The Use of History in Business and Management, and Some Implications for Management Learning

Last year the then Reviews Editor of Management Learning, Elena Antonacopoulou described three new aspects to the reviews section of the journal. These categories were knowledge-sharing, reflective and revisiting reviews. My purpose in this review is chiefly aimed at knowledge-sharing, in that the review will demonstrate that the ‘seemingly distant’ topic of history can ‘provide new ways of articulating and understanding the learning process and its outcomes’ (Antonacopoulou, 1999, 83). In addition however, as reviewing books often confronts the reviewer with new and different ways of seeing, this review will also include some reflection. As will become apparent, this seemingly disparate and unassuming collection of economic/business history texts has taught me much. It has not come from what the books are about necessarily (the birth of corporations, Japanese and British management education, the American influence on European business practices and management education, and ancients economies), but more from the different academic approaches to history demonstrated within them. Hopefully some of this personal learning will be instructive in considering how we consider the history of management and learning in organisations, and the choices involved in adopting historical approaches to organisations more generally, in order that we might better educate our students