Yehouda Shenhav

From Binarism Back to Hybridity: A Postcolonial Reading of Management and Organization Studies

Drawing on recent theoretical developments in postcolonial research, we examine the effect of the colonial encounter on the canonization of management and organization studies (MOS) as well as the field’s epistemological boundaries. In contrast to Orientalism, which is founded on a neat, binary, division between West and East, we offer (following Latour) a hybrid epistemology, which recognizes that the history of management and organizations should include the fusion between the colonizer and the colonized and their mutual effects on each other. Thus, while we discern the Orientalist assumptions embedded in the writing of management scholars, we also show that certain texts and practices that emerged during the colonial, as well as neo-colonial, encounter were excluded from the field, resulting in a ‘purified canon’. We conclude by arguing that hybridization between the metropole and colonies, and between western and non-western organizational entities, needs to be acknowledged by students of cultural diversity, and of critical management.

From Americanization to Colonization: The Diffusion of Productivity Models Revisited

Drawing on postcolonial studies, this article seeks to add a layer to the literature concerning the Americanization of productivity models and management in general. Based on a genealogical analysis of Israel’s productivity models, we juxtapose two processes by which productivity models were disseminated: first, by the British colonial authorities, and then as part of American technical assistance to Israel. Thus, we draw attention to the close ties between Americanization and colonialism. Our objective is to show empirically how earlier colonial practices preceded and set the stage for later processes of Americanization, and to stress the similar logic that both processes tend to follow.

Entrance of Blacks and Women Into Managerial Positions in Scientific and Engineering Occupations: A Longitudinal Analysis

This longitudinal study of a national sample examined the effects of workers’ gender and race on their entrance into managerial positions in public and private organizations over a period of four y...

The `Costs' of Institutional Isomorphism: Science in Non-Western Countries:

The theoretical section of this paper describes three mechanisms through which science in non-Western countries is institutionalized to follow the forms that are prevalent in the major industrial nations. The empirical section, which is based on a sample of 73 less developed countries (LDCs) and underdeveloped countries (UDCs) demonstrates that the findings are inconsistent with predictions made by theories of economic development and modernization. These theories predict a positive relationship between the degree of institutionalization and economic performance, but, for LDCs we find no such relationship; for the UDCs, it is even negative. Thus we conclude that institutional isomorphism and conformity to external rational myths are loosely coupled with internal economic efficiency.

Are Women and Blacks Closing the Gap? Salary Discrimination in American Science during the 1970s and 1980s

The authors use two longitudinal surveys of American scientists conducted by the Census Bureau, one for the years 1972–76 and one for the years 1982–86, to estimate salary discrimination against black scientists and female scientists. In counterpoint to the results of some other studies, which have suggested that race- and gender-based salary discrimination has been either declining or stable in many occupations, this analysis provides evidence that salary discrimination against black scientists and female scientists worsened between the 1970s and the 1980s. Female scientists earned about 12% less than similarly qualified male scientists in 1972, but 14% less in 1982; and black scientists earned about the same amount as white scientists in 1972, but 6% less in 1982.

The Jews of Iraq, Zionist Ideology, and the Property of the Palestinian Refugees of 1948: An Anomaly of National Accounting

An account already exists between us and the Arab world: the account of the compensation that accrues to the Arabs who left the territory of Israel and abandoned their property … The act that has now been perpetrated by the Kingdom of Iraq … forces us to link the two accounts … We will take into account the value of the Jewish property that has been frozen in Iraq when calculating the compensation that we have undertaken to pay the Arabs who abandoned property in Israel.

The cloak, the cage and the fog of sanctity: the Zionist mission and the role of religion among Arab Jews

. This paper examines the Zionist national mission to mobilise Jewish ethnic communities in Arab countries, in the period preceding the establishment of the state of Israel. It draws on archival texts to trace a phenomenon known in Jewish historiography as ‘Shadarut’; a voluntary religious practice of fundraising which was widespread in the Jewish world for hundreds of years. The paper shows how this pre-national religious practice (to be labelled ‘the cloak’) was adopted and incorporated into the Zionist national project (‘the cage’), first generating tension between the Jewish religious establishment and the Zionist ‘secular’ movement, and then blurring the distinction between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a national identity. The paper shows how secular emissaries of European origin arrived in Arab countries as religious emissaries (‘shadarim’) and aspired to discover a strong religious fervour among members of the Jewish communities there. This is because in the eyes of the Zionist (ostensibly secular) movement, being religious Jews in Islamic countries was a criterion that demarcated them from their Arab neighbours. This analysis entails two main conclusions: (a) that contrary to the experience of the European Zionist national movement in which secularism and the revolt against the Jewish religion played a central role, in Islamic countries it was particularly the Jewish religion, and not secular nationalism that was used to mobilise the Jewish community into the Jewish national movement; (b) that the ‘shadarut’ practice refuses to yield to the epistemological imperatives and the common divisions that arise from the binary distinction between ‘religiousness’ and ‘secularity’, particularly in the Middle East. Some implications for contemporary Israeli society are discussed.

The State, the Labor Process, and the Diffusion of Managerial Models

This study examines the autonomous goals of state actors and their administrative and cultural capacities to pursue them. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from Palestine/Israel during the years 1940–1960, we study the diffusion of joint productivity councils that use scientific management principles (scientific JPCs). We assess explanations for the diffusion of managerial models offered by theories of state autonomy, efficiency, labor control, and professionalization. We demonstrate that the actions of state leaders interested in stabilizing the economy and financing nation-building projects were a necessary condition for the diffusion of scientific JPCs, which were initially rejected by labor, capital, and industrial engineers. State actors used public policy to foster national and plant-level agreements between labor and capital and launched a moral discourse that framed productivity as a precondition for national survival. This case study brings insights from political sociology and the framing literature to organizational research and offers a new set of factors for understanding the nexus between the state, the labor process, and the diffusion of managerial models.

Expected Managerial Careers within Growing and Declining R & D Establishments

Numerous studies using individual-level variables have sought to explain the tendency of scientists and engineers to aspire to managerial careers within R&D establishments. The present study, which concentrates on expected mobility to management, examines the interplay between structural and individual determinants of the phenomenon. Logit analyses indicate that the individual-level effects were remarkably consistent with the findings presented in the literature, lending construct validity to the dependent variable used in this study. Structural-level variables, most of which have not been examined previously in R&D establishments, greatly enhanced our understanding of expected managerial mobility. Different effects were found for growing and for declining organizations.

The political embeddedness of managerial ideologies in pre‐state Israel: the case of PPL 1920‐1948

The study of managerial ideologies focuses exclusively on the emergence of American models and their dissemination in other societies. Argues that the a‐political, scientific and rational facade on which these models are premised is often incommensurate with the industrial experience of “non‐western” societies. Based on the historical case study of Palestine Potash Ltd (PPL), this study explores the development of managerial ideologies within the political and cultural context of pre‐state Israel in its formative stage (1920‐1948). While elaborating on the undocumented management history of Israel, demonstrates that American managerial ideologies were indeed imported, but their logic and casting were subordinated to national objectives. Furthermore, shows that Socialist‐National, idiosyncratic political ideology became a dominant ideology of employment management ‐ even in capitalistic firms ‐ allowing managers to acquire legitimation, control workers and increase profits of industrial enterprises.