and the practical challenges of collecting and interpreting historical data. Methodological innovation was paired with pedagogy, including sessions on teaching history and fiction in business schools and on translating historical inquiry into publishable management theory. Other workshops addressed contemporary pressures on scholarship, from rankings and pandemics to social media.
A central highlight was the plenary on the history of entrepreneurship, which opened new research avenues and framed entrepreneurial change in long historical perspective. Complementing this, a DIG-sponsored PDW—“Unicorns and Other ‘Fantastic’ New Ventures: Lights and Shadows of Entrepreneurial Evolution”—examined the promises and limits of entrepreneurial growth through historical cases, alongside sessions on community-based enterprises and diverse organizational legacies.
Beyond the scholarly program, the Division held its Executive and Business Meetings, reinforcing governance, community engagement, and future priorities, and concluded with a well-attended social event that showcased the collegial spirit of the field.
