About
I am Reader in Management at the School for Business and Society at the University of York, UK. I am currently (2022-) the Director of the Sustainable Growth, Management, and Economic Productivity Pathway at the ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership having previously held the role (2017-2020). Prior to that I was Head of the International Business, Strategy, and Management Group at the Management School, University of York (2013-2017). Before joining the University of York I held academic posts at the University of Liverpool, Durham University, and York St John University, and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Duke University, North Carolina (Spring and Summer 2019). I hold undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from Durham University and the University of Glasgow. I did my PhD in economic history at Durham University.
I have previously served as the Chair of the
Management History Research Group (UK) (2015-2019), and President of the
Economic and Business History Society (2019-2020). I am the current Director of the EBHS Doctoral Workshop, and an Associate Editor of the open access journal,
Essays in Economic and Business History.
Publications
Articles
Tennent, Kevin, and Simon Mollan. 2021. “The Limits of the Narratives of Strategy: Three Stories from the History of Music Retail.” Management & Organizational History [accepted].
Mollan, Simon, Billy Frank & Kevin Tennent. 2020. “Changing corporate domicile: the case of the Rhodesian Selection Trust companies”, Business History [accepted].
Mollan, Simon. 2020. “Phenomenal Differences: Varieties of Historical Interpretation in Management and Organization Studies.” Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal 14 (4), 498-516.
Mollan, Simon, and Beverly Geesin. 2020. “Donald Trump and Trumpism: Leadership, Ideology and Narrative of the Business Executive Turned Politician.” Organisation 27 (3), 405-418.
Billings, Mark, Simon Mollan, and Philip Garnett. 2019. “Debating Banking in Britain: The Colwyn Committee, 1918.” Business History [accepted].
Mollan, Simon. 2019. “Imperialism and Coloniality in Management and Organization History.” Management and Organizational History 14 (1): 1–9.
Geesin, Beverly, and Simon Mollan. 2019. “This Sporting Life: The Antithetical Novel’s Revelation of the Organization and Work of Sport.” Culture and Organization 25 (5), 368-382.
Geesin, Beverly and Simon Mollan. 2018. “Taxis for neoliberalism!? Surveillance and resistance in post-industrial Philadelphia” Competition and Change: The Journal of Globalisation, Financialisation and Political Economy 24 (2), 114-132.
Mollan, Simon. 2018. “Management’s Troubling Past and Management Studies’ Troubling Present: Reflections on A New History of Management and The Dark Side of Management: A Secret History of Management Theory.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 18 (3), 517-521.
Mollan, Simon. 2018. “The Free-Standing Company: A ‘zombie’ Theory of International Business History?” Journal of Management History 22 (2): 156–73.
Garnett, Philip, Simon Mollan, and R Alexander Bentley. 2017. “Banks, Births, and Tipping Points in the Historical Demography of British Banking: A Response to J.J. Bissell.” Business History 59 (5): 814–20.
Linsley, Philip, Alex Linsley, Matthias Beck, & Simon Mollan. 2016. Employing neo-Durkheimian institutional theory in cross-cultural accounting research. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 29 (8), 1270–1293.
Mollan, Simon, and Kevin D. Tennent. 2015. “International Taxation and Corporate Strategy: Evidence from British Overseas Business, circa 1900–1965.” Business History 57 (7): 1–28.
Garnett, Philip, Simon Mollan, and R Alexander Bentley. 2015. “Complexity in History: Modelling the Organisational Demography of the British Banking Sector.” Business History 57 (1)181–201.
Mollan, Simon, and Ranald Michie. 2012. “The City of London as an International Commercial and Financial Center since 1900.” Enterprise and Society 13 (3): 538–87.
Mollan, Simon. 2010. “S. Hoffnung and Co: The Case of a Market Intermediary in Australia, 1851-1980.” Consumption, Markets and Culture 13 (1): 7–30.
Mollan, Simon. 2009. “Business Failure, Capital Investment and Information: Mining Companies in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1900–13.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37 (2): 229–48.
Mollan, Simon. 2008. “Business, State and Economy: Cotton and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1919-1939.” African Economic History 36: 95–124.
Mollan, Simon. 2002. “Recruitment to the Sudan Medical Service, 1900 – 1938.” Sudan Studies 29, 35–54.
Books
Mollan, Simon. Imperialism and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Economic and Business History of Sudan. 2020. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, Andrew, Kevin Tennent, and Simon Mollan (eds). 2016. The Impact of the First World War on International Business. London: Routledge.
Stephen Gibson and Simon Mollan (eds). 2012. Representations of Peace and Conflict. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapters in books
Mollan, Simon. 2018. “Economic Development and the British Empire.” In The British Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Mark Doyle. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Mollan, Simon, Andrew Smith, and Kevin Tennent. 2016. “Introduction.” In The Impact of the First World War on International Business. London: Routledge.
Mollan, Simon. 2016. “The ‘Impact’ of the First World War on Business and Economic Development in Sudan.” In The Impact of the First World War on International Business. London: Routledge.
Mollan, Simon, and David K. Kelsey. 2012. “An Overview of the Business History of the International Mining Industry.” In Contemporary Issues in Mining, edited by Nigel Finch. Sydney: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mollan, Simon. 2012. “International Banking and Asia: Some Evidence from Correspondent Banking Links.” In International Banking in Asia in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Ranald Michie and Shizuya Nishimura, 217–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Other publications
Mollan, Simon. 2018. “ Arts-Based Methods and Organizational Learning.” Management Learning. 1350507618787251. doi:10.1177/1350507618787251.
Michie, Ranald, and Simon Mollan. 2012. “British and American Banking in Historical Perspective: Beware of False Precedents.” History and Policy, 2012.
Mollan, Simon. 2004. International Banking Database, 1912 and 1938. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 5055, Projects
My research is focused on international business history, financial history, and the role of economic ideas in management and organization.
Current projects include a comparative social and organizational history of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve, the transformation of British international investment/business in the course of the twentieth century (in particular looking tax havens and tax avoidance by corporations), and the intellectual history and contemporary impact of managerialism.
