‘Cold Cases’: Revisiting founding myths, iconic cases,
and forgotten stories in management

Download the Call for Papers here (PDF, French and English) >>

Guest Editors:

Anaïs Boutru, DRM M-Lab, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL (anais.boutru@dauphine.psl.eu)

Linda Rouleau, HEC Montréal (linda.rouleau@hec.ca)

Géraldine Schmidt, IAE Paris, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (schmidt.iae@univ-paris1.fr)

Albéric Tellier, DRM M-Lab, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL (alberic.tellier@dauphine.psl.eu)

DESCRIPTION OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

IBM’s blindness to the rise of personal computing, Xerox’s strategic myopia toward the graphical user interface developed in its own Palo Alto Research Center, the fall of Nokia overtaken by smartphones, the Mann Gulch fire, Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne experiments: these are among the celebrated cases that populate the collective memory of management scholars. These ‘cold cases’, endlessly cited and taught, have become genuine founding myths of the field. They structure ways of thinking and play a central role in the construction of epistemic communities by providing a shared foundation of representations (Brown, 1998).

Yet, despite their ubiquity, few studies scrutinize the empirical robustness, theoretical validity, or performativity of these emblematic cases. In management research, and particularly in qualitative research, the risk of circularity (Dumez, 2013) is significant. While the material collected by researchers is inevitably heterogeneous and incomplete, the theories they mobilize are general and decontextualized. As a result, researchers may, even unconsciously, select data that confirm their theoretical priors, set aside disconfirming evidence, and ultimately favor demonstrations of the ‘as if’ type.

Management research, in its pursuit of ‘theoretical gaps’ (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011), has often privileged the production of new concepts at the expense of verification, reinterpretation, or falsification (Popper, 1959, 2005). This predilection leads to a stratification of knowledge: certain studies become canonical and generate ‘halo effects’ (Rosenzweig, 2009), while others sink into oblivion, not because they are invalid, but because they do not fit the dominant narratives of the discipline (Bourdieu, 2001). The aim of this special issue is to ‘reopen the files of management’: to challenge established truths, revisit myths, excavate forgotten cases, and analyze the processes of canonization and erasure that structure disciplinary memory.

Indeed, several studies have focused on individual characteristics, such as motivation (Jansen et al., 2009) and the cognitive abilities of individuals in building higher-order capabilities (Duran et al., 2022; Adner & Helfat, 2003). Thus, Adner and Helfat (2003) highlight the importance of three managerial characteristics: human capital (manager’s experience), social capital (manager’s network), and managerial cognition (mental model serving as the basis for decision-making). Furthermore, several researchers have emphasized the importance of organizational structure (e.g., agility) as a microfoundation of social innovation (Vézina et al., 2019) and internationalization (Chebbi et al., 2023; Neesen et al., 2019). Regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR), Borah, Dogbe and Marwa (2025: 912) suggest the concept of green dynamic capability, which “refers to firm’s ability to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing business environment, while prioritizing sustainability and environmental responsibility”. In this perspective, Borland et al. (2016) advanced the literature on dynamic capabilities’ microfoundations for ecological sustainability by proposing two new dynamic capabilities’ components to sensing, seizing and transforming: remapping and reaping (Borland et al., 2016). Thus, it is only recently that researchers have begun to examine CRS’s antecedents (Gond et al., 2017; Pacheco et al., 2018), such as executive commitment and individual values (Muller & Kolk, 2010).

Famous, emblematic cases, sometimes elevated to the status of ‘textbook cases’, are not mere illustrations: they are performative of the managerial realities they purport to describe (Callon, 1998; MacKenzie & Millo, 2003). They shape analytical frameworks and influence how researchers conceptualize their objects of study (Latour, 2005). In this sense, such cases (Kodak, IBM, Enron, Nokia, etc.) must be regarded as epistemic artifacts, produced, reproduced, and sometimes distorted by scholarly communities, and bearing a narrative, moral, and institutional dimension (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996).

M@n@gement has established itself since its founding as a privileged venue for critical, reflexive, and interdisciplinary approaches in management research. With this special issue, we wish to continue this tradition by inviting the community to undertake an archaeology of its own knowledge (Foucault, 1969). More broadly, revisiting ‘cold cases’ means interrogating how management research constructs its own history, its certainties, and its silences. It is also a call to strengthen the cumulative and self-critical dimension of the field, by restoring a rightful place to research grounded in the replication of experiments, the challenging of established findings, and recontextualization. Furthermore, at a time when researchers are constantly pressured to produce ‘new’ knowledge, this special issue proposes to rehabilitate slow, reflexive research, research capable of revisiting taken-forgranted assumptions, reopening closed debates, and reinvigorating the controversies that are constitutive of knowledge production.

SUBMISSION FORMATS

For this special issue, we invite researchers to submit contributions on revisited cold cases
through three distinct sections: ‘Original research articles’, ‘Business Voice’, and ‘Essays’.
Each section addresses different audiences and objectives, offering a diversity of opportunities
for both researchers and practitioners to enrich our understanding of the mechanisms
that shape strategic thinking.

For each of these sections, submissions must comply with the format indicated on the
M@n@gement website at: https://management-aims.com/index.php/mgmt/preparation

Submission Guidelines

• All manuscripts should be submitted through the M@n@gement Online Submission System
• Authors should select the title of the special issue as the section to which they are submitting.
  Additionally, it is important to specify in the cover letter whether you are submitting to the
  ‘Original Research Articles’ section, the ‘Business Voice’ section, or the ‘Essays’ section.
• Submissions must fully follow the Author Guidelines for M@n@gement

Submission deadline: December 31, 2026

Pre-submission workshop

Authors considering submitting a paper to this special issue will have the opportunity to participate in a paper development workshop dedicated to the special issue. This workshop, which will be held online, is scheduled for October 14, 2026. Authors who submit their articles (either a complete article or a long abstract of 2–3 pages) to the workshop will have the opportunity to present their research, receive feedback on the relevance of their article for the special issue, and use these comments to improve their work before the final submission deadline in December 2026. Participation in the workshop is not mandatory for submission to the special issue.

Read the full Call for Papers and information here >>

 

References

Acquier, A., Daudigeos, T., & Valiorgue, B. (2011). Corporate social responsibility as an
organizational and managerial challenge: The forgotten legacy of the Corporate Social
Responsiveness movement. M@n@gement, 14(4), 222–250. https://doi.org/10.3917/
mana.144.0222

Alvesson, M., Hardy, C., & Harley, B. (2008). Reflecting on reflexivity: Reflexive textual
practices in organization and management theory. Journal of Management Studies,
45(3), 480–501. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00765.x

Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2011). Generating research questions through problematization.
Academy of Management Review, 36(2), 247–271. https://journals.aom.org/doi/
abs/10.5465/amr.2009.0188

Banerjee, S. B. (2003). Who sustains whose development? Sustainable development
and the reinvention of nature. Organization Studies, 24(1), 143–180. https://doi.
org/10.1177/01708406030240013417

Benabdelkrim, M., Levallois, C., Savinien, J., & Robardet, C. (2020). Opening fields: A
methodological contribution to the identification of heterogeneous actors in unbounded
relational orders. M@n@gement, 23(1), 4–18. https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.v23.4245

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Science de la science et réflexivité. Cours du collège de France (200-2001).
Raisons d’agir.

Brown, A. D. (1998). Narrative, politics and legitimacy in an IT implementation. Journal of
Management Studies, 35(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00083

Callon, M. (1998). The Laws of the Markets. Blackwell.

Czarniawska, B., & Joerges, B. (1996). Travels of ideas. In B. Czarniawska & G. Sevón
(Eds.), Translating Organizational Change (pp. 13-48). De Gruyter. https://doi.
org/10.1515/9783110879735.13

Cummings, S., Bridgman, T., Hassard, J., & Rowlinson, M. (2026). Why we needed (and still
need) new histories of management and organization. Management & Organizational
History, 21(1–2), 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2026.2626424

Deuten, J. J., & Rip, A. (2000). Narrative infrastructure in product creation processes.
Organization, 7(1), 69–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050840071005

Dumez, H. (2016). Méthodologie de la recherche qualitative. Les 10 questions clés de la
démarche compréhensive (2nd ed.). Vuibert.

Foucault, M. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Gallimard.

Haraway, D. (2013). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege
of partial perspective. In M. Wyer, M. Barbercheck, D. Cookmeyer, H. Ozturk, & M. Wayne
(Eds.), Women, Science, and Technology (pp. 455–472). Routledge.

Hardy, C., & Clegg, S. (1997). Relativity without relativism: Reflexivity in post-paradigm
organization studies. British Journal of Management, 8(S1), 5–17. https://doi.
org/10.1111/1467-8551.8.s1.2

Hubbard, R., & Vetter, D. E. (1996). An empirical comparison of published replication research
in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing. Journal of Business
Research, 35(2), 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/0148-2963(95)00084-4

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford
University Press.

Lin-Hi, N., & Müller, K. (2013). The CSR bottom line: Preventing corporate social
irresponsibility. Journal of Business Research, 66(10), 1928–1936. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jbusres.2013.02.015

MacKenzie, D., & Millo, Y. (2003). Constructing a market and performing theory: The historical
sociology of a financial derivatives exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 109(1), 107–
145. https://doi.org/10.1086/374404

Mintzberg, H., Pascale, R. T., Goold, M., & Rumelt, R. P. (1996). CMR Forum: The ‘Honda effect’
revisited. California Management Review, 38(4), 77–117. https://doi.org/10.2307/41165855

Popper, K. (2005). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge.

Rosenzweig, P. (2009). L’effet halo, ou les mirages de la performance. Le Journal de l’École
de Paris du management, (79), 9–16. https://doi.org/10.3917/jepam.079.0009

Spicer, A. (2020). Playing the bullshit game: How empty and misleading communication takes
over organizations. Organization Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787720929704

Tellier, A. (2023). La chute de Kodak : une affaire classée ? Annales des Mines – Gérer et
comprendre, (151), 42–52. https://doi.org/10.3917/geco1.151.0042

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage.

Walsh, J. P., & Ungson, G. R. (1991). Organizational memory. Academy of Management Review,
16(1), 57–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/258607

_________________________________