Dear Bob:
Your posts are always so thoughtful and helpful. I've been an MSR list "lurker" for some time--my more active participation is on the Critical Management Studies list. I did just want to thank you for your perspectives. I enjoy and learn from them.
Tom Potterfield
>From: "Robert A. Giacalone" <
ragiacal@TEMPLE.EDU>
>Date: 2007/04/18 Wed AM 09:35:28 CDT
>To:
MSR@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
>Subject: On the MSR newsletter issue
>The newsletter issue raises the question of our focus, but I
>think that it creates questions about related things as well.
>
>First, I wonder whether we would react the same way if the
>article covered a more mainstream article on Christianity
>and the divinity of Jesus. Matthew Sheep alludes to this in
>his excellent comments, asking whether such an article would
>be permissible in the newsletter. I think that consistency
>of standards are essential. My own inclination is that if it
>isn't a testable hypothesis in some way, it probably doesn't
>belong. This would eliminate issues of divinity, where faith
>reigns supreme.
>
>Second, the question is not if religion fits into MSR, but
>how the R fits in. Just because it related to Management
>doesn't make it necessarily appropriate. I, for one, see
>absolutely no place for any article which tries to show that
>one religion is superior to another (even if that means that
>it is superior for organizational profitability); I see no
>place for any article that seeks to show that any particular
>religion is deleterious to organizational functioning.
>Articles like this can only create anger, divisiveness, and
>hate. It reduces religion to a kind of sporting event in
>which one "wins" over the other, or to a political
>discussion where invariably someone will translate
>deleterious functioning to some sort of evil or religious
>inferiority.
>
>The role of "religious thought" (in the plural sense) on
>organizational functioning does not imply any kind of
>superiority. The use of religious coping or religious
>attendance (like Harold Koenig does in his well-known work
>on religion and health) does not single out the "advantage"
>of one faith over and another provides an excellent test of
>religion's role in organizational life, without resorting
>to an implication of superiority. In the present political
>environment, it is not so far-fetched for hate-mongers to
>use a "scientific" forum to attack Islam or whatever
>religious group our political leaders wish for us to hate.
>
>I realize that much good work has been done in religious
>thought and that some of it may run counter to what I've
>said above. But MSR is not about religion, but about
>religion in the context of management. More importantly, it
>is NOT now nor should it ever be, a forum for anyone to
>engage in religious advocacy/evangelizing or religious
>denigration. There are churches, synagogues, and mosques
>that do a wonderful job of advocacy, and unfortunately, hate
>groups that will welcome people who want to do the latter. I
>see no place for that kind of thinking in this group. Others
>may disagree, and this list is precisely the place where
>such discussions may be had.
>
>Bob
>
>Robert A. Giacalone, Ph.D.
>Department of Human Resource Management
>Acting Director, Center for Ethics and Organizational Integrity
>313 Speakman Hall, FSBM
>Temple University
>1810 N. 13th St.
>Philadelphia, PA 19122
>e-mail:
ragiacal@temple.edu
>Work phone: (215) 204-7038
>Fax: (215) 204-8362
>
>Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
>
>It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society - Krishnamurti
>
>To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development--Felix Adler