The Past Speaks

On Friday, 26 March, I was honoured to be part of an online panel on Racial Justice, History, and Business Ethics organized by the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management. The panel, which is connected to a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics (an FT50 journal) on racial injustice and business ethics, included me as well as  Jennifer Johns (Bristol), Leon Prieto (Clayton State), and Simone Phipps (Middle Georgia State). My hosts included Paul T. Harper of University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business and David Wasieleski, who is the Albert P. Viragh Professor of Business Ethics in the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University. Anyway, here is a description on the session written by the organizers

Panel will provide examples of the ways ahistorical methods and temporal frames expose and occlude the role of race in knowledge creation processes. The Atlantic Slave Trade as a context for understanding current management practices will be discussed as well as the unrecognized history of Black entrepreneurship in the U.S.

You can watch a video of the session here.

I found that the session on Friday was extremely stimulating and useful. I learnt a great deal from listening to the presentation of my co-panelists. I also got valuable feedback on my paper that will allow us to do a better job of preparing it for submission to the journal. A major theme of the conversation on Friday was slavery, both its historical legacies and the existence of slavery and slavery-like forms of exploitation in the present. In my presentation, I suggested that corporate involvement in crimes against humanity usually, although not necessarily in all cases, involves a company profiting from the mistreat of individuals who have been Otherized. By Otherized, I mean depicted by a regime or a culture as inferior, sub-human, and less deserving of the rights enjoyed by individuals who are members of the locally dominant ethno-racial group.

 I prefaced my discussion of the involvement of companies in the historic crime of Black slavery by observing that while historic crimes by firms are, in theory, a separate from discrimination against Otherization populations the most prominent examples of firms having profited by participating in crimes against humanity involved crimes that were directed against Otherized populations (e.g. Jews in Nazi Germany and people of African descent in the British Empire and its offshoots). I would theorize that the worst types of criminal behaviour involve actions at the expense of marginalized groups because managers who are embedded in cultures that have already Otherized the group in question find it easier to justify their decisions to exploit.

It seems to me that this historical pattern is consistent with what we see in the present, particularly with respect to some patterns we currently see in debates about global supply chains for such commodities as cotton.

Overall, the session was superb. I was pleased by the fact it was diverse in so many dimensions– by presenter demographic background, but also by academic discipline, meta-theoretical orientation, and geography.

The summer of 2020 was a difficult one for the companies that once profited from African slave labour, as these firms, which include such prominent corporations as Citibank and Barclays, faced calls from Black Lives Matter and others to apologize and pay reparations for their involvement in the historic crime of slavery. The managers of these firms responded in strikingly different ways. About thirty extant US and UK firms with documented ties to pre-1865 Black slavery have faced criticism for their roles in what is now universally regarded as a terrible crime against humanity. Tomorrow, I’ll present research that aims to explain why the companies accused of historic involvement in slavery have responded in such different ways. I’ll be speaking to a webinar organized by the Academy of Management’s Social Issues in Management Division. To attend the webinar, please register here.

I’m really looking forward to presenting my co-authored research and from hearing about the interesting research of my co-panelists.

AOM Social Issues in Management Division
Hosts: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) & David Wasieleski (Duquesne)

Featuring:
Andrew Smith (Liverpool)
Jennifer Johns (Bristol)
Leon Prieto (Clayton State)
Simone Phipps (Middle Georgia State)

Panel will provide examples of the ways ahistorical methods and temporal frames expose and occlude the role of race in knowledge creation processes. The Atlantic Slave Trade as a context for understanding current management practices will be discussed as well as the unrecognized history of Black entrepreneurship in the U.S.
Lead Sponsor: Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. Special thanks to the David Berg Centre for Ethics and Leadership for sponsoring the event.

The History in Management and Organization Research Seminar (HiMOS) series is organized by researchers in the Strategy and Entrepreneurship research group at Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, Finland. In the research group, we have had a long-standing seminar series in the intersection between history and management and organization research. The COVID-19 situation forced the organizers to broaden our geographical reach and move the seminar online, which is actually fantastic news for researchers around the world who are very interested in their seminars, since this change dramatically reduces the costs of participation.

The aim of this seminar series is to help open up the black box of “practicing” history in the context of management and organization studies.

Anyway, I’m now pleased to share details of the next seminar.

We are very proud to have another great lineup of speakers sharing their insights and workshopping their papers, including Eero Vaara (Saïd Oxford, keynote), Christina Lubinski (Copenhagen Business School), and Antti Sihvonen (JSBE).

Event details:

Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Time:   2pm-5pm (UTC+2, Finland)

1pm-4pm (UTC+1, Central European Time)

Noon-3pm (UTC+0, UK)

Please register by click here

After the registration, you will receive the Zoom link, passcode, and the full version of the working papers one week before the seminar.

Program

Keynote:

Eero Vaara (Saïd Oxford): ”How to learn from unusual organizations?”

Working paper presentations:

Christina Lubinski (Copenhagen Business School): ”The Sound of Opportunity: Aural Temporality, Entrepreneurial Opportunity & the Evolution of Markets” (with Dan Wadhwani, University of Southern California)

Antti Sihvonen (JSBE): “Chance, Strategy and Change: The Structure of Contingency in the Evolution of the Nokia Corporation, 1986–2015” (with Jaakko Aspara, NEOMA; Juha-Antti Lamberg, JSBE; Henrikki Tikkanen, Aalto)

HiMOS is organized by the Strategy and Entrepreneurship research group of Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics (JSBE). The purpose of the seminar series is the advancement of historical research in management and organization studies. Seminars are organized twice per year. In each seminar we will have one keynote speaker with a recent history-related publication sharing their insights and experiences and 2–3 advanced working paper presentations.

If you are interested in presenting in future seminars, contact the organizers Zeerim Cheung (zeerim.cheung@jyu.fi) and Christian Stutz (christian.stutz@jyu.fi).

Business historians in the North Atlantic countries often pay insufficient attention to the work of their colleagues in India, a thriving democratic country that may represent the future of business history. The top Indian business schools increasingly employ historical researchers. It is, therefore, with great pleasure, I would like to promote this forthcoming event.

Pandemics, Panic, And Preparedness: Decoding The Past To Decipher The Present And Delineate The Future

Professor Chinmay Tumbe
Assistant Professor, Economics Area,
Indian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad

JOIN THE
WEBINAR

March 13, 2021
Saturday
4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (IST)

The Conversation Series

Pandemics, Panic, And Preparedness: Decoding The Past To Decipher The Present And Delineate The Future

March 13, 2021
Saturday
4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (IST)

In early 2020, when the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, the world descended into pandemonium. The ensuing months were a mix of heightened panic and ill-preparedness. Amid the chaos, we tried to find a method in the madness, pausing to ponder over the handling of past public health crises.

History may not repeat itself, but it swings around in a perennial loop. We forget history at our own peril. As it turned out, India had a case of mass amnesia about its own experiences with pandemics. Why did we not learn from the past, to predict and prepare for future portentous calamities?

Our speaker, who works at the intersection of economics and history, probed into previous public health disasters, culminating in the book, ‘The Age of Pandemics’. It describes how the world at large, and India in particular, endured three other pandemics over a century ago. He will explain how these experiences changed people’s lives and livelihoods, and lessons for the present and inevitable similar crises in the future. He will answer questions about what could have done better if we had not forgotten the past.

REGISTER NOW

Andrew Smith
University of Liverpool Management School

Graham Alan Brownlow
Queen’s University Belfast – Queen’s Management School

Paper Abstract: Which groups of elected officials should be in charge of decisions about the imposition of lockdowns and other social distancing rules? People throughout the UK have debated this issue since the start of the pandemic. When central government, local governments, and devolved administrations all enjoy democratic legitimacy, disputes over who should have the power to impose social distancing rules are almost inevitable. The nature of the British constitution also means that the recent debates about parliamentary insight and social distancing rules were predictable. This paper sheds lights on these debates over who should have the power to impose social distancing rules by drawing on economic theory, particularly the work of Nobel Laureates Hayek (1945) and Ostrom (1990). We review UK policy since March 2020 using this lens and then present policymakers with actionable recommendations. We argue that local rather than national governments should be given authority over whether or not to impose lockdowns and similar measures. We argue that in areas in which local government powers are not unified into a single unit and instead dispersed to different levels (e.g. county and borough councils), power over social distancing rules should be vested in the most junior unit of government. We use economic theory to argue that the legislative branches within each level of government should exercise close and continuous parliamentary oversight of all social distancing rules. In light of this pandemic, the UK might also consider investing resources in acquiring a written constitution that would clearly specify who has power over public health measures such as social distancing rules.

Full paper available here.

This year, the Business History Conference will be held virtually for the first time.  

This new format presents us with both challenges and opportunities.  The Emerging Scholars Committee usually runs networking events, such as a drinks reception and a breakfast.  While we will miss seeing all of you in person this year, we hope to maintain some of these traditions in the new virtual format and to continue to provide a supportive space to network and meet other scholars.

We are launching a new mentoring scheme, which will provide participants at the virtual BHC with a valuable opportunity to gain advice and insight from more advanced scholars in the field on everything from completing a dissertation to finding research funding, navigating the academic job market to exploring possibilities for business historians beyond the academy. 

If you would like to participate, please contact Victoria Barnes <barnes@rg.mpg.de>

We aim to begin the process of introducing mentors with mentees on the 17th February.

With best wishes,

Grace Ballor (Harvard Business School/Bocconi University)

Victoria Barnes Max Planck Institute for Legal History

Jessica Burch (Denison University)

Sven Kube (Florida International University)

Andrew McGee (Carnegie Mellon University)

Corporate Responses to Racial Unrest
A special issue of the journal Enterprise & Society (an ABS3 journal in the UK business school ranking system)
Guest editors: Dr. Tyesha Maddox and Dr. Michael J. Thate

The aim of this special issue is to convene an international team of scholars, ranging from
diverse disciplinary perspectives and broad historical periods, on the question of historical
corporate responses to racial unrest. Organized by an historian of the African Diaspora and a
philosopher of religion and ethicist, this special issue places our current moment of corporate
responses to racial unrest within a broad comparative perspective.

Historically, corporations􀂲and the pressure placed on them by fears of the loss of reputation and
public good will􀂲have propelled many social justice movements. Some, however, have worked
openly as well as through clandestine backchannels to suppress such movements. In this special
issue, we interrogate the ways in which corporations have responded to social pressure and civic pressure
from Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, to corporate responses to the civil rights movement of
the 1960s, to contemporary companies posting statements in support of Black Lives Matter on
social media accounts following the police killing of George Floyd, such responses have ranged
from the purely representational to the more substantive variety of systemic change.

The editors are thus inviting original essays that analyze from an historical perspective corporate
responses to social unrest that consider (or relate to) the following questions:
􀁸 What are, if any, the ethical responsibilities of corporations in moments of social unrest?
􀁸 How might stakeholder theory be relevant within discussions of civil society and racial
inequality?
􀁸 How can corporations functioning and co-implicated within a capitalist system effect
change?
􀁸 How and in what ways have the pressures to respond to social justice movements
changed over time?
􀁸 What has been the fiscal impact of corporate responses to racial unrest over the long
term?
􀁸 What have been the incentives for companies to respond? And how have these incentives
changed over time?
􀁸 What special cases are worth pointing out across a global perspective as models to imitate
and/or excoriate?

The editors welcome other topics, too, that might relate to the theme of the special issue.
Essays should be around 7,500 to 10,000 words􀂲with a hard limit of 12,000 words􀂲and
formatted according to the style of Enterprise & Society. (Please refer to their Instructions for
Authors page for specific guidance.) The deadline for submission is 1 February 2022.
If you are interested in submitting an essay for review, please submit your essay through
Enterprise & Society􀂶s Manuscript Central by the due date of 1 February 2022. Upon
submission, you will be given an option to indicate that you are submitting to a special issue. If
you have questions about the special issue or expressions of interest, please contact either Dr.
Thate (mthate@princeton.edu) or Dr. Maddox (tmaddox1@fordham.edu).

That’s the title of a new initiative from the Social Issues in Management (SIM) division of the Academy of Management.

The SIM Racial Justice Committee seeks to expand the conversation of race and identity in the business academy. Building on the important research traditions within management scholarship that critically engage the role of race in interpersonal conflict and group dynamics, we intend to demonstrate the value of racial considerations in areas of management theory where race has been less prominent. The goal of this series is to spur novel ideas for the development of new research programs and innovative pedagogical and practitioner approaches. 

January 22, 2021, 11:00am- 12:30pm EST – Racial Justice and Business Schools 

Hosts: Robbin Derry (Lethbridge) & Sharon Alvarez (Pittsburgh) 

registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/… 

Penelope Muzanenhamo (Univ. College Dublin)

Victor Ray (Iowa)

Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh)

Panel will examine the role of race in business school curricula and research valuation: what topics matter, which research questions are overlooked, whose scholarship is cited.  Leading diversity and inclusion efforts as well as teaching about racial justice in business schools will also be addressed.  

February 12, 2021, 11:00am-noon EST – Racial Justice, Social Theory, and Business Ethics 

Hosts: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) & Cristina Neesham (Newcastle) 

registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/…

Rabbi Gideon Pogrund (Univ. of Pretoria) 

Smriti Sharma (Newcastle)

Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) 

Panel will challenge and extend dominant social and political theories operating within business scholarship through a critical engagement with Black studies, post-colonial studies, and global feminism. Diversity professionals will find strategies for building communities of trust across identity boundaries.  

Event Sponsor: Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge

March 5, 2021, 11:00am-noon EST – Racial Justice and Business Technologies 

Hosts: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) & Kirsten Martin (Notre Dame) 

registration www.eventbrite.com/e/…

Alvaro Bedoya (Georgetown) 

Muhammad Ali (Northeastern) 

Ezinne Nwankwo (Cambridge) 

Panel will explore the moral dimensions of technology policy and implementation with an eye toward racial impacts. Issues of fairness and transparency in use of machine learning algorithms used in the high-stakes contexts will be a central theme of the discussion. 

Event Sponsor: University of Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center 

March 26, 2021, 11:00am-noon EST – Racial Justice, History, and Business Ethics 

Hosts: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) & David Wasieleski (Duquesne)

registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/… 

Andrew Smith (Liverpool) 

Jennifer Johns (Bristol) 

Leon Prieto (Clayton State) 

Simone Phipps (Middle Georgia State) 

The panel will provide examples of the ways ahistorical methods and temporal frames expose and occlude the role of race in knowledge creation processes. The Atlantic Slave Trade as a context for understanding current management practices will be discussed as well as the unrecognized history of Black entrepreneurship in the U.S.

May 7, 2021, 11:00-noon EST – Racial Justice and Sustainability

Hosts: Robbin Derry (Lethbridge) and Jeffrey York (Colorado)

registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/…

Carl Zimring (Pratt Institute) 

Irene Henriques (York) 

Mary Beth Doucette (Cape Breton Univ.) 

This panel aims to broaden our perspectives on the relationship between the social and natural environments. It will also deepen our understanding of the conceptual connection between “race” and “waste” in the historical development of public and corporate policies.  

Event Sponsor: Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge 

The SIM Division Racial Justice Web-Forum Series is made possible by the generous support of our lead sponsor: 

The Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh 

Call for Papers: https://www.springer.com/journal/10551/updates/18290364 

Journal of Business Ethics (Financial Times 50) Special Issue on “Racial Justice and Business Ethics” 

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2021 

Guest Editors: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh), Robbin Derry (Lethbridge), Gregory Fairchild (Virginia)