History as a Mode of Inquiry in Organizational Life: A Role for Human Cosmogony

Abstract

Inquiry into social and organizational life has been characterized predominantly by a structural-functionalist orientation, following the influence of sociologists such as Talcott Parsons. While this orientation has produced a great deal of knowledge and insight in the field of organizational theory, there are ways in which this orientation has led to unintentional consequences. The structural-functionalist orientation tends to generate a snapshot approach to research by focusing on the givenness of social structures and in so doing, adds to a sense of reification of organizational processes. Organizational life is a socially constructed reality. This is easily forgotten because by nature, social institutions begin to degenerate into recipe knowledge for its members, and original meanings and intentions that once guided social arrangements get lost. This paper proposes that we need a methodology which attempts to capture the historicity and continuity of organizational life, and the contingencies and decisions made through time. We need to pay attention to the human cosmogony, the human creation of the world through contingencies, accidents, and choices, to attempt to re-discover the original intentions and choices of predecessors. A brief review of historians and historical philosophers' views of methods for studying human action is investigated.