Scandinavian Journal of Management最新文献

Processes of experiential learning are instruments of intelligence. Yet, these processes have limitations. We explore how disinformation – invalid information or experience that actors present as valid to deliberately deceive or persuade targets and achieve a goal – challenges the standard model of experiential learning in the Carnegie School tradition. We examine how disinformation not only elevates the importance of interpretation in experiential learning but also generates three problems that can undermine effective learning: ignorance, conflict, and ambiguity. We outline how organizations and communities might approach these challenges and problems. We also propose ideas and future research that might help actors imagine how to interpret and learn effectively from disinformation.

The paper addresses a history of the present, doing so in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goal #13, that of taking urgent action to combat climate change. It uses key concepts from the circuits of power framework (Clegg 1989; 2023) to do so; notably the idea of social and system integration, adapted from Lockwood (1964). The focus is on the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on European system integration that is dependent on trade in fossils fuels. The paper begins by a backwards glance at how the Soviet Union disintegrated to become Putin’s Russia, via Gorbachev’s attempts at reforming the basis for social integration (Brown, 1997). It contrasts the social integration of Russia with that of the Western democracies. All of this discussion is preparatory to a consideration of Putin’s paradoxes in invading Ukraine and how the unanticipated consequences of this strategic choice point to an undermining of the basis of Putin’s power. The cost inflation and limiting of gas supplies to Europe by supply chain disruption that have been a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provide a massive stimulus for the greening of the global economy’s energy sources, thus undermining the resource based power on which the Russian economy is founded.

Scientific research was introduced in business schools in the mid-1950s to raise the quality of business education as well as to improve actual business practices. Schools expected scientific research to provide a benign and respected path toward improvements, and government support for research and students’ strong interest in studying business brought financial resources and hiring opportunities that made large changes possible. Consequently, hundreds of business schools began urging professors to publish scientific research. Sixty years later, plentiful evidence is showing that scientific research has not brought expected benefits for business operations; on the contrary, business-school research has generated a high percentage of untrustworthy “findings”. This disappointing outcome has six interacting causes: (1) Business schools have expanded by hiring professors who study fundamental topics of economics, psychology, and sociology rather than topics relevant for business practices, so few research findings have been adopted and tested by firms. (2) Instead of evaluating the quality or consequences of research, schools have relied on evaluations by journal editors and reviewers, whose overriding criteria emphasize theory at the expense of practical implications. (3) Editorial evaluations have high error rates because editors and reviewers only know what researchers choose to tell them, and because the complexity of manuscripts causes editors and reviewers to disagree frequently. (4) Schools have incentivized professors by making promotions and job security depend on publishing numerous papers in “prestigious” journals. (5) Many professors have responded to these incentives by engaging in covert practices that make studies unlikely to be supported in replications, and some professors have gone so far as to manufacture fake data. (6) Researchers, editors, and reviewers have largely relied on null-hypothesis statistical significance tests, which are prone to interpret small variations or random errors in data as “significant” findings. Although there are fresh efforts to make research findings more reliable and impactful, the need for further interventions to reform the present knowledge-production system is all too apparent.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Scandinavian Journal of Management, we explore its becoming in a context where internationalism is used to evidence claims about journal quality. Through an analysis of editorial voices, we show how internationalism positions journals as ‘a view from nowhere’, making them party to a ‘God trick’. Acknowledging the situated nature of all knowledge instead provides a means of disturbing geographies of power that shape how knowledge is created, performed and transformed in journals and expanding the range of others that ‘management’ represents. We trace the beginnings of a feminist new materialist theoretical shift in the journal, which we argue is crucial in providing hope regarding what management can do and engaging with our ethical response-abilities as knowers.

In this article, I draw upon social practice theories as a way to understand the persistent lack of diversity in entrepreneurship as inter-related nexuses of practices. The article presents evidence from an autoethnography. It situates diversity issues within a larger set of interdependent relational practices that unfold over time in entrepreneurial contexts. Insights from my reflections on volunteering as a mentor in a celebrated, virtual accelerator highlight the ways that diversity in entrepreneurship can be understood as interconnected practices. The article contributes to the entrepreneurship-as-practice literature by examining the ways that sociomateriality and translation play in the social accomplishment of diversity in accelerators. It also offers suggestions for accelerator leaders and other practitioners.