Research seminars with Farzad Khan
On Thursday 31 August 10-12 am (Hanken School of Economics, aud.305) Farzad will be talking on "Recoupling Institutional Logics through Institutional Work: The Case Study of the Pakistani Judiciary’s Struggle for Independence"
On Friday 1 September 9.30-11.39 am (Hanken School of Economics, aud.411) Farzad will be talking about "Epistemic Healing: A Critical Ethical Response to Epistemic Violence in Business Ethics"
About Farzad: Dr. Khan is a well recognized scholar within CSR and critical managemen
t studies. His research interests center on business ethics, corporate social responsibility, critical approaches in management, and organization theory. He graduated with a Ph.D in Strategy and Organization from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in 2005. He also has a Masters in Economics of Developing Countries from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor with Great Distinction from McGill University in Accounting and Finance. He has published in the leading academic research journals in the business and management field such as Human Relations, Organization, Organization Studies, and Journal of Business Ethics. He has been involved in consulting and executive development programs with leading organizations such as Nestle, Siemens, Telenor, and Teradata. He also has held several international academic appointments and has taught at the top universities in a wide range of countries including Canada, China, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
Recoupling Institutional Logics through Institutional Work: The Case Study of the Pakistani Judiciary’s Struggle for Independence
Articulating and documenting a qualitative fieldwork based case study on the lawyers movement for judicial independence from the executive branch of the government in Pakistan (2007-2009), this paper investigates the process through which decoupled institutional logics become recoupled. In doing so, it answers the following unexplored questions in institutional theory: 1) What is the process for recoupling decoupled institutional logics?; 2) What forms of institutional work are involved in recoupling material and symbolic elements of institutional logics?; and 3) What set of activities are associated with these recoupling institutional work forms? Both written documents and field interviews have been used for addressing these questions. Doing so reveals that a successful recoupling process unfolds gradually over three stages: the background stage, the inter-person rivalry stage, and the institutional war stage. The last of these stages is divided in two phases i.e., limited and total institutional war phases. Furthermore, each stage involves various institutional work forms manifested through different activities. Identifying these work forms and activities helps us in offering a multi-level analysis of institutional agency, in opening the black box of institutional recoupling, and in highlighting some blind spots in institutional theory that potentially have to do with its ethnocentric bias and lack of input from the Global South.
Epistemic Healing: A Critical Ethical Response to Epistemic Violence in Business Ethics
We argue that there is a neo-colonial knowledge regime operating in business ethics. This knowledge regime engages in systematic epistemic violence of exclusion and distortion against indigenous alternative
knowledge formations from the Global South. Thus, the question posed for the business ethics field from a critical perspective is how to ethically respond and challenge this situation of power and domination. We propose the idea of epistemic healing as an ethical critical response for reversing epistemic violence in business ethics. Epistemic healing requires identifying and then calling back to the center of discussion in business ethics knowledge traditions of the other that it has excluded and made peripheral. We illustrate this principle of epistemic healing in the context of Islamic business ethics given that it contains epistemic violence against Islam, particularly Sufism, an important knowledge tradition of the Muslim other from the Global South. Breaking silence on the neocolonial knowledge regime operating in the construction of business ethics, introducing the concept of epistemic healing, and illustrating the latter’s fecundity in advancing debate in business ethics while also helping reverse the field’s epistemic violence against alternative knowledge commitments
and resources of the other from the Global South are the important contributions of this paper.
We welcome all interested researchers to attend - the seminars are open and free of charge.