Using History Ahistorically: Presentism and the Tranquility Fallacy

Abstract

Much attention in this journal has been paid to the ahistorical nature of management and organizational studies. Drawing from academic, practitioner and consultant literature, I look at examples where history itself is called upon – absent any of the theoretical and methodological discipline that should accompany history – to augment an authors' analysis and conclusion. In particular, I focus on presentism and the tranquility fallacy; the terms I use to label the tendency to find the current era to be exceptionally, even uniquely turbulent and past eras to seem calm in comparison. Calling on both economic and philosophical fields, I argue that presentism is a universal human condition, inherent in the state of being. The turbulence fallacy, however, compounds that flaw, distorts the past, and severely constricts our capacity to learn from experience. The essay concludes with a call for management historians to counter the tranquility fallacy.