Cruz, Rafael Luis De Jesus
BUSHIST - Article Reading 1
The article by Todd Bridgman and Stephen Cummings examines how business history
can encourage innovative thinking. The authors contend that a thorough and critical analysis of
the past can empower people and organizations to contest widely held beliefs, question
prevailing assumptions, and produce fresh solutions for resolving problems. It also highlights
how the linear view of how management emerged may limit the perspectives of management
scholars toward other fields such as medicine and architecture.
Based on the article, management and business students are introduced to the
monocultural views on business history (e.g. Industrial Revolution, US railroad companies). The
authors argue that this limited view of history can possibly limit the full potential of the
management field for future development. Since its origins in the United States and Britain
during the 19th century, the history of business and management’s temporal focus does not seem
to have shifted focus, compared to other fields such as architecture and medicine, and reflect new
concerns and problems in the present. Because of the more diverse and dynamic histories of the
fields of architecture and medicine, it may possibly be what helps prompt creative hybrids and
different forms of innovation within these fields.
Through this, the authors wish to argue that the history of business and management
should be further explored past its old-fashioned views. Rather than teaching what is worthy of
learning is the management history that happened in the UK and the US between 1800 and
1920s, we should also encourage business scholars to actively seek out different perspectives in
the field’s history in order to expand views for innovation and empower deeper innovative
thinking.