With Special Guests Dr. Leon Prieto and Dr. Simone Phipps

In this episode, we acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Charles Clinton Spaulding, an important management thought leader who, like many African-Americans prior to the U.S. civil rights movement, has been sadly overlooked in the management canon. From 1923 until 1952, Spaulding served as the President of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the largest company in the U.S. owned exclusively by African-Americans, with over $40 million in assets at the time of his death.

In 1927, with the U.S. in recession, Spaulding wrote a reflection of his experiences as a business leader in the Pittsburgh Courier, a widely-read newspaper, hoping to help fellow African-American business leaders overcome the economic downturn. This reflection became the article “Administration of Big Business,” published over two issues (August 13 & 20). To the modern reader, Spaulding’s ideas echoed those of other classic management thought leaders such as Frederick Taylor (Episode 1), Henri Fayol (Episode 2), and Chester Barnard (Episodes 7 & 8) — but pre-date Barnard by over a decade!

His ideas are also distinctive as they reflect some form of ‘African management’ principles, the most salient being the emphasis on cooperation, echoing the African idea on cooperation (Ubuntu) and doing business also for the good of communities. The latter was important as African-Americans were/are a particularly vulnerable and discriminated minority. Spaulding also evoked a religious or spiritual dimension in his work, and some of his practices mirrored those exercised in African-American churches. Thus, one can attribute to him the practice of workplace spirituality before this concept was adopted in contemporary works. Spaulding’s work also displayed social entrepreneurship, which echoes the work of contemporary researchers like Dr. Nevena Radoynovska on how entrepreneurship can play a vital role in vulnerable populations.

Joining us for this episode are two scholars of African-American Management History — Leon Prieto of Clayton State University and Simone Phipps of Middle Georgia State University. Together, they authored a 2016 paper that the Academy of Management called groundbreaking, “Rediscovering Charles Clinton Spaulding’s ‘The Administration of Big Business’: Insight into early 20th Century African-American Management Thought,” and have authored several other papers bringing important attention to Spaulding and other African-American management leaders whose works deserve much wider attention!

Featured image: Photograph of Officers of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, c. 1911., with permission from the North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library.

Podcasting in this episode: Pedro, Jarryd, Leon Prieto, and Simone Phipps

Read With Us:

Spaulding, C.C. (1927, 13 & 20 April), “The administration of big business”, The Pittsburgh Courier, Pittsburgh, PA. Not available online. Click here for a transcribed version.

Prieto, L. C., & Phipps, S. T. (2016). Re-discovering Charles Clinton Spaulding’s “The Administration of Big Business” Insight into early 20th century African-American management thought. Journal of Management History, 22(1), 73-90.

To Learn More:

Milliman, J., Czaplewski, A. J., & Ferguson, J. (2003). Workplace spirituality and employee work attitudes: An exploratory empirical assessment. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 16(4), 426-447.

Prieto, L. C., & Phipps, S. T. (2019). African American management history: Insights on gaining a cooperative ddvantage. Bingly, UK: Emerald Publishing.

Radoynovska, N. (2017). Solving social problems through (social) entrepreneurship: Evaluating the promise(s). Academy of Management Conference. Atlanta, GA.

Zilber, T. B. (2002). Institutionalization as an interplay between actions, meanings, and actors: The case of a rape crisis center in Israel. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 234-254.