Call for Applications

Purpose

Stewardship, as the responsible power to guide behaviour, is well founded as a critical element of organizational control. We believe it is time to reinvigorate it's meaning and invest in its relevance for organisational behaviour. We propose renovating the construct of Stewardship as a timely, rallying, normative standard for enterprises and practitioners. Such a renovation would including restoring the central place afforded human values, such as respect for human dignity (Kant, 1784/2006; Dworkin, 2011) while extending the dedication to safe-guarding "the commons", as for example, in the UN principles of sustainable development (UN Compact, 2012). We envisage Stewardship as both a personal and organisational normative standard. Essential to that restoration would be research investment in understanding institutional conditions that foster dedication to what constitutes public wellbeing (Selznick, 2012).

The theme of the 2015 EGOS Colloquium presents a timely opportunity to reflect on organisational studies and practice – specifically in light of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This PDW reconceptualizes the place of Stewardship as an organisztional and personal standard of public trust. Our ambition is to investigate possible synergistic benefits in making public commitments to such a standard on both national and a global scale.

The concept of Stewardship has mixed origins and over the last couple of decades has gained reasonable traction in terms of sustainability, yet the concept has not been translated for broader organisational or professional management purposes. A prominent exception is Peter Block's pioneering Stewardship (Block, 2013). In posing this PWD we seek to facilitate a dialogue exploring and assessing the merit of Stewardship for both organisational and personal purposes. At the enterprise level Stewardship would relate not only to practices around the use of natural resources but equally the salience of human wellbeing in those practices – both immediate and intergenerational (Elias, 1990/2011). We envisage equivalent concerns for individual practice – not least for those engaged in managing and leading within enterprises.

We propose Stewardship as a robust frame for housing some of the most vital of recent developments in social science theory and practice. There has been considerable empirical work over the last decade exploring the merit of phronesis/practical wisdom (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Clegg & Pitsis, 2013). The stress on cultivating moral judgement and accountability – notably via Kant's moral anthropology (Jarvis, 2009, 2011) has likewise come into focus. Similarly, Rego, Cunha and Clegg (2012) have drawn together works under the rubric of the Virtues of Leadership. At the same time major inroads have been made into governance and sustainability (Benn & Bolton, 2011). While each of these perspectives can be seen as advancing aspects of Flyvbjerg's restoration of phronesis (practical wisdom) in organizational research and practices, we suggest that these various perspectives might be more influential if recognized as elements in an overall framework of accountabilities.

The following are some of the questions that could be addressed through this PDW:

• From a power perspective, how might Stewardship focus attention on broader and temporal (intra and inter generational) consequences of organization – irrespective of sector, maturity and scale of the enterprise?
• Beyond serving as a framework to merely accommodate diverse perspectives how does Stewardship serve as a powerful action-guiding principle – for both individuals and organisations?
• How might different philosophical approaches develop self-regulating maxims or standards for public accountability beyond the criteria of efficiency as defined in neo-economically liberal terms?
• What is the role of specific forms of professional judgement and knowledge in facilitating or hindering public accountability?
• What are the connections between Stewardship and various positions in organization theory and moral anthropology?
• How might Stewardship be linked to ideas of economic democracy and human rights, for example in the neglected Northern European traditions of codetermination?
• In what ways can the notion of Stewardship be a rallying focus for human dignity (Dworkin, 2011)?
• Where do other species fit in to the picture of Stewardship? What are the organizational implications of existing practices of husbandry and slaughter? What obligations are owed not only to others but also other species?

Accordingly, we seek to create an opportunity for dialogue on interpretations and translations of Stewardship as a profession-like standard in the public interest. Such a standard would help to reinforce the essential context that all enterprises are embedded in society (Polanyi, 1944) and thus serve public wellbeing. In the wake of the GFC, Stewardship may prove to be a rallying standard that helps to restore much needed dedication. Offsetting justifiable public scepticism of such a normative commitment is the kind of legitimacy challenge the post GFC generation of practitioners and educators alike need and, we sense, would welcome.

The workshop will be structured in two parts:

• Senior scholars will initially outline the evolution and tensions inherent in Stewardship as a prospective framework to reconceptualise management and organizational issues for practitioners and educators.
• The second phase invites participants to discuss and consider working papers with senior scholars.

Application

We invite working papers (conceptual or empirical) that consider the place of Stewardship as a post GFC standard of legitimacy – for management practitioners and educators alike. We also invite contributions that explore ways in which Stewardship is linked to wider issues of social democracy and human rights (for example, through enterprise based co-determination as a human right). This workshop should be of special interest for junior faculty scholars as well as PhD candidates.

Please submit until March 31, 2015 – via the EGOS website – a single document of application that includes:

• On the first page: a short letter of application containing essential details of name, address (postal, phone and email), affiliation (date of PhD completion for early career scholars), and a statement of why you consider it valuable to attend this workshop.
• A draft/working paper (8,000–10,000 words, inc. text, references, figures and tables).

References

• Benn, S. & Bolton, D. (2011): Key Concepts in Corporate Social Responsibility. London: SAGE Publications.
• Block, P. (2013): Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Clegg, S.R., & Pitsis, T.S. (2012): "Phronesis, projects and power research." In: B. Flyvbjerg, T. Landman & S. Schram (eds.): Real Social Science. Oxford University Press, pp. 66–91.
• Dworkin, R. (2011): Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press.
• Flyvbjerg, B. (2001): Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jarvis, W.P. (2009): Moral Accountability in the MBA: A Kantian Response to a Public Problem. Sydney: University of Technology.
• Jarvis, W.P. (2011): "Restoring public trust in the MBA: A road-tested Kantian approach." In: W. Aman (ed.): Business Schools Under Fire: Humanistic Management as the Way Forward. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 147–170.
• Kant, I. (1785/2012): Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary Gregor and Hans Timmermann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Polanyi, K. (2001): The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz; Introduction by Fred Block. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Rego, A., Cunha, M.P., & Clegg, S. (2012): The Virtues of Leadership. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Selznick, P.A. (2008): Humanist Science: Values and Ideals in Social Inquiry. Stanford: Stanford University Press.