Table Of ContentManagement Education and Humanities
This book is dedicated to the memory of Claudio Ciborra, who, alas,
could not stay with us until it was finished.
Management
Education and
Humanities
Edited by
Pasquale Gagliardi
Barbara Czarniawska
In association with Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Pasquale Gagliardi and Barbara Czarniawska 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
permission of the publisher.
Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
Glensanda House
Montpellier Parade
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 1UA
UK
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
136 West Street
Suite 202
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Management education and humanities / edited by Pasquale Gagliardi, Barbara
Czarniawska.
p. cm.
Selection of papers presented at a conference held in Venice on Sept. 10–12,
2003.
“In association with Fondazione Giorgio Cini.”
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Management–Study and teaching–Congresses. 2. Business education–
Congresses. 3. Executives–Training of–Study and teaching–Congresses. 4.
Management–Social aspects–Congresses. 5. Management–Moral and ethical
aspects–Congresses. 6. Education, Humanistic–Congresses. I. Gagliardi,
Pasquale, 1936– II. Czarniawska, Barbara. III. Fondazione “Giorgio Cini.”
HD30.4.M3493 2006
650.071⬘1–dc22 2005052709
ISBN-13: 978 1 84542 475 6 (cased)
ISBN-10: 1 84542 475 1 (cased)
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Contents
List of contributors vii
Foreword xii
INTRODUCTIONS
1 A role for humanities in the formation of managers 3
Pasquale Gagliardi
2 Forming managers? A counterpoint 10
Barbara Czarniawska
3 A guide for readers 14
Pasquale Gagliardi and Barbara Czarniawska
PART 1 MANAGERIAL PROFESSION AT THE START OF
THE NEW CENTURY
4 Management education and the humanities: The challenge of
post-bureaucracy 21
John Hendry
5 Women and humanities: Allies or enemies? 45
Helene Ahl
6 American psycho/European schizo: Stories of managerial elites
in a hundred images 67
Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert
PART 2 MANAGEMENT EDUCATION: IS A HUMANIST
REFRAMING POSSIBLE?
7 The business school in ruins? 101
Ken Starkey and Sue Tempest
8 Problematizing and enlarging the notion of humanistic
education 113
Daniel Arenas
9 Cultivation or civilization? Popular management concepts and
their role in reshaping the way management is understood 135
Niels Dechow
v
vi Contents
PART 3 BRINGING HUMANITIES INTO THE HEART OF
MANAGEMENT
10 Management as product of the European knowledge tradition:
A modern form of ancient paideia? 159
Keith Hoskin
11 A journey beyond institutional knowledge: Dante’s reading of
the Odyssey 174
Silvia Gherardi
12 Strong plots: Popular culture in management practice and
theory 195
Barbara Czarniawska and Carl Rhodes
PART 4 RETHINKING HUMANISM
13 A philosopher in public management 221
Lars Vissing
14 The great narrative of the sciences and the history of
humanities 227
Michel Serres
15 Post-humanist challenges to the human and social sciences 233
Karin Knorr Cetina
Afterword Anthony G. Hopwood 246
Index 251
Contributors
Helene Ahl holds a PhD degree from Jönköping International Business
School in Sweden, an ME degree from Lund University and an MBA from
the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. She is a Research
Fellow at the National Centre for Lifelong Learning (www.encell.se) at the
School of Education and Communication at Jönköping University. Her
research focuses on learning, from individual, organizational and institu-
tional perspectives. At present she is engaged in a discourse analysis of the
concept ‘lifelong learning’, and her latest publication was a critical literature
review of the motivation concept. She has also published within feminist
theory and entrepreneurship. Her book The Scientific Reproduction of
Gender Inequality received an award at the Critical Management Studies
division of the Academy of Management in 2003.
Daniel Arenas is Assistant Professor of the Department of Social
Sciences at ESADE Business School. He holds an PhD and an MA from
the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, a degree in
Philosophy from the University of Barcelona and a diploma from the
Program of Executive Development at ESADE. He teaches courses on soci-
ology and business ethics, and also coordinates the Program ‘Vicens Vives
– Leadership and Civic Commitment’ and the humanities courses for
undergraduates at ESADE. He has done research in the area of business
ethics and corporate social responsibility as well as in aesthetics and politi-
cal theory. Among the most recent publications are: (with Josep M. Lozano
and Alfons Sauquet) ‘Educational Programs in CSR’ in José Allouche (ed.),
EFMD-Book on Corporate Social Responsibility, Palgrave McMillan
(forthcoming Spring 2005); (with Josep M. Lozano and Conxita Folguer)
‘Setting the Context: The Role of Information Technology in an Business
Ethics Course Based on Face-to-Face Dialogue’, Journal of Business Ethics
48, 99–111 (2003), and ‘Per què ens importa l’art? El trencaclosques
de l’estètica i els valors’, IDEES Revista de temes contemporanis, 2004,
21, 34–45.
Barbara Czarniawska holds a Swedish Research Council/Malmsten
Foundation Chair in Management Studies at Gothenburg Research
Institute, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University,
Sweden. Her research takes a constructionist perspective on organizing,
most recently in the field of big city management and finance. She applies
vii
viii Contributors
narratology to organization studies. Her recent English books are A Tale of
Three Cities (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Narratives in Social
Science Research (Sage, 2004). Czarniawska is a member of the Swedish
Royal Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, and
the Royal Society of Art and Sciences in Gothenburg. She received the
Wihuri International Prize ‘in recognition of creative work that has spe-
cially furthered and developed the cultural and economic progress of
mankind’ in 2003.
Niels Dechow is a Lecturer in Management Studies (Accounting) at the
Saïd Business School – University of Oxford. Before joining Saïd, he worked
in the Danish consulting industry for Deloitte Consulting and KPMG
Consulting and later in the United States as Assistant Professor of
Accounting at Case Western Reserve University. His current research is
based on empirical studies focusing on the implementation and coordin-
ation of new management control technologies, concepts and procedures;
the (lack of) interaction of consultants and practitioners in transforming
management projects into practice; and associated with this, the role of the
business school in shaping modern notions of ‘good management’.
Pasquale Gagliardi is Professor of Sociology of Organization at the
Catholic University of Milan, and Managing Director of ISTUD – Istituto
Studi Direzionali. Before launching his academic career, he worked as a
consultant with many large Italian corporations. During the 1980s he
contributed to the foundation and development in Europe of SCOS, the
Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism. His present research
focuses on the relationship between culture, aesthetic knowledge and organ-
izational order. He has widely published books and articles on these topics
in Italian and English. Among his publications: Le imprese come culture
(Isedi, 1986); Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape
(de Gruyter, 1990); Studies of Organizations in the European Tradition
(Jai Press, 1995), co-edited with Sam Bacharach and Bryan Mundell;
Narratives We Organize By (Benjamins, 2003), co-edited with Barbara
Czarniawska. Professor Gagliardi is at present Secretary General of the
Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. He also serves on the Editorial Boards
of Organization Studies and Organization.
Silvia Gherardi is Professor of Sociology of Work and Organization at
the University of Trento, Italy, where she is responsible for the Research
Unit on Cognition, Organizational Learning and Aesthetics (RUCOLA).
Her research activities focus on workplace learning and knowing. Her the-
orethical background is in qualitative sociology, organizational symbolism,
and feminist studies. Her most recent book The Texture of Organizational
Knowledge (Blackwell, 2006) is devoted to the theme of the circulation of
knowledge.
Contributors ix
John Hendry is a Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge,
and Professor of Management at the University of Reading. He holds
degrees in mathematics (from Cambridge) and history (from London) and
has written extensively on intellectual history as well as on business and
management. Having worked in both the public and the private sectors, he
joined the faculty of the London Business School in 1984, and has since
held positions at Cranfield School of Management, Birkbeck College and
the University of Cambridge’s Judge Institute of Management, where he
was director of the MBA Course from 1990–1998. His current research is
on the CEO’s job in large listed companies and his most recent book is
Between Ethics and Enterprise: Business and Management in a Bimoral
Society (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Daniel Hjorth is Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneur-
ship at Växjö and Malmö Universities and senior researcher at ESBRI in
Stockholm. His previously published works include Rewriting Entrepre-
neurship – for a new perspective on organisational creativity; New Movements
in Entrepreneurship; Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepre-
neurship; and Entrepreneurship as Social Change, the latter three being part
of a mini-series of four books for which Hjorth has written and worked
as editor (together with Chris Steyaert). Hjorth’s publications in journals
(such as Journal of Management Inquiry, Journal of Management Education,
or Human Relations) display an attempt to make literary studies affect our
understanding of creative organizational life.
Anthony G. Hopwood is the Peter Moores Dean of the Saïd Business
School, the American Standard Companies Professor of Operations
Management, and Student of Christ Church at the University of Oxford.
Educated at the London School of Economics and the University of
Chicago, prior to moving to Oxford in 1995 Professor Hopwood had held
professorships at the London Business School and the London School of
Economics. He was also the President of the European Institute for
Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels from 1995 to 2003. A prolific
author, Professor Hopwood is also Editor-in-Chief of the major inter-
national research journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society. He has
served as a consultant to commercial, governmental and international
organizations. Professor Hopwood holds honorary doctorates from uni-
versities in Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Keith Hoskin is Professor of Strategy and Accounting at Warwick
Business School. He was initially trained in the humanities in Europe,
studying ancient Greek and Latin, and medieval and modern Greek, as an
undergraduate. He then went a more social science route as a graduate
student in the USA, taking an MSc in Educational Psychology. In his PhD
thesis he split the difference by undertaking a historical–theoretical study
