Jason Russell
Jason Russell is a Professor at SUNY Empire State College where he teaches history, work and labor studies, and policy studies. He completed a Ph.D. in History at York University in Toronto in 2010. His research and publication interests focus on work, labor, and capital in Canada and the United States from the mid-1930s to the end of the twentieth century.
Biography
I came to academia after working in the private sector for seventeen years. I was also a volunteer union activist during that time. I have long been interested in how the modern workplace developed. My recent publications have focused on the development of management in post-World War II Canada, and also on management interaction with unions. I am the author of Our Union: UAW/CAW Local 27 from 1950 to 1990 (Athabasca University Press, 2011); Making Managers in Canada, 1945-1995: Companies, Community Colleges, and Universities (Routledge, 2018); Leading Progress: The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada 1920 - 2020 (Between The Lines, 2020); and Canada, Working History (Dundurn, 2021).Education
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Ph.D. in History, York University (Toronto), 2010
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Canadian and American labor and working-class history
History of unions in Canada and the United States
History of management in Canada and the United States
Personal Interests
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My future research projects will continue to focus on interaction between workers and employers, the development of business and management, and workers' movements.
Books
Articles
Finding a Turn in Canadian Management Through Archival Documents
Published: Nov 11, 2019 by Journal of Management History, Vol. 25 (2019) No. 4, pp. 550-564
Authors: Jason Russell
The purpose of this paper is to reveal something about a turn that occurred in Canadian management from the 1960s to 1980s through an empirical analysis of three different archival research sources. It considers three sub-themes that collectively help to reveal empirically major changes in management identity that happened in Canada from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
The Rejection of Industrial Democracy by Berle and Means and the Emergence of the Ideology of Managerialism
Published: Oct 30, 2019 by Economic and Industrial Democracy volume 43 (1): pp. 98-122
Authors: Jason Russell, Andrew Smith, Kevin Tennent
One distinctive feature of the American variant of capitalism is the near absence of any of the industrial democracy institutions found in many European firms. This article examines ideology as a factor behind the absence of industrial democracy institutions in the United States. It focuses on the early 1930s, when the ideology of managerialism was being formulated by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, the authors of a book that had a well-documented influence on American business culture.
Berle and Means' The Modern Corporation and Private Property: the Military Roots of a Stakeholder Model of Corporate Governance
Published: Feb 20, 2019 by Seattle University Law Review, Volume 42, Issue 2 (2019), pp. 535-563
Authors: Jason Russell, Andrew Smith, Kevin Tennent
The Modern Corporation and Private Property by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means (1932) remains one of the most cited works in management studies. Our paper shows that Berle and Means espoused a stakeholder theory of corporate governance that challenged the then-hegemonic idea that the sole purpose of a corporation is to create value for the shareholders.
Caterpillar Hates Unions More Than It Loves Profits”: The Electro-Motive Closure and the Dilemmas of Union Strategy
Published: May 01, 2018 by Labour/Le Travail
Authors: Jason Russell and Stephanie Ross
The February 2012 closure of London, Ontario’s Electro-Motive Diesel by the notoriously anti-union US multinational Caterpillar symbolizes the deep challenges faced by private sector unions in globalized industries. This article explores the implications of changes in corporate structure, investment, and labour-relations strategy in manufacturing that have reduced capital’s dependence on production and increased corporate power over workers.
Toward polyphonic constitutive historicism: a new research agenda for management historians
Published: Dec 10, 2015 by Management and Organizational History
Authors: Jason Russell and Andrew Smith
Ten years after the call for a ‘historic turn,’ this paper builds on recent developments in organizational remembering scholarship to outline a new research agenda for management historians. Traditionally, management historians have focused on understanding what actually took place in the past. The research agenda for management historians proposed in this paper involves a shift in focus to understanding how perceptions of the past influence economic action in the present.
Organization men and women: making managers at Bell Canada from the 1940s to the 1960s
Published: Oct 30, 2015 by Management and Organizational History
Authors: Jason Russell
The development of management as an occupation in post-World War II Canada is a topic that has received some attention from historians, but it is still an aspect of work and labor history that merits closer attention. This article seeks to reveal something about the nature of management work in Canada in the postwar decades by looking at how managers at Bell Canada were trained from the late 1940s to the late 1960s.