56: Cooperative Advantage - Charles C. Spaulding (Part 1)

Talking About Organizations Podcast

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.
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!