Author Archives: Celeste

May 27th Readings – short this month!

Posted on by
Hello all and thank you for your interest in our upcoming PhD Reading Group for new scholars interested in Humanistic Management. Our meeting on Monday (27-May) is coming up in just a few days. In our last call a good question was asked: is humanistic management research always prescriptive, or can more typical descriptive, positive, or inductive research also be humanistic? We will spend a few sessions digging into this question, which has vast ramifications for our career-planning. In Monday’s session we will begin the conversation on this important issue.
Since there is not much time before Monday we only ask you to read one short piece (less than 7 pages) – the introductory editorial to the Humanistic Management Journal when it launched in 2016. This was written by the IHMA’s own Michael Pirson and outlines a direction both for the journal and humanistic management more broadly. Download the reading here
If you have extra time or interest, following are links to download the first article and second article from that issue, which give some of the theoretical and historical background for humanistic management as a whole. Hopefully we will also have time to make practical applications of these ideas to our own individual research ideas and proposals.
If you haven’t registered on eventbrite yet and plan to come, please register at this link now. As always, please feel free to invite friends to come along.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Tyson and David
NOTE: this session is a preview of a workshop we are doing this year at the Academy of Management Annual Conference in Boston. Will you be at AOM? Want to help us make the workshop a big success for early career researchers and for humanistic management? Come on Monday and share your ideas!

April readings & discussion

Posted on by

Welcome to the Foundations in Humanistic Management Reading Group. This month we’re experimenting with something new. Rather than looking at self-consciously humanistic articles as exemplars, we will dive into two articles that address central concepts in neo-institutional theory to ask critical questions including “does this perspective place human dignity and wellbeing at the center of theory, research, and practice?” and “how might we reframe theory to incorporate more humanistic perspective?”. This month’s readings are:

  • Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20, 571–610. Link to article on JSTOR
  • Zietsma, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2010). Institutional Work in the Transformation of an Organizational Field: The Interplay of Boundary Work and Practice Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55, 189–221. Link to article on JSTOR

The first of these articles is a classic foundational work on legitimacy, a central concept in neo-institutional theory. The second contemporary work concerns fields, also central to institutional theory, while engaging both micro and macro perspectives in the roles of individuals and institutions in field change. If you are unable to access the articles, please email Celeste Diaz Ferraro or Tyson Rallens and we can help you out.

The live group discussion will be April 8, 12:00pm-1:00 pm EDT (UTC-5). Celeste & Tyson will guide the live discussion around how humanistic perspective are (or aren’t) incorporated into institutional theory and institutional work.Due to global differences in internet bandwidth availability, participants are welcome to join the zoom platform discussion in video mode or in audio-only mode.

In the interim, please feel free to share thoughts and questions on any aspect of these articles in the comments here. It’s a near certainty that if you have a question about something, others do too!