Search results

To explore how Critical Management Studies can be used to frame a strategy to effect change and promote diversity and inclusion in organizations.

Drawing on the experience gained from a large multi-sector action research project aimed at promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in organizations, this chapter proposes a multilayer [Critical] Ecological Model.

While early critical theorists were committed to effecting change, the rise of post-modern critical theory eroded the ground on which to stand, widening the gap between theory and practice. Secondly, the chapter asserts the importance of linking empirical research and critical theory in order to advance equality seeking projects. Thirdly, the chapter provides a [Critical] Ecological model that bridges theory and action in Critical Management Studies, based partly on experience from a large community-based research project. The need for a multifaceted approach to advance equality and inclusion emerged as a way to bridge ideological differences among actors and academics committed to effecting social change.

By addressing directly the challenges of theoretical rifts as well as differences in research focused on micro, meso and macro levels, the chapter builds a framework to allow different stakeholders – scholars, practitioners, activists and change agents across sectors – to take action in advancing inclusion and equality as well as an understanding of interactions between levels.

While sharing similar goals, many approaches to change are fragmented on the level of analysis and by underlying paradigms. This chapter is unique in its focus on ways to bridge theory and practice and to develop a framework for action that accommodates equality seeking theorists and activists working on several levels.

This article addresses the issue of social representations of the past, focusing on the relation between collective memory and power. It is argued that cultural shapes of memories (i.e. a memorial, a monument, a diary, a public display) are the space and the place were power relations affect the social representation of the past. In this respect, the choice of representing a controversial past through a specific cultural form can be viewed as a good terrain were to study the process of selecting one of the competing versions of this past. This process, in fact, is closely related to the category of power. Particularly in case of controversial events (such as the Vietnam War, the Hiroshima bombing, the Bologna massacre, the Milan slaughter), Halbwachs’ and Namer’s analyses on the social construction of the past become particularly evident. In those cases there is a conflict among different versions of the past, that can be analysed by referring to the power relations among the different social groups related to that event. If collective memory is the content, and cultural objects are the form of this content, power is the key to understanding why a certain content embodied in a specific form has been selected in a specific context. Methodologically speaking, the notion of commemorative genre represents an useful key to understanding the articulation of power in relation to collective memories. The genre, in fact, can be viewed as a schema of perception, able to organise the process of classifying the competing representations of the past. In fact, if the arena where one version of an historical event successfully competes with another is represented by the cultural and symbolic field, the criteria of this competition are determined by the established genre of memorisation. By sketching the most pertinent dimensions to the understanding of the relations among cultural objects, collective memories and public discourse, it is here shown how the struggle over the most “adequate” social representation of a certain past (i.e. its cultural form) corresponds to a struggle over legitimacy.

At many crucial moments in recent foreign affairs, relations between the United States and other nations of the world have hinged on our diplomats providing accurate and timely information to governments and foreign publics about our government's policies and our goals (Dunlop, 1996). Within the US government, our relations with other peoples of the world was coined as public diplomacy, as opposed to official diplomacy between governments, by the Kennedy administration. Despite strains in US relations with other countries, international opinion polls mostly show that Americans are still admired, even as there are disagreements with US policies (Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 2003; What the World Thinks, 2004).