The business of labor requires us to discuss how we teach business. The value of business school pedagogy has received increased attention in recent years (Delgado and Stefancic, 1992; Giacalone and Wargo, 2009; Podolny, 2009; Grier & Poole, 2020; Prieto & Phipps, 2021). Traditionally, the fundamentals of management teaching have been aligned with the belief that conventional management theories were developed separate and apart from the institution of chattel slavery and the management of race (Aufhauser, 1973; Cooke, 2003; Blackmon, 2008; Roediger & Esch, 2012).
It is important to explore the pedagogical practices that systematically omit the impact and historical links to chattel slavery. A narrative of hegemony is constructed, reinforced, and exacerbated by the present-day effort to introduce U.S. Congressional legislation to remove any semblance of historical reality from pedagogy, across disciplines.
American business and management teaching in the 20th century has emphasized fundamentals on competition, productivity, and various economic systems. Typically included in this course delivery is the historical development of business (Pride et al., 2018).
The exclusion allows faculty to teach and students to learn about capitalism without including a review of the historical extremes of defining property, control, and wealth. For example, enslaved workers, already regarded as mere property rather than human beings, were progenitors of the terms efficiency and effectiveness, two key tenets taught to business and management students. To avoid scaffolded sessions of brutality in attempts to effect faster production, the enslaved developed methods for working faster and more resourcefully. By revealing to business and management students that subjugation and mistreatment accompanied the development of management concepts, educators are much closer to truth-telling about the history of management (Cooke, 2003).