Strategy, management, corporate social responsibility, critical accounting, and other business researchers frequently utilize financial metrics such as return on assets, return on equity, and return on sales as proxy measures for the financial performance of firms. Large data sets offer convenience but exclude the textual data of corporate disclosures that offers critical insight into specific executive actions and social and environmental outcomes. This study looks at the detrimental consequences of the prevalent practice of relying on macrofinancial metrics as measures of firm performance. Insight from the socioeconomic approach to management (SEAM) is then applied to help an external analyst develop the perspective of an internal consultant to identify hidden costs in corporate disclosures. An extensive case on former CEO Robert Nardelli's tenure at Home Depot is presented as an example of applied SEAM theory to explore how a causal network of dysfunctions can be traced through publicly available financial disclosures. The management discussion and analysis as well as the executive incentive compensation formulas serve as a roadmap to discover hidden costs. The study offers a critical perspective of financial disclosures to allow researchers to externally diagnose dysfunctions sooner rather than years later, an insight formerly only available to internal consultants.

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Purpose Calls for dialectical learning process model development in learning organizations have largely gone unheeded, thereby limiting conceptual understanding and application in the field. This paper aims to unify learning organization theory with a new understanding of Hegelian dialectics to trace the development of the storytelling learning organization. The “storytelling learning organization” is a conceptual framework presented along with criteria to evaluate different kinds of dialectical development claims in “storytelling learning organization” work that are bona fide instances of one or another dialectical ontology ranging from Marxian, to Hegelian, to Brierian, to Žižekian. Design/methodology/approach Ontological evaluation and critique of a variety of “storytelling learning organization” practices posit different dialectical ontology and consequences for theory and practice. Through a case example of business process reengineering (BPR) in a “public research university (PRU)”, the storytelling of “schooling” versus “education” ideas and practices, in a place, in a period and in material ways of mattering, never achieves synthesis. The dialectical development of resistance to implementation evolves toward transcendence into irreducible oppositions of ontological incompleteness – the essence of a learning organization. Findings This ontological analysis focuses on the use of ideas and practices by opposing storytelling agents and actants to uncover a learning organization’s dialectical development in its own storytelling, its narrative and counter-narrative enactments, and its attempts to unpack contradictions. The PRU under study has gone through a series of financial crises, and its learning organization responses were downsizing staff and faculty positions and implementing BPR in ways that worsened the situation. The process resulted in staff and faculty leaving even before the reorganization was completed and enrollment dropped dramatically, in great part due to the negative press and the excessive standardization of the curriculum that accompanies “schooling” displacing acts of “education” practices and ideations. Meanwhile, the administrators are still trying to manage the narrative and control it so as to forestall additional attrition. Originality/value The theory of “storytelling learning organization” is original. The question answered here has practical value because institutions have choices to make concerning the kind of dialectical narrative and counter-narrative development that is cultivated, and there are options for transforming or moving to an alternative narrative and counter-narrative development process. The analysis of the case also illustrates a pattern of intervention that is, on the one hand, unsuccessful in developing “higher” education and, on the other hand, successful in shutting down the efficacy of a PRU by centrist use of reengineering to accomplish more schooling, more downsizing and more installation of “academic capitalism” ideas and practices.

The purpose of this conceptual essay is to challenge the inevitability of living with the destructive beast of speculative market economics in the 4 th epoch of global capitalism. We are facing an existential socioecological threat from the short-term excesses of financial capitalism, a socially irresponsible form that consumes without producing value and without bearing entrepreneurial risk, benefitting only the few. The fate of roughly 90% of humanity hangs in the balance. The primary contribution of this paper proposes a 5 th epoch of capitalism, inspired by Savall and Zardet's socio-economic and sustainable approach that restores human potential and value creation to spacetimemattering. Applying their conceptual innovation moves capitalism to a Bernácer-Perroux economic universe, with a different curvature capable of reconfiguring organizational story spacetime and resituating the antenarrative of global capitalism.

Purpose This paper aims to present several tools to facilitate strategic planning and to demystify the situational analysis and the selection of strategy. These tools include situational analysis scorecards for the environmental scan, market analysis, competitive bench-marking and internal resource evaluation along with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) fit matrix. Business student teams have tested these scorecards in capstone projects with good results; however, the concepts remain works-in-process. Design/methodology/approach This study introduces tools to assist planners in preparing the situational analysis and deriving logical strategic choices based upon the SWOT analysis. These aids include an environmental factors scorecard, a market favorability scorecard, a competitive benchmarking scorecard, a resource evaluation scorecard and a SWOT fit matrix. Planners can use these devices to produce a research-based situational analysis and as a guide to select the most appropriate strategy. Findings These concepts have been beta tested by business student teams in capstone projects with good results but remain works-in-process. Originality/value The introduction of these creative scorecards addresses a shortcoming in academic literature concerning the interpretation of situational analysis research data and provides tactical tools linking SWOT to the choice of grand strategy and strategy implementation.