Terrance G. Weatherbee

Maslow: man interrupted: reading management theory in context

Purpose – This paper aims to build on recent work in the field of management and historiography that argues that management theorizing needs to be understood in its historical context.Design/methodology/approach – First, the paper attempts to show how a steady filtering of management theory and of the selection and work of management theorists lends itself to a narrowly focused, managerialist, and functionalist perspective. Second, the paper attempts to show how not only left‐wing ideas, but also even the rich complexity of mainstream ideas, have been “written out” of management accounts. The paper explores these points through an examination of the treatment of Abraham Maslow in management texts over time.Findings – The papers conclusion is a simple one: management theory – whether mainstream or critical – does a disservice to the potential of the field when it oversimplifies to a point where a given theory or theorist is misread because sufficient context, history, and reflection are missing from the p...

Hurricanes Hardly Happen: Sensemaking as a Framework for Understanding Organizational Disasters

This study makes use of Weick’s sensemaking properties to help understand the actions, activities and sensemaking processes that occurred within and between several organizations that were working collectively in response to a hurricane. Through the sensemaking framework, we show how the response efforts were initially ‘disastrous’ themselves, and how effective inter‐organizational response necessitates shared meaning and heedful interrelating (Weick & Roberts, 1993), which we maintain, can only result when there is a convergence of both inter and intra organizational sensemaking. We highlight the importance of organizational identity as a critical element in the sensemaking process and show how this affects the processes of sensegiving, sensetaking, and sensemaking.

Caution! This historiography makes wide turns: Historic turns and breaks in management and organization studies

Abstract In enacting the three movements needed to make a ‘historic turn’ in Management and Organization Studies (MOS) this paper investigates the proposed concept of the ‘historical break’ – a point where MOS ceased to be historical in its research endeavours. By eschewing the methodological realism that dominates much of the history in management research in favour of directly engaging with a theory of History, the construction of a historical narrative is presented. This narrative may be read as a ‘history of the present’ and a potential explanation for the absence of engagement with history in MOS.

Ethnostatistics and Sensemaking: Making Sense of University and Business School Accreditation and Rankings

This article combines ethnostatistics with Weicks sensemaking framework to explore how and why Canadian business schools and universities use comparative rankings and performance measures to signal to audiences about selected features and characteristics of their institutions. These quantitative performance-based strategies include seeking accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the use of data produced by Macleans annual university rankings and other performance benchmarks—to position and validate themselves in their academic fields. Specifically, the authors deconstruct the production, meaning, and rhetoric used by business schools and universities when they draw on accreditation and rankings in the processes of socially constructing a sense of academic standing that is used to project a plausible image to both external and internal audiences.

Theorizing the past: Realism, relativism, relationalism and the reassembly of Weber

Abstract This paper attempts to address the recent call for an historic turn in management and organization studies: that of how to do history and represent the past of the field. To this end, we begin by stressing the need to theorize the past. We develop and describe a concept that we term relationalism, which draws on the sociology of knowledge (SoK) as well as select facets of an approach that has been developed through an engagement with the SoK, that of actor-network theory. The paper offers a theoretical discussion of relationalism as a way of theorizing the past and the past-as-history as an alternative to realism and relativism. We seek an empirical demonstration of relationalism through exploring the wide dispersion and numerous linguistic translations of the work of a scholar who was instrumental in the development of the SoK, that of Max Weber. Relationalism calls for interrogating the politics of representing the past, tracing actors symmetrically and surfacing the past-as-history in its multiplicity. Telling the past relationally calls for an exploration of the tensions between different modes of knowing. To this end, we offer it as a moral alternative.

Reassembling Weber to reveal the-past-as-history in Management and Organization Studies

The purpose of this article is to unravel the link between the past and history to reveal the importance and the problems of developing a historically informed critical management studies (Booth and Rowlinson, 2006; Kieser, 1994). Drawing on Munslow (2010), we focus on the relationship between ‘the past’ and ‘history’ as ‘ontologically dissonant’ (p. 3) to argue for an ‘epistemically skeptical,’ relational approach to critical organizational history. These arguments are explored through analysis of the ‘career’ of Max Weber in management and organization studies (MOS).

Theorizing the Past: Critical engagements

Like the ‘individual’, ‘the past’ is pervasive yet under-theorized in management and organizational studies (MOS) (Booth and Rowlinson 2006; Nord and Fox 1996). The idea of ‘the past’ is clearly embedded in a number of approaches and foci. The notion of organizational culture, for example, suggests a culmination of past factors that influence present behaviour; the theoretical character of ‘the past’ and its reconstruction, however, are rarely examined within studies of organizational culture (Rowlinson and Procter 1999). Similarly ‘the past’ is embedded in such concepts as ‘institutional field’ (Khurana 2007), ‘population ecology’ (Hannan and Freeman 1977), ‘labour process’ (Braverman 1974), ‘narratives’ (Brown et al. 2008), ‘tracking’ (Mintzberg and Rose 2003), ‘longitudinal study’ (Delios and Ensign 2000), ‘evolutionary analysis’ (Baum et al. 2004) and various other ways of talking about the past. Less obvious examples run the gamut from statistical analyses of preand post-test findings, through to management textbooks where considerable space is given over to the development of specific theories, such as motivation and leadership. More obvious examples can be found in dedicated ‘histories’ of management, organizations and business (Wren 2005). While the former tend to ignore the past as a theoretical issue or concern (except perhaps as a variable), the latter, including but not limited to mainstream

History, field definition and management studies: the case of the New Deal

Purpose – The aim of this paper is threefold. First, to argue for a more historically engaged understanding of the development of management and organization studies (MOS). Second, to reveal the paradoxical character of the recent “historical turn,” through exploration of how it both questions and reinforces extant notions of the field. Third, to explore the neglect of the New Deal in MOS to illustrate not only the problem of historical engagement, but also to encourage a rethink of the paradigmatic limitations of the field and its history. Design/methodology/approach – Adopting the theory of ANTi-history, the paper conducts an analysis of historical management textbooks and formative management journals to explore how and why the New Deal has been neglected in management theory. Findings – Focussing on the New Deal raises a number of questions about the relationship between history and MOS, in particular, the definition of the field itself. Questions include the ontological character of history, context ...

There’s nothing as good as a practical theory: The paradox of management education

Abstract Practicing managers, the users and consumers of management theory, are arguably not applying theories as they were originally conceived. They are using an ontologically based version of theory that is only tenuously related to its epistemological origins. Turning Lewin’s famous dictum on its head, we argue that for the management practitioner there really is nothing so good as a practical theory.

The Historic Turn and MOS: Getting Beyond False Consciousness in Our History-Work

The aim of this paper is to introduce, highlight and discuss the emerging epistemic problematic of the relationship between the past and history (Mills, Weatherbee, & Durepos, 2013) in relation to the concepts of Historical Consciousness (Lukacs, 1968, 2002) and modes of historical thinking (Rusen, 2004). Using these theories of history, we ‘map’ typologies and categorizations of MOS history-work within a meta-historical framework. The situating of issues of fact, context, method, and theory within the framework surfaces how the orientation of a culture or collective is related to how a history is produced and the purposes for which it is used. The paper concludes by briefly sketching how the linkages and relationships which inhere in the ways we think about history in meta-historical terms may serve as a conceptual and analytic guide for future history-work in MOS.