Odyssey of a Socialist in the Business School World

This is an edited version of my remarks at the 2020 Academy of Management on receiving the Organization and Management Theory Division's Distinguished Scholar award. I review the main steps of my intellectual trajectory, aiming to show how it has been enriched both by my engagement with “classic” scholars in our field–most notably Marx, Gouldner, Weber, Schumpeter, and Polanyi—and by my commitment to socialist values. I offer my case, with its strengths and weaknesses, in the hope of inspiring reflection on the role in our scholarship of such classics and our personal values, whatever they may be.