Dutton, management philosophy, realistic job previews, and Weber

Citation

Carraher, S. (2014), "Dutton, management philosophy, realistic job previews, and Weber", Journal of Management History, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-10-2013-0045

Dutton, management philosophy, realistic job previews, and Weber

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Management History, Volume 20, Issue 2

Welcome to Volume 20 No. 2. As I am writing this editorial I just came back from a memorial session for JoAnn Carland and did three presentations at Oxford University for a faculty forum. You might remember that with the last issue we had been at a 17.1 percent acceptance rate. We are currently at a 11.39 percent acceptance rate and it appears that it should continue on down below a 10 percent acceptance rate by the end of this volume – fortunately, we should also have a large increase in the number of submissions. We are still seeking to have the journal reclassified as an A on the Australian Business Dean Council’s list as we are the only journal affiliated with an Academy of Management Division which is not classified as an A or A*. I received the news that it has been recommended that we do be reclassified as an A, which would be wonderful. We shall also seek to do better with the rating system used in the UK. As I write this editorial according to Publish or Perish the number of citations for Journal of Management History papers has increased from 2,691 to 2,710 since the last issue. Our h-index is still 22, our g-index is still 36. We have no paper that has been cited 22 times and our most cited paper remains Roehling (1997). The most cited paper per year is Murphy, Liao and Welsch (2006) at 11.88 citations per year. We also have an Age Weighted Citation Rate of 291 so we are getting cited more and more over time. I would not have expected the numbers to change much as I did the last issue less than three weeks ago.

We begin the issue with an interview of Jane Dutton who was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 1997. According to Publish or Perish her works have been cited 20,930 times in the last 33 years and she has an h-index of 54 and a g-index of 144. Her Age Weighted Citation rate is 1,270. She earned her doctorate from NorthWestern University in Organizational Behavior. This is the first of what shall hopefully be a series of interviews with AOM Fellows.

The first article "Discovering the foundational philosophies, practices, and influences of modern management theory" by Eric B. Dent of Fayetteville State University and Pamela Bozeman of the University of North Carolina, Pembroke discusses the factors that influenced the establishment of modern management. They briefly describe modern management focus social Darwinism and religion, the rise of social science, the promise of the scientific method, the perspectives of the business tycoons, and Frederick W. Taylor’s scientific management, and Christianity. They analyse the prevailing trends of the late 1800s to determine which had the greatest influence on the formation of modern management. The second paper "The 1920 Farrow’s Bank failure: a case of managerial hubris?" by Matthew Hollow of Durham University evaluates the extent to which hubristic behavior on the part of Thomas Farrow contributed to the downfall of Farrow’s Bank in 1920. He traces the way in which Thomas Farrow’s behavior changed over the course of his managerial career using primary sources obtained from various British archives, including: court records, witness statements, auditors’ reports, newspapers, journals, and personal letters. He then evaluates Farrow’s actions in relation to the criteria outlined in Petit and Bollaert’s (2012) "Framework for diagnosing CEO hubris" so as to assess how far he can be said to have become afflicted by managerial hubris. All the collected evidence points to the conclusion that Thomas Farrow had, by the time of the Bank’s collapse in 1920, become afflicted by managerial hubris. This was reflected most clearly in the fact that he increasingly came to view himself as being somehow above and beyond the laws of the wider community. As a result, he felt little compunction about fraudulently writing-up the Bank’s assets so as to cover the huge losses that his reckless investments had produced.

The third paper "History, field definition and management studies: the case of the New Deal" by Jason Foster of Athabasca University, Albert J. Mills of Saint Mary’s University, and Terrance Weatherbee of Acadia University argues for a more historically engaged understanding of the development of management and organization studies (MOS). The authors then seek to reveal the paradoxical character of the recent "historical turn," through exploration of how it both questions and reinforces extant notions of the field. They then explore the neglect of the New Deal in MOS to illustrate not only the problem of historical engagement but also to encourage a rethinking of the paradigmatic limitations of the field and its history. They explore how and why the New Deal has been neglected in management theory. The fourth paper "A historical approach to realistic job previews: an exploration into their origins, evolution, and recommendations for the future" by John E. Baur, M. Ronald Buckley, and Zhanna Bagdasarov of the University of Oklahoma and Ajantha S. Dharmasiri of the University of Sri Jayeewardenepura reviews the historical evolution of a popular realistic recruitment procedure – realistic job preview (RJP). RJPs were created as an alternative to the seduction method. By providing accurate information, both positive and negative, employees are able to decide whether to remain in the recruitment process or self-select. RJPs have been found to be positively related to job satisfaction, intentions to quit, and voluntary turnover. While research has generally supported this position, mixed results in some studies have been a cause for concern from some researchers. The aim of this paper, then, is threefold. First, the authors trace the origins of RJPs and the reasons for their creation. Second, they examine the chronology of the research to determine how it has evolved and in what ways researchers have helped to improve our understanding of RJPs. Third and finally, they address several important areas of interest for the future of RJP research and practice. The final paper is "Revisiting Weber’s charismatic leadership: learning from the past and looking to the future" by Ivana Milosevic and A. Erin Bass, both of the University of Nebraska; the authors revisit Weber’s seminal work in order to illustrate several historical findings and identify research opportunities in the study of the charismatic leadership. Weber emphasized the informal structure, followers’ power, and time in charismatic leadership; yet the extant literature either overlooks or underplays the significance of each of these facets. The authors revisit Weber’s conceptualizations of charisma and illuminate these facets, thus creating new avenues for the contemporary charismatic leadership research.

I trust that you’ll enjoy these articles as much as I have and that they’ll provide you with ideas for future research which you can submit to the Journal of Management History.

Shawn Carraher

References

Murphy, P.J., Liao, J. and Welsch, H.P. (2006), "A conceptual history of entrepreneurial thought", Journal of Management History, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 12–35

Roehling, M.V. (1997), "The origins and early development of the psychological contract construct", Journal of Management History, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 204–217