Debating ‘Homo Academicus’ in Management and Organization Ontological Assumptions and Practical Implications

In the fields of management and organization, there is an ongoing debate about different ontological assumptions about people in and around organizations, and the dangers of self-fulling prophecies, i.e., the phenomena in which unsubstantiated, unethical, or dysfunctional assumptions about people can lead to adverse practical consequences. This open access book advances this debate, but in a self-reflexive direction, asking: Who do we, as scholars in the fields of management and organization, think we are? What ontological assumptions about ourselves do we live by? Do we think we are something “special”, a 'Homo Academicus', distinctively separated from the life-world of managers and employees but linked with other academics such as, say, philosophers and sociologists? If so, what are the consequences and implications of such assumptions?
Part of the popular Palgrave Debates in Business and Management series, each of the chapters disclose, problematize, and criticize different ontological assumptions about 'Homo Academicus' that underpins research in the fields of management and organization. It will be of great interest to management and organization scholars and students, as well as those with a broader interest in methodology and critical studies.

1 Debating Homo academicus: A maieutic quest for self-reflexivity.- PART ONE: Homo moralis.- 2 When management and organization came to the village of Jante.- 3 Aren’t we all human? - On the illusion of the extraordinary academic.- PART TWO: Homo reflectivus.- 4 Existential explorations of others and oneself as a researcher.- 5 Homo scribens – Notes on writing management.- 6 Living as an academic-cum-something-else: How I learned to stop worrying and love academia.- 7 Homo academicus as becoming nomad: Reflections through a journey of pregnancy and motherhood.- 8 “Dragged in the opposite direction”: Identity tensions facing women academics in management and organization.- PART THREE: Homo mutatus.- 9 Homo academicus and gender: The cracking assumptions of rationality.- 10 Beyond Conventional Leadership: On Homo academicus (dux) and ontological assumptions in academia.- 11 From Homo academicus activistarum to Homo academicus imaginatus.- 12 Homo academicus as guild, employment and attitude – the academy in transition.

Silvia Cinque is Lecturer in Organisation and Management at the University of Liverpool Management School and Fellow at SDA Bocconi School of Management. She conducts research across the areas of organisation and management theory, business and society, and social theory. Her main interests involve identity, meaningful work and work as a calling, power and resistance, gender, and the creative industries.

Daniel Ericsson is a Professor in Business Administration at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Sweden, specializing in Organisation and Management. He is also a Visiting Professor in Cultural Entrepreneurship at Lund University, Sweden. His research is mainly carried out in the intersection of management, entrepreneurship and organization, with a special interest in creativity, and methods.