Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    What Silence Does: An Arendtian Analysis of Quaker Meeting Practices
    (Oxford University Press, 2023-01-26) ; ;
    Organization studies has a substantial literature on why employees stay silent when confronted by dysfunctional or unethical behaviour. Within this literature, organizational silence is typically depicted as having negative effects. This chapter builds on a smaller literature that sees silence more positively and productively. Intellectually, it draws on Hannah Arendt’s ideas on thinking as an internal aporetic dialogue that finds expression in dialogue with others. Thinking, for Arendt, is not about producing knowledge or practical wisdom but about discovering the meaning of things through connecting the private (silent) space of thinking with the public space of the political world of common action. Her ideas are well-illustrated in the meeting practices of the Quakers, a non-conformist Christian denomination that originated in the mid-17th century. Quaker meetings for business enact a political space where participants share their thoughts as equals, bound together in a unity of difference, where one’s silent thoughts and the contributions of others become entangled in a manner that allows for some collective sense to emerge (or not). This chapter proceeds to consider how formal rationality can threaten to obliterate the possibility of thinking and, conversely, how thinking without reasoning is equally dysfunctional. Finally, the chapter points to how our inquiry into Arendt, silence, and Quaker meetings can help us reflect on the concrete practices that exist in other contexts that might enable the enlargement of mind and collective sense-making.
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  • Publication
    The Quakers: Forgotten Pioneers
    (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018-06-29) ;
    This chapter argues that there is much to be learned about the origins of organizing through looking back at how the Quakers—who have been largely forgotten and overlooked in management and organization studies’ founding narratives—were organized and how they ran their businesses. The chapter is structured as follows. First, we present a brief description and history of the Quakers (also known as the Society of Friends, or simply Friends) from 1650 to c. 1880. Even though the Quakers underwent a number of schisms during their history, the various branches share a common ideology, which we summarise. Second, we focus on Quakers’ remarkable success in business and commerce, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This success has long been recognized by Quakers themselves and also by historians, even though it is largely absent from the history of management thought. Part of our objective is to better integrate this narrative into management and business history, which we do by describing the Quaker beliefs and practices that seemed to provide the basis for their success in business. We analyze these beliefs and practices in relation to contemporary debates within management and organization studies. Third, we proceed to examine the decline of Quaker businesses from the late nineteenth century onwards, a decline that we link with the rise of managerialism. We argue that the Quakers’ absence from the history of management thought is neither an accident nor an oversight, but rather is best understood as a deliberate, political act that benefited a new managerial elite that emerged out of mid-nineteenth century initiatives in corporate law. We conclude the chapter by reflecting on the lessons which might be learned through studying the Quakers and their approach to management and organization.
      397Scopus© Citations 4
  • Publication
    Why has Organization Theory forgotten the Quakers?
    This paper argues that there is much to be learned about the power of ideas and habitus through looking back at how the Quakers—who have been largely forgotten and overlooked in management studies’ founding narratives—were organized and how they ran their businesses. The paper presents a brief history of the Quakers focusing on the beliefs and practices that contributed to their success from 1650 to c. 1880, and which also contributed to their demise from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards and early decades of the twentieth century. We identify changes in nineteenth century corporate law, changing density of family networks and business clusters, the rise of new managerial elites particularly in the US, an increasing dualism between personal and company values, and the structure and practices of liberal Quaker worship and action in the world, as explaining the demise of Quaker businesses in the early twentieth century. We also reflect on the various lessons that can be learned through studying the Quakers and their approach to management for the future of management and organization studies. We conclude that this would be a prescient time to recover a focus on authenticity and play, to embrace and act morally and experimentally.
      184
  • Publication
    The decline of the Quakers in the world of business: the role of corporate ethics and the law
    (American Academy of Religion, 2017-11-21) ; ;
    The twenty-first century has witnessed a number of corporate scandals and private-sector takeovers that have called into question the shareholder-focused economy and corporate ethics. By way of contrast, this paper focuses on the Quakers as an example of a form of (largely) ‘responsible’ business practice. Quaker businesses had a significant impact on commerce and trade over a 200 year period, sowing the seeds of the industrial revolution. The Quakers were known for their honest and honourable business practices, their enlightened approach to employee welfare, their concern for wider society, and their willingness to innovate. Today, most of these ‘Quaker’ businesses are no longer either owned or controlled by Quakers, and have almost invariably adopted the conventional shareholder model of corporate governance. In the context of the UK, we trace their demise to the introduction of limited liability and innovations in corporate law in the mid-nineteenth century. These changes provided the legal basis for the Quaker family firms to incorporate, which many of them did in the late nineteenth century. We then describe how the unique Quaker ethos was inexorably decanted out of these companies during the twentieth century as the Quakers slowly lost both ownership and control of their businesses. In other words, we argue that in the context of business ethics, corporate law matters too.
      161
  • Publication
    The Ethics of Silence: The Sense of the Meeting
    (Irish Academy of Management, 2016-09-01) ;
    This paper is about the relationship between talk and silence, with a particular focus on the role of silence in business meetings. We suggest that this is an important but neglected area of focus in Organization and Management Studies. Our paper aims to contribute to understanding the constitutive role of silence in organizations through a discussion and analysis of the ‘Quaker Business Method’. We argue that that there has been limited attention to silence and silent practices in Organization and Management Studies (see Kuhling et al. 2003). Our intention is to open up silence as a concept worthy of further study in the field of management (see Law 1998 for a study of Quaker meeting practices, and Spivak et al. (1996) on how the subaltern cannot speak). We focus on the way in which silence is deployed in the business meetings of the Religious Society of Friends—more commonly known as Quakers. We begin the paper with an overview the relevance of silence in Organization and Management Studies. This is followed by an introduction to the Religious Society of Friends and how silent meeting is the central feature of Quakers’ practice: the central feature of Quakers practice is the combination of silence and collective meeting. In terms of empirical material, we draw upon what others have said about their experience of a Quaker Meeting for Business, observation at a Quaker clerk workshop, and our experience of organising a ‘Quakerly’ silent meeting at an academic conference.
      153
  • Publication
    The Sense of the Meeting: Silent Organization
    This paper is about the relati onship between talk, silence and action, with a particular focus on the role of silence in business meetings. Silence is, we want to suggest, a neglected area of focus in Organization and Management Studies. Our paper aims to contribute to understanding the perf ormative role of silence in organizations.
      219
  • Publication
    Rethinking the Corporation Through the Quaker Legacy to Business
    (European Academy of Management, 2018-06-22) ;
    This paper argues that there is much to be learned about business and by looking back at how the Quakers—who have been largely forgotten and overlooked in management studies’ founding narratives—were organized and how they ran their businesses. The paper presents a brief history of the Quakers focusing on the beliefs and practices that contributed to their success from 1650 to c. 1880, and which also contributed to their demise from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards. We also reflect on the various lessons that can be learned through studying the Quakers and their approach to management.
      235