Racial Justice, History, and Business Ethics

AOM Social Issues in Management Division

Hosts: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh) & David Wasieleski (Duquesne)

Featuring:

Andrew Smith (Liverpool)

Jennifer Johns (Bristol)

Leon Prieto (Clayton State)

Simone Phipps (Middle Georgia State)

Panel will provide examples of the ways ahistorical methods and temporal frames expose and occlude the role of race in knowledge creation processes. The Atlantic Slave Trade as a context for understanding current management practices will be discussed as well as the unrecognized history of Black entrepreneurship in the U.S.

Lead Sponsor: Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh

Call For Papers:

Journal of Business Ethics (Financial Times 50)

Special Issue on “Racial Justice and Business Ethics”

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2021

Guest Editors: Paul T. Harper (Pittsburgh), Robbin Derry (Lethbridge), Gregory Fairchild (Virginia)

https://www.springer.com/journal/10551/updates/18290364

Andrew Smith is Senior Lecturer (US equivalent Associate Professor) at the University of Liverpool Management School in the UK. Part of his research involves adopting postcolonial approaches to issues in business ethics and historical organization studies. He has published on consumer activism and historical anti-slavery and on the present-day relations between Indigenous peoples and corporate Canada.

Dr. Jennifer Johns’ interdisciplinary research interests are primarily concerned with network approaches to economic development, entrepreneurship and innovation. She has joined Bristol as a Reader in International Business, having previously worked at the University of Liverpool Management School and the University of Manchester.

Jennifer's PhD, obtained from the School of Geography, University of Manchester, examined the agglomeration and production networks of the film and television industries in the North West of England. Whilst studying and working at the University of Manchester Jennifer collaborated on two large ESRC projects on Global Production Networks. The first was the foundational GPN project, the second examined the internationalisation of temporary staffing firms.

Since then Jennifer has continued work on creative industries, focusing on the power relations between network actors and the causes and outcomes of precarity in creative work. She has also conducted empirical research on FabLabs (digital fabrication spaces) in Manchester, London and Barcelona, investigating the use of these spaces by entrepreneurs.

Jennifer's current research focuses on technological change and innovation in global production networks and governance and transparency in supply chains. She has just completed two grants;

1. A British Academy grant examining the impact of additive manufacturing (3D printing) on manufacturing supply chains in the UK, Germany and the US. The project has two foci: a) to conceptualise and map the additive manufacturing production network and b) to understand the current impact of these new technologies on manufacturing production networks. Jennifer is on the Membership Committee of AMUG (Additive Manufacturing Users Group) and is working with the AM firms, shaping their corporate strategies.

2. A DFID/British Academy large grant (£200,000) on Chocoate, Clothes and Children: Managing the Transparency Divide lead by Alex Balch (Politics, University of Liverpool) with other collaborators from business and law. This project investigated the Modern Slavery Act and the impact of the legislation on transparency in supply chains. Empirical work was conducted in the UK, Dominican Republic, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Ghana.

Jennifer has published in various world leading and internationally excellent journals including Journal of Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Global Networks and others. She has recenly published a co-edited Routledge Companion on International Business and Economic Geography. Jennifer enjoys engaging with industry and has conducted over 500 interviews with firms during her career. This creates much potential for impact, including her work with the Fab Foundation to produce a guide to setting up FabLabs, and through her work on both transparency and technological change in production networks.

Leon Prieto, PhD is an Associate Professor of Management at Clayton State University, and Associate Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School's Centre for Social Innovation. His research areas are in African American management history, management education and critical management studies, and his research is focused on the contributions of minorities (gender as well as racial & ethnic) to the development of management as a discipline and the interrelationship between organizational management and society.

Dr. Prieto and Dr. Phipps have publications in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management History, and MIT Sloan Management Review, to name a few, and their first book is entitled African American Management History: Insights on Gaining a Cooperative Advantage. Their research has been featured in Quartz magazine and The List, an Emmy-award TV show, and it has resulted in Charles Clinton Spaulding, Father of African American Management, being inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

Simone T. A. Phipps, PhD is an Associate Professor of Management in the School of Business at Middle Georgia State University, and Associate Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School's Centre for Social Innovation. Her research interests include management history, entrepreneurship, HR practices, leadership, and relationships between the organization and society. Usually, her research involves the exploration of gender, racial, and ethnic minorities, with the aim of highlighting their struggles and contributions, as well as finding possible solutions to improve the minority experience in business and society.