From data problems to questions about sources: elements towards an institutional analysis of population-level organisational change. The case of British building societies, 1845–1980

Institutional analyses of population-level organisational change seem particularly well suited to the task of further incorporating historical concerns into organisational theory, as has been advocated by a growing number of authors, both within business history and management and organisation studies. Such an approach has been applied, in particular, to studies of shifts in organisational forms within the early-twentieth-century US thrift industry. The aim of this article, building on the case study of British building societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is to uncover both the promises and the limitations of this approach in terms of historical epistemology and methodology, and suggest ways to further consolidate the historical grounding of similar approaches to organisational change. In particular, detailed attention paid to sources and to periodisation may point towards improvements in methodology, both within historical institutionalism and neo-institutionalist history.