Capitalism in Question

Paul Adler was Program Chair for the 2013 meeting of the Academy of Management in Orlando, Florida, in August. In this capacity, he organized the “All-Academy Theme” component of the meeting program, helped by a committee of Tom Kochan (MIT), Jerry Davis (U. Michigan), Carrie Leana (U. Pittsburgh), and Stella Nkomo (U. Pretoria). The theme was “Capitalism in Question.” The essay below is an edited version of Paul’s presentation of the theme at the Presidential breakfast session, August 11, 2013. He argues that recurrent economic and financial crises and the emergence of protest movements around the world should encourage us as management scholars to consider more carefully the broader “political–economic” context of business and management—how organizational behavior, structure, and strategy differ across societies characterized by different political–economic structures, whether variants of capitalism or alternatives to it.