Haveman, H.A., Habinek, J., and Goodman, L.A. (2012) ‘How entrepreneurship evolves: the founders of New Magazines in America, 1741–1860’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 57, 4: 585–624.

This article examines how individual actors navigate social structures in order to acquire resources and launch their new ventures. The researchers test the argument that, as industries develop, it becomes increasingly difficult for newcomers to become established. This historical study is based on evidence about the American magazine industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though initially restricted to an elite group of publishing-industry insiders, they found later founders were mostly newcomers, of more modest social status, but that their success was uneven and that insiders retained their dominance at the centre of the industry.

Lugar, C.W., Garrett-Scott, S., Novicevic, M.M., Popoola, I.T., Humphreys, J.H., and Mills, A.J. (2020) ‘The historic emergence of intersectional leadership: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of St. Luke’. Leadership, 16, 2: 220-240.

This article, which is also discussed in our Researcher Profile (Case 14.3), is an account of the career of Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a former slave, who became a prominent banker, entrepreneur and community leader in the state of Virginia in the early 1900s. She was the first African American woman in the United States to establish and lead a bank, the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. The article also examines her role in leading the Independent Order of St. Luke, a mutual aid society (similar to a modern social enterprise), that was led by African American women. It is also a good example of a ‘microhistory’, a detailed study of a unique research subject that has the objective of providing new insights into a larger phenomenon or process.

Jones, C. (2001) ‘Co-evolution of entrepreneurial careers, institutional rules and competitive dynamics in American film, 1895–1920’. Organization Studies, 22, 6: 911–44.

This article presents an historical case analysis of the early American film industry, tracing the careers of two distinct groups of pioneering entrepreneurs – one group were developing the new technologies of film-making while the other group, which emerged from the existing entertainment industry, was focused on the content. The researcher uses archival data and historical analysis to show how these different elements co-evolved, and how changes in the institutional ‘rules’ affected the fortunes of each group of entrepreneurs.

Oertel, S. and Thommes, K. (2018) ‘History as a Source of Organizational Identity Creation’. Organization Studies, 39, 12: 1709-1731.

This article looks at how entrepreneurs make use of history in order to promote their businesses. It presents a case study of a German watchmaking industry cluster in Glashütte, a town in the state of Saxony. The cluster had developed in the mid 19th century after a leading maker relocated to the town in response to a government call for economic regeneration. However, the researchers’ main focus is on the present day and how 21st century firms are presenting stories about the past (i.e. ‘rhetorical history’). To do so, they examine the complete website contents of twelve sample firms. Their analysis reveals a number of similarities and differences in the ways that these businesses tell their own stories and that of the watchmaking cluster in which they are located.