Centre for Critical and Historical Research on Organisation and Society (CHRONOS)

Itinerary

First speaker: Professor Sarah Ansari, Department of History, Royal Holloway

Title: ‘A way of life rather than an ideology?: Sufism, pirs and the politics of identity in Sindh'

Abstract

In the context of present-day Pakistan, the province of Sindh is often described as the ‘land of Sufism’, and sometimes ‘of secularism’: following an attack on a Shi’i imambargah in Shikarpur in January 2015, a local newspaper report (entitled ‘Can Sufism Save Sindh?’) claimed that “The Sufi ethos of Sindh has long been cherished as the panacea for burgeoning [religious] extremism in Pakistan”. Such positive statements, however, need to be assessed in light of the role of local pir families—the very influential hereditary guardians of Sindh’s many Sufi shrines—particularly in relation to longer-term social and political developments in the province. Accordingly this paper explores what in practice has proved to be a far from straight-forward relationship between Sindhi pir families and the politics of identity, contextualising and perhaps complicating debates about the potential political role of Sufism in the region more widely.

Second speaker: Professor Robert Fitzgerald, School of Management, Royal Holloway

Title: `Historical Myths, the Development of Employment Systems, and the Hawthorne Experiments'

Abstract

The presentation considers the historical development of employment systems in the electrical manufacturing industry, and reviews the divergence in theory and practice. As a result, it raises questions about the psychological experiments conducted at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant, near Chicago, between 1924-1932, which has had a pervasive impact on our understanding of management history. Despite the Hawthorne story being ‘known’, historical evidence and critique are lacking. The cross-referencing of secondary sources allowed an under-researched historical thesis to prosper: that the Hawthorne experiments were conceptually path-breaking, and that the Human Relations school initiated a transformation in management and employment practice. A business history approach can fill the gap in primary historical evidence, and more adequately account for significant international trends in management, employment, industrial psychology and the ‘human factor’. Furthermore, we can consider the emergence of Organization Studies as an academic discipline, its relationship with Business History, and Business History's own entrenched approaches to organization building by large firms.

Followed by Q&A and an open discussion with participants

Short bio - Professor Sarah Ansari

Professor Sarah Ansari is a historian of South Asia with a focus on those parts of the region that became Pakistan in 1947, in particular the province of Sindh and its mega port-city of Karachi.  Among other subjects, she has published on the role of local religious leaders, the impact of Partition migration, and citizenship and the everyday state in the decades following independence.   Her forthcoming co-authored monograph – Boundaries of Belonging:  Localities, Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan – will be published by CUP in 2019.  She is also editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (established in 1834). 

Short bio - Professor Robert Fitzgerald

Professor Robert Fitzgerald is a business historian with an interest in international business, employment relations, the global electronics industry, business organization, and Japan and the Asia Pacific economies. He researches and writes on the historical, international and comparative analysis of business. His The Rise of the Global Company: Multinationals and the Making of the Modern World was published by Cambridge University Press, and other recent works include the history of the electrical industry and Japanese multinationals.