Mary Hartog

Extreme managers, extreme workplaces: capitalism, organizations and corporate psychopaths

This article reports on qualitative research carried out in England in 2013. Participants were five organizational directors and two senior managers who had worked with six corporate psychopaths, as determined by a management psychopathy measure. The corporate psychopaths reported on displayed consistency in their approach to management. This approach was marked by high levels of abusive control. The corporate psychopaths were seen as being organizational stars and as deserving of awards by those above them, while they simultaneously subjected those below them to extreme behaviour, including bullying, intimidation and coercion. The corporate psychopaths also engaged in extreme forms of mismanagement characterized by poor personnel management, directionless leadership, mismanagement of resources and fraud.

Critical action learning: Teaching business ethic

This article explores Critical Action Learning as a vehicle for reflective practice and professional development. It examines the utility of this approach and its capacity to facilitate an ethical awareness to professional practice. It does so in the context of an MA in Personal and Organisational Development at Middlesex University Business School, drawing on the experience of the tutor and on case study vignettes from student practitioners. The account conforms to BERA (British Educational Research Association) 2003 revised ethical guidelines in respect of use and disclosure of student material.

Personal lives and professional practice: working with memoir to facilitate rationality and justice in our work

My inspiration for this paper arose at the third Carfax international conference, Reflection as a catalyst for change, through two different papers presented to the conference: Margaret Ledwith’s paper that told her mother’s life story, and Robert Grossman’s paper on Perry’s stages of intellectual and ethical development. For me, the connection between these papers lay in their resonance with my approach to reflection and practice in professional development and learning. In this article, I address working with memoir to identify how this process awakens our sensibilities, linking life story with moral development and the process of coming to know and learn. I will explain how the process of reflection was undertaken and address how this approach can facilitate the way reflection is taught and most meaningfully learned in a professional development context. I will point to the benefits this approach can facilitate, by indicating albeit briefly, the impact this approach has had on others, their work and my role as a tutor. I suggest this approach to reflection can facilitate renewed professional identities and practice improvement that is driven by a desire to bring rationality and justice to our work.

Becoming a scholarly practitioner: as a teacher in higher education ‘how do I improve my practice’?

ABSTRACT This paper explores what it means to research one’s own practice, drawing on my experience as an educational action researcher and creating a living theory thesis. I begin by identifying key theories that inform my approach, exploring how scholarship in the form of self-study is viewed as a discipline, addressing issues of rigour and validity and I explain how the values of an educational practitioner are central to this practice-based research. I then explain the origins of my research and explore the relationship between living theory and auto-ethnography, showing how storied accounts of my practice illuminate my inquiry. Next, I explore what becoming a reflective practitioner has meant for me and its place in my research. I then explore how I understand humanistic action research as a dialectical engagement with the world and in relation to the stages of my research. I conclude with a summary of my journey of research and scholarship and ask why self-study matters.

Developing diversity skills with university students

Purpose – Points up the importance of developing people in organizations to enhance diversity. Design/methodology/approach – Draws on two presentations to a conference on diversity at Middlesex University, London. Findings – Highlights the role mentoring can play, first to achieve access to graduate-employment opportunities in the public sector and secondly to enable people to work together effectively and harmoniously in teams with greater respect through awareness and appreciation of difference. Practical implications – Describes the public-sector diversity-mentoring scheme, the primary goal was to widen the pool of applicants to graduate-employment opportunities in the sector from ethnic minorities and working-class backgrounds. Social implications – Explains that, while respect is a common value shared by all, in one culture it may be experienced differently from in another and for teams to work harmoniously all members need to feel respected. Originality/value – Shows how diversity is the key to bett...

Is this your cultural place or mine

Purpose – Highlights the need to be mindful of the global implications of migration and the ecology of diversity in our economy and organizations. Argues that support and programs for diversity are essential to a sustainable economy and the life chances of all our citizens. Design/methodology/approach – Explores diversity from a theoretical perspective and then provides details of one person’s struggle to gain acceptance in an alien culture. Findings – Draws attention to the complexities and complications born of globalization and the challenge these pose for multi-national organizations. Advances the view that these complexities also relate to the emigres who bought with them their different ways of thinking, behaving and speaking that were alien to the indigenous community, and for many still remain an enigma. Practical implications – Highlights the need to develop an organization and leadership culture where every manager is an HR manager, assuming shared responsibility for promoting and developing div...