William M. Foster

Rhetorical history as a source of competitive advantage

This paper develops a framework for understanding history as a source of competitive advantage. Prior research suggests that some firms enjoy preferential access to resources as a result of their past. Historians, by contrast, understand past events as more than an objective account of reality. History also has an interpretive function. History is a social and rhetorical construction that can be shaped and manipulated to motivate, persuade, and frame action, both within and outside an organization. Viewed as a malleable construct, the capacity to manage history can, itself, be a rare and inimitable resource.

History as social memory assets: The example of Tim Hortons

Abstract Strategic management research has demonstrated that firm-specific resources can confer a distinct competitive advantage. This research, however, tends to assume that the resources are fixed and immutable and that they operate inside the organization. We offer a competing view in which resources are socially constructed and operate primarily on external stakeholders. Drawing from emerging research in social memory studies, we argue that historical narratives are an emerging means of socially constructing firm-specific social memory assets that can be used to create competitive advantage. We illustrate our argument through an analysis of how Tim Hortons, a now iconic Canadian company, uses historical and tradition-based narratives to construct its brand identity.

Inventing Team Tradition: a Conceptual Model for the Strategic Development of Fan Nations

Abstract While the strong support of local fans will always be an important concern for big-league professional teams, new technologies are making it easier for distant fans to learn about and begin following teams from afar. To better ensure financial viability into the twenty-first century, we argue that major professional teams should create a strategy to build a fan nation containing both local and distant loyal fans. We argue that teams should invent traditions to entice both local and far-flung casual, and non-fans to become loyal members of a teams fan nation. The recent actions of the National Hockey Leagues Edmonton Oilers are used as a case study of how a team can use the invention of tradition to expand and enhance its fan base.

History and Organizational Change

This research commentary introduces historical consciousness to studying organizational change. Most theories of organizational change contain within them implicit assumptions about history. Made explicit, these assumptions tend to cluster into different models of change that vary by the assumed objectivity of the past and the associated malleability of the future. We explore and elaborate the implicit assumptions of history. We identify four implicit models of history in the change literature: History-as-Fact, History-as-Power, History-as-Sensemaking, and History-as-Rhetoric. We discuss the implications of theorizing organizational change from each of these views of history and outline future directions for studying change with a heightened understanding of history.

New identities from remnants of the past: an examination of the history of beer brewing in Ontario and the recent emergence of craft breweries

Abstract We present an exploratory analysis of historical narratives and data covering 200 years of beer brewing in the Canadian province of Ontario. These data are used to illuminate the process of collective identity emergence in established organisational fields. We argue that established fields are typically littered with identity remnants from ancestral organisations and related institutional configurations that can facilitate the successful emergence of new collective identities. In our analysis we first show how multiple identity elements fell by the wayside as the beer brewing field matured and settled on a corporate path. We go on to detail how some of these identity elements were subsequently recovered during the recent decades which marked the successful emergence and proliferation of craft beer brewing. Our study has implications for research on collective identity and organisational legacy, and we stress the importance of taking a historical lens for understanding present day phenomena.

A dynamic capabilities view of employability: Exploring the drivers of competitive advantage for university graduates

Purpose – The increasing demand for post-secondary education, and the ongoing difficulty students’ face in securing appropriate work upon program completion, highlight the importance of an enhanced understanding of employability resources for university graduates. Just as organizations achieve a strategic advantage from resources and dynamic capabilities (DCs), university graduates can similarly apply these principles and tactics to be competitive in the job market. The purpose of this paper is to ask the question: how can new graduates enhance their competitive advantage when entering the employment market? To address this question the authors propose to adopt the DCs framework to analyze the competitive advantage of a graduate and argue that university graduates can take specific steps to enhance their own competitive advantage in the labor market. Design/methodology/approach – An extensive review of the existing human resource and strategic management literature was used to develop a conceptual DCs mod...

Re-visiting the historic turn 10 years later: current debates in management and organizational history – an introduction

Abstract The establishment of Management & Organizational History (MOH) emerged out of earlier calls for a ‘historic turn’ in Management and Organization Studies (MOS) and a (somewhat mooted) critique of existing approaches to the study of history in the field. While MOS was seen as universalist, presentist, and scientistic, attempts at historical analysis were seen by some, in the words of Alfred Kieser, as generally “myopic fact collecting without a method.” The inaugural editorial of Management & Organizational History went on to call for greater exploration of the different methodological (and philosophical) approaches to the study of history. Central to the first issue of MOH was a renewed call for a ‘historic turn.’ Ten years later, there is some question if the ‘historic turn’ has been fully realized or even adequately conceptualized. Nonetheless, a growing consensus around the need for a historical turn has arguably served to paper over some potentially significant differences and debates. In this special issue, we revisit the idea and progress of the notion of the historic turn in MOS through the eight contributing articles. We frame our discussion of the papers through a focus on the notion of the historic turn itself, the issue of critically rethinking MOS from an historical perspective, new turns and developments, MOH and contemporary thinking about the past and history, the performance of history, polyphonic constitutive historicism, fusions of methods and theoretical framing, and tales from the field.

The strategic use of historical narratives: a theoretical framework

Abstract History has long been recognised as a strategic and organisational resource. However, until recently, the advantage conferred by history was attributed to a firm’s ability to accumulate heterogeneous resources or develop opaque practices. In contrast, we argue that the advantage history confers on organisations is based on understanding when the knowledge of the past is referenced and the reasons why it is strategically communicated. We argue that managers package this knowledge in historical narratives to address particular organisational concerns and audiences. As well, we show that different historical narratives are produced with the goal of achieving different organisational outcomes. The success of an organisation is thus dependent on the ability of its managers to skilfully develop historical narratives that create a strategic advantage.

Off-the-Ice Action in the National Hockey League: An Interview With Scott Howson of the Edmonton Oilers

Professional sports teams have become big business in North America, but sport management has received little academic attention. This interview with Scott Howson, the assistant general manager of the National Hockey League Edmonton Oilers, reveals what it is like to be a manager in professional sports. It explores strategy, human resources decision making, and innovation from the perspective of a manager.

Academic and Practitioner Antecedents of Scholarly Outcomes: Examining the Role of Industry Engagement of Business School Faculty.

Scholars, policymakers, accreditation bodies and industry leaders have called for an increased focus on scholarship that is both relevant and actionable for industry. In pursuance of this goal, many institutional solutions have been proposed. These solutions, however, have largely failed because they do not fully consider the individual and his or her background as significant factors in the choices an academic makes. To address the lack of research on individual academics, the authors conducted a two-part study that identified key issues and tested various hypotheses as to why some scholars choose to pursue actionable scholarship. Their findings show that five scholar-level factors (career stage, tenure, professional qualifications, active industry engagement and alumni affiliation) and one institutional-level factor (business school mission) influence whether or not they are likely to pursue research that is both relevant and actionable for industry.