The study of organizations and organizing since 1945

The history of organization studies is embedded in its times and the ways those times affect different regions differently. In particular, significant features of the field were molded by the moods and prejudices associated with academia after three critical events in 20th-century history: (1) the Second World War, (2) the social and political protest movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, (3) the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the triumph of markets. Speculating about the unfolding of the events of the future that will have similar impacts is discouraged by an awareness that neither their timing nor the severity of their impacts can be specified with any precision. In any event, our task is not to join any particular wave of the future, but to make small pieces of scholarship beautiful.