Why We Need a Transparency Revolution in Business History Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool Management School Maki Umemura, Cardiff Business School ‘Learning to make a difference’

My Goals To explain what the transparency revolution is To convince you that business history needs a transparency system of some sort To suggest that the right research transparency system for qualitative and mixed-method business history is Active Citation

The Research Transparency Revolution Since c. 2007, a transparency revolution has swept across the natural and then the social sciences. Open Data means that the “raw” data on which a paper is based must be shared. This norm is designed to improve confidence in research (has other benefits too). There is perhaps a historical analogy with the post-Reformation rise of the footnote (Grafton, 1997).

Institutional Drivers Since 2007, the OECD has encouraged research councils in member nations to encourage/require researchers to share their data. Research scandals and pseudo-scandals in a variety of disciplines have given impetus to this idea. In many disciplines, research transparency protocols have been put in place by journals to promote confidence.

Benefits of Research Transparency Revolution for a Discipline It promotes accuracy in research findings, which is an inherently positive development. It prevents flawed research from becoming actionable knowledge for practitioners. It maintains eligibility for research council funding. It signals to stakeholders that researchers take their responsibilities to knowledge users very seriously.

Key Point We do not believe that there is a widespread problem with data misrepresentation in the field of business history. Impressions matter, however. By failing to join the research transparency revolution, we risk putting our research tradition at a competitive disadvantage.

Qualitative Research What does research transparency look like in qualitative research? In essence, it means sharing the texts on which we base our conclusions (Moravcsik, 2014) . It involves adopting technologies that make it easier to verify statements by looking at the primary sources.

The Example of Qualitative Political Science Political science exhibits many similarities to business history. Most political scientists engage in qualitative research. Political scientists have a similar relationship with formal theory. Political scientists sometimes use archival sources (e.g., presidential papers).

The Example of Qualitative Political Science In 2012, the American Political Science Association (APSA) began moving that discipline toward research transparency (DA-RT Statement). Data repositories have been established and the authors of qualitative pieces are now required to use Active Citation. The QDR at the University of Syracuse serves political scientists from many universities.

A Single University, Multi-Discipline Repository

The Example of Qualitative Political Science Under a regime of Active Citation, whenever a primary source is quoted or cited in an article, the citation includes a hyperlink that takes readers to an image of that source. Since 1 January 2016, papers submitted to signatory journals must use this system, unless the authors have a reasonable explanation for why they cannot share the data. Political scientists have fought over the distribution of the costs associated with the new system.

Can We Apply This To Business History? We face several unique obstacles. First, business history is an inter-discipline (Klein, 1990), not a discipline, thus unlike political science. Second, many business historians work in management schools. Management scholars have largely ignored the transparency revolution. Third, the documents we tend to use are owned by private firms.

Our Proposal The global business history community should establish a single repository to serve all business-historical journals. The repository should be supervised by a board that includes representatives of corporate archives as well as academics from different countries. Journal editors should have the discretion to waive the data sharing requirement when it would prevent publication.

Nature of Business Archives In a public-sector archive, the default assumption is that researchers will eventually have a statutory right to read and cite documents. Research in corporate archives is done at the discretion of the data owners. Corporate archivists might be reluctant to permit the uploading of primary sources to repository, especially if it is located in a foreign state.

Our Backgrounds As researchers who have negotiated access to corporate archives on three continents, we are very sensitive to the concerns of data owners/corporate archivists. Our research has dealt with such sensitive historical topics as pharmaceutical research and racial discrimination in an extant multinational firm. We need to move carefully here.

Why Research Transparency Can Benefit Us All Christensen, Clayton M. ‘The rigid disk drive industry: a history of commercial and technological turbulence.’ Business History Review 67, no. 4 (1993): 531-588. This paper is arguably the most impactful paper in a business-history journal in my lifetime, although the author does not self-identify as a business historian. In 2014, Harvard’s Jill Lepore said that Christensen’s influential theory was based on bad history. Today, the empirical basis of Christiansen’s theory is being re-examined by scholars from various disciplines, including business history. Christiansen has recently welcome this!