History-informed Strategy Research: The Promise of History and Historical Research Methods in Advancing Strategy Scholarship

The last decade has witnessedan increasing interest in the use of history and histori-cal research methods in strategy research. We discusshow and why history and historical research methodscan enrich theoretical explanations of strategy phenom-ena. In addition, we introduce the notions of“history-informed strategy research,”distinguishing betweenthe dimensions of“history to theory”and“history intheory”and discussing various under-utilized methodsthat may further work on history-informed strategyresearch. We then discuss how contemporary researchcontributes to history-informed research within thestrategy field, examine key methodological and empiri-cal challenges associated with such research, anddevelop an agenda for future research.