History‐informed strategy research: the promise of history and historical research methods in advancing strategy scholarship

The last decade has witnessed an increasing interest in the use of history and historical research methods in strategy research. We discuss how and why history and historical research methods can enrich theoretical explanations of strategy phenomena. In addition, we introduce the notions of “history‐informed strategy research,” distinguishing between the dimensions of “history to theory” and “history in theory” and discussing various under‐utilized methods that may further work on history‐informed strategy research. We then discuss how contemporary research contributes to history‐informed research within the strategy field, examine key methodological and empirical challenges associated with such research, and develop an agenda for future research.