Management research has long been populated by celebrated cases that have achieved the status of founding myths. Cases such as IBM's blindness to personal computing, Xerox's strategic myopia toward the graphical user interface, Nokia's fall to smartphones, the Mann Gulch fire, and Elton Mayo's Hawthorne experiments have become ubiquitous in the field's collective memory. These 'cold cases', endlessly cited and taught, structure ways of thinking and provide a shared foundation of representations that are central to the construction of epistemic communities.
Despite their pervasive influence, few studies scrutinize the empirical robustness, theoretical validity, or performativity of these emblematic cases. In management research, particularly in qualitative research, the risk of circularity is significant. Researchers working with inevitably heterogeneous and incomplete material may, even unconsciously, select data that confirm their theoretical priors, set aside disconfirming evidence, and ultimately favor demonstrations of the 'as if' type.
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