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Wim Van Lent

Other affiliations: ESSEC Business School
Bio: Wim Van Lent is an academic researcher from University of Montpellier. The author has contributed to research in topics: Human resources & Agency (philosophy). The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 9 publications receiving 72 citations. Previous affiliations of Wim Van Lent include ESSEC Business School.

Papers
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the turn in management and organization studies (MOS) and reflect on history as theory versus history as method, looking at previous research and the evolution of MOS, and situate the special issue papers in the current climate of this area of research.
Abstract: This paper aims to explore the turn in management and organization studies (MOS) and reflect on “history as theory” versus “history as method”.,Looking at previous research and the evolution of MOS, this paper situates the special issue papers in the current climate of this area of research.,The special issue papers included here each make a theoretical contribution to methodology in historical organization studies.,The eight articles featured in the special issue offer examples of innovative and historically sensitive methodology that, according to the authors, increase the management historian toolkit and ultimately enhance the methodological pluralism of historical organization studies as a field.

39 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article showed that private-trade regulations, as a historical form of adaptation, occurred as a response to declining performance and exercised a beneficial financial impact, underlining the need of dynamic models to capture complex historical events, illustrating how seeming inactivity may mask inconsistent activity.
Abstract: The first wave of global trade, in which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was a key player, writ large the problem of how “principals” could ensure that overseas “agents” protected company interests. The two principal mechanisms were suppression of opportunism and permission of agents to engage in private trade. There is near consensus in past research that the rigidity of the VOC in not permitting private trade left it unable to emulate more nimble rivals and contributed to its demise. Drawing on unique 18th-century archival data, a time-series analysis revises this assumption, showing that private-trade regulations, as a historical form of adaptation, occurred as a response to declining performance and exercised a beneficial financial impact. From the 1740s, control was more flexible than typically asserted, attempting to balance permission and prohibition. If principals recognized the economic upside of private trade, they were apprehensive about its social consequences. The study underlines the need of dynamic models to capture complex historical events, illustrating how seeming inactivity may in fact mask inconsistent activity. It also contributes to better understanding historical transitions when forms of adaptation may prove beneficial in the short run, but are insufficient to prevent decline in the long run.

15 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a longitudinal analysis of the Dutch East India Company (1700-1795) highlights the use of slack as a response to a resource constraint (the shortage of skilled labor).
Abstract: Slack is an elusive concept in organizational research, with studies documenting a variety of relationships between slack and firm performance. We advocate treating slack not as a resource, but as a practice – a sequence of events and responses over time. A longitudinal analysis of the Dutch East India Company (1700–1795) highlights the use of slack as a response to a resource constraint (the shortage of skilled labor). After documenting the negative performance effects of skill shortage, we identify a trade-off in the use of human resource slack (number of sailors above what is operationally required), in which slack enhanced operational reliability, but reduced efficiency. Derived from a historical context, this trade-off has contemporary relevance and is helpful in reconciling contradictory evidence on slack.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a historical case study of the Hudson's Bay Company's long term use of history in stakeholder relations was performed, and it was found that under conflicting internal and external pressures, the HBC's engagement with historical criticism became "sedimented" over time, involving both open and stakeholder-inclusive practices of "history-as-sensemaking" and instrumental "historyas-rhetoric".
Abstract: Increased scrutiny of corporate legitimacy has sparked an interest in “historic corporate social responsibility”, or the mechanism through which firms take responsibility for past misdeeds. Extant theory on historic CSR implicitly treats corporate engagement with historical criticism as intentional and dichotomous, with firms choosing either a limited or a high engagement strategy. However, this conceptualization is puzzling because a firm’s engagement with historic claims involves organizational practices that managers don’t necessarily control; hence, it might materialize differently than anticipated. Furthermore, multiple motivations could jointly affect managers’ approach to organizational history, especially when dealing with conflicting stakeholder demands, rendering it difficult to historicize consistently. Examining the relationship between the legitimacy of critical historic claims, corporate engagement with these claims and corporate legitimacy, the present paper performs a historical case study of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) long term use of history in stakeholder relations. The data suggest that under conflicting internal and external pressures, the HBC’s engagement with historical criticism became “sedimented” over time, involving both open and stakeholder-inclusive practices of “history-as-sensemaking” and instrumental “history-as-rhetoric”. Enriching understanding of corporate-stakeholder interaction about the past, this finding may stimulate its generation of social value and corporate legitimacy.

11 citations


Cited by
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01 Dec 2009
TL;DR: Paul P. Peterson as mentioned in this paper, "Resena del libro:======Politics in Time", History, Institutions and Social Analysis. New Jersey, 2004, p. 196 p.
Abstract: Resena del libro: Politics in Time. History, Institutions and Social Analysis. PAUL PIERSON. Princeton University Press. New Jersey, 2004. 196 p.

561 citations

07 Mar 1994

555 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe how people search hundreds of times for their favorite books like this conducting research literature reviews from the internet to paper, but end up in infectious downloads.
Abstract: Thank you for reading conducting research literature reviews from the internet to paper. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search hundreds times for their favorite books like this conducting research literature reviews from the internet to paper, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some malicious virus inside their desktop computer.

397 citations