Search results

This paper aims (1) to create a sense of resonance with Maida Herman Solomon and her ideas, (2) to inspire a reconsideration of current management history (the unquestioned block box of dominant figures, dominant foci and dominant practices), (3) to bring Solomon’s contributions to clinical social work into present discourse in management and organizational studies and (4) to foster recognition for Solomon in her own field of social work, as forerunner in a developing profession. Guiding this study is the question: “What are Solomon’s key contributions and why is she overlooked?”

This paper features a novel methodology, ficto-feminism. The feminism in ficto-feminism is presented as ontology, epistemology, method and mode of writing. Ficto-feminism combines polemical (or prowoman writing) with aspects of collective biography, autoethnography and fictocriticism. As such, the paper contributes to the emerging feminist tradition of writing differently. The approach is an embodied and reflexive approach that engages with history to investigate the absence of women.

Maida Solomon was an educator, researcher, practitioner and advocate. Her contributions to the development and practice of clinical social work spanned over 60 years, and yet, she is little more than a footnote in the history of the field. Her contributions include authoring and implementing graduate programming, which continues to be the taken for granted training; penning some of the most seminal works and advancing theory; introducing academic and scientific approaches, which saw the field professionalize and adopt new standards; and helping to change the way that society thought about mental health and sexual health. A confluence of factors contributes to her marginalization and neglect: gender, ethnicity, the feminized field of social work and the stigmatized focus for her practice.

The paper combines assertive autobiographical and literary strategies to foreground an overlooked female leader in the field of clinical social work, namely, Maida Solomon. Drawing on biographical material, literature, media and archival material, this paper features a fictional but truthful conversation between the present-day author/writer/historian and the posthumous, historical protagonist (Maida Solomon). In so doing, the engagement with history is both one that deconstructs while reconstructing a historical account with both aesthetic and political implications.

This paper aims to examine adaptation in buyer–seller relationships in a time of crisis and to explore what consequences adaptation has for the actors involved. The authors are particularly interested in examining how suppliers and public buyers adapt in turbulent situations where public policy opens for interaction in a mode represented by studies in the industrial marketing and purchasing research approach. The COVID-19 pandemic represents such a unique research setting, as it opens up insights into how buyers and suppliers had to adapt in a matter of days in response to rapid and turbulent changes in their business environment. In this paper, the authors seek insights into the following research questions: What role do the actors’ interpretation of the situation play in the adaptation process? How do adaptation processes unfold in a time of national crisis? What are the actor and relationship-specific outcomes from adaptation in such a situation?

To answer these questions, the authors present data from an exploratory case study of intra- and interfirm adaptation processes between public buyers and private suppliers in the health-care sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic opened for access to a unique data from personal interviews and secondary data, from public reports and newspaper/media coverage at intervals during the outbreak and at the aftermath of the pandemic.

The authors find that the actors’ interpretation of the situation and their motivation to engage in adaptations play an important role in the adaptation processes. In particular, a normative commitment based on a moral duty to contribute to dealing with the turbulent situation of society is found to be a main driver. In these situations, shared sensemaking and alignment of mental models help to mobilise actors, resources and activities into new interaction patterns. At the same time, mutual affective commitment between the buyer and suppliers is not significant over time, thus constraining and eventually terminating the adaptation processes.

This study contributes to the understanding of interaction between public buyers and suppliers during turbulent situations. Changes in the adaptation context opens for extensive interaction, thus enabling actors to combine and exploit resources of value, but temporary adaptations do not create long-term effects on the ability to develop buyer–supplier interaction in public markets.

Social networks can not only mobilize individuals for collective action but also pose risks, potentially leading to political challenges and societal unrest. Information consumption varies across platforms, with platform characteristics influencing user interactions and information sharing; yet this has received limited attention in scholarly literature. Acknowledging platform-specific differences, this paper seeks to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms driving information diffusion on social networks in the context of geopolitical tensions.

The structural communication features on Twitter and Reddit are explored using schema theory and the concept of social media platform schema. Comparisons are drawn with social network analysis and content analysis of communication dynamics surrounding geopolitical tensions in India–Qatar relations, followed by the context of geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan.

The results illustrate how content-based connections on Reddit foster closer ties within subreddits but less connectivity between them, contrasting with Twitter’s profile-based connections. These distinct characteristics lead to varied information diffusion patterns and shape the diversity of opinions, influencing community structures and affecting the emotional tenor of discourse.

Social networks can potentially influence geopolitical events, but focusing on one platform overlooks differences in how information spreads and the influence each platform holds. Recognizing this, our comparative analysis of social networks’ structural attributes highlights their crucial roles in shaping user engagement and information diffusion. It lends theoretical support to the notion of social media platform schema with empirical insights into how users’ perceptions of these schemas impact thematic and emotional differences in platform discourse related to geopolitical tensions.

This paper aims to use the origin story of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management as a foil for unpacking the tensions between deep disciplinary specialization and liberal education in business schools in Canada and the USA. Ultimately, the paper reveals that those tensions are not irreconcilable, and that through the fortunes of historical contingencies and deliberate decision-taking, a faculty can embrace the benefits of both breadth and depth.

The paper proposes a critical organizational history of management education through a case study. By drawing on secondary literature and archival sources, the authors focus on moments in business education, such as the founding of the Wharton School of Business, the release of the Carnegie and Ford Reports and the trend towards increased specialization to situate a case study of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management.

The authors find that the evolution of business education in North America from its broad, liberal origins towards narrow, specialization has come at a cost to some of the benefits of business and management education. An alternative approach, one reflected in the design of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management, its programme offerings and its interconnection with other disciplines, enables the advantages of deep disciplinarity to co-exist (and cross-inform) with the advantages of liberal approach to knowledges.

The Dalhousie model offers business schools an example of a faculty that balances the rich insights of liberal interdisciplinarity with the need for sophisticated approaches to more granular, often disciplinary, topics. In addition, the paper offers the story of a multidisciplinary management faculty, some explanation for how that faculty was maintained despite pressures towards specialization; and in doing so, contributes to the limited historical research of management education, particularly in Canada, post-2000.