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Oral History, the Business History of Slavery and Enslavement...

...African Women Entrepreneurs, and History and Theory

Stephanie Decker FAcSS FBAM

Aug 1

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After nearly two weeks of conferencing, I’m heading home to sleep through the weekend. It was fun, stimulating and exhausting in equal measure. Before signing off for the weekend, I thought I would put down what I took away from the Carlsberg Rethinking Entrepreneurship Conference (Fredericksberg, Copenhagen), the Academy of Management Conference (Bella Centre, Copenhagen), and the World Economic History Congress (Lund, Sweden).

AOM 2025

For the first time in Europe, and outstripping all expectations with over 13,400 participants, over 9,000 were non-US participants. So, pretty overwhelming, all in all.

What did I do? Running between sessions in the cavernous Bella Centre, mostly. My first session was a great panel organised by Rohin Borpuraji about History and Theory, with an excellent cast of characters: Andrew Nelson, Andrew Hargadon, Natalya Vinakurova, and myself. Natalya, in particular, talked about her recent SMJ article based on historical research into the Financial Crisis, which I very much look forward to having the time to read.

I felt my “pièce de resistance” was an image that I nicked from the social media post of a colleague, which just encapsulates how historians view the presentation of many examples of “history-informed research”:

On Monday, I got to present some historical research in a session on social evaluations, which was perhaps not an ideal fit. Still, it was a very friendly session. Then, during the discussions, someone pointed out (in their comments on a non-historical paper) the reputational damage of Dr Guillotine, who had not wished to be associated with the guillotine. Which they described as a medieval innovation. Which gets me back to the image above. I could not help myself and had to say “it’s early modern!!” in my comments. (I didn’t add that medieval people were normally hanged — and presumably clubbed to death, but here maybe a medievalist can help me out here with the details.)...