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The Use of Digital and Archival Sources in Business Research

From the ARQ research webinar hosted by the University of Kent and the British Academy of Management

Stephanie Decker FAcSS FBAM

Oct 24

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Contemporary archival collections are becoming more diverse and complex. They range from centuries-old paper documents to emails, Slack channels, and abandoned websites captured by the Wayback Machine or the Internet Archive. Yet many business researchers still don’t know how to tap into these rich resources.

This week, I spoke at an online research seminar at Kent University, hosted jointly with the British Academy of Management’s Special Interest Group on Management and Business History. The aim was to demystify archival research and share crucial insights on why understanding the distinction between history and memory, archives and libraries, is essential for any researcher investigating the past.

Key Definitions: Building a Shared Language

Before diving into methodology, it’s worth clarifying the terms that historians use, since they can differ significantly from how other academic disciplines approach the past.

The Past refers to events that occurred chronologically before the present and are now ontologically inaccessible—we cannot directly observe them. This is the fundamental challenge historians face: unlike social scientists, who can observe events as they unfold, historians must work with traces.

History is knowledge of the past based on those traces left behind. These might be documents, but they could equally be videos, audio recordings, images, archaeological ruins, or even human remains. Importantly, history is not the past itself but rather a constructed representation of it—one that can change over time and often coexists with rival interpretations.

Historiography is the philosophy, theory, and method of writing history. It encompasses how historical knowledge is constructed and challenged, making it useful for understanding not just what happened, but how our understanding has evolved.

Memory, by contrast, is collectively shared representations of the past—the lived understanding that remains relevant in the present. It appears in national holidays, memorials, historical fiction, and cultural narratives.

Key Takeaway: History ≠ Past

Think of Magritte’s pictures: Ceci n’est pas une pipe, ceci n’est pas une pomme. The representation of a thing is not the thing itself.

History is Not the Past

One of the most important takeaways from the discussion is this: history is not the past. It’s a representation of the past—a carefully constructed narrative based on available traces and evidence. This distinction matters because it fundamentally shapes how we research.

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