Tag: Management Learning

Management Learning in Historical Perspective: Rediscovering Rowntree and the British Interwar Management Movement

Steph1 Comment

Reblogged from The Past Speaks:

I would like to draw the attention of my readers to a superb new business-historical paper that has appeared in Academy of Management Learning & Education.  The paper Mairi Maclean, Gareth Shaw, Charles Harvey and Alan Booth develops our understanding of the history of management education at the same time as addressing a classic debate in the field of business that was initiated by the late Al Chandler’s remarks about the role of education in the relative decline of British industry.

Abstract: British interwar management (1918-1939) has been criticized as overly conservative, comprising a core of progressive firms amidst a mass of conservatively-run, family-dominated businesses. According to the dominant narrative, British firms exhibited little interest in new managerial approaches. Our study of the Rowntree business lectures and British interwar management movement challenges this view; suggesting British managers displayed greater openness to innovation than is commonly recognized. We uncover and analyse a network of British firms engaged in management education through organized peer-to-peer communication, facilitated by lectures and management research groups initiated by Seebohm Rowntree. Our primary contribution to the literature is to offer a more nuanced perspective on the evolution of British management learning in the interwar years. This reveals dynamic knowledge networks reflexively engaged in advancing and codifying practice-based learning to promote the diffusion of effective solutions to shared problems – building communities of practice, codifying management knowledge, and drawing on an ethos of ‘business as service’. By undertaking archival research to create a coherent body of documentary material, and making this available to others, we also make a methodological contribution, creating a new ‘space’ for future researchers to explore, from which they can write new management histories of their own.

One of the many great things about this paper is that the authors have adopted a variant of the Open Data principle and have shared the data (i.e., the historical documents on which the paper is based) in an online repository. I have long advocated the adoption of Open Data as a norm in the field of business history (see our paper on the subject in Business History) and I am thus very pleased to see this principle being applied here in such an excellent way. Check out all of the historical sources on the companion website for this paper, which can be found here.

CFP: New Histories of Business Schools and How They May Inspire New Futures

Christina

Academy of Management Learning and Education

New Histories of Business Schools and How They May Inspire New Futures

Initial submissions should be received by: March 31, 2020

Scheduled for Publication: June 2021

Guest Editors:

  • Patricia Genoe McLaren, Wilfrid Laurier University
  • JC Spender, Kozminski University
  • Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington
  • Todd Bridgman, Victoria University of Wellington
  • Ellen O’Connor, Dominican University of California
  • Christina Lubinski, Copenhagen Business School
  • Gabrielle Durepos, Mount Saint Vincent University (Canada)

 

We might do well to re-examine what we are doing and show the executive judgment and courage necessary to implement radical change (Khurana & Spender 2012: 636).

Business schools are the institutional locus of management learning and education. In recent years, we have gained a greater understanding of how their structures, processes, and power dynamics influence pedagogy and curricula, management theory and research, faculty, students, graduates, and society more broadly. We are also witnessing growing research into, and discussion about, the relative lack of innovation in management theory development, research, pedagogy, and curricula (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2012). While there have been a small number of inspirational works that have sought to push us towards changing business schools and business education (Augier and March, 2011; Hassard, 2012; Khurana 2007; Spender, 2016), they have not yet spurred the change we might have hoped for.
One under-explored route to encourage innovation in this regard is examining how our historical understanding of all aspects of business schools – including curriculum, pedagogy, research, structure, processes, stakeholders, power, and politics – may be limiting change. Histories highlight particular characters and plots but what we do not include – what we write out of history – is just as important as what is written in (Jenkins, 2003). History is constitutive, in that our own interpretations of the past define and shape our present and our future (Wadhwani & Bucheli, 2014). Compared with other stochastic fields of study, histories of management and business are simplistically linear and mono-cultural. This constrains how we see business schools in the present, and can subsequently limit their future development (Cummings & Bridgman, 2016).
The conventional history of business education tends to follow the emergence of American business schools: from the founding of the Wharton School in 1881, to the rapid growth of business school enrollment within American universities leading up to the 1950s, to the standardization of the schools after the publication of the Gordon-Howell and Pierson reports in 1959 (Hommel & Thomas, 2014). This history has been crafted over many years and now goes largely unchallenged. But it begs the questions: why is this the story we tell, who gains and who loses from its telling, and what events and people are missing from a narrative that should be inspirational for a broad range of people?
North American business education has been studied at various points in a straightforward assessment style – what are business schools doing, how could they
“improve” (Bossard & Dewhurst, 1931; Gordon & Howell, 1959; Pierson, 1959; Porter & McKibbin, 1988), and also with a more complex analysis of context, history, power, and influence (Engwall, Kipping, Usdiken, 2016; Khurana, 2007; Pettigrew, Corneul, & Hommel, 2014). Work has been done on the history of European management education (cf. Engwall, 2004; Harker, Caemmerer, & Hynes, 2016; Kieser, 2004; Kipping, Usdiken, & Puig, 2004; Tiratsoo, 2004; Usdiken, 2004), and some have looked at the global South (Cooke & Alcadipani, 2015). We are beginning to see alternative histories of the development of management theory and education (Bridgman, Cummings, & McLaughlin, 2016; Dye, Mills, & Weatherbee, 2005; Hassard, 2012; Peltonen, 2015). However, what about histories of schools of business and commerce from other parts of the world (Asia, Africa, Australasia, South America) in more detail? Or from earlier centuries? Or different examples from North America or Europe that did not survive or later morphed toward the standard form?
This special issue seeks to move things forward by looking differently when we look back. It encourages submissions that explore emerging interests, historical barriers to change, and their interrelationships by focusing on the emergence and development of business schools as complex entities that are interwoven with universities, the business community, government, and civil society. It also seeks submissions that explore how these broader understandings may stimulate innovation in the way we configure business schools and, consequently, how we teach, conduct research, view our profession, and relate to our stakeholders.
In this call for papers, we – professors/educators, researchers/inquirers, sufferers/critics, and aspirational as well as actual change agents – are the organizational actors, and business schools are our reflective historical setting; more importantly, they are our actual environment. We have a unique opportunity to push management theory, research methods, and interdisciplinarity to better understand and, more importantly, to reinvent business school(s) in light of what is socially or personally meaningful. We have contextual richness, personal and professional stakes, and a sense of crisis. Being able to change our practices from within, we are uniquely situated to bring scholarship, formal positioning, and inhabited experience to bear.
Better historical scholarship could, therefore, help us to change ourselves. To engage historical sensibilities and methods, and empirical richness, to push theory and change institutions. As a call for spurring this process we welcome contributions that address the following questions:
  1. What people, events, curriculum, pedagogy, form, and research of business schools’ past have been overlooked by conventional historical narratives?
  2. What role could new histories play in debates about how business schools should develop? Can new understandings of the past inspire us to think differently for the future?
  3. How can we write reflexive or critical histories of business schools that expose the power and politics of business education and what we teach, or do not teach, students?
  4. Are histories being used within business schools or other organizations, such as accreditation bodies, academies and societies, to perpetuate traditional structures and/or norms? Why and to what effect?
  5. What are the ‘invented traditions’ that support any or all aspects of the institution of business schools and what purpose were they invented to serve?
  6. What are the stories of the development of business education outside of North America or prior to the late 19th century? Are these different or the same as the current narrative? How, why, and what can we learn from these alternative histories?
  7. How has history traditionally been taught in business schools? What are the positive and limiting effects of this pedagogy? How could we teach history differently?
  8. Why should business school students learn more (or less) history? Or learn it differently?
  9. How might management scholars using history in their research influence business education?
Call on AMLE Website

References
Alvesson, M,. & Sandberg, J. 2012. Has management studies lost its way? Ideas for more imaginative and innovative research. Journal of Management Studies, 50(1): 128-152.

Augier, M. and March, J. 2011. The roots, rituals, and rhetorics of change: North
American business schools after the second World War. Stanford University Press.

Bossard, J. H. S., & Dewhurst, J. F. 1931. University education for business: A study of
existing needs and practices. Philadelphia. PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bridgman, T., Cummings, S., & McLaughlin, C. 2016. Restating the case: How revisiting the development of the case method can help us think differently about the future of the business school. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(4): 724-741.

Cooke, B., & Alcadipani, R. 2015. Toward a global history of management education: The case of the Ford Foundation and the São Paulo School of Business Administration, Brazil. Academy of Management Learning & Education,14(4): 482-499.

Cummings, S. & Bridgman, T. 2016. The limits and possibilities of history: How a wider,
deeper and more engaged understanding of business history can foster innovative thinking. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 15(2): 250-267.

Dye, K., Mills, A. J., & Weatherbee, T. 2005. Maslow: Man interrupted: Reading
management theory in context. Management Decision, 43(10): 1375-1395.

Engwall, L. 2004. The Americanization of Nordic management education. Journal of
Management Inquiry, 13(2): 109-117.

Engwall, L., Kipping, M., & Usdiken, B. 2016. Defining management: Business
schools, consultants, media. New York: Routledge.

Gordon, R. A., & Howell, J. E. 1959. Higher education for business. New York:
Columbia University Press.

Harker, M. J., Caemmerer, B., & Hynes, N. 2016. Management education by the French
Grandes Ecoles de Commerce: Past, present, and an uncertain future. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(3): 549-568.

Hassard, J. 2012. Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its
social, political and historical context. Human Relations, 65(11): 1431-1461.

Hommel, U., & Thomas, H. 2014. Research on business schools. In A. M. Pettigrew, E.
Corneul, & U. Hommel (Eds.), The institutional development of business
schools: 8-36. Oxford: Oxford University PRess.

Jenkins, K. 2003. Refiguring history: New thoughts on an old discipline. London, U.K.:
Routledge.

Khurana, R. 2007. From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of
American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Khurana, R., & Spender, J. C. 2012. Herbert A. Simon on What Ails Business Schools: More than ‘A Problem in Organizational Design’. Journal of Management Studies, 49: 619–639.

Kieser, A. 2004. The Americanization of academic management education in Germany.
Journal of Management Inquiry, 13(2): 90-97.

Kipping, M., Usdiken, B., & Puig, N. 2004. Imitation, tension, and hybridization:
Multiple “Americanizations” of management education in Mediterranean Europe. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13(2): 98-108.

Peltonen, T. 2015. History of management thought in context: The case of Elton Mayo in Australia. In P. G. McLaren, A. J. Mills, & T. G. Weatherbee (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History. Abindon, UK: Sage.

Pettigrew, A. M., Corneul, E., & Hommel, U. 2014. The institutional development of
business schools. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pierson, F. C. 1959. The education of American business men: A study in university-
college programs in business administration. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Porter, L. W., & McKibbin, L. E. 1988. Management education and development: Drift
or thrust into the 21st century? New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Spender, J.C. 2016. How management education’s past shapes its present. BizEd.

Tiratsoo, N. 2004. The “Americanization” of management education in Britain. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13(2): 118-126.

Usdiken, B. 2004. Americanization of European management education in historical and
comparative perspective. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13(2): 87-89.

Wadhwani, D., & Bucheli, M. 2014. The future of the past in management and organization studies. In D. Wadhwani, & M. Bucheli (Eds.), Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods. New York: Oxford University Press.

CfP: 50 years of Management Learning

Steph

Call for Papers: Anniversary Special Issue of Management Learning
Celebrating 50 years of Management Learning:
Historical reflections at the intersection of the past and future

Deadline for submissions: June 01, 2018
Guest Editors:
Gabrielle Durepos, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada
Rafael Alcadipani, FGV-EAESP, Brazil
Mairi Maclean, University of Bath, UK
Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Management Learning marks its 50th anniversary in 2020. Management Learning has a
long history of publishing critical, reflexive scholarship on organizational knowledge and learning. This special issue provides a forum to celebrate and build on this history
through critical and reflective engagement with the past, present and future of
management learning, knowledge and education. Taking a historical approach is all the
more pressing given recent and impending crises – geo-political, technological,
environmental and humanitarian – since some crises only make sense when seen in the
fullness of time (Casson and Casson, 2013). We therefore encourage scholarship that
challenges the disciplinary past of management knowledge, learning and education and
enables more diverse, innovative futures to be imagined.
There are a growing variety of approaches and conceptual frameworks in management
and organization studies for writing histories of organizations (Maclean, Harvey and
Clegg, 2016; Rowlinson, Hassard and Decker, 2014), management thought (Bucheli and
Wadhwani, 2014; Cummings, Bridgman, Hassard and Rowlinson, 2017) and researching
management in historically conscious ways (Jacques, 1996; Kieser, 1994). This has been
accompanied by a rise in critical organizational histories (Cooke, 1999; Ibarra-Colado,
2006; Scott, 2007). Although diverse, this scholarship is characterized by reflexivity
(Cunliffe, 2002), anti-performativity – history is generated for reasons beyond improving
future business efficiency and effectiveness – and commitment to an agenda of denaturalizing both hegemonic organizations, by exposing problematic pasts, and dominant historiography like positivism that seeks unitary truth (Fournier and Grey, 2000). The rise of critical history research has involved scholarship on management learning and education that challenges the dominant history of management thought in a number of ways (Jacques, 1996; Genoe Mclaren, Mills and Weatherbee, 2015). While some have exposed processes of exclusion and marginalization of management knowledge in textbooks (Cummings and Bridgman, 2011; Grant and Mills, 2006), others have uncovered knowledge politics and marginalization around geographical boundaries.

 

Full details are here: http://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/MLQ/ML%2050%20anniversary%20SI.pdf

CfP: SI in Management Learning

Steph

Call for Papers: Anniversary Special Issue of Management Learning

Celebrating 50 years of Management Learning: Historical reflections at the intersection of the past and future

Deadline for submissions: June 01, 2018

Guest Editors:
Gabrielle Durepos, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada
Rafael Alcadipani, FGV – EAESP, Brazil
Mairi Maclean, University of Bath, UK
Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Management Learning marks its 50th anniversary in 2020. Management Learning has a long history of publishing critical, reflexive scholarship on organizational knowledge and learning. This special issue provides a forum to celebrate and build on this history through critical and reflective engagement with the past, present and future of management learning, knowledge and education. Taking a historical approach is all the more pressing given recent and impending crises – geo-political, technological, environmental and humanitarian – since some crises only make sense when seen in the fullness of time (Casson and Casson, 2013). We therefore encourage scholarship that challenges the disciplinary past of management knowledge, learning and education and enables more diverse, innovative futures to be imagined.

For more:
http://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/MLQ/ML%2050%20anniversary%20SI.pdf