Business School Research: Some Preliminary Suggestions

Please note this event has been cancelled.

Edward Freeman, University Professor; Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Academic Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics Darden School of Business

Presented by the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the John Molson School of Business in collaboration with the Office of Research, Concordia University.

Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. – noon
Concordia University MB Building, Room MB 6.240
1450 Guy Street (de Maisonneuve Blvd. West), Montreal, Quebec. View map

Recent critiques of business schools have led to the formulation of three interconnected problems: the problem of research; the problem of the use of knowledge; and, the normative problem. At the heart of the issue is what we have called “the separation thesis” or “the separation fallacy,” most powerfully seen as the exclusion of ethics from business judgments, but generalizable to a duality between the worlds of management and humanity. If we give up this fallacy, we can gain a different and more pluralist view of the role of research in business school, and as the nature of meaningful “research.” We lay out five main modes of research, and suggest how each can escape the separation fallacy. We then show how the problem of the use of knowledge can be ameliorated by giving up the separation fallacy. Finally, we suggest how we can re-define and re-discover the disciplines of business by thinking about more thick moral conceptions.

Edward Freeman

R. Edward Freeman joined the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration in 1987. Currently he is University Professor and Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics; and, Academic Director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics. Freeman is perhaps best known for his award winning book:  Strategic Management:  A Stakeholder Approach, published in 1984, where he traced the origins of the stakeholder idea to a number of others, and suggested that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders. Mr. Freeman has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Duke University. He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate  in economics (DHC) from Comillas University in Madrid for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics.   He has received the 6th Annual Outstanding Teaching Award from the Wharton Advisory Board, a Top Ten Teachers Award from the Wharton MBA Program, and in 1986 was named Teacher of the Year at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.


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For more information, please contact:

Andrew Ross
David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise
John Molson School of Business
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514-848-2424 ext. 5131