Finding a turn in Canadian management through archival sources

How history can inform corporate responsibility: the statutory rule of profit allocation

Purpose

This study aims to present how a historical governance mechanism (a statutory rule of profit allocation) could answer the practical question of profit allocation, thereby proposing a methodology to enhance future quantitative studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The rule sets profit allocations to a predetermined set of stakeholders in corporate charters. It could be seen as a tool used by historical organisations to enact corporate social responsibility (CSR). The authors propose a straightforward way to calculate the payout ratios promised by this rule to each stakeholder. This methodology was applied to shareholders and used to calculate the promised dividend payout ratios.

Findings

This rule constitutes a natural experiment from which modern organisations could learn to implement the most relevant profit-allocation schemes given their CSR strategy. The authors propose calculating a promised payout ratio that would allow scholars to empirically examine the rule and its effects and provide accurate recommendations to these organisations.

Research limitations/implications

This mechanism allows the study of profit allocations made to stakeholders (not limited to shareholders or employees like it is usually done). The promised payout ratio makes future quantitative investigations possible.

Practical implications

Modern organisations could use the CSR mechanism to allocate profits continuously in formats that would best fit their strategy and environment.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first article to examine the statutory rule of profit allocation per se, which proposes a new methodology to calculate payout ratios promised by the rule. The idea is to investigate their impact and provide recommendations for modern organisations to adapt.

Accounting for management and organizational history: strategies and conceptions

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of where the course of the collective efforts in historical research on business and organizations has taken this discipline. By raising two key contributions that have sought to reshape the contours of management and organizational history, the authors trace the work of their field since their inception and, in doing so, critique the utility of these typologies as representative of diverse historical knowledge in management and organization studies (MOS).

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on elements of an integrative review that seeks to critically appraise the foundation of knowledge built in a scholarly field, the authors interrogate the historical knowledge that has been (and is being) produced in three leading management and organizational history journals by synthesizing the posture history takes as an object and subject of study in MOS. Over 400 articles were closely examined and categorized using Rowlinson et al.’s (2014) research strategies in organizational history and Maclean et al.’s (2016) four conceptions of history. Then, this research was used to examine the integrity of these two typologies and their practice by management historians.

Findings

The bulk of the work our field has produced mirrors an analytically structured history feel – where “doing history” straddles careful divide between data analysis and narrative construction. Narrating as a conception of history used in organization studies research remains the most subscribed representation of the past. It was found that while some work may fit within these typologies, others especially those considered peripheral of mainstream history are difficult to confine to any one strategy or conception. The authors’ examination also found some potential for a creative synthesis between the two typologies.

Research limitations/implications

Because only three management history journals are used in this analysis, bracketed by the choice of the periodization (between 2016 and 2019 inclusive), this study must not be viewed as being wholly representative of all historical research on business and organizations writ-large.

Practical implications

This research attempts to demonstrate the recent direction management and organizational historians have taken in crafting history. The authors embrace the opportunity to allow for this paper to act as a tool to familiarize a much broader audience to understand what has been constituted as historical research in MOS to-date and is especially useful to those who are already contributing to the field (e.g. doctoral students and junior scholars who have demonstrable interest in taking up historically inspired dissertations, articles, chapters and conference activities).

Originality/value

The research conducted in this article contributes to the debates that have sought to define the scholastic character of management and organizational history. The authors build on recent calls to take part in creating dialogue between and among each other, building on the collective efforts that advance history in both theory and practice.