Parametric Design in Urbanism: A Critical Reflection

Parametric modelling run by the explicitly defined algorithms generating synchronically auditable dynamic forms and patterns, has become a prominent method especially in architecture. Though the use of parametric models has got wider in urban design, the critical reflection on the actual and possible application of the method in urbanism has fallen limited so far. The paper tends to relate parametric design with the contemporary understanding of urbanism with regards to the idea of design control in the the context of complexity. From this perspective, the actual performance of the model application in urban context is discussed with the renowned project of Kartal-Pendik Masterplan (Zaha Hadid Architects) in Istanbul, Turkey.     

中国的商学院向何处去——中国管理教育的深层反思

从困惑、原因、思考3个方面对中国管理教育进行了深层反思,中国的商学院需要在中国、教育、人群的全方面变化中,重新寻找自己的坐标与方位,明确价值取向和社会责任,关注并认真做好顶层设计,努力探索个性化发展路径。     

Knowledge Spillovers from FDI: A Critical Review from the International Business Perspective

This paper reviews and organizes the theoretical and empirical research on foreign direct investment (FDI) knowledge spillovers from the international business perspective. In doing so, it develops a framework for the analysis of this phenomenon. The suggested FDI knowledge spillover framework integrates both the macro‐level (country, industry, institutions) and micro‐level (multinational firm, headquarters, subsidiary, local firms) antecedents of spillovers with their consequences, and proposes to analyse spillovers along three main attributes that characterize their occurrence, i.e. their magnitude, scope and speed.     

Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Multilevel Review,Synthesis and Research Agenda

Small‐business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in quantity, but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a comprehensive review that identifies, synthesizes and integrates previous research, and highlights the knowledge gaps and the way forward. This methodical search of the literature helped to identify 115 multidisciplinary peer‐reviewed academic articles appearing in high‐quality journals over the 1970–2016 period. Using a systematic and in‐depth content analysis technique, the authors reviewed the articles and identified the theories used, the national contextual focus and the methodological orientations in these articles. They also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators and moderators of SBSR at the institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis. This review helps to identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. The authors offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help address the knowledge gaps and raise important questions for future research. The primary contributions of this paper are: delineating and summarizing a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and geographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributions in this field; and informing directions for future research. The authors propose a research agenda that is theoretically relevant and innovative, and call for context‐ and size‐aware research on SBSR, using small‐business‐specific methodologies and measurements.     

科学管理原理:理论反思与现实批判

泰勒的《科学管理原理》发表100年来,科学管理的理论和实践得到不断发展和创新。无论《原理》作为一种思想体系或管理哲学,还是对制度经济学的推进,以及作为现代管理理论的发轫,其理论和技术的生命力都不容忽视。由此,探讨泰勒科学管理的本质所在,揭示科学管理在过去100年对人类组织管理行为的深刻影响,批判性地分析我国科学管理的思想传播和实践过程显得十分重要。故提出一个核心观点:科学管理原理是科学精神在人类管理行为上的反映,是现代产业文明的哲学基础和行动原则。重新发现和挖掘泰勒管理哲学和技术的现实意义在于坚定管理理论和实践创新的科学精神,这对中国管理理论和实践的发展与创新具有方向性价值。     

On the Power and Poverty of Critical (Self) Reflection in Critical Management Studies: A Comment on Ford,Harding and Learmonth

Ford, Harding and Learmonth in their paper in the March 2010 special issue of the British Journal of Management ask ‘who is it that would make business schools more critical?’ Commenting on their paper, I argue that although they raise a very important question they do not deliver rigorous answers because their critical reflexive gaze fails to fall upon the mechanisms of hierarchy and exclusion that operate within the critical management studies (CMS) community. First the reflexivity debate in CMS and Ford, Harding and Learmonth's contribution to this debate is explored. Next institutionalized orthodoxies in CMS, such as the tendency to close ranks for those with different perspectives and the lack of demographic diversity, are problematized, and Ford, Harding and Learmonth's contribution is situated across these orthodoxies. Finally, the commentary offers some alternatives and solutions for CMS to take the step further from verbalism to critical praxis. It is suggested that the solution lies in exercising critical self‐reflection which acknowledges the embeddedness of CMS in structures and relations of power and hegemony and recognizes the role of CMS scholars in sustaining and reproducing these structures in their own institutions and communities.     

A Critical Reflection on the Experimental Method for Planning Research: Testing the Added Value of PSS in a Controlled Environment

For planning research to successfully generate usable mechanisms for planning practitioners more hypothesis-testing research designs are needed. Currently, the academic field seems more geared toward generating hypotheses, either by observing practice or from theoretical studies. This approach is especially common in research that generates knowledge of planning. In this paper, I map several relevant research designs that allow for such hypothesis testing and discuss their usability in planning research. Then, I particularly focus on the experimental method as a promising design for generating contextualized mechanisms for planning practice. I describe and analyze a study that aimed to develop mechanisms about the added value of knowledge technologies for the quality of planning. Two consecutive experiments are described in detail, after which the usability of the experimental method for planning research is discussed. Reflecting on these experiments indicate that the main strength of this research design is that it allows to create ideal circumstances for falsification (which is virtually impossible in planning practices. The main weakness is the ecological validity of findings, especially when the research is executed with students.     

Business and Management Impact Assessment in Research Excellence Framework 2014: Analysis and Reflection

The evaluation of research impact is likely to remain an important element of research quality audits in the UK for the foreseeable future. With this paper, we contribute to debates on impact and relevance of business and management studies research through an analysis of Research Excellence Framework 2014 impact scores within the business and management unit of assessment. We offer insights into the organizational contexts of UK business schools within which impact is produced, drawing attention to the issues of linkages with research intensity, grant income generation, research team size, career stage and gender of academics, and whether impact activity is focused on private or public sector organizations and national or international reach. We put forward recommendations for managers responsible for business schools and higher education policymakers regarding management and organizational policies and processes, as well as possible changes to the rules guiding future research excellence audits.     

Gay Male Academics in UK Business and Management Schools: Negotiating Heteronormativities in Everyday Work Life

This paper contributes to a neglected topic area about lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people's employment experiences in UK business and management schools. Drawing on queer theory to problematize essentialist notions of sexuality, we explore how gay male academics negotiate and challenge discourses of heteronormativity within different work contexts. Using in‐depth interview data, the paper shows that gay male academics are continually constrained by heteronormativity in constructing viable subject positions as ‘normal’, often having to reproduce heteronormative values that squeeze opportunities for generating non‐heteronormative ‘queer’ sexualities, identities and selves. Constructing a presence as an openly gay academic can invoke another binary through which identities are (re)constructed: as either ‘gay’ (a cleaned up version of gay male sexuality that sustains a heteronormative moral order) or ‘queer’ (cast as radical, disruptive and sexually promiscuous). Data also reveal how gay men challenge organizational heteronormativities through teaching and research activities, producing reverse discourses and creating alternative knowledge/power regimes, despite institutional barriers and risks of perpetuating heteronormative binaries and constructs. Study findings call for pedagogical and research practices that ‘queer’ (rupture, destabilize, disrupt) management knowledge and the heterosexual/homosexual binary, enabling non‐heteronormative voices, perspectives, identities and ways of relating to emerge in queer(er) business and management schools.     

Responsible Management Education in Time of Crisis: A Conceptual Framework for Public Business Schools in Egypt and Similar Middle Eastern Context

Public Organization Review - Recent studies show that the adoption of RME scenarios is still a matter of concern for non-western countries ((Mousa et al., Journal of Management Development...     

家族逻辑、企业逻辑与家族企业成长——S公司案例研究

家族企业涉及家族和企业2个系统,前者以情感为维系逻辑,后者以能力效率为运营逻辑,二者之间既存在互补关系,也存在冲突。家族逻辑和企业逻辑之间能否平衡决定着家族企业成功的概率。S公司案例表明,在中国文化背景下,以孝悌为核心的家族伦理影响着创业者的家族地位和家族社会资本的汇集,进而影响家族企业的文化理念和社会责任。只有在制度理性的约束下,伦理文化才有利于企业运行效率的提升,因此,家族企业获得竞争优势的机制在于家族伦理—企业伦理-制度理性三者之间的有效制衡与共振。     

Critical Business Ethics: From Corporate Self‐interest to the Glorification of the Sovereign Pater

Research in critical business ethics has demonstrated how economic self‐interest is the primary reason that businesses adopt nominally ethical practices. After reviewing this body of research, the authors propose that it can be further developed by questioning its conception of self‐interest, by exploring its non‐economic dimensions and by reconsidering the meaning of the ‘self’ that is said to have such interests. Drawing insights from feminist theory and political theology, the paper interrogates corporate business ethics as a public glorification of corporate power based on a patriarchal conception of the corporation. Genealogically rooted in early Christian ceremonial practices used to glorify God the Father, this is a glorification for the sake of glory rather than just for the sake of commercial ends. The authors further argue that corporate business ethics is rendered as the feminized servant of the sovereign corporate patriarch, always at hand to glorify the master. The meaning of corporate business ethics is hence one where the feminine is not absent, but rather is servile to a masculinity conceived in relation to domination, greatness and sovereignty. Collectively, this shows how the power wielded and desired by corporate business ethics far exceeds the pursuit of financial self‐interest; it is also related to modelling the corporation on a male God. The paper concludes by considering how research in critical business ethics can be extended through forms of inquiry that destabilize the ethical glorification of the corporation, and displace its masculinist privilege.     

On Academic Rankings,Unacceptable Methods,and the Social Obligations of Business Schools

Inspired by recent discussions of the systematic costs that external rankings impose on academic institutions, and the undeniable shifts in the landscape of institutional data, a concerted and pragmatic re‐evaluation of ranking efforts has begun. In this study, multiple administrators and researchers representing both public and private institutions across the United States weigh in on these issues. While reaffirming the social contract we hold with society, we argue that the fundamental methodological shortcomings of existing rankings, and ultimately any ordinal ranking system, limit the value of current rankings. These shortcomings emerge from the conceptualization and the architecture of comparisons, and are evident in survey designs, data collection methods, and data aggregation procedures. Our discussion continues by outlining the minimal requirements that a socially responsible, transparent, flexible, and highly representative rating (vs. ranking) approach should employ. Ultimately, we call on academic institutions and organizing bodies to take a collective stand against existing rankings and to embrace the strategic use of multidimensional alternatives that faithfully serve prospective students, parents, and other key stakeholders. We conclude with a number of suggestions and opportunities for practice‐oriented research in the decision sciences aimed to support this fundamental shift in evaluative framing.     

Addressing Concerns Raised by Critics of Business Schools by Teaching Multiple Approaches to Management

As part of the larger discussion of the role of business schools in society, increasing concern is being expressed about the materialist–individualist values that underpin mainstream management. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the mechanisms through which these values are taught through the content of management theory. This study examined what happened when students in an introductory management class were deliberately taught two “ideal type” approaches to management: mainstream management, which seeks to maximize productivity and profitability for shareholders; and multistream management, which seeks to achieve a balance among multiple forms of well‐being (including financial, social, ecological, spiritual, physical, aesthetic) for multiple stakeholders (including owners, employees, customers, suppliers, competitors, neighbors, future generations). Results suggest that compared with students who are taught only one approach to management, students who are taught both a mainstream and a multistream approach place lower emphasis on materialism and individualism, differ in their perception of what constitutes effective management, and may manage differently. Implications for business schools, management theory, and instruction are discussed.