Leon C. Prieto, Simone T. A. Phipps, Lemaro R. Thompson and Xavier A. Smith
This paper aims to depict the pivotal role played by Rose Schneiderman and Frances Perkins in early twentieth-century labor and safety reform in the USA. The paper also examines…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to depict the pivotal role played by Rose Schneiderman and Frances Perkins in early twentieth-century labor and safety reform in the USA. The paper also examines the contributions made by these notable women through the lens of stakeholder theory and the feminist ethic of care.
Design/methodology/approach
The review process commenced with a comprehensive search for women in history who advocated labor and safety reform and campaigned for safer organizational practices in the workplace. History books, academic journals and newspaper articles, including writings from Schneiderman and Perkins, were the main sources used for this research endeavor.
Findings
Schneiderman and Perkins were both instrumental in playing a major role in fighting for labor and safety reform in the early twentieth century, albeit in different ways. Through their work, there was a heightened understanding of organizations’ duties and obligations to their stakeholders and, in particular, to their employees. They also embodied the feminist ethic of care by being attentive to the needs of others, accepting responsibility and demonstrating competence, while being responsive to their needs.
Originality/value
The influential women in management history are often given scant recognition or not recognized at all. This article highlights the contributions of two women who greatly impacted labor and safety through their struggle for the improvement of working conditions in the USA. The originality of this manuscript also lies in the ethical perspective in which it is grounded.
Details
Keywords
Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar
This chapter focuses on critical thinking as a new, powerful, and specialized tool and technique for understanding and analyzing the subtle operations of the free enterprise…
Abstract
Executive Summary
This chapter focuses on critical thinking as a new, powerful, and specialized tool and technique for understanding and analyzing the subtle operations of the free enterprise capitalist market system and its ethics and morality. Everything in the world of consumers and market enterprise systems are determined by our supply–demand system that in turn are determined by our presumed limitless production–distribution and consumption (LDPC) systems. From a critical thinking viewpoint, we study the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS) as a dynamic, interconnected organic system and not as a discrete or compartmentalized body of disaggregate parts. Systems thinking with critical thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity; both mandate that we see ourselves as active participators or partners of FECS and not as mere cogs in its wheels or as mere factors of its production processes. Critical thinking seeks to identify the “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS with those that bring about high- versus low-leveraged changes in various versions of capitalism. Specifically, this chapter applies critical thinking to FECS as defined by its founder, Adam Smith, in 1776 to its fundamental and structural assumptions, and as supported or critiqued by serious scholars such as Karl Marx, Maynard Keynes, C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond (inclusive capitalism), John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia (conscious capitalism), and others.
FR. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, S.J.
The typical corporation is based on free capital markets, and in general, on the free market capital system for all its factors of production, distribution, and consumption…
Abstract
Executive Summary
The typical corporation is based on free capital markets, and in general, on the free market capital system for all its factors of production, distribution, and consumption. Hence, this chapter studies the economic, legal, ethical, and moral goodness and promise of the Free Enterprise Capitalist System (FECS) as it exists and thrives in the open and free economies of the world. We will review several versions of FECS starting from Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) views on private property, Thomas Hobbes’ (1588–1679), The Leviathan (1651), Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776), Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904/1958) to modern defenses of capitalism by David Bollier (Aiming Higher, 1997), Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales (Saving Capitalism from Capitalists, 1998, 2004), C. K. Prahalad (2005) on Inclusive Capitalism, Nitesh Gor (The Dharma of Capitalism, 2012), and John Mackey and Raj Sisodia (Conscious Capitalism, 2014), to name a few. Based on these seminal authors and subsequent theoretical developments, this chapter seeks to defend, save, and uphold the goodness of the FECS along multiple viewpoints such as economics, management, law, ethics, morals, and executive spirituality.
Shelley T. Price, Megan Fogarty, De-Ann Sheppard, Grace Campbell, Sarah Cartwright, Kylie Ito, Rachel MacDonald, Sabrina Guzman Skotnitsky, Heidi Weigand and Krista Smith
Sexual harassment and discrimination are continuing and chronic workplace problems (Quick & McFadyen, 2017) that affect the health, well-being and socio-economic future of…
Abstract
Sexual harassment and discrimination are continuing and chronic workplace problems (Quick & McFadyen, 2017) that affect the health, well-being and socio-economic future of victim/survivors (Blau & Winkler, 2018). Despite this, management and leadership education have been primarily addressing this workplace issue from a legal responsibility perspective and using preventative strategies such as promoting the value of equity, diversity, inclusion and belongingness and explaining the importance of safe, healthy and respectful workplaces. While the establishment of policies, human rights training and disciplinary procedures are undeniably important, rarely do business educators prepare future managers to engage with employees in trauma-informed, compassionate and respectful ways. The co-authors have used a collective restorying process to engage in co-designing a workshop for early career managers and students of management and leadership. The workshop includes iterative exploration of the language and authentic performativity of unbiased compassion while engaging in collective reflexivity. The basis of the workshop centres the research proposition that to support a claimant the manager must performatively lead with authentic compassion while using unbiased language in order to assure procedural justice while mitigating procedural trauma. Early career managers, and hence their organizations, are ill-equipped to deal with workplace investigations of sexual harassment and discrimination. By collectively exploring and practicing unbiased compassion, managers will not only be more prepared to respond to a claim of sexual harassment or discrimination, but they will also reduce employee's felt sense of procedural trauma and increase the organization's likelihood of due diligence.
Details
Keywords
As digital devices (e.g. laptops, tablets) have become increasingly ubiquitous, so too has students’ potential for digital distraction. It is yet unknown how teachers and schools…
Abstract
Purpose
As digital devices (e.g. laptops, tablets) have become increasingly ubiquitous, so too has students’ potential for digital distraction. It is yet unknown how teachers and schools might effectively handle such challenges. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explore educators’ encounters with digital distraction among students, including their work toward addressing the problem.
Design/methodology/approach
This mixed-methods case study drew upon interview and survey data. Data were analyzed to describe educators’ encounters with and problem solving around digital distraction. This included the use of social network analysis. Specifically, a core-periphery model helped illuminate patterns in collaborative problem solving.
Findings
Students’ distractions included online entertainment and sending messages. This added to an overall atmosphere of distractedness in classrooms. Rather than collaborate around digital distraction, teachers tended to handle these issues on their own. If teachers did talk to others, these instances were more likely complaints to leaders than peer-to-peer collaborations.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides a descriptive account of one school and its problem solving around digital distraction. Building upon this study, future research might address the effectiveness of approaches for handling distraction, the influence of network structures on problem solving, and the factors influencing educators’ collaboration around technology.
Originality/value
Digital distraction is a new challenge in schools and in society. This study lays groundwork for understanding and addressing this issue. It also demonstrates one way to apply core-periphery analyses toward understanding problem solving.
Details
Keywords
An evaluation of libraries and their overall quality should consider the quality of the services they provide. Satisfaction in terms of the service provided is indicative of the…
Abstract
Purpose
An evaluation of libraries and their overall quality should consider the quality of the services they provide. Satisfaction in terms of the service provided is indicative of the quality of reference services and since these services are expensive, evaluation is therefore essential. This paper aims to outline the development of a structural equations model to evaluate service quality and user satisfaction with regard to the electronic reference service provided by Francisco Xavier Clavigero Library belongs to the Iberoamericana University, located in Mexico City.
Design/methodology/approach
This model suggests that service quality can be explained by way of the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL methodology, (reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness) and in turn, quality explains both user satisfaction and the value of the service to its patrons. Finally, this model suggests that a positive increase in user satisfaction leads to a lineal and positive increase in user loyalty. The evaluation considered 297 users who made at least one electronic reference request during 2014.
Findings
The adjustment of the structural model reveals that the latent variables that explain quality are reliability and responsiveness, and that quality explains satisfaction, which in turn explains user loyalty.
Originality
The generation of an indicator to evaluate the reference services enables identification of its strengths and weaknesses to offer a more efficient service, considering that it represents a significant percentage of the library’s financial and human resources.