Mairi Maclean

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Verified

Mairi verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MA, MBA, PhD
• Professor at University of Bath

The promise of a closer union between organizational and historical research has long been recognized. However its potential remains unfulfilled: the authenticity of theory development expected by organization studies and the authenticity of historical veracity required by historical research place exceptional conceptual and empirical demands on re...

A common lament is that business history has been marginalized within mainstream business and management research. We propose that the remedy lies in part with more extensive engagement with organization theory. We illustrate our argument by exploring the potentialities for business history of three cognitive frameworks: institutional entrepreneurs...

This paper draws upon archival and oral history research on organizational transition at Procter & Gamble (1950-2009), during which P&G evolved from a multinational to global enterprise. Intertextuality, the ways in which texts appropriate prior works to produce new texts, illuminates the practical workings of rhetorical history, accentuating inter...

British interwar management (1918-1939) has been criticized as overly conservative, comprising a core of progressive firms amidst a mass of conservatively-run, family-dominated businesses. According to the dominant narrative, British firms exhibited little interest in new managerial approaches. Our study of the Rowntree business lectures and Britis...

Elite philanthropy—voluntary giving at scale by wealthy individuals, couples and families—is intimately bound up with the exercise of power by elites. This theoretically oriented review examines how big philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom serves to extend elite control from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social an...

How do women negotiate and express authenticity in professional contexts where their presence and identities are largely rendered (in)visible? We draw on intersectional invisibility as our conceptual lens to explore how women early career researchers subjectively negotiate authenticity given prevailing conditions of visibility, invisibility and hyp...

This special issue represents the first effort to bridge paradox theory and historical analysis further. Its goal is to create a fertile environment for advancing the historical study of organisations by contributing to discussions on various research topics where organisations, paradoxes, and temporality intersect. Defining organisational paradoxe...

This article explores the role of history in management learning. Our starting point is the notion of historical reflexivity, which promotes a non-linear analysis of what becomes taken-for-granted, acknowledging that past, present and future are bound up with the historical development of management and organization. Our analysis recalibrates histo...

Taking Northeast England as our proving ground, we argue that social entrepreneurship played a highly productive role in deepening the social economy of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Social enterprises flourished in the fields of community welfare, education, healthcare, recreation, and religion, enriching innumerable lives, and creating value a...

It is often assumed that industrial sociology scarcely existed as a topic of study before the Second World War. Here, we illuminate its antecedents by showing social relations in work organisations being vigorously debated by workers and managers in the Rowntree lecture conferences, an integral part of the British interwar management movement (1918...

Despite growing interest in time, history, and memory, we lack an understanding of the multi-temporal reality of organizations-how past, present, and future intersect to inform organizational life. In assuming that legacies are bequeathed from past to present, there has been little theorization on how this works practically. We propose that the lex...

Purpose This study explores how a small minority of social entrepreneurs break free from third sector constraints to conceive, create and grow non-profit organisations that generate social value at scale in new and innovative ways. Design/methodology/approach Six narrative case histories of innovative social enterprises were developed based on doc...

Historical organization studies denotes organizational research that draws on historical sources, methods and knowledge to promote historically informed theoretical narratives attentive to both theory and history. It thus aspires to dual integrity, whereby organization theory and history inform one another without either becoming dominant. By histo...

Much thought has been accorded to the evolving nature of business history. It is only relatively recently, however, that attempts have been made to articulate methodological issues in a more epistemologically explicit and reflexive fashion. This article contributes towards this burgeoning agenda. It does so by examining the methodology underpinning...

Extant research has focused on the role of philanthropy in the socio-economic development of western countries, but little is known about the role of indigenous voluntary organisations in bridging social divides in the developing world. To help redress this imbalance, we present findings on the motivations, strategies, methods, and impact of five l...

How can we understand the multiple, intersecting webs of oppression that Palestinian women activists face in their everyday organizing? With a long tradition of counter-hegemonic organizing, the Palestinian context presents opportunities and challenges for women pursuing activist causes in the public domain. Adopting an intersectionality framework,...

How can we better understand the puzzle of low-skilled migrants who have acquired citizenship in a European Union (EU) country, often with generous social security provision, choosing to relocate to the United Kingdom (UK)? Drawing on Elias’s figurational theory as a lens, we explore how relational interdependencies foster the mobility of low-skill...

How is it that global elite universities operating in a hyper-competitive world replete with aspirational challengers maintain positions of dominance within the field of higher education decade after decade? Taking a Bourdieusian approach, we argue that the highest-ranking universities strategically leverage pronounced philanthropic advantages to d...

Drawing on a cultural perspective from the Global South, Notsie narrative, a West African literary folklore, we explore the high churn rate in the UK financial services industry. Viewing the storied accounts of former financial complaint handlers through a Notsie narrative lens, we examine why they frequently quit their well-paid jobs. Our study el...

Britain is often depicted as a laggard in management education before the late creation of two graduate business schools in London and Manchester in the mid-1960s triggered the emergence of a new academic sector. According to the dominant narrative, the anachronistic views of Britain’s industrial leaders and disdain of its universities for practica...

This article expands understanding of how institutional biography may inform institutional change by examining Conrad Hilton’s role in building the global branded hotel chain (1946-1969). We show how an individual’s institutional biography can play a pivotal role in their development as an institutional entrepreneur and the institutionalization of...

To what extent should business have an implication of service when its fundamental purpose is profit-seeking? We explore this issue through a contextually informed reappraisal of British interwar management thinking (1918-1939), drawing on rich archival material concerning the Rowntree business lectures and management research groups. Whereas exist...

Drawing on the psychological concept of scarcity mindset as a lens, we explore UK-based ethnic entrepreneurs' accounts of their behaviors and choices to theorize ethnic business venture failure. Our findings suggest the constraints of 'having too little' entrepreneurial resources can induce three organizing tensions in organizing, community embedde...

Please see our Call for Papers for a Special issue of Business History on 'Organizations in Time: Paradox and History'. Deadline for Submission: 1st September 2022 Guest Editors: Stewart Clegg University of Stavanger Business School s.clegg@uts.edu.au Miguel Pina e Cunha Nova School of Business and Economics miguel.cunha@novasbe.pt Charles H...

A salient if under researched feature of the new age of global inequalities is the rise to prominence of entrepreneurial philanthropy, the pursuit of transformational social goals through philanthropic investment in projects animated by entrepreneurial principles. Super-wealthy entrepreneurs in this way extend their suzerainty from the domain of th...

We examine the role of mediators in locally embedding the community foundation model of philanthropy to enable its global diffusion. We hold that mediators, as trusted agents within elite networks, promote and legitimate institutional innovation by tailoring the model to satisfy local requirements. They thereby limit resistance while creating futur...

We examine the role of mediators in locally embedding the community foundation model of philanthropy to enable its global diffusion. We hold that mediators, as trusted agents within elite networks, promote and legitimate institutional innovation by tailoring the model to satisfy local requirements. They thereby limit resistance while creating futur...

We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive methodological paradigm within the broad field of organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as a key reference tool for researchers and students. It evaluates the current state of play, advanc...

Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the field of power, we examine the cross-national translation of organizational models and the strategic processes induced in recipient institutional contexts. By means of an in-depth historical case study, we demonstrate how elite strategists mobilized networks and symbolic capital to disrupt field relations and em...

The literature on interwar British industrial management has been severely critical. British firms have been generally presented as overly conservative, comprising a small core of progressive firms amongst conservatively-run, family-dominated businesses. According to this critique, British firms displayed little interest in new managerial approache...

The social technologies of the web permit new techniques of research to emerge, often with novel ethical challenges. One such technique is digital ethnography. While there is a robust literature associated with digital approaches to ethnography, there is a lack of development in how digital ethnography can be used when researching vulnerable popula...

Persistent tensions arising from the exploration–exploitation paradox continuously threaten the accomplishment of organizational ambidexterity. Structural, contextual, and sequential solutions designed to alleviate these tensions dominate the ambidexterity literature. None of these adequately explains how top executives implement tension-alleviatin...

A salient if under-researched feature of the new age of global inequalities is the rise to prominence of entrepreneurial philanthropy, the pursuit of social goals through philanthropic investment in projects animated by entrepreneurial principles. This chapter proposes a typology of the philanthropic identities that wealthy individuals craft during...

Management Learning marks its 50th anniversary in 2020. The journal has a long history of publishing critical, reflexive scholarship on organizational learning and knowledge. This Special Issue is a forum to celebrate and build on this history through critical and reflective engagement with the past, present and future of management learning, knowl...

How, why and with what consequences do entrepreneurs engage in philanthropy? This is the focal question of this special issue, and one that has yet to be satisfactorily answered in the literature on philanthropy. We propose that historical research has an important role to play in understanding the motives, methods, rewards, achievements and limita...

Why does disclosure continue to be seen as a panacea for failings in corporate governance,despite mounting evidence that it is a weak instrument of control? Through amicro-historical study of the constitution and deliberations of the Greenbury committee,which placed executive remuneration disclosure at the heart of UK corporate governance,we demons...

One of Pierre Bourdieu’s great skills and gifts to organizational researchers is his ability to reveal and make manifest the hidden mechanisms of social stratification that often remain invisible in organizational and social life. In this chapter, we explore Bourdieu’s contribution to the study of elites, power and domination. We apply his ideas an...

Drawing on the discursive practice turn in social theory, we examine the career journeys of skilled West African migrants based in Britain. While many, especially those from developing countries, may end up in elementary occupations, accounts of their progression into professional occupations remain elusive. Here, we unpack specific transient momen...

Drawing on a framework that integrates discursive practices and relationalism, we explore the relevance of relational ties for the cross-state mobility of naturalised third-country nationals (NTCNs) within the European Union (EU); examining how relational ties facilitate their mobility to the United Kingdom. Our data derive from in-depth interviews...

Purpose – We aim to answer two main research question. First, we ask to what degree the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to systemic perturbations and subsequent enquiries established to recommend solutions to perceived shortcomings. Second, we ask how the solutions proposed in these landmark governance texts might be explained....

How might political ideology help to shape an organizational field? We explore the discursive construction of the multinational hotel industry through analysis of one of its leading actors, Hilton International (HI), conceived by Conrad Hilton as a means of combatting communism by facilitating world peace through international trade and travel. Whi...

Class analysis has undergone a ‘cultural turn’ in recent years, driven most notably by the growing influence of the work of Pierre Bourdieu. We seek to connect this perspective with organization studies via an analysis of the political, economic and cultural cleavages that exist within a sample of professionals, managers and executives – summarily,...

We examine service nepotism, the practice of bestowing gifts or benefits on customers by frontline service staff based on a perceived shared socio-collective identity. Adopting a micro-sociological approach, we explorethe practice as played out in multi-cultural transient service encounters. Given the dearth of existing research and low visibility...

Longitudinal studies with a mix of binary outcomes and continuous variables are common in organizational research. Selecting the dependent variable is often difficult due to conflicting theories and contradictory empirical studies. In addition, organizational researchers are confronted with methodological challenges posed by latent variables relati...

We explore the meaning and implications of Bourdieu’s construct of the field of power and integrate it into a wider conception of the formation and functioning of elites at the highest level in society. Corporate leaders active within the field of power hold prominent roles in numerous organizations, constituting an ‘elite of elites’, whose network...

This paper examines the relevance of employing an oral history method and narrative interview techniques for business historians. We explore the use of oral history interviews as a means of capturing the expression of subjective experience in narrative and metaphor. We do so by analysing interviews concerning the transition of East German identitie...

This paper assumes a network dynamics perspective to explore the charitable sector campaign known as ‘Give it Back, George’, which overturned a threatening tax change announced in the UK Budget 2012. We consider network activity from diverse viewpoints. Collaboration by disparate players enhanced the campaign’s legitimacy, high-status actors with a...

This paper develops theoretical understanding of the involvement of wealthy entrepreneurs in socially transformative projects by offering a foundational theory of philanthropic identity narratives. We show that these narratives are structured according to the metaphorical framework of the journey, through which actors envision and make sense of per...

This article highlights a dynamic and productive duality in the expression of organizational identity claims between demonstrating coherence with the past and responsiveness in the present. Informed by renewed interest in the concept of institutional leadership, which is precisely concerned with the management of this temporal duality, we argue tha...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the multi-ethnic marketplace as the site of the emergence of service nepotism: the practice where employees bestow relational benefits and/or gifts on customers on the basis that they share a perceived common socio-collective identity. The authors draw on the contemporary turn to practice in socia...

This paper demonstrates how structured reality television programming has changed our theoretical understanding of the celebritisation process. By focusing on the cultural productive aspects of this genre of programming, we are able to see how marketers leverage fashion systems to remediatise marketplaces and create new celebrity forms, a process w...

Corporate failures and financial crises periodically lead to speculation and critique of the Big Four in the UK. Wide-reaching regulatory changes and reforms have emerged as a consequence, yet the overall dominance of the large accounting firms remains an immutable truth. This paper explores the dominance of the Big Four drawing on Bourdieu’s rich...

Bourdieu’s construct of the field of power has received relatively little attention despite its novelty and theoretical potential. This paper explores the meaning and implications of the construct, and integrates it into a wider conception of the formation and functioning of elites at the highest level in society. Drawing on an extensive dataset pr...

Purpose - – The small accounting practice, despite being the most numerous part of the profession by number of firms, remains largely under-researched. Part of the reason the small practice category remains elusive is that researchers find it difficult to precisely define the object to study, and yet, this may be precisely the reason for studying i...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore some of the distinctive features of organizing and organization in France which set it apart from organization in other nations, and which are fundamental to its modus operandi . In particular, this article is concerned with elite connectivity and concerted action by elite “connectors”. Design/meth...

What causes some business owners to be marginalized by a social structure that empowers others? This paper explores the relational dynamics of legitimation within a professional service venture context, using a Bourdieusian framework to elucidate the struggles for capital and legitimacy that characterize the venture development process. We identify...

This article builds upon archival and oral history research on organizational change at Procter & Gamble (P&G) from 1930 to 2000, focusing on periods of transition. It examines historical narrative as a vehicle for ideological sensemaking by top managers. Our empirical analysis sheds light on continuities in the narratives they offer, through which...

This paper explores pathways to power from the perspective of the French corporate elite. It compares those who enter the ‘field of power’ with those who fail to reach this final tier. Adopting an innovative econometric approach, we develop and test three hypotheses. These underline the pivotal role of external networks and the strategic advantage...

The dispositions and invisible cognitive structures central to organizational foresight are more likely to emerge in young or transforming industries, which are less constrained by the need to achieve institutional legitimacy.

This paper unpacks strategic foresight by exploring the creative evaluation and reconfiguration of sources of potentialities into resources and productive outcomes. Placing emphasis on the everyday practices of organizational members’ positioned lower down the organizational hierarchy, we identified prospective sensemaking, multi-lateral conversati...

Emphasizing practice as the site of the emergence of strategic foresight, this paper draws on the contemporary turn to ‘practice’ to examine how the organizing practices of members positioned further down the organization may facilitate (or constrain) their ability to enact foresightful actions. Adopting a case-based approach, three software compan...

Tourism is a potent realm for theorizing broader issues of culture and taste. Exploring dining and culinary pursuits can shed light on the production and reproduction of gastronomic culture and broader struggles for authenticity. We explore the ‘liquid times’ of late modernity, and how the competing processes of popularization and legitimization co...

The economic crisis has accentuated the social and economic dislocation experienced by disadvantaged communities at a time of unprecedented political and public interest in philanthropy. This has concentrated attention on the contribution that philanthropists might make in addressing socio-economic challenges, and on the role that social innovation...

Strategic foresight as a derived outcome of corporate foresight exercises has led to the dominant discourse on strategic foresight as an episodic intervention encompassing a proliferation of organizational foresight methodologies. We argue that such an approach is flawed, consigning strategic foresight to a narrow function in a planning perspective...

Research beyond the field of entrepreneurship has long observed the involvement of super-wealthy entrepreneurs in large-scale philanthropic endeavours, while the world’s media has endowed them with celebrity-like status. However, entrepreneurial philanthropy is largely absent from the entrepreneurship research literature. This article addresses thi...

This paper demonstrates the importance for entrepreneurship of historical contexts and processes, and the co-evolution of institutions, practices, discourses and cultural norms. Drawing on discourse and institutional theories, it develops a model of the entrepreneurial field, and applies this in analysing the rise to global prominence of the Indian...

The dispositions and invisible cognitive structures central to organizational foresight are more likely to emerge in young or transforming industries, which are less constrained by the need to achieve institutional legitimacy. Five key points: •Organizational foresight, conceived of as the ability to transgress boundaries and evaluate different fu...

In contexts of complexity and high uncertainty, turning the differing visions of stakeholders into a shared attainable vision is crucial to the creation, validation and acceptance of a realized innovation. This paper seeks to explore the contingency role that product innovation teams play in mobilising the divergent visions of various organisationa...

This article develops a new perspective on reflexive practice in the making of elite business careers. It builds upon Bourdieu’s practice framework to examine how business leaders from elite and non-elite backgrounds develop and practice reflexivity in their everyday lives. The article draws upon in-depth life-history interviews with members of the...

This article examines elite business careers through the dual lens of sensemaking and storytelling as recounted in life-history interviews with business leaders. It explores how they make sense of, narrativize and legitimate their experiences of building their careers within and beyond large organizations. The research contribution is twofold. Firs...

Drawing on the social theory of practice, this paper ‘unpacks’ scenario thinking in the form of strategizing in product innovation teams to explore when and how the practice may lead to the identification of opportunities for innovation. Adopting a case-based approach, three software companies engaged in four new product development projects served...

This paper focuses upon the relationship between the business and philanthropic endeavours of world-making entrepreneurs; asking why, how and to what ends these individuals seek to extend their reach in society beyond business. It presents an original model of entrepreneurial philanthropy which demonstrates how investment in philanthropic projects...

This article focuses on the social processes that inform cultural production, asking how tastes are formed, transmitted, embedded and reproduced across generations. These questions are explored through a study of William Morris, his working methods and products, and their impact on the decorative arts in Victorian Britain and beyond. We demonstrate...