Ronald Hartz
LightNews LightNews
banner
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Ronald Hartz
@ronaldhartz.bsky.social
2.2K followers 850 following 630 posts
Senior Researcher at Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany | organization studies | critical management studies | alternative forms of organization | higher education | he/him
Posts Replies Media Videos
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Three months ago
Announcement of NSS results by University of Leicester, saying Human Geography 1st for overall positivity in the UK.
November 7, 2025 at 8:31 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
It seems that the Ordinance is based on a somewhat interesting interpretation of the Education Reform Act 1998, Section 202.
(2) In exercising those functions, the Commissioners shall have regard to the need— (a) to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question andtest received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial orunpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing theirjobs or privileges they may have at their institutions; (b) to enable qualifying institutions to provide education, promote learning andengage in research efficiently and economically;
November 6, 2025 at 10:01 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Großer Garten, Dresden.
Palais und Teich im Großen Garten Dresden. Großer Garten Dresden. Teich im Großen Garten Dresden. Allee im Großen Garten Dresden.
November 2, 2025 at 6:41 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
"During periods of crisis ... outside pressures for purging the universities of their supposedly disloyal elements increased ... Professors and administrators responded by revising the ... definition of academic freedom to exclude ... the types of behavior the rest of the community did not like."
Book cover of No Ivory Tower by Ellen W. Schrecker.
October 10, 2025 at 11:44 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
"‘Can’t you see that we admitted that student from his deeply impoverished background? If he can do it, anyone can’. And thus the university absolves itself of any proper social responsibility for a world of massive structural inequality, preferring instead .. a logic of aggressive competitiveness".
Book cover of Universities at War by Thomas Docherty.
October 9, 2025 at 7:11 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Glad you made it out.
Still from The Process by Orson Welles.
September 30, 2025 at 1:54 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
"Before a strategy for social critique can be formulated,
we must make assumptions about the way in
which subjectivity is impacted by language; ..why the revolution has not taken place; and why we keep going to meetings that we know are pointless." (Hoedemaekers,2010)
mayflybooks.org/lacan-and-or...
Book cover of Lacan and Organization by Cederström and Hoedemakers.
September 30, 2025 at 11:06 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Traces of the Leicester Model of a Critical Management School - Workshop announcement of the Collective for Alternative Organisation Studies (CAOS) in 2005:
C A O S Workshop announcement: CONTESTING CAPITALISM: PRACTICES AND STRATEGIES One day Workshop, Wednesday 18 May 2005 Collective for Alternative Organisation Studies (CAOS) University of Leicester Management Centre.
September 29, 2025 at 6:19 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
‘In the end ... we decided to employ academic capitalism in part because alternatives - academic entrepreneurism or entrepreneurial activity - seemed to be euphemisms for academic capitalism which failed to capture fully the enroachment of the profit motive into the academy.’ (p.9)
Book cover of Academic Capitalism by Slaughter and Leslie.
September 26, 2025 at 1:11 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Books about the state of #HigherEd, no. 29: ‘the front and centring of the finances aspect of universities has changed their very nature, with a concomitant prioritisation of marketing the university as a product to attract customers and to build the university as a brand for consumption’ (p.15)
Book cover of Life for the Academic in the neoliberal university by Maisuria and Helmes.
September 23, 2025 at 6:02 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Oh, I was there on holiday in 2023. Such a marvellous place!
September 17, 2025 at 3:21 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
“In a world of widely communicated nonsense, any statement of fact is of political and moral significance. ... In such a world as ours, to practice social science is, first of all, to practice the politics of truth.” (C. Wright Mills, 1959)
Book cover of The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills.
September 17, 2025 at 1:49 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Hobbyist researcher in action
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921 (photography Ferdinand Schnutzer).
September 12, 2025 at 11:12 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'But can we really see things if we have an urge to constantly produce?'

New book by Ilaria Boncori, Monika Kostera and Emmanouela Mandalaki: Poetry and Organizing: Perspectives on the Uses and Value of Poetry in Organization Studies.

#OrgStudies

www.elgaronline.com/monobook-oa/...
Book cover of Poetry and Organizing.
September 11, 2025 at 10:02 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'If your organization is "changing the world", on a "spiritual journey", or on a "mission for humankind", you know that rules do not count for you even if the outside world doesn't understand it. All those terms signal trouble ahead. The way to corporate hell is paved with words.' (Palazzo/Hoffrage)
Book cover of The Dark Pattern by Palazzo and Hoffrage.
September 5, 2025 at 2:52 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
‘we suggest that chief amongst the beliefs implicit in managerialism is the idea that management in itself is of greater importance than the primary activities that are being managed’ (Hussey/Smith (2010): The Trouble with Higher Education, p.20)

#HigherEd
#UKHE
Book cover of The Trouble with Higher Education by Trevor Hussey and Patrick Smith.
September 4, 2025 at 2:28 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'By believing that they must imitate business in order to work with business, universities are in danger of forgoing some of the very elements that enable them to make a distinctive contribution: teaching for personal/cultural development.., long-term research programs, critical scholarship’.(p.244)
Book cover of The Enterprise University by Marginson and Consodine.
August 29, 2025 at 6:48 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Interesting working paper by Carina Altreiter, Theresa Hager and Stephan Pühringer:

Political Economy of Knowledge Production in Capitalist Academia: Challenges and Opportunities for Socio-Ecological Transformation

#HigherEd

www.jku.at/fileadmin/gr...
August 28, 2025 at 10:33 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'From the perspective of leadership, the future will have an episodic quality, each moment erasing itself in a long march to success. ... Change procures its own values ... And yet ... the conviction is sustained that the next decision might make all the difference in the world.' (Randy Martin)
Book cover of Under New Management by Randy Martin.
August 26, 2025 at 12:03 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Organizing for apocalypse - new special issue of ephemera:

ephemerajournal.org/issue/organi...
Organizing for apocalypse It is sometimes asserted that most people find it easier to envision the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. In this special issue, we address this assertion head-on by exploring what it might mean to organize for apocalypse. As the contributions reveal, the notion of apocalypse means different things to different people. It might even be interpreted as an empty signifier. However, for large parts of the world’s population, the apocalypse does not point to a distant future but represents a (very real) lived experience in the present. In any case, as global temperatures continue to rise, while pandemics spread at lightning speed, and as military superpowers continue to act both irresponsibly and unpredictably, many are currently coming to the realization that the world – as we know it – might be coming to an end. What comes after the apocalypse is an open question, of course, which provides plenty of space for social and political imagination.
August 11, 2025 at 10:50 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Critical books about the state of #HigherEd, no. 28: 'Today’s problems do not reflect a failure to introduce market thinking but the effects of its long-term presence.’ (Christopher Newfield (2016): The Great Mistake, p.4)
Book cover of The Great Mistake by Christopher Newfield.
July 18, 2025 at 5:48 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'[T]he university [is] a permanent battleground, and a source of vitality, contestation, "creative desctruction", money power, and visions of better worlds. The university is a corporate and a utopian environment at the same time'. (Christopher Newfield, 2003, p.4)
Book cover of Ivy and Industry by Christopher Newfield.
July 11, 2025 at 6:08 AM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
'In science, if the object is the satisfaction of the customer, we should stop funding science, and fund science fiction, which does the job far better' (Russell, 1993: 31).

#AcademicFreedom
#HigherEd
Book cover of Academic Freedom by Conrad Russell.
July 2, 2025 at 4:21 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Critical books about the state of #HigherEd, no. 27: 'Right to learn hopes to provide educators and concerned citizens with tools to combat this unprecetended assault on the freedom to think and the right to learn’ (Johnson et al., 2024: 1).

#AcademicFreedom
Book cover of The Right to Learn. Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom.
July 2, 2025 at 2:40 PM
ronaldhartz.bsky.social
Shortly afterwards, Peter Armstrong received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Accounting & Finance Association.
We are delighted to confirm a BAFA Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022 is to be presented to Professor Peter Armstrong (Retired) Peter Armstrong came late to critical accounting research. His first career was as a research engineer, the enduring legacy of which is the Armstrong-Frederick kinematic yield criterion now standard in computer programmes for the analysis of inelastic strain in engineering structures He then left engineering to take a master's degree in the sociology of science and technology. There followed two years as a sociological fieldworker on the well known 'Chemco' studies, five years as a lecturer in general studies, another two years' sociological fieldwork and five years at Huddersfield Polytechnic as a tutor on shop steward courses. During this last period, he synthesized insights from neo-Marxist class theory, the sociology of professions and debates on the problematic status of engineering in the UK to theorize the rise of accounting controls in British companies. Through the agency of the late Anthony Hopwood this was published in Accounting, Organizations and Society and initiated further work in Critical Accounting at the universities of East Anglia, Sheffield, Keele and Leicester, at the last three of which he held chairs. He retired in 2010 as Professor Emeritus at the University of Leicester. Last year the title was rescinded by the present governors of that university in retaliation for his public expressions of disgust at, and contempt for, a management which, in its ignorance of the nature and purpose of universities, thought fit to dismiss a number of scholars distinguished in the fields of critical accounting and critical management studies simply because their work did not fit with its agenda.
June 27, 2025 at 5:34 PM