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The purpose of this chapter is to examine the proliferation of scientific management and then to consider its effect on business and society. Our examination begins with a brief survey of various management approaches that emerged in the early twentieth century. We focus on Frederick Taylor, the originator of scientific management, as the person with the greatest influence on management scholarship. We assert that the propagation of scientific management in all sectors of business and society is so pervasive that is it ubiquitous, making it exceedingly difficult to consciously detect or question. We examine how core ideas from scientific management have facilitated the dehumanization of stakeholders in management scholarship and practice. We then discuss how dehumanizing tendencies — informed by the hidden ubiquity of scientific management — have permeated research in corporate social responsibility and management theory. We conclude with suggestions for integrating humanity into management theory.

This chapter focuses on women's descriptions of their own violence in nineteenth-century Ireland, as revealed in prisoner petitions held in the National Archives of Ireland. It uses the case files of women imprisoned or sentenced to death for violent crimes such as infanticide, manslaughter, murder, wounding and assault. This chapter takes an empirical approach and considers the ways that women explained and rationalised their violent acts. An analysis of the petitions offers an insight into women's views of their own violence, gendered attitudes at the time, and women's sense of the factors that might lead to a commutation of sentence. The accuracy or truthfulness of the petitions is not important in this study; instead, the chapter explores the self-image that women wanted to portray and the tactics that they opted to use to seek a reduction in their sentences. As shown in this chapter, most women emphasised their passivity: they typically claimed to be innocent, coerced or provoked into violence.