No abstract

Competitive papers are double-blind reviewed by volunteer Sprott faculty members. A volunteer Sprott faculty panel also provides detailed comments on the students' presentations.

We put forth a call to management and organization studies (MOS) researchers to practice context in their research. Context is not, as it is so commonly treated, a stable object to be invoked as a background for our work. Contexts are inherently plural and fluid, and they shift depending on our phenomenon of interest and philosophical framing. We need to engage with context respective to our paradigm of choice, embed context into our research, explain how and why the relevant context was formulated, and acknowledge that the relevant context we have formulated influences both the questions we ask and the answers we find. In this article, we review the use of context in MOS, discuss the current understandings of context across paradigms and offer reasons for why MOS does not practice context, and draw on work done in other social science disciplines to help us practice context.

Business schools have played a significant role in creating and sustaining many of today’s grand challenges, including income inequality, the gig economy and climate change. Yet calls for change go unanswered. With a critical perspective on philanthropy, an understanding of power and historical reflexivity, this article helps develop our understanding of why business schools are so deeply rooted in managerialism and so resistant to change. Through archival research, I show how the Ford Foundation used its money and influence in the 1950s to embed a managerialist ideology in American business schools as part of its efforts to sustain and strengthen the capitalist system. Through its outward face of objectivity and neutrality, combined with targeted support of specific schools, individuals and research, the Ford Foundation went beyond shaping the structure and curriculum of business schools to shaping the ideology and identities of management scholars. The more that we, as business academics, understand the full histories of our own institutions and the often hidden or ignored sources of power that played a role in their development, the easier it will be to change business schools in ways that fit our current contexts and support our current and future needs.

The management textbook is a fundamental tool in the education of business students. This article uses a critical hermeneutic analysis to examine how major social and political issues of the past six decades have been incorporated into the management textbook in ways that increase the power and unquestioned acceptance of the corporate discourse. The specific social and political events addressed are the feminist revolution and the civil rights movement.