Constructing Trustworthy Historical Narratives: Criteria, Principles and Techniques
| Author | Thomas J. Roulet,Michael J. Gill,David James Gill |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12262 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 29, 191–205 (2018)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12262
Methodology Corner
Constructing Trustworthy Historical
Narratives: Criteria, Principles
and Techniques
Michael J. Gill, David James Gill1and Thomas J. Roulet2
University of Oxford, Sa¨
ıd Business School, Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP, UK, 1University of
Nottingham, School of Politics and International Relations, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK, and
2King’s College London, FranklinWilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street, London SE19NH, UK
Corresponding author email: michael.gill@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Organizational scholars increasingly recognizethe value of employing historical research.
Yet the fields of history and organization studies struggle to reconcile. In this paper, the
authors contend that a closer connection between these two fields is possible if organi-
zational historians bring their role in the construction of historical narratives to the fore
and open up their research decisions for discussion. They provide guidelines to support
this endeavor,drawing on four criteria that are prevalent within interpretive organization
studies for developing the trustworthinessof research: credibility; confirmability; depend-
ability; and transferability. In contrast to the traditional use of trustworthiness criteria to
evaluate the quality of research, the authors advancethe criteria to encourage historians
to generate more transparent narratives. Such transparency allows others to comprehend
and comment on the construction of narratives, therebybuilding trust and understanding.
Each criterion is converted into a set of guiding principles to enhance the trustworthiness
of historical research, pairing each principle with a practical technique gleaned from a
range of disciplines within the social sciences to provide practical guidance.
Introduction
Organizational scholars increasingly recognize
the value of incorporating historical evidence into
their theories. Researchers suggest that historical
accounts provide new perspectives that could
infuse organizational theories with a greater
sensitivity to the issues raised by the humanities
(Burrell, 1997; Zald, 1993), a richer understanding
of organizations (Sydow, Schrey¨
ogg and Koch,
2009) and a new outlook on accepted assumptions
(Jacques, 2006). Yet organization studies contin-
ues to neglect history (Alvesson and Sk¨
oldberg,
2009; Warren and Tweedale, 2002) and retains an
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their
constructive and supportive comments in developing this
paper.
ahistorical character ( ¨
Usdiken and Kieser, 2004)
as the two fields of research struggle to reconcile
(Greenwood and Bernardi, 2014).
In this paper, we contend that organizational
historians could foster a closer connection be-
tween these two fields by making the conduct
of their research and the construction of their
narratives more transparent. By accounting for
and justifying their methodological decisions,
organizational historians would provide organi-
zational scholars with an opportunity to build
greater trust in their work and facilitate more
open conversations. Currently, however, while
there is some emerging practical guidance for
organizational historians (see Kipping, Wadhwani
and Bucheli, 2014), this remains limited. As
Zald (1996, p. 256) pointed out, ‘there is little
explicit attention to issues of historiography and
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