Madeline Toubiana

Business pedagogy for social justice? An exploratory investigation of business faculty perspectives of social justice in business education

What needs to happen in business schools to create a space for social justice? In this article I explore business faculty members’ perspectives on social justice as a means of illuminating the ideological and institutional forces affecting pedagogy and examining the future for social justice within business schools. Participants identified three hegemonic forces driving business programs: profit-driven business ideologies, the particular character of MBA programs, and bias toward quantitative research in business programs. These forces negated the ways in which faculty engaged with social justice concepts and the ways in which they could teach and research within their respective business schools. I review these hegemonic forces and suggest that in order for social justice to be realized within business schools there has to be institutional redesign which could, potentially, be triggered by disruptive institutional work.

The Valuable, the Constitutive, and the Energetic: Exploring the impact and importance of studying emotions and institutions:

Emotions shape our lives and experiences as institutional actors, yet neo-institutional theorizing has paid scant attention to them until recently. In this introduction to the Special Themed Section, we explore why this blind spot has existed in past theorizing and aim to push scholarship further to elucidate the role that emotions play in institutional life. Drawing insights from the emerging literature and the four papers in this issue, we emphasize specific themes of interest for research on emotions and institutions. Specifically, we highlight the need for a focus on the role of emotions as: value-laden, constitutive of institutions, and energetic. We argue that foregrounding emotions promises a myriad of opportunities for future work and promises rich theoretical rewards.

Beyond Differentiation and Integration: The Challenges of Managing Internal Complexity in Federations

In this paper we examine the management of internal complexity in federations as a means of shedding new light on how the challenges inherent in governing these forms of inter-organizational networks are managed. Our analysis reveals that these networked organizations differed as a function of their approach to four complexity management activities: perspective shifting, shaping interactions, managing standards and constructing commitment. Based on the use of these four activities we identify three approaches to complexity management in this study – leveraging complexity, suppressing complexity and disengaging from complexity. Each of these approaches differed in their focus on differentiation or integration in the implementation of complexity management activities. We found that only leveraging complexity went beyond separate management activities aimed at differentiation or integration and employed policies and activities that possessed the capacity to optimize both simultaneously. In doing so, our study highlights new possibilities for complexity management by revealing the ways in which management activities can be designed to optimize both integration and differentiation.

The salvation of meaning in Peter Drucker's oeuvre

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illuminate Peter Druckers management theory by exploring German theological concerns which constituted his unique approach in management theory.Design/methodology/approach – To uncover the secularized German theological roots in Druckers work, the paper juxtaposes his writings from his 60‐year‐long career with prior cultural interpretations of German scholarship.Findings – The analysis shows that German secularized theological concerns surrounding the fall of modernity influenced Druckers oeuvre, leading him to advocate “the meaningful organization” as a pragmatic solution to the ills of modern society. While Druckers ideas evolved over the years, the paper shows that his agenda to promote meaningful organizations in an otherwise totalitarian‐prone, alienated, rationalized and meaningless era remained consistent. This interpretation suggests that Drucker believed that management had moral duties in a Nietzschean godless world. The paper shows that these themes...

Book Review: Edwards, M. (2010). Small Change:Why Business Won’t Save the World. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. 120 pp.

Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94(Suppl.), S95-S120. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Warren, M., Hong, S., Rubin, C., & Uy, P. (2009). Beyond the Bakesale: A community based relational approach to parent engagement in schools. Teachers College Record, 111, 2209-2254.