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title
The critical need for critical cases: the dark side of
business
author(s)
Emmanuel Raufflet and Albert J. Mills
available in The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of
Business
format Hardback
date August 2009
isbn 978-1-906093-20-4
pages 1-10
more details
www.greenleaf-publishing.com/darkside
S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y • R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y • A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y
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The critical need for critical
cases: the dark side of business
Emmanuel Raufflet and Albert J. Mills
Introduction: the end of history?
In his landmark book The End of History and the Last Man (Fukuyama 1992),
Francis Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 represented the end of the evolution of human history as a struggle between ideologies. Fukuyama predicted the global triumph of political and
economic liberalism and the end of history, i.e. the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government and the market
economy, as defined in the USA in the beginning of the 1980s, as the dominant
economic system. With “the end of history” came a certain vision of capitalism
based on deregulation, low taxes, and the mantra of less government. These
conditions would create the conditions for business to flourish and prosperity
for the whole society.
Sixteen years later, this optimistic panorama has changed. The turn of the
millennium brought its share of global threatening economic, social and ecological challenges. Recent events, including September 11, 2001, corporate scandals
and the increasing questioning of business and corporate practices, the rise of
China and India, the resurgence of Russia as a global power, the climate crisis,
increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor in and between societies, and, more recently, the financial and economic crisis since 2008 suggest
that we are witnessing what Fukuyama (2008) coined “the Fall of America Inc.”
This “Fall of America Inc.” represents an overall discredit of a certain brand of
capitalism, dominated by short-term thinking (Waddock 2005) and a systematic
neglect of the social, regulatory, and economic conditions in which business
ought to operate. What we have learnt is that we are entering a time of trouble
and questions. What we know is that we are near an era of economic, social, and
ecological turbulence.
© 2009 Greenleaf Publishing Ltd
http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com
the dark side: critical cases on the downside of business
Hence the critical need to examine, explore, and understand these different
multifaceted, complex phenomena of our late capitalist era. Hence the critical
need as business educators and trainers to expose students, course participants, and managers to these issues. Hence our responsibility as business educators and management scholars to foster a climate for business managers to
reflect, feel, and think differently both ethically and cognitively.
Beyond ethical muteness in business:
training responsible managers
Bird and Waters (1989) proposed the idea that managers in business organizations tend to be morally mute, as they avoid moral references in their workrelated activities. They mention ethics only when things go wrong, in situations
such as price-fixing, bribery, or scandals. As such, they tend to avoid “moral
talk,” as such moral talk is perceived at odds with an image of individual and
organizational effectiveness based on diligence, efficiency, competence, and
competitiveness.
Bird and Waters highlighted the fact that one of the consequences of this
moral muteness is to create and to reinforce moral amnesia, or “a caricature
of management as an amoral activity, and a very narrow definition of morality”
(Bird and Waters 1989: 79). In a later book, Bird proposed the need for “good”
conversations, or conversations that would help managers be more aware of
the moral dimensions of their decisions and actions (Bird 1996). According to
Bird, the role and responsibility of managers is to foster good conversations
in business settings—be they teams, business units, business organizations, or
projects. Such good conversations will allow organization members to become
aware of the ethical dimensions of their own activities and to surface their dilemmas and doubts. It will equip them with tools and lexicon to express and share
around ethics in business life.
Beyond instrumental short-term thinking:
training cognitively equipped managers
Westley et al. (2006) introduce the differences between simple, complicated, and
complex problems. Simple problems—like building a chair—can be addressed
using patterns and behaviors established by routine craft or commonly held
knowledge; while complicated problems—like building a plane—require a high
level of technical sophistication and precision, and tight coordination through
rigid protocols. Success in a complicated problem will result from sticking to
the critical need for critical cases: the dark side of business Raufflet and Mills these rigid protocols and strict application of pre-established rules and roles.
Laxness or negligence likely leads to catastrophic results in addressing a complicated problem.
By contrast, a complex problem—like raising a child—requires sensitivity to
the uniqueness of the situation at hand, and recognition that approaches used
to address simple or complicated problems may not work or may be counterproductive in such a context. Complexity involves thinking about the problem in
a different way, both in terms of being aware of and sensitive to the connections
that need to be made as well as in terms of the knowledge needed to address it.
Using critical and complex teaching cases in the classroom helps make students
aware of the limitations of the methods used to solve problems that are only
simple or complicated.
Our business courses have their shares of simple recipes and complicated
formulas (Ghoshal 2005). What may be needed is to train students and business
managers to think about problems and issues using insights from complexity.
To train managers to think and be aware, we believe that the case studies in
this book have the potential to contribute to addressing these ethical and cognitive challenges. Both the content and the format of these cases are innovative.
First, these cases are innovative in terms of contents. Whereas most teaching
cases focus on managers in situations and tend to be oblivious of other groups
or logics, these cases acknowledge the diversity of actors and interests in and
around organizations. These cases have different levels of analysis and propose
different points of view and logics. They recognize that decisions, seemingly
good at a given moment of time, may actually contain the seeds of their later
demise.
Second, these cases are innovative in terms of format. Whereas most cases
are formatted along decision and decision-making lines, these cases are more
diverse and open-ended. This diversity and open-endedness allows for the formation of judgment among managers. Judgment is defined is as the capacity
to synthesize, integrate, balance short-term and long-term effects, appreciate
effects on different groups, learn to listen, and evaluate. Whereas decision-making is key for complicated issues, matters and situations, judgment-making relies
on experience and may be better suited for complex, murky, and gray areas.
This set of outstanding cases aims to achieve this. These 16 cases were
selected as finalists or winners of the seven first years (2002–2008) of the Dark
Side of Business Case Competition—a joint event of the Critical Management
Studies and the Management Education sections of the Academy of Management (AoM).
the dark side: critical cases on the downside of business
2001: a dark side odyssey—the case of the Darkside
Case Competition
In the late summer of 2001, Paul Adler and other members of the Critical Management Studies Interest Group (CMSIG) found themselves at yet another annual
meeting of the Academy of Management—this time in Washington, DC. Among
the many informal conversations that Adler found himself in, one turned to the
issue of case studies and the absence of those that dealt with the darker side of
business. It occurred to Adler, Professor of Management and Organization at the
Marshall School of Business at the University of South California (UCS), that:
[business] case libraries are almost exclusively devoted to “best practice” cases or difficult decisions by basically well-managed firms. When
we want to talk to our students about the more typical cases, let alone
the really scandalous practices of the worst firms, the cupboard is
almost entirely bare. It’s almost impossible to even find a reasonably
rich case on a labor/management conflict.
Following the AoM meeting, Adler—a founding member of CMSIG and part of
its executive group—undertook to develop his idea further. In an exchange of
emails with leading CMSIG members, Adler argued that the CMS Interest Group
should “organize an award for the best case-study on worst business practice.”
Outlining an argument for such an award, Adler made four main points.
First, that the Harvard Business School:
. . . folks justify [the] bias to best practice saying there’s 100 ways to go
wrong for every 1 way to go right: we challenge that premise, arguing
that the patterns we observe among the wrong ways tell us a lot about
the nature of the broader system of business, and that our students
need to be given the chance to think through the scope of feasible
and appropriate action if they happen to find themselves working for a
poorly managed firm or for a bunch of scumbags.
Second, “our union friends are particularly eager to see more cases available
that raise issues about union organizing rights and more generally about the difficulties workers encounter in expressing voice at work.”
Third, “we seem to have abandoned the heritage of ‘muck-raking’—the best of
this tradition seems to be in the Wall Street Journal of all places!”
Fourth, he referenced the practice of US Senator Proxmire who:
This account is based on an email exchange with Paul Adler. Adler recalls that the idea of a
dark side case competition was likely his but that “such recollections are unreliable” (email
to Albert J. Mills, November 13, 2008).
Undated email from Paul Adler to “CMS Steering Committee.”
the critical need for critical cases: the dark side of business Raufflet and Mills . . . gave out an annual “Golden Fleece” award for the military contractor who demonstrated the worst price-gauging practices. It served
very effectively to provoke some real debate.
For Adler, if such an award was to be developed by the CMS Interest Group,
the competition needed to encourage a focus not on:
. . . individual bastards, but on cases that tell us something about the
broader system and how it permits, encourages, even forces firms to
do terrible things.
In other words, Adler continued:
. . . the “damage” we’re looking to document would presumably be to
employees, but perhaps also to local community, environment, [etc].
Following a further exchange of emails among group members, Paul Adler
developed a proposal based on responses from Marta Calas (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Bill Kaghan (University of Washington), John Jermier (University of Southern Florida) and Linda Smircich (University of Massachusetts,
Amherst). The focus of the developing case competition would be on teaching
cases (rather than research papers based on case studies)—the goal here was
“the development of good classroom materials.” The award was to:
. . . go to the best case study—not to the worst corporate offender
. . . The goal would therefore be to encourage the development of
teaching cases that revealed the “dark side” of corporate America.
The new competition was agreed by the CMSIG Executive in time to be launched
at the 2002 annual meeting of the AoM in Denver, Colorado. The competition was
co-sponsored by the Management Education Division and was called The Darkside Case-Writing Competition.
The call for cases was accompanied by the following explanation:
This competition . . . aims to encourage the development of cases that
provoke reflection and debate on the “dark side” of contemporary capitalism. Some might argue that we are promoting “muckraking.” They
are correct: we feel that if there’s so much “muck” out there, it behoves
us to look at it squarely and decide what should be done about it. For
both teaching and research purposes, it is critical that we have well
documented worst-practices cases on the table, so that we have the
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Email from Paul Adler to CMS-SG, September 24. 2008.
Ibid.
the dark side: critical cases on the downside of business
opportunity to understand how such organizations come in being, how
they function, and how they might be challenged and changed.
We especially want cases that lead discussion to the broader socialpolitical-economic structure and help students critically think about
the consequences of this structure. In particular, we encourage submissions focused on labor relations—instructors in this area are especially eager to see cases that raise issues about the difficulties workers
encounter in organizing unions and otherwise expressing voice at work.
We also encourage submissions focused on environmentally harmful
practices—we need to understand better the factors that entice firms
to pollute, and how these conditions might be changed. Other foci are
also welcome.
From the beginning, the Darkside Competition aimed at encouraging the writing
of cases that would integrate socio-political issues with organizational dynamics, thus contextualizing organizational and management problems within the
broader system of capitalism.
The Darkside Competition in the shadow of 9/11
In the period between discussions around the idea of a dark side case competition and its eventual implementation, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon in September 2001. The impact of this momentous event did
not dissuade the CMSIG from launching the competition, but perhaps surprisingly in the face of evidence of organizational politicking and incompetence on
the part of those charged with the security of the U.S.A., no cases came forward
examining the background to the 9/11 attacks.
The announcement of the competition attracted a number of entries from the
U.K. (work victimization), U.S.A. (including cases on business ethics, attacks
on public education, unionization), Australia (the impact of corporate culture),
New Zealand (workplace distress), and Canada (power and politics at work).
The international sweep of these cases put the competition judges on notice
that the focus was not simply on “corporate America” but global capitalism.
However, the winning case—by Paul M. Swiercz of George Washington University—met one of the original aims of the competition: to deal with issues of labor
relations.
In “Food Lion vs. the UFCW: time for a change?” Swiercz presents an account of
the operations of a Belgian-owned supermarket chain in the U.S.A. and its struggle against unionization by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
The organizational dark side of U.S. security organizations are, however, examined in a
vignette in Mills et al. 2006: 14-17.
the critical need for critical cases: the dark side of business Raufflet and Mills The case follows the various strategies adopted by the company and the union
as they struggle over unionization at Food Lion. This case appears in Part 2 of
this book on the interactions between business and local communities.
As the winner of the case competition, Paul M. Swiercz was awarded a certificate of merit and the dubious honor of organizing the second year of the competition.
The 2003 competition was won by Caroline O’Connell and Albert J. Mills of
Saint Mary’s University in Canada’s eastern province of Nova Scotia. Their case,
“The Westray mine explosion,” maintained the trade union focus of the previous year but was centered on events leading up to the deaths of 26 miners in
the 1996 mine explosion in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County. The case appears in
the third part of this book and takes students through a range of structural and
behavioral problems to make sense of how various factors led to the deaths of
so many employees.
Like Paul Swiercz before them, O’Connell and Mills were awarded a certificate and the honor of running the third Darkside Case Competition. This led to
some changes, with the third year of competition seeing the selection of the top
five finalists in the competition being asked to present their cases at the annual
meeting of the AoM. Furthermore, thanks to the sponsorship of Saint Mary’s
Sobey PhD in Management, the winner was awarded a check for $500.
Darkside III
The third year of competition in 2004 saw finalists drawn from:
• U.S.A.—Paul Swiercz was back with a case on union struggle in the
newspaper industry
• New Zealand—Kate Kearins, Keith Hooper, and Belinda Luke presented a
case of entrepreneurship, state sponsorship, and marginalized groups
• Canada—Gina Grandy’s case focussed on careers in the U.K. exotic
dancing industry,10 Jean Helms Mills examined the impact of change
programs on employees11 and Rosemary McGowan looked at the problem of work and eldercare
The eventual winner was Rosemary McGowan, with her case “John Hamilton’s
work and eldercare dilemma. Break the silence? Sustain the silence?” This case
is included in the first part of this book.
This case appears in Mills et al. 2006.
10 This case can be found in Mills et al. 2005: 291-304.
11 This case appears in Jones et al. 2006 and Mills et al. 2006.
the dark side: critical cases on the downside of business
Darkside IV
The fourth year of the competition took place in Honolulu and saw a winning
case that focused on the impact of a multinational company on a small rural
community in India. Competition was strong, with cases on:
• “Bhopal Gas” by Sanjib Dutta
• “Manipulation, placation, partnership or delegated power: can community and business really work together when surface mining comes to
town?” by Sherry Finney
• “Nestlé’s social irresponsibility in developing countries” by Shirisha
Regani and Sanjib Dutta
• “Poison gas in a northern copper mine” by Tupper Cawsey and Gene
Deszca
The Finney case appears in the second part of this book.
In the winning case, “The dark side of water,” Latha Poonamallee and Anita
Howard (both of Case Western Reserve University) look at the appalling irony of
how a multinational water bottling company depleted the water supply of a local
community. This case appears in our fourth part on business and the global
economy.
Darkside V
In 2006 the AoM moved to Atlanta in Georgia and the Darkside Case Competition was held for the fifth year. The strong competition generated three of the
cases that are published in this book. Two finalist cases bookend the collection:
Francine K. Schlosser’s “Leading the team out of the hazing blues yonder” deals
with the problem of hazing and is the opening case of this book, while an examination of “Genocide in Rwanda: leadership, ethics, and organizational ‘failure’ in
a post-colonial context,” by Brad Long, James D. Grant, Albert J. Mills, Ellen Rudderham-Gaudet, and Amy Warren is the final case in the book. The 2006 winning
case by Monique Le Chêne and Emmanuel Raufflet, “The smell of power: Yves
Rocher in La Gacilly, France,” describes the challenges of a dominant company
on a local community and appears in the book’s second part.
the critical need for critical cases: the dark side of business Raufflet and Mills Darkside VI
Philadelphia was the location of the AoM annual meeting for 2007 and the sixth
year of the Darkside Competition. This year’s competition also provided three
cases for our collection.
In “The story behind the water in Walkerton, Ontario,” Elizabeth McLeod and
Jean Helms Mills detail the management failures that led to the deaths of several
people from tainted water in a small Canadian community. This case appears in
Part 3.
In “Who takes responsibility for the informal settlements? Mining companies in South Africa and the challenge of local collaboration,” Ralph Hamman
examines corporate responsibility for events in local communities. This case is
included in the second part of the book.
And, in the winning cases, Anne Lawrence examines human rights and corporate global citizenship in “Google, Inc: figuring out how to deal with China,” and
Kevin McKague and Oana Branzei in “City Water Tanzania” highlight innovative
forms of providing water in Dar es Salaam. Lawrence’s case forms part of the
book’s fourth part.
From Darkside VII to the Dark Side Case Book
The seventh Darkside Competition provided no less than four of our featured
cases. In 2008, at the AoM meeting at Anaheim, California, the CMS Interest
Group was promoted to a full division and participants of the Darkside Competition heard cases about:
• A chlorine spill and stakeholder responsibility (“Dark territory: the
Graniteville chlorine spill” by Jill Brown and Ann K. Buchholtz—see
Part 3)
• Global corporate relations and the production of hazardous materials
for toys (“Mattel Inc.: lead-tainted toys” by Adenekan Dedeke and Martin Calkins—see Part 4)
• Dubious marketing strategies (“Antiquorum Auctioneers: building
brands on ignorance?” by Benoit Leleux—see Part 1)
• A business model based on employee degradation (winning case “Hugh
Connerty and Hooters: what is successful entrepreneurship?” by Mary
Godwyn—see Part 1)
As the 2008 AoM conference loomed, the Darkside Case-Writing Competition
was entering its seventh year and had generated dozens of cases, including 25
finalist cases—a veritable wealth of teaching material. Yet, paradoxically, with
10 the dark side: critical cases on the downside of business
one notable exception,12 the wealth of critical cases had not been published in
a collective sense nor were they easily accessible. It was at this point that we,
as former competition winners and organizers, decided to seek a publisher for
a selected collection of cases. To that end, we began with competition winners,
supplemented by other finalist cases that would round out each of the four sections of the book. This collection is the result of what we hope will become a
series of critical case study books in the field of management and organization.
These cases form a diverse and rich set from several countries, continents,
and issues pertaining to interactions in business organizations as well as
between business organizations and groups and societies. The book is divided
into four parts. The first sheds light on gray areas in the behavior of businesses.
The second concerns the interactions between business and local communities in diverse countries. The third part concerns crises, and specifically how
companies may create or manage crises. The fourth and last part concerns gray
areas in business behavior in the global context.
References
Bird, F.B. (1996) The Muted Conscience: Moral Silence and the Practice of Ethics in Business (Westport, CT: Quorum Books).
—— and J.A. Waters (1989) “The Moral Muteness of Managers,” California Management Review
32.1: 173-88.
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press).
—— (2008) “The Fall of America Inc.,” Newsweek, October 2008.
Ghoshal, S. (2005) “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices,”
Academy of Management Learning and Education 4.1: 75-91.
Hamschmidt, J. (ed.) Case Studies in Sustainability Management and Strategy: The oikos collection (Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing).
Jones, G.R., A.J. Mills, T.G. Weatherbee and J. Helms Mills (2006) Organizational Theory, Design,
and Change (Toronto: Pearson, Canadian edn).
Mills, A.J., T. Simmons and J. Helms Mills (2005) Reading Organization Theory: A Critical Approach
to the Study of Organizational Behaviour and Structure (Toronto: Garamond Press, 3rd edn).
——, J. Helms Mills, J. Bratton and C. Foreshaw (2006) Organizational Behaviour in a Global
Context (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press).
Waddock, S. (2005) “Corporate Citizen: Stepping in to the Breach of Society’s Broken Contracts”,
Journal of Corporate Citizenship 19.3: 20-24.
Westley, F., B. Zimmerman and M.Q. Patton (2006) Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
(Toronto: Random House of Canada).
12 McKague and Banzei’s case was published in Hamschmidt 2007.