SPECIAL ISSUE OF ORGANIZATION Anti-Blackness in Management and Organization Studies: Challenging Racial Capitalism in Knowledge Production and Organizational Practices (original) (raw)
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CADERNOS EBAPE.BR, 2023
This special issue, generously accepted and published by Cadernos EBAPE.BR, emerges from the daily life-preserving struggles in Brazil and other parts of the Global South against the radical invisibility of colonial and racial oppressions at a time of the double pandemic of COVID-19 and white supremacy. This collection of articles that we have the pleasure to share with you embodies our decolonizing and deracializing response to normalization of necropolitics, of deciding who may live and who must die. This normalization can be seen in the false idea of impunity of law enforcement officials, such as the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd in the USA. It is important to highlight that George Floyd's death would have been yet another mere statistic if not for the courage and determination of the 17-year-old Black teenager who filmed it with her cell phone. Inspired by the attitude of this Black girl, we brought together eight provocative and insightful articles which will help us to reflect on the struggles faced by marginalized communities and the impact of the domain of Eurocentric perspective on the understanding of management practices and organizations' dynamics. These papers cover topics such as the role of accounting in the slave-owning system, contemporary forms of slavery in Brazil, and the intersectional experiences of Black women in labor exploitation. Our goal is to challenge existing narratives and shed light on hidden histories to contribute to the decolonization and deracialization within and outside the field of Management and Organizational Studies.
Human Relations
Why do the majority of (White) academics within management and organization studies (MOS) endorse discourses of equality, diversity and inclusion on the one hand yet ignore the epistemic injustice suffered by Black scholars on the other? We demonstrate how White supremacy within a historically racist academia marginalizes non-White bodies from knowledge production and dissemination by embedding epistemic injustice in MOS, and diminishing their utility globally. To expose the multifaceted harm caused by White supremacy, we reflect on Black scholars’ experiences of epistemic injustice, conceptualizing their work (i.e. Black scholarship) as underpinned by epistemic struggle and epistemic survival. We conceptualize epistemic struggle as striving to produce and disseminate knowledge in the face of difficulties and resistance generated by structural and agential powers. Epistemic survival denotes the sustained presence of Black scholarship through compromise, collusion and radicalism. Sub...
A Call to Action: Six Anti-Black Racism Topics Practitioners Encourage Researchers to Investigate
2022
Anti-Black racism within the workplace has been negatively associated with psychological well-being, belonging, pay equity, and creativity (Neal-Barnett, Harvard Business Review, 2021; Tucker, SHRM, 2021). Moreover, after the deaths of George Floyd and countless other Black Americans, anti-Black racism has become a topic that has garnered international attention and demanded reformation of organizational culture (see Boykin et al., Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 2020). During a time when academic research on these topics is still in their nascent stages, we have assembled a team of practitioners to offer advice on what we believe are some of the most critical topics to tackle. These issues are not only ones that we-as Black individuals-personally feel are critical. But additionally, we-as practitioners who have had experiences in a wide scope of organizational settings-feel they are under challenges that simply must be addressed through empirical research, which is currently lacking. Our "call to action" focuses on these six key topics: (1) avoiding short-term solutions to a long-term problem; (2) maximizing the effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion officers; (3) engaging White men as allies; (4) ensuring fairer selection systems for hiring; (5) effectively leveraging diversity, equity, and inclusion data; and (6) leveraging employee resource groups as critical business drivers. After discussing each section, we provide recommendations regarding what we believe need empirical attention, attention we believe is key to ultimately mitigate anti-Black racism in the workplace.
Black managers in a white world: Strategy formulation
South African Journal of Business Management
This article takes a look not only at the strategies which could be employed towards the solution of the problems faced by both the black manager and his employing organization, but also at the possibility of providing a tentative formula for decisions relating to the amount of time, money and effort which should be expended on efforts to ameliorate problems of this kind. It is argued that attempts to successfully introduce black managers into an erstwhile 'white' world will require a combined socio-economic method of decision-making. In other words, it would appear that, in the majority of organizations which are attempting to integrate black managers into their managerial structures, it is necessary to devote resources to the partial resolution of conflict whilst at the same time not detracting from goal achievement aims. It is further argued that short-run resource allocation with regard to social versus economic ends should be based on a comparison of the relative equili...
True colorsof global economy: In the shadows of racialized capitalism
Organization, 2021
This paper unpacks the notion of racial capitalism and highlights its salience for Management and Organization Studies. Racial capitalism is a process of systematically deriving socioeconomic value from non-white racial identity groups, and has shaped the contours and trajectories of capitalism for over 500 years. Drawing on the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Bourdieu, and a number of labor historians, we argue that whiteness operates as symbolic capital and status property in market conditions, and is therefore responsible for perpetuating economic inequalities along color lines all over the world. We demonstrate how the extra value placed on whiteness can create a shadowland of split labor markets, colorism, and transnational patterns of expropriation that systematically disadvantage populations of color.
Dismantling Structural Racism in Organisational Systems
Journal of awareness-based systems change, 2023
Globally, our societies are riddled with racism and so are our organisations. While there are many excellent "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (DEI) practitioners tackling racism and promoting racial equity in organisations, we contend that the language of "diversity" and "inclusion" risks diluting the impact of this work. Something stronger may be required to address racism's tenacious structural character. We propose thinking about this work in organisational systems as more fundamentally "dismantling structural racism." The dismantling process can be enabled by having a fuller understanding of what structural racism is, and how it affects people working in organisations, as well as by having a deeper appreciation of the history of racism, rooted in colonialism, and serving the ends of economic exploitation. With this greater awareness of how racism is built into, and manifests, in organisational systems, we are better equipped to act in more systemic ways towards dismantling it. In this article, we share some of what we are learning about convening and engaging in organisational systems with the purpose of navigating both structural and cultural change.
True colors of global economy: In the shadows of racialized capitalism
Organization
This paper unpacks the notion of racial capitalism and highlights its salience for Management and Organization Studies. Racial capitalism is a process of systematically deriving socio-economic value from non-white racial identity groups, and has shaped the contours and trajectories of capitalism for over 500 years. Drawing on the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Bourdieu, and a number of labor historians, we argue that whiteness operates as symbolic capital and status property in market conditions, and is therefore responsible for perpetuating economic inequalities along color lines all over the world. We demonstrate how the extra value placed on whiteness can create a shadowland of split labor markets, colorism, and transnational patterns of expropriation that systematically disadvantage populations of color.