Introductory paragraph: Many business schools would testify that before they entered the world of accreditations and rankings, they gave less attention to analysing and strategising stakeholder perceptions and public conversations about their school; Daniel Kahn, Björn Kjellander, and Benjamin Stévenin ask why.

Introductory paragraph: As schools work to fulfill Standard 9, they should first know why they want to achieve impact, how they want to achieve impact, and for whom.

To enrich conceptually the study of identity work, the paper directs attention to how identity-self constitutes in individuals' interactions and relationships. By using a narrative approach that includes Ricoeur's notions of idem and ipse, it elevates temporal dynamics of identity work with reference to the becoming aspect of the individual self in relation to the other. Idem identity denotes sameness and permanence through time and space, and ipse identity concerns selfhood in the sense of change and interrupted continuity. As pointed out, a Ricoeurian conceptualization of identity helps to extend our understanding of practical actions beyond individual character and traits. In consideration of both concordance and discordance in narrative structure, this conceptualization suggests a middle way between stability and variability, refraining us from relying on a narrative that presupposes a linear plot based on a causal-type model of occurrences to construct and maintain a stable and coherent personal identity. 

Purpose

Determining the attributes of effective business teachers is critical to schools as they strive to attract and retain students, assure learning, obtain and maintain reputation and accreditations, and place their alumni in the competitive job market. This study examines students and faculty perceptions of teaching effectiveness in five culturally disparate countries: Colombia, France, Lebanon, Sweden, and the United States.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was designed based on previous research complemented by an extensive literature review as well as personal communications with faculty in different international business schools. The survey considered 39 teaching attributes related to three specific dimensions: 1) class delivery, 2) class preparation and design, and 3) instructional traits and personal characteristics. The survey targeted students and faculty from seven business schools located in five countries.

Findings

This study offers new conceptual and analytical analyses from a cross-country comparative perspective. Rankings of the importance of perceived teaching attributes for both major groups involved in the teaching of business, faculty and students, are reported. The attributes are also ranked by teaching taxonomy and examined across countries.

Practical implications

This study provides practical results that can be useful to instructors wishing to increase their teaching effectiveness and to universities considering revising their student evaluation forms.

Originality/value

This study includes data collected from faculty and students from several schools located in culturally disparate countries and, thus, increases the applicability of the results in a cross-cultural manner and provides implications for practice internationally.

This chapter sets out to create a novel understanding of identity dynamics in the family business context. Focusing on Hjalmar Bergman’s The Head of the Firm (1924), a fiction novel, our purpose is to describe and interpret how the personal identity of an entrepreneur is challenged and changed in relation to demanding and overlapping family, business, and societal norms and expectations. In our case, ­particularly events related to succession of management and ownership in a family business form dynamic and emotional plots that propel the story forward.

This paper takes an interest in the past, as depicted by family business owners, and how it is reflected in the governance of the firm. The purpose of this paper is to explore how family business owners express and perceive their family business story and the implications for the strategy formation of the firm. Through the storytelling from 20 cases, we conclude that they embrace their past through different degrees of adoption and their promotion or prevention focus. We construct four typologies: strategy formation through reinforcement, renewal, remembrance and rhetoric. The implications of storytelling and these typologies are discussed.

Family business ‘history’ and ‘the past’ are in the literature used interchangeably. History is often referred to as something static that can be elicited and analyzed from a firm’s past. Further, how culture is ingrained by history, especially the founder’s role is a well researched area (e.g. Dyer, 1986; Kets de Vries, 1993; Gersick et al., 1997; Garzia-Alvarez et al., 2002). The impact of family values and traditions on firm governance in general has also received attention (Alvesson and Melin, 1989; Kets de Vries, 1993; Hall et al., 2001; Hall, 2003; Brundin, Nordqvist and Melin, 2010). Hall, Melin and Nordqvist (2006) argue that family values, goals and relations have an impact on the strategy formation in the family firm. However, there is still scant research into how family business history may form firms’ narrative strategies. This paper suggests some perspectives and tools that can bring some more light on these matters.

A tenet of this paper is that discourse understanding is strategic. (Discourse) strategies, normally unconscious and instinctive, are formed to create multilevel representations employed in discourse understanding and memory (Dijk & Kintsch 1983). That is, it does not concur with Hall et al.’s, (2006)  claim that strategy is about “moving from its [the firm’s] history to its future” (p. 255). Along with Brundin & Kjellander, forthcoming), the paper claims that the firm’s history is an active part of the ongoing strategy formation of the firm.  When the family firm history has consequences for the present strategy formation of the firm, we claim that family business owners strategize.

The purpose is to discuss the unconscious and instinctive sides of these narrative strategies through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’. Firm praxis is in this paper seen as governed by habitus, which comprises both a practical apprehension of the world based on decisions made in the past as well as constructed, constructing dispositions “constituted in practice and […] always oriented towards practical function” (Bourdieu, 1990a: 52). Empirically, the paper applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to look into how a firm’s narrative strategies are constructed around a sort of habitus.