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New research focuses on the long-standing interdisciplinary interaction between business history and management science to explore how interdisciplinarity is actually done.

The two disciplines share common grounds in their primary interest in understanding business institutions and organizations. The interdisciplinary dialogue, however, has proved more problematic than the commonalities would lead one to expect, partly due to divergent disciplinary traditions and norms.

“The profound social nature of scientific knowledge creation was one of the fascinating learnings during research”, says Christian Stutz from Ģ��ֱ��.

Disciplinary traditions and norms hinder interdisciplinarity

Scholars gather around topics in which they are interested. Over time, such communities can establish associations and journals and gain considerable authority over new knowledge production.

For instance, the system of qualitative evaluation of research before publication, known as the peer-review system, mainly functions to evaluate new knowledge claims in relation to existing understandings.

While this system enhances robustness and credibility of research, it also protects, to a certain extent, the mere preferences of a community in power.

“Against this background, interdisciplinary research faces the challenge that scholars have to persuade the incumbent community to accept new sets of ‘preferences’”, Stutz says.

Efforts of a network of business historians and management scholars to overcome the boundaries

The findings of the research indicate that this legitimation process takes time. In the case of history and management science, the first calls to engage in interdisciplinary projects appeared more than 25 years ago. However, it required the persistent effort of a more or less connected group of scholars that finally led to a broader acceptance of history in major management journals.

“As a historian working in a business school environment, I easily identified with the interest of this group and wanted to contribute to their goals,” Stutz says. “Hence, I chose a research field in management science that arguably overlooked the importance of history so far: the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR).”

The four articles that make up the thesis by Stutz strive to infuse CSR scholarship with more history. Stutz does so by explicating the value of history in methodological, conceptual, and practical terms in the CSR context.

Corporate social responsibility is concerned with the responsibilities of business to pursue its goals in a socially acceptable manner. The research suggests that the infusion of history into corporate social responsibility would produce better results.

“If historians and corporate social responsibility scholars work together, I truly believe that we can produce more useful insights to make business more socially responsible,” Stutz says.

MA Christian Stutz defends his doctoral dissertation in Economic History, entitled “History and organizational theorizing blended: Insights from exploring the corporate social responsibility field”, on 11th of December in Seminaarinmäki H320 at 12:00. Opponent Professor Stephanie Decker (Aston Business School, UK) and Custos Senior Researcher Heli Valtonen (Ģ��ֱ��).

Christian Stutz (b. 1984) completed high school in 2004 (Wohlen, Switzerland) and graduated in History at the University of Zurich, Switzerland in 2012. He pursued his dissertation at the Department of History and Ethnology since 2014, while working as a research assistant—and later lecturer—at HWZ Universities of Applied Sciences in Business Administration in Zurich (Switzerland).

More information:
Christian Stutz
Ģ��ֱ��, Department of History and Ethnology
christian.stutz@fh-hwz.ch
+41 43 322 26 94