Critical management studies
A loose but rapidly growing grouping of politically left wing and theoretically innovative approaches to management, business and organisation. Usually dated as beginning with Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott's edited collection Critical Management Studies (1992), Critical Management Studies (CMS) initially brought together critical theory and post-structuralist writings, but has since developed in more diverse directions. Since 1999, there has been a bi-annual CMS conference held in the UK, and a special interest group of the US Academy of Management.
The main home of CMS has been in the organisation theory and behaviour parts of British, Australian and Scandinavian Business Schools, though (since the late 1990s) there are academics from North America and other parts of the world who are engaging with this body of writing and research. The origins of CMS in part date to the series of UK Labour Process Conferences that began in 1983 and reflected the impact of Braverman's (1974) attempt to make Marxist categories central to understanding work organisations. In addition, many heterodox scholars in various parts of the world had been inspired by the international activities of the Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism. This latter grouping developed work which drew variously on post-structuralism and symbolic interactionism in order to develop a cultural and anthropological understanding of contemporary organizations.
However, perhaps the most important development in the stimulation of CMS was the global expansion of business schools, but particularly in the English speaking world. During the 1980s, this resulted in many academics with graduate training in sociology, history, philosophy, psychology and so on getting jobs training managers. Not only did this result in an infusion of sophisticated theoretical tools into business schools, it also meant that the politics of managerialism became questioned by newcomers who did not necessarily share the ideology of managerialism. The use of Frankfurt School critical theory, and the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze has been particularly influential, though there has also been interest in feminism, queer theory and post-colonial theory. (See Alvesson and Willmott 2003 for a recent survey of the field.)
Main points of debate now centre around the relationship with more orthodox forms of Marxism, the nature and purposes of CMS critique, as well as questions of inclusion and exclusion (Fournier and Grey 2000), and the possibilities of social transformation from within business schools ( Parker 2002). Wider impatience with market managerial forms of organization are common enough outside the business school, from anti-corporate protest to popular media presentations of managers. What CMS attempts to do is to articulate these voices within the business school, and provide ways of thinking beyond current dominant theories and practices of organization. Whether it can be successful in changing management education, or even changing assumptions about organizing, is an open question.
References
Alvesson, M and Willmott, H (eds) (1992) Critical Management Studies. London: Sage.
Alvesson, M and Willmott, H (eds) (2003) Studying Management Critically. London: Sage.
Braverman, H (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Fournier, V and Grey, C (2000) 'At the Critical Moment'. Human Relations.
Parker, M (2002) Against Management. Oxford: Polity.
Websites
Links to Critical Management Resources [1]
Critical Management Studies Interest Group of the US Academy of Management [2]
See also Critical Legal Studies