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The twenty-first century has been witness to a number of corporate scandals and private-sector take-overs that have called into question the shareholder-focused economy and talk of a ‘post-capitalist’ economy. By way of contrast, this paper focuses on the Quakers as a (largely forgotten) exemplar of good organisation and good governance. We begin by briefly introducing the Quakers and the particular context (mid-seventeenth century England) from which they emerged. We then describe the significant impact that Quaker businesses had since the industrial revolution and we outline some of the business innovations they pioneered. In particular, the Quakers were known for their honest and honorable business practices, their enlightened approach to employee welfare, their concern for wider society, and their willingness to innovate. Today, most of these ‘Quaker’ businesses are no longer either owned or controlled by Quakers, and have almost invariably adopted the conventional shareholder model of corporate governance. We trace their demise to the introduction of limited liability and innovations in corporate law in the mid nineteenth century. These changes provided the legal basis for the Quaker family firms to incorporate, which many of them did in the late nineteenth century. We then describe how the unique Quaker ethos was inexorably decanted out of these companies during the twentieth century as the Quakers slowly lost both ownership and control of their businesses. We then inquire into how the Quaker story might help us reimagine the theory and practice of corporate governance and management.

This paper examines the related but different concepts of the uncanny and the sacred. Drawing on two cases – one fictional and one real – and using Žižek’s Symbolic-Real-Imaginary as an organising frame, the paper analyses how the uncanny and the sacred are connected. It then proceeds to examine the role of theorising in sacralising the uncanny and profaning the sacred. Finally, it briefly discusses how theory might be re-enchanted.

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AD 12/02/2014

This paper examines an industry whose incumbents’ specialised complimentary assets were their operations management and distribution channels. This advantage was seriously undermined by the advent of digital distribution. Radical technological change theories dictate that if incumbents in an industry without specialised complimentary assets will be replaced by entrants. This did not happen, and extant theories of incumbent survival do not explain why the incumbents remained dominant in the industry. We propose that survival is due to the unique industry characteristic of perpetuating sales. This paper will explain what is a perpetuating sales model and why does it enable incumbent survival?

We are interested in the emergence of new markets. While the literature contains various perspectives on how such new markets come to be, the dynamics of the marketization process are less clear. This paper focuses on the development of stent technology and examines the activities characteristic of its emerging market. We identify four market ‘moments’: a mutable marketing moment prior to the point of disruption; two parallel moments at the point of disruption – internecine marketing between emergent competitors, and subversive marketing between those competitors and established actors; and finally, a civilized marketing moment. We conclude that emergent competitors operate two distinct strategies at the point of disruption. Also, legal activities are central to marketization dynamics during this period. In terms of process, while creative destruction may broadly describe the move from disruption to acceptance, there is a period of creative construction prior to disruption, when the new market is coming into being.

Donncha Kavanagh (chapter eight) invites us to think of the university as fool,the idea of fool taken from the mediaeval courts and elsewhere in which the fool had a crucial role to play. The role of the fool, after all, is to present ambiguity to the powerful, wittily engaging his audience but perhaps to disturb a little as well.The fool is an irritant, a provocateur, whose modus operandi is to provoke newwisdom in others. Within the fool's foolishness, then, lies wisdom. Understood as fool, the university has had several masters or 'sovereign institutions' over its near-one thousand years of history, including the crown, the nation, the state, theprofessions and the world of work. The idea of fool, however, implies a certain 'liminality' from the main structures of power and so an issue (for Kavanagh) isthe extent to which this liminal role has been or is being abandoned. If, qua fool, the university is both to institutionalise and to de-institutionalise, the universitycannot become subservient to any authority. 'The fool must . . . be carefulnot to transgress this (liminal) role.' Accordingly, 'there is an . . . onus on the university . . . to actively foster intellectuals that question and play with society's institutions.' AD 31/03/2014

This paper takes some of Melanie Klein s ideas, which Bion (1961/1998) previously used to understand group dynamics, to analyse the discipline of management studies since its birth in the United States in the late 19th century. Specifically, it focuses on the idealisation of work and play, and argues that at its inception, for idiosyncratic historical reasons, the discipline was rooted in a paranoid-schizoid position in which work was idealised as good and play as bad. The paper maps out the peculiar set of factors and influences that brought this about. It then examines how and if, again following Klein, the discipline has evolved to the depressive position, where the idealisations are replaced by a more ambiguous, holistic semantic frame. Seven different relationships between work and play are then described. The paper contends that the originary splitting and idealisation is foundational to the discipline, and provides an enduring basis for analysing management theory and practice. It concludes by using this splitting to map out five potential future trajectories for the discipline. DM, 29/11/2013

This paper examines the international diffusion of one business practice, project management, through the prism of prior literature and data on the diffusion of ISO 9000. The study took an inductive approach, building theory through the iterative collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The findings problematise the central position accorded to the S-curve model and neo-institutional theory in explaining technology diffusion. The research posits three distinct processes driving the diffusion process: utility, institutional isomorphism, and competitive isomorphism, with the latter consisting of three primary mechanisms: competitive imitation, trendslators and fashion retailers. Contrary to prior literature, national, quasi-professional associations are found to be central to the diffusion process and play a key role in advocating and containing management technologies.

This paper reviews a remarkable experiment in organisation. At the centre of the story is James G. (Jim) March, one of the most influential scholars in management and organisation studies over the last half century. From 1954 to 1964, March was a leading member of the Graduate School of Administration (GSIA) at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which was an extraordinary hotbed of ideas and research at that time. The group was led by Herbert Simon, a true polymath who is now recognised as a founding father of many scientific domains.