The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies 9780191577123, 019157712X, 9780199595686
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies provides an overview of theoretical approaches, key topics, issues, a
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[UNTITLED]
[UNTITLED] The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press, 2009 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 First published in paperback 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Page 1 of 2
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[UNTITLED] Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King's Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–923771–5 (hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–959568–6 (pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
(p. v)
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following: • David Musson, our commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, who provided the initial support for the project and who challenged our conceptions of who and what CMS might represent. Matthew Derbyshire, for his excellent management of the project form the beginning and for being both assertive and understanding when it came to deadlines. Other members of the production team at OUP, including Kate Walker, Tom Chandler, and Chris Champion, who worked on the website and took the manuscript through to publication. • Our contributors, who have made this project possible by writing chapters on their specialist areas within the constraints which we set. We are also grateful to many of them for providing additional reviewing inputs to other chapters and making numer ous suggestions for the development and refinement of the volume. • Members of our editorial board: David Courpasson, John Forrester, Paul du Gay, Christopher Grey, Cynthia Hardy, Robert Jackall, Dennis Mumby, Jan Mouritsen, Mar tin Parker, Charles Perrow, and Barbara Townley. • To the following reviewers of the chapters: Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic, Carl Ceder stom, Lucas Introna, Alistair Mutch, Linda Putnam, Prem Sikka, Andrew Sayer, and Stefan Sveningsson. • Laine Clayton, Angela Cox, Jan Richards, and Louisa Acheson, for the secretarial and administrative assistance they provided. • And last, but certainly not least, our families for their enduring support and encour agement. (p. vi)
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List of Figures
List of Figures The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
(p. x)
List of Figures
7.1. The pluralist or stakeholder model 153 9.1. Global flows, systems, and effects 190
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List of Tables
List of Tables The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
(p. xi)
List of Tables
20.1. Approaches to critiquing strategy 421 21.1. Four common approaches to communication 435
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Editor Biographies
Editor Biographies The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
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Editor Biographies
Mats Alvesson is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Lund, Swe den. He is also affiliated with University of Queensland Business School. Research in terests include critical theory, gender, power, management of professional service (knowledge intensive) organizations, organizational culture and symbolism, qualita tive methods, and philosophy of science. Recent books include Understanding Gender and Organizations (Sage, 2009, 2nd edn, with Yvonne Billing), Reflexive Methodology (Sage, 2009, 2nd edn, with Kaj Skoldberg), Changing Organizational Culture (Routledge 2008, with Stefan Sveningsson), Knowledge Work and Knowledge-inten sive Firms (Oxford University Press, 2004), Postmodernism and Social Research (Open University Press, 2002) and Understanding Organizational Culture (Sage, 2002).
Todd Bridgman is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He was previously an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson Col lege, University of Cambridge. His PhD, completed at Judge Business School, was judged best doctoral thesis in critical management studies at the Academy of Man agement 2005. His research interests include poststructuralism, management educa tion, and the role of the university in society.
Hugh Willmott is Research Professor in Organization Studies, Cardiff Business School, having held professorial positions at the Universities of Cambridge and Man chester and visiting appointments at the Universities of Copenhagen, Lund, and Cran
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Editor Biographies field. He has a strong interest in the application of social theory, especially poststruc turalist thinking, to the field of management and business. His recent books include Critical Management Studies: A Reader (Oxford University Press) Introducing Organi zation Behaviour and Management (Cengage). He currently serves on the boards of Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Stud ies, and Organization. Full details can be found on his homepage: http:// dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome
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Author Biographies
Author Biographies The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
(p. xiii)
Author Biographies
Karen Lee Ashcraft is an associate professor at the University of Utah and a visiting professor at Lund University. Her research explores gender, race, and power relations in the contexts of occupational identity and organizational form. This work has been published in such forums as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Manage ment Journal, and Communication Theory; and her book with Dennis Mumby, entitled Reworking Gender, examines the relationship between feminist and critical manage ment studies. Her current research entails extensive qualitative study of the role of race and gender in the evolution of professional identity among commercial airline pi lots.
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee is Professor of Management and Associate Dean (Re search) at the College of Business, University of Western Sydney. His research inter ests are in the areas of corporate social responsibility, sustainability, postcolonialism, indigenous ecology, and globalization. He has published widely in scholarly interna tional journals and his work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Marketing, Organization, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and Human Re lations. His book Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good The Bad and the Ugly was published by Edward Elgar in 2007. Bobby is also a senior editor at Organization Studies.
Charles Booth is Reader in Strategy and Organization at Bristol Business School, Uni versity of the West of England. He was a founding editor of the journal Management & Organizational History. His present research interests concern issues at the inter
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Author Biographies sections of history, heritage, and memory, in and of technologies, organizations, and societies.
Joanna Brewis works at the University of Leicester School of Management, UK, where she teaches research methodology and writes about the intersections between the body, identity, consumption, culture, and processes of organizing. Jo has published in journals including Human Relations, Sociology, and Organization. She also has a very extensive collection of flip flops and would dearly love to meet Josh Lyman from The West Wing in real life.
Gibson Burrell has been a professor of organizational behaviour and of organization theory in a number of British universities. He has recently published with Karen Dale a book entitled The Spaces of Organisation and the Organisation of Space (p. xiv) (Pal grave Macmillan, 2007). He is currently working with Alan Whitaker on The Structure and Role of University Councils. Until recently he was Head of the School of Manage ment at the University of Leicester. The School, in its principles and projects, at tempted to develop a “community of a scholars” committed to “critical management studies”. How this enterprise fared forms part of his article in this volume.
Chris Carter is from Cornwall and currently works as a Professor of Organization Studies at the University of St Andrews. He also holds a visiting professorship at the University of Technology, Sydney, which is a congenial intellectual home from home. His current research investigates the politics of strategy and the organization of cam paigns. Chris received his PhD in Organization Theory from Aston Business School. He lives in Edinburgh.
John Child (MA, PhD, ScD, University of Cambridge; FBA) holds the Chair of Com merce at the University of Birmingham. His principal scholarly interests are in alter native forms of organization, the internationalization of small firms, and management in China. His recent books include Organization: Contemporary Principles and Prac tice (2005), Cooperative Strategy (2005, co-authored with David Faulkner and Stephen Tallman), and Corporate Co-evolution: A Political Perspective (2008, co-au thored with Suzana Rodrigues). He is Senior Editor of Management and Organization Review and has published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Acad
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Author Biographies emy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, and Organization Studies.
Stewart Clegg is Research Professor and Director of Centre for Management and Or ganization Studies Research at the University of Technology, Sydney; Visiting Profes sor of Organizational Change Management, Maastricht University Faculty of Busi ness; Visiting Professor and International Fellow in Discourse and Management Theo ry, Centre of Comparative Social Studies, Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam; Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School and EM-Lyon. A prolific publisher in lead ing academic journals in social science, management, and organization theory, he is also the author and editor of many books.
Alessia Contu is Associate Professor of Organization Studies in the Industrial Rela tions and Organizational Behaviour Group, Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick. Her published work has included explorations of resistance and power at work, and their impact on learning dynamics and identity. She is currently writing on new forms of resistance. With the fellowship of the Reinvention Centre, at the Univer sity of Warwick's Department of Sociology, she is researching the learning processes in teaching business ethics to management undergraduates. Alessia is interested in Lacanian psychoanalysis. She is currently re-reading the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, but this time in Italian, as a new revision has recently been published. She is Series Edi tor of the Critical Management Study Series, Palgrave Macmillan, and author of nu merous publications including “Groups and Teams (p. xv) at Work,” in David Knights and Hugh Willmott (eds.), Introducing Organizational Behaviour and Management (Thomson Learning, 2007).
Sadhvi Dar is Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics at Queen Mary University of London. She holds a doctoral degree from the Judge Busi ness School, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include international development, third sector organizations, business and society, and critical theory. She is co-editor with Professor Bill Cooke of The New Development Management: Cri tiquing the Dual Modernization (2008).
Stanley Deetz (PhD) is Professor of Communication and Director of Peace and Con flict Studies at the University of Colorado. He is author/co-author of numerous arti
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Author Biographies cles and books including Leading Organizations through Transitions (Sage, 2000), Do ing Critical Management Research (Sage, 2000), and Democracy in an Age of Corpo rate Colonization (Suny, 1992). His research focuses on corporate governance and communication processes in relation to democracy, micro-practices of power, and col laborative decision-making. His current work investigates native theories of commu nication and democracy and their consequences for mutual decision-making. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar, a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar, and an International Communication Association Past-President and Fellow.
Joanne Duberley is a senior lecturer in organizational studies at Birmingham Business School, the University of Birmingham. Her main research interests include the impact of commercialization upon the development of science, the study of scientific careers, and the management of the interface between work and home life in female entrepre neurs. Recent publications have appeared in journals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Vocational Behavior.
Mahmoud Ezzamel is Cardiff Professorial Fellow, Cardiff University, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Research Unit. His research inter ests focus mainly on critical accounting and management issues drawing on a variety of social theories, in particular the interface between issues of ideology, power, con trol accountability, and corporate governance and accounting regulation in transition al economies. He has written eleven scholarly books, and published widely in leading accounting and management journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly; Academy of Management Journal; Accounting, Organizations and Society; Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Organization, Accounting and Business Research; and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.
Peter Fleming is Professor of Work and Organization at Queen Mary University of London. He has previously held positions at Cambridge University and Melbourne University. One aspect of his research focuses on power, resistance, and political struggle in organizations. Another interest is mapping the ethical and political dimen sions of corruption. He is currently studying authenticity and power (p. xvi) in contem porary corporations. He is the author of Contesting the Corporation (Cambridge Uni versity Press, 2007, with André Spicer), Charting Corporate Corruption (Edward El gar Press, forthcoming), and Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
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Author Biographies
Steve Frenkel is Professor of Organization and Employment Relations and Head of the Department of Organization & Management at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales. Steve has published widely in the areas of sociology of work, industrial relations, and human resource management. He is on the editorial boards of Human Relations, the Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Organization Studies, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management. His current research focuses on the organization of service work, and human resource practice patterns and their consequences in Australia and China.
David Grant is Professor of Organizational Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. His current research interests focus on organizational discourse theory and discourse analysis especially where these relate to organization al change. His work has been published in a range of management and organization journals including Organization Studies, Academy of Management Review, and British Journal of Management. He is co-editor (with Cynthia Hardy, Cliff Oswick, and Linda Putnam) of the Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse (Sage, 2004).
Anthony Hopwood is the American Standard Companies Professor of Operations Man agement and Student of Christ Church at the University of Oxford. Educated at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago, prior to moving to Oxford in 1995, he held professorships at the London Business School and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Anthony served as Dean of the Said Business School during its formative years, 1999 to 2006. He was also President of the Euro pean Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels, from 1995 to 2003. In 2006 he was appointed Chairman of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environ ment. A prolific author, Anthony is also Editor-in-Chief of the major international re search journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society. He was elected to the USA's Accounting Hall of Fame in 2008.
Debra Howcroft is Professor of Technology and Organizations at Manchester Busi ness School and a member of the ESRC-funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Broadly, her research interests are concerned with the drivers and consequences of socio-economic restructuring in a global context. Books include the Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Application (Edward
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Author Biographies Elgar, 2005), Social Inclusion: Societal & Organizational Implications for Information Systems (Springer-Verlag, 2006), and Foundations, Philosophy and Research Methods (Sage, 2008).
(p. xvii)
Rick Iedema is Professor in Organizational Communication and Director of the
Centre for Health Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. His re search focuses on communication in hospitals among clinicians and between clini cians and patients. He and colleagues have received more than $10 million in re search funding from the Australian Research Council and other agencies. He publish es his work in journals such as the Medical Journal of Australia, British Medical Jour nal, Organization Studies, Social Science and Medicine, and Communication and Medicine. He has (co)authored over 125 research articles and book chapters, includ ing three edited volumes, and a single-authored book.
Gavin Jack is Professor of Management in the Graduate School of Management at La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include international, cross-cultur al and diversity management, postcolonial organizational analysis, and cultures of consumption. He is co-editor of an Academy of Management Review special topic fo rum (2008) on international management.
Roy Stager Jacques (Massey University, New Zealand) has a primary interest in the management of knowledge intensive work. One strand of that interest led to his re searching the origins and foundational conditions of management knowledge which were published in Manufacturing the Employee (London, Sage, 1996). He presently co-edits the Sage journal, Management & Organizational History.
Phil Johnson is Professor of Organization Studies at Sheffield University Management School and Head of the OB/HRM division. His primary research interest is in the de velopment democratic modes of organization and new working practices. In the past he published in a range of refereed journals and co-authored and edited several books on organization behaviour, organization theory, and research methodology.
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Author Biographies Campbell Jones is Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory and Business Ethics at the Uni versity of Leicester School of Management, UK, and Visiting Professor in the Depart ment of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Den mark. His publications include Contemporary Organization Theory (Blackwell, 2005), For Business Ethics (Routledge, 2005), Philosophy and Organization (Routledge, 2007), and Unmasking the Entrepreneur (Edward Elgar, 2009).
Tom Keenoy is Professor of Management at the University of Leicester. He has an abiding interest in understanding the social processes through which the employment relationship is managed, controlled and accomplished in the context of work organi zation. Current research interests include organizational discourse analysis, the so cial construction of HRM, time and organization, the co-construction of management in cooperative organization, and the changing temper of sensemaking in academic work. Since 1996, he has been a co-organizer of the bi-annual (p. xviii) Organizational Discourse Conference. He has no hobbies but reads much of the night and would like to go south in the winter.
John G. McClellan is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Boise State Universi ty. His research combines critical and interpretive perspectives to explore the discur sive qualities of organizing with an interest in issues of knowledge, identity, collabora tion, and change. His current work on collaborative change attends to organizing dis courses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life. His recent collaborative work appears in The Handbook of Business Discourse (University of Edinburgh Press, 2009) and Re framing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies: Research, Pedagogy, and Practice (Sage, 2010).
Matteo Mandarini is a lecturer at the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London. He holds a PhD in philosophy and an MA in continental philosophy from the University of Warwick, as well as a BA in philosophy from Univer sity College London. His research has focused on the relation of conflict to the trans formations of capitalism. He has written on Italian postwar communist thought as well as on French poststructuralism. He is currently engaged in research on the “au tonomy of the political,” on ways to think the organization of conflict, and on forms of political subjectivation. He has translated numerous books and essays by Antonio Ne gri, most recently, The Labor Job, and is currently engaged in a translation of Giorgio Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of the Economy
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Author Biographies and of Government with Lorenzo Chiesa. He is part of the editorial collective of the journal Historical Materialism.
Glenn Morgan is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. He is one of the editors-in-chief of Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society. He is a visiting professor at the Interna tional Centre for Business and Politics at Copenhagen Business School. Recent book publications include the co-edited volumes The Multinational Firm (2001) and Chang ing Capitalisms? (2005), both published by Oxford University Press. Journal publica tions have appeared in Organization Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Manage ment Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Scandinavian Journal of Management, and Critical Perspectives on International Business.
Tim Newton is Professor of Organization and Society at the University of Exeter. His current research interests include social and organization theory; sociology and “na ture”; interdisciplinarity; the historical development of credit and commercialization; organizations and the natural environment; organizations, new genetics, and ge nomics. Recent publications include Nature and Sociology (Routledge, 2007) and pa pers in Organisation Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, Academy of Management Review, Sociology, and the British Journal of Sociology. He serves on the editorial boards of Sociology and Organization Studies.
Damian P. OʼDoherty is Senior Lecturer in Organization Analysis in the Man chester Business School at the University of Manchester. He has published widely in the fields of labor process theory, critical management studies, and organization theo ry. His most recent project takes “the city” as a subject of management and organiza tion in which he is testing various methods of intervention and study that include the creation of an experimental travel agency which will be launched as a new business start-up. (p. xix)
Cliff Oswick is Professor in Organization Theory at Queen Mary University of London. His research interests focus on the application of aspects of discourse, dramaturgy, tropes, narrative, and rhetoric to the study of management, organizations, organizing processes, and organizational change. He has published over 100 academic articles and contributions to edited volumes, including contributions to Academy of Manage
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Author Biographies ment Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, and Organization Studies. He is also European Editor of Journal of Organizational Change Management and Co-Director of the International Centre for Research on Organiza tional Discourse, Strategy and Change.
Nelson Phillips is Professor of Strategy and Organizational Behaviour at Imperial Col lege London. His research interests include institutional theory, discourse analysis, technology studies, and entrepreneurship. He has published more than 70 academic articles and book chapters including articles in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Management Science, Sloan Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organization, Entre preneurship Theory and Practice, and Organization Studies. He has also written two books: Discourse Analysis (2002, with Cynthia Hardy), and Power and Organizations (2006, with Stewart Clegg and David Courpasson).
Michael I. Reed is Professor of Organizational Analysis (Human Resource Manage ment Section), Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. He has published widely in major international journals, such as Journal of Management Studies and Organiza tion Studies, as well as book-length monographs in the areas of organization theory and analysis, expert work and knowledge organizations, public services organization and management, and organizational futures. He is a member of several leading in ternational academic associations, such as the European Group for Organization Studies and the British Academy of Management. He is one of the founding editors of the international journal, Organization, published by Sage.
Keith Robson is Professor of Accounting in the Cardiff Business School at Cardiff Uni versity, having previously held chairs at UMIST and the University of Manchester. He has published widely on social and organizational aspects of accounting in both orga nization (e.g. Human Relations, Economy and Society) and accounting journals (Ac counting, Organizations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting). His current research examines the social construction of auditing (p. xx) techniques with particu lar reference to business risk auditing and discourses of audit quality.
Michael Rowlinson is Professor of Organization Studies at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London. He has published a series of articles
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Author Biographies on the tensions between history and organization theory in journals such as Business History, Organization Studies, and Organization. He has analyzed the genre of corpo rate history in an article for the Journal of Organizational Change Management, and examined how organizations come to terms with the dark side of their history in an article for Critical Perspective on Accounting. He is the Editor of Management & Or ganizational History.
Michael Saren is Professor of Marketing at Leicester University School of Manage ment. He has previously held Chairs in Marketing at the Universities of Stirling and Strathclyde. He was a convener of the Marketing Stream at five Critical Management Studies International Conferences, 1999–2007; also a founding editor in 2001 of the journal, Marketing Theory (Sage Publications), one of the co-editors of Rethinking Marketing (Brownlie et al., Sage, 1999) and Critical Marketing: Defining the Field (Saren et al., Elsevier, 2007). His introductory text is Marketing Graffiti: The View from the Street (Butterworth Heinemann, 2006).
Andreas Georg Scherer is Professor of Business Administration and Theories of the Firm. He is Director of the Institute of Organization and Administrative Science (IOU) and holds a chair at the University of Zurich. His research interests are in business ethics, critical theory, international management, organization theory, and philosophy of science. He has published eight books, most recently the Handbook of Research on Global Corporate Citizenship (co-edited with G. Palazzo, 2008). His work has ap peared in Academy of Management Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Management International Review, Organization, Organization Stud ies, and in numerous volumes and other journals. He is Associate Editor of Business Ethics Quarterly and a member of the editorial boards of Business and Society, Busi ness Research, Organization, and Organization Studies.
André Spicer is an associate professor (reader) at Warwick Business School, UK. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He is interested in politi cal dynamics within organizations. He has studied a range of settings such as media, transportation, education, and food. He is the author (with Peter Fleming) of Contest ing the Corporation (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
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Author Biographies Peter Svensson (PhD Lund University) is Associate Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, in Sweden. His research interests include marketing work, knowledge production in business life, political theology, law/capital ism, qualitative method, discourse theory, critical social theory and its relevance for marketing and management studies. Some of his work has appeared (p. xxi) in Re search in the Sociology of Organizations, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Macro marketing. He is a member of the ephemera collective.
Robyn Thomas is Professor of Management at Cardiff Business School, and Ghoshal Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. Her main research inter ests center on managerial and professional identities, and forms of identification in relation to change and restructuring in organizations. Robyn's work has appeared in a range of management and organization journals and books, including Organization Studies, Organization, Public Administration, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting.
Paul Thompson is Professor of Organizational Analysis in the Business School at the University of Strathclyde. He has published widely, including papers in Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and Work, Employment and Society. Amongst his recent publications is a Handbook of Work and Organization for Oxford University Press (co-edited with Stephen Ackroyd, Pam Tolbert, and Rose Batt, 2005). His research interests focus on skill and work organization, control and resistance, organizational restructuring, and changing political economies. He is Research Notes, Debates and Controversies Editor of Work, Employment and Society and an editor of the Palgrave Series, Management, Work and Organization.
Edward Wray-Bliss (PhD UMIST, Manchester) works as a senior lecturer in manage ment at the School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney. His research in terests are in the ethics and politics of business and academic practices. He has pub lished on these issues in a number of edited collections and journals including Organi zation (2002, 2003), Organizational Research Methods (2002), Human Relations (2005, co-authored with Helen Collins), and Organization Studies (2008, co-authored with Joanna Brewis). Other recent work in this area includes a contribution on the ethics of research for the Sage Handbook of Organisational Research Methods (2009, co-authored with Emma Bell). (p. xxii)
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Author Biographies
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Introduction
Introduction Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0001
Abstract and Keywords Critical management studies (CMS) has emerged as a movement that questions the au thority and relevance of mainstream thinking and practice. Its focus is ‘management’ not as a group or as a function but as a pervasive institution that is entrenched within capital ist economic formations. This introduction first outlines the development of CMS before reflecting upon its distinctiveness and the significance of its location within business schools. It then considers some of the directions in which CMS might develop. In each section, passing references are made to the different parts of the book. These references are intended to indicate where ideas and debates are expanded in the course of sketching a context in which to read and appreciate their diverse contributions. The introduction al so outlines the organization of this book. Keywords: management, business schools, economic formation, capitalism, management movement, management ideas
CRITICAL management studies (CMS) has emerged as a movement that questions the au thority and relevance of mainstream thinking and practice. Its focus is “management” not as a group or as a function but as a pervasive institution that is entrenched within capital ist economic formations. Its concern is with the study of, and sometimes against, manage ment rather than with the development of techniques or legitimations for management. Critical of established social practices and institutional arrangements, CMS challenges prevailing relations of domination—patriarchal, neo-imperialist as well as capitalist—and anticipates the development of alternatives to them (Parker, Fournier, and Reedy 2007). This book provides an overview and distillation of CMS as an evolving body of knowledge. It is intended for readers who may be disillusioned with mainstream understandings of management2 or who are curious about analyses of management that are less anodyne and self-serving. The chapters have direct relevance for teachers, students, and re searchers of management but we hope that their contents will be instructive for anyone who regards management as a key modern institution which merits critical examination.
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Introduction The Handbook provides an overview of work from a variety of perspectives and across a range of topics, subdisciplines, and themes. For those interested to learn more about the field, the collection offers a comparatively accessible point of entry into a range of areas so that non-specialists can better discern and assess what is (p. 2) distinctive about CMS. For teachers, it provides a series of resources for giving students a taste of non-main stream approaches and discussions of particular topics. Accordingly, the chapters might be used when delivering undergraduate or postgraduate courses or modules in critical management studies. For more reflective practitioners, in which we include researchers and teachers in their organizational work, the Handbook contains ideas and perspectives that can broaden the repertoire of theoretically informed ways of making sense of experi ences, and thereby take thought and practice in new directions. It is worth stressing that the development of CMS is not confined to the broad field of management and/or organization but extends into management specialisms—notably, ac counting (Ezzamel and Robson, Chapter 23), but also marketing (Saren and Svensson, Chapter 18), information systems (Howcroft, Chapter 19), human resource management (HRM) (Keenoy, Chapter 22), and so on. It is also concerned with studies, not study— which suggests that there is room for considerable diversity and fluidity. Nor is CMS re stricted to any particular variant of critical analysis. Even if the theoretical center of grav ity shifts—for example, from Marxist or Frankfurt conceptions of criticality to more post structuralist approaches and then shifts again, as can be expected—the signifier cmS is sufficiently capacious to accommodate such changes. The “critical” in CMS may be di rected at current manifestations of “management,” or it maybe directed at its “study,” its twin targets that are intimately linked. If critique(s) of the (mainstream) study of manage ment is successful, then a new, critical form of management knowledge develops—one which incorporates critique(s) of management. Indeed, for CMS to be “critical”—that is, for CMS to mean something different to “management studies”—it must necessarily seek to challenge and replace a dominant orthodoxy or, more modestly, to supplement and gradually reorient the diverse currents that comprise the orthodoxy within the already “fragmented adhocracy” (Whitley 1984) of management studies. The book is organized in four parts. Part I presents leading theoretical approaches: criti cal theory (Scherer, Chapter 2), critical realism (Reed, Chapter 3), poststructuralism (Jones, Chapter 4) and labor process theory (Thompson; OʼDoherty, Chapter 5). These per spectives are by no means exhaustive of approaches that inform critical studies of man agement but they are amongst the most widely adopted and influential. Throughout this introductory chapter we draw on these perspectives in constructing a narrative of the ori gins and dynamics CMS's development. Part II considers key topics and issues that, to date, have been subjected to critical management study. In addition to reviewing areas that have attracted considerable critical attention, contributions to Part II illustrate the application of a range of perspectives; they also illuminate the diverse ways in which the study of key topics has been advanced and offer directions for future enquiry. For exam ple, in Chapter 12, Spicer and Morgan examine critical approaches to organizational change which highlight struggles around identity (see also Thomas, Chapter 8), (p. 3) or ganizational and societal dynamics and interorganizational fields. While commending the Page 2 of 26
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Introduction valuable insights generated by critical analyses, questions remain for the authors about how and where CMS should situate itself in relation to organizational change—an issue that invites interpretation in terms of the stratagems of purity and pragmatism explored later in this introduction. In Chapter 14, Rowlinson, Jacques, and Booth argue for a reori entation, or an “historic turn,” toward management and organizational history. Or, to give another example, in Wray-Bliss (Chapter 13) suggests that CMS writing on ethics is held back by a reluctance to explore ethics at the level of individual subjects. Wray-Bliss makes the case that increased engagement with those involved in questionable practices could bring together the “violence of critique” with responsibilities for respecting the hu manity of subjects. Some topics, including change, especially in relation to “culture” (Brewis and Jack, Chapter 11), have received comparatively close and sustained attention from critical scholars. In contrast, others remain largely hidden from view. In Chapter 6, Newton notes with surprise the lack of interest within critical and mainstream management studies in the natural environment, relative to the interest shown by media, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Responding to this silence, Newton makes a case for why greater attention is warranted as he sets out a critical re search agenda around issues of environmental degradation and global social inequality, the geopolitics of energy, activism, and regulation at governmental and intergovernmen tal levels. While the topics and issues covered in Part II provide a good indication of the nature of topics and issues addressed to date by CMS, they are far from comprehensive as limitations of space have necessitated selectivity. Part III addresses the development of critical studies within specialist disciplines, such as marketing and accounting. Its contributions underscore how CMS is not confined to gen eralist studies of management but, rather, is inclusive of its numerous subdivisions. In their chapter on the discipline of strategy, Phillips and Dar (Chapter 20) review some counterpoints to the linear, rational and profit-driven narrative of mainstream analysis in which the manager assumes a heroic role. They highlight how CMS work illuminates pow er dynamics around the research, pedagogy and practice of strategy. In his chapter on HRM (Chapter 22), Keenoy analyzes human resource management as a discursive cultur al artifact, showing that while the term is deployed unproblematically in mainstream text books, it acts as an “empty signifier” that has been constructed and mobilized in a way that assumes the necessity, and serves the neoliberal objectives, of managerialism in a global economy. As with Part II, the chapters which make up Part III necessarily attend to a selection of the major specialisms and make no claim to be comprehensive in their cov erage. Finally, in Part IV, we conclude with a range of commentaries on aspects of CMS that have implications for its future prospects. Here some of the contributors point at shortcomings within CMS and encourage a stronger focus on important issues, like fi nance (Hopwood, Chapter 25) and organizational (p. 4) hierarchies (Child, Chapter 24). Both Hopwood and Frenkel (Chapter 26) draw attention to the shortcomings of restrict ing CMS to too narrow a set of concerns and a related reluctance to explore and address scholarship and issues relevant to CMS. Contu (Chapter 27) and Burrell (Chapter 28) of fer critical reflections upon the problems and prospects of CMS with regard to the nature
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Introduction and impact of critical management education (CME) and its institutional location and ori entation. In questioning the legitimacy and efficacy of established patterns of thinking and action, the chapters offer an alternative to the mainstream in which knowledge of management becomes knowledge for management and alternative voices are absent or marginalized.3 The appearance of a Handbook dedicated to CMS is indicative of its rapid growth, an ex pansion that has prompted some commentators to suggest that CMS is the “new main stream.” The increase in the scope and influence of CMS during the past decade or so should not, however, be overestimated. Even if it has a capacity to “punch above its weight” in terms of profile and influence in research and management education (see dis cussion of Critical Management Education in Chapter 27), CMS remains a marginal ele ment within management theory and practice. When viewed from within the bubble of CMS, its standing and significance can become greatly exaggerated. A quick perusal of books and textbooks published in the field in the past five years, or a scan of articles ap pearing in the most prominent journals, provides a rapid deflationary correction. Nonetheless, as a movement, CMS has become somewhat institutionalized within the much larger bubble of management knowledge. And this Handbook of course makes a fur ther contribution to its institutionalization. While contributors to the Handbook are en gaged in “taking stock” of CMS, they are simultaneously involved in shaping its develop ment and extension. In the remaining sections of this Introduction, we first outline the development of CMS before reflecting upon its distinctiveness and the significance of its location within busi ness schools. We then consider some of the directions in which CMS might develop. In each section, we make passing reference to the Handbook chapters but our objective is not to summarize their contents. Instead, our references to the chapters are intended to indicate where ideas and debates are expanded in the course of sketching a context in which to read and appreciate their diverse contributions.
Origins Critiques of management in the context of the emergence of capitalist political economy are by no means new. All the founding fathers of sociology—Weber and Durkheim as well as Marx—had critical things to say about the modern, capitalist (p. 5) corporation, point ing to its needless dehumanization, anomie, and exploitation. The rise of CMS as a con temporary phenomenon has been linked by some commentators with the publication of the edited collection of the same name (Alvesson and Willmott 1992).4 However, as Bur rell (Chapter 28) notes, the appearance of that book is perhaps more plausibly viewed as a moment in an ongoing process of problematization rather than as a particularly signifi cant event, even if its subsequent acronymic identification has had a significant “market ing” impact.5 The wider problematization of management to which CMS contributes and aspires to accelerate is ongoing; and the identity and purpose of CMS continues to evolve
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Introduction through a process of contestation and institutionalization in which contributions to this Handbook are necessarily implicated. Contemporary critical management studies draw and build upon earlier contributions in which management is addressed as an historical and cultural phenomenon (e.g., Bendix 1956; Child 1969; Anthony 1977; Clegg and Dunkerly 1980). In general, these works have derived their inspiration from Weber, from moral philosophy, or from Marx's analysis of the labor process, and they make limited reference to Critical Theory. The thinking of members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory has, however, been of particular im portance in the formation of CMS,6 along with elements of labor process theory and some early flirtations with Foucauldian and poststructuralist analyses. Burrell and Morgan's (1979) conceptualization of a radical humanism paradigm, in which the Frankfurt School formed a key position, was important here in framing and marketing a broad intellectual alternative to both mainstream and an interpretivist strand of management and organiza tion studies (Duberley and Johnson, Chapter 17). From these (diverse) beginings, CMS has grown into a pluralistic, multidisciplinary movement incorporating a range of per spectives. A number of the more influential of these are presented in Part I but space has not permitted the inclusion of those associated with feminism, Deleuze and Guattari, au tonomist Marxism, Lacanian thinking, Gramscian analysis, postcolonialism, and numer ous others. CMS has been challenged and enriched by all of these strands of critical thinking. In different ways—and not without a degree of confusion and accusations of scholasticism—they have inspired new directions and renewed impetus for studies that anticipate the possibility of less oppressive and divisive forms of management practice. Critical theory (Scherer, Chapter 2) proceeds from an assumption of the possibilities of greater autonomy that, in the tradition of Enlightenment, anticipates the development of social relations in which their participants are masters of their own destiny. These possi bilities are understood to be unnecessarily narrowed, distorted, and impeded by the tech nocratic impulse of received managerial wisdom. By providing an intellectual counter force to the ego administration of modern, advanced industrial society, critical theory ap prehends how personalities, beliefs, tastes, and preferences are developed to fit into the demands of mass production and mass consumption, thereby expressing standardized, yet increasingly customized, forms (p. 6) of individuality where human beings tend to be come reduced to components in a well-oiled machine (Steffy and Grimes 1992; Alvesson 2003). Critical theory's wide compass continues to offer a valuable resource for critical reflection on a large number of central issues in management studies: notions of rationali ty and progress, technocracy and social engineering, autonomy and control, communica tive action, power and ideology as well as fundamental issues of epistemology. The tradition of labor process theory (Thompson, Chapter 5; OʼDoherty, Chapter 5), which stems from Marx's analysis of capitalist work organization in Capital, has provided anoth er central strand of theoretical inspiration for critique, not least because its specific focus is the workplace (Braverman 1974). It has challenged assumptions about the neutrality of management knowledge (e.g., Taylorism) and it has drawn attention to and systematically explored the design and control of work, and the struggles of wage labor, which includes Page 5 of 26
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Introduction many salaried employees, to improve the terms and conditions of their employment (Knights and Willmott 1986). Labor process theorists have critically investigated and questioned the seemingly progressive quality of organizational change and job redesign, and more generally have addressed the systematically disadvantaged, yet resistant, posi tion of labor in an era of monopoly capital. During the 1990s, other streams of critical thinking, many of them collected under the umbrella headings of “postmodernism” and “poststructuralism” (Jones, Chapter 4) have emerged and developed within the field of management to complement and challenge earlier traditions of critical analysis. Notably, the thinking of Michel Foucault has been important in providing an alternative, critical voice—in both style and substance—to the visions of critical theory and labor process analysis. His ideas have, for example, ques tioned the humanist concept of autonomy ascribed to subjects and questioned the as sumption that knowledge can be cleansed of power (Foucault 1975, 1980). The centrality of these ideas for organization and management studies is explored by Knights (Chapter 7) in his overview of theories of power. Foucault-inspired attention to the “theory of the subject” has been paralleled in feminist theory which has sought to correct the neglect of gender relations in management and organization studies. Feminist voices been increas ingly heard, but are often muted or restricted to issues of access to existing professional/ managerial career tracks (Marshall 1984). Broader and deeper issues are increasingly be ing addressed (see, for example, Calás and Smircich 2006; Alvesson and Billing 2009) but gender has yet to be fully integrated into critical studies of management (Ashcraft, Chap ter 15). Likewise, ethnic groups outside white AngloSaxon Protestants merit much closer and sustained consideration in the context of dominant notions and practices of manage ment and leadership ideals which frequently bear subtle imprints of a dominant culture and/or postcolonial tradition (P. Prasad 1997; A. Prasad 2003). In Chapter 9, Banerjee, Carter, and Clegg draw on emerging literatures such as postcolonialism and sustainable development to challenge universalist assumptions which underpin the managerialism of globalization. Given the diverse critical traditions of analysis that are now being deployed to in terrogate management theory and practice, a current challenge is to appreciate common alities and continuities in different strands of critical thinking, and not to become exces sively preoccupied with differences or detained by schisms. Debate over the distinctive strengths and limitations of different critical forms of analysis can be beneficial. It is also consistent with nurturing a critical impulse that places in question apparently self-evident authority. But there is also a danger of goal-displacement when debates dominate or drown out critical analysis of aspects of management practice, whether this is within a single organization or more globally within the operation of transnational corporations, international NGOs, and financial markets. That said, rejection of all rival approaches in favor of a single, avowedly “enlightened” conception of CMS is, in our view, likely to be counterproductive in terms of any aspiration to challenge and change the theory and practice of management. Our inclination, therefore, is to lean in the direction of a view of CMS that is accommodating rather than restrictive whilst, at the same time, being mind ful of the danger of being so open-minded and liberal that it includes everything and so (p. 7)
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Introduction ends up being a vacuous category. Mindful of this issue we now reflect upon contributions to an ongoing debate on the question of what is distinctive about CMS.
Constituting CMS So, what, makes CMS distinctive? CMS proceeds from the assumption that dominant the ories and practices of management and organization systematically favor some (elite) groups and/or interests at the expense of those who are disadvantaged by them; and that this systemic inequality or interest-partiality is ultimately damaging for the emancipatory prospects of all groups. Accordingly, CMS is particularly attentive to aspects of organiza tion and management that are widely regarded as negative. It rejects the mainstream view that organizations are adequately represented as (imperfectly) rational instruments for achieving shared goals and/or as media for satisfying people's needs through produc ing goods and services. In most research papers and especially in textbooks, organiza tions are presented as a self-evident force for good. Deviation from the norm of fulfilling positive social functions is interpreted as the exceptional “bad apple” rather than the in stitutionalized rule or a manifestation of systemic malfunction. CMS regards uncritically one-sided, positive representations of management and organization as expressive of the ideology of elites that becomes, through the channels of media and education, widely dis persed. Even if subscription to this ideology is instrumental and grudging (p. 8) it is nonetheless highly consequential for the reproduction and legitimation of the status quo (Žižek 1989). Against this pervasive ideology, CMS contends that contemporary organizations and forms of organizing have many negative implications for and impacts upon nature as well as society—notably, their destructive effects on natural environments in addition to their divisive and disciplining consequences for communities and employees. At the same time, it is acknowledged that organizations contribute to material survival and affluence, job satisfaction and positive social relations, a sense of meaning and personal development. What CMS addresses is the needless frustration of this potential that occurs when, in stead of enabling human flourishing, organizations incubate and normalize stress and bad health, naturalize subordination and exploitation, demand conformism, inhibit free com munication, erode morality, create and reinforce ethic and gender inequalities, and so on. Instead of being progressive forces for emancipatory change, mainstream theory, as well as the everyday practice of organization and management, become reactionary means of conserving forms of exploitation and oppression institutionalized in the status quo. There is, in this sense, good reason to introduce, develop, and apply critical perspectives on management and organizations. That there is a dark side of business and organizations should not come as a surprise to anybody, whether they are bored or stressed employees, “ripped off” consumers or lender-of-last-resort citizens. Despite this, the development of an expanding stream of critical work based in management schools is not something many would have predicted a couple of decades ago. Given the diversity and fluidity of CMS as a movement, vigorous Page 7 of 26
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Introduction discussion and debate about what it is, and what it is not, is to be welcomed. Today, the field of CMS is difficult to demarcate. What is to be counted as critical is contested in at least two ways. First, the very sense of CMS has been challenged on the grounds that few self-respecting academics (even those whose intellectual credibility might be doubted by their very employment in a business school) would instantly tarnish their work as “uncrit ical.” Critical scrutiny of knowledge claims is a trademark of Academia. From this per spective, CMS is a meaningless category. Denying its difference by insisting that the mainstream is already “critical” is one simple strategy for protecting the mainstream from CMS critique. The second form of contestation occurs within CMS where different factions claim to occupy the intellectual high ground of critique. Even if this claim is not explicitly made, an allegiance to one or other of the theoretical approaches presented in Part I tacitly indicates a preference for the conception of critique favored by that ap proach. Included in that preference is a view as to whether one conception of critique should trump the others, or a more inclusive view should prevail. It is probably fair to say that CMS is currently pluralistic. Our own assessment is that it has, to date, benefited from the absence of any dominant or totalizing (p. 9) approach. Nonetheless the absence of a strong, disciplining center provokes those who would prefer to monopolize the field to struggle against others who are content to take refuge in a movement that can provide some shelter and support for their particular variants of CMS. As within any movement, the danger of the “monopolizing” strategy is that it can sacrifice diversity and dynamism for purity and clarity. Conversely, the hazard of a diversifying strategy is that it may dilute the meaning of CMS to the point that it becomes indistin guishable from the mainstream that it ostensibly rejects. Initiatives such as this Hand book are vulnerable to becoming little more than vehicles for the promotion of a favorite view. Whilst we have reserved some space for this in contributions to Part IV, we have en deavored to restrict it, or at least to make acknowledgement of a distinctive standpoint, in the contributions to Parts I–III, as we do in this Introduction. That is to say, we have sought to avoid sponsorship of fruitless quarreling of what or who is “really” critical in a CMS-correct way, and who and what is to cast aside. More positively, critical self-reflec tion stimulated by debate over the merits of different approaches within CMS can facili tate clarification of their respective possibilities and contributions. Chapter 5 is of partic ular relevance in this regard as it is intended to acknowledge and illuminate the schism that has developed in labor process theory (LPT). Instead of inviting one author to present and balance the different standpoints, we asked a prominent figure from each side of the “divide” to present their understanding of what problems LPT is intended to address, how successful it has been, and what relationship it has to (other forms of) CMS.
De-naturalization, Anti-performativity, and Reflexivity One influential attempt to identify distinguishing characteristics of CMS has pointed to “de-naturalization,” “non-performative” (which others have characterized as “anti-perfor mativity”7) and “reflexivity” as its core elements (Fournier and Grey 2000; see also Grey and Willmott 2005). De-naturalization refers to what is crucial to any oppositional politics. Whatever the existing order may be, it becomes taken for granted or naturalized and of Page 8 of 26
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Introduction ten is legitimized by reference to nature and necessity: it is the way of the world: of course men dominate women, whites dominate blacks, capital dominates labor, and so on. Whether based on evolution or social function, the answer is the same: “That's how things are”; “There is no alternative.” In management, naturalization is affirmed in the proposi tion that someone has to be in charge, that of course they know more, or else they would not be in charge, so of course they deserve more money as their labor is scarce and they have the burden of responsibility to shoulder. As Child (Chapter 24) notes, hierarchy is an example of what is frequently taken to be natural. Markets are also widely seen as self-ev idently efficiency-producing givens which only (p. 10) ignorant people would seek to pre vent governing economic life, and perhaps life in general. Greed and competitiveness are also widely assumed to be natural and so on. CMS challenges these kinds of assertions, identifying them as manifestations of a particular, capitalist, and possessive individualist ideology, and thereby endeavors to denaturalize them by recalling their context-depen dence. “Anti-performativity,” or, “non performative stance,” as Fournier and Grey (2000: 17) characterize CMS, is perhaps a special case of de-naturalization as it denies that social relations should (naturally) be thought of as exclusively instrumental—that is, in terms of maximizing output from a given input. This element of CMS is important because most knowledge of management presupposes the overriding importance of performativity. It is taken to be the acid test of whether knowledge has any value. Knowledge of management is assessed to have value only if it is shown how it can, at least in principle, be applied to enhance the means of achieving existing (naturalized) ends. What, then, of “anti-perfor mativity”? The term emphatically does not imply an antagonistic attitude towards any kind of “performing.” Rather, “performative” is used in a somewhat technical sense to identify social relations in which the dominance of a means—ends calculus acts to ex clude critical reflection on the question of ends. The natural and legitimate nature of the dominant social order is taken for granted and problems are seen as minor or moderate imperfections to be resolved or, when not, are seen to be unavoidable. Broader and deep er ethical and political issues and questions—such as the distribution of life chances with in corporations or the absence of any meaningful democracy in working life—are either ignored or, at best, marginally accommodated through, for example, programmes of em ployee “involvement” and “consultation.” Efforts are limited to ameliorating shortcomings and “dysfunctions” within the established system such that prevailing priorities and or ders of privilege are preserved. In short, a second core feature of CMS, according to Grey and Fournier (2000), is its challenge to forms of theory and practice that confine ethical and political questions and issues to the reproduction or restabilization of the status quo. “Reflexivity,” the final element of CMS identified by Fournier and Grey (2000) refers to a capacity to recognize all accounts of organization and management as mediated by the particular tradition of their authors. By embracing “reflexivity,” CMS contributes to a methodological and epistemological challenge to the objectivism and scientism which is seen to pervade mainstream research. It radically doubts the possibility of neutrality and universality, arguing that such notions are invoked as part of an ideology of research which disregards its (partisan) theory-dependency and disavows its implicit naturalization Page 9 of 26
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Introduction of the status quo. Under the guise of the production of “facts,” such research is inatten tive to (i.e., unreflexive about) the values which guide not only the scoping and represen tation of what is researched but also how research is conducted. Where “reflexivity” is weak or absent, little encouragement is given to knowledge users—who include students, (p. 11) managers, and policy-makers—to interrogate the assumptions and routines upon which conventional knowledge production is founded. Nor is there much support for questioning the commonsense thinking (e.g., about what counts as “scientific”) and disci plinary paraphernalia (e.g., tenure, control of journals, etc.) that safeguard their authori ty. CMS, in contrast, sees such questioning as mandatory; and, in principle, it accepts that critique is appropriately directed at its own claims by acknowledging and appreciating how CMS conjectures about reality are themselves conditioned by tradition and context.8
Reconstituting CMS? Fournier and Grey's (2000) characterization of the three core elements of CMS has been influential but also controversial. Much contemporary social theory and methodology, as Thompson (2004) points out, is based on ideas of de-naturalization and reflexivity. These elements are by no means unique to CMS. It is probably fair to say, however, that these receive a particular inflection within the context of CMS. In substantial part, that is be cause, as we observed earlier, CMS has emerged out of engagements with critical theory and other neo-Marxist traditions that open these elements to more radical interpreta tions. “De-naturalization” in the context of CMS is associated with an impulse that, going beyond recognition of the constructed quality of social worlds, invites and support their radical transformation. Likewise, “reflexivity” incorporates critical self-reflection as inte gral to processes of emancipatory change. Understood in this way, Thompson's criticism that these elements are shared with varieties of constructionist analysis would seem to assume a rather “literalist,” decontextualized reading of their meaning and import. That said, Thompson's (2004) critique of Fournier and Grey (2000) provides a useful re minder that exponents of some major strands of CMS—notably, versions of labor process theory, left-Weberianism, and critical realism—would probably not identify de-naturaliza tion and reflexivity as the most significant aspects of what, for them, constitutes good critical (management) research. They might also hesitate to endorse “anti-performativi ty,” perhaps on the grounds that it denies or forecloses CMS having a practical impact. Such hesitation would, we believe, betray a questionable representation of Fournier and Grey's position. For, as noted above, Fournier and Grey are careful to stress that “perfor mativity” has a very specific, technical meaning: “the principle of performativity serves to subordinate knowledge and truth to the production of efficiency” (2000: 17). What they term CMS's non-performative stance, rather than the “anti-performativity” attributed (p. 12) to them, is not antithetical or hostile to knowledge having a practical impact. What the so-called “anti-performativity” signals is a determination to avoid a narrowing or re duction of practical impact to the production of efficiency as this, Fournier and Grey con tend, has calamitous consequences. In particular, such a narrowing of management
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Introduction knowledge makes it more likely that “management … is not interrogated except insofar as this will contribute to its improved effectiveness” (ibid.). Critical work, Fournier and Grey insist, is not equivalent to, or reducible to, analysis that is performative in that narrow sense. This is probably not very controversial. However, the characterization of CMS as non-performative or “anti-performative” has invited an in terpretation of CMS as being “anti-performativity” in the sense that it has no interest in performance—something that, arguably, is not intended. CMS is against performativity only in the sense of being hostile to knowledge that has it as an exclusive focus. That said, the conception of CMS as “anti-performative” has clearly been confusing and, in this sense, unhelpful, though whether Fournier and Grey could have been expected to antici pate that is an open question. What would seem to be a misunderstanding of their posi tion has led to calls for “pro-performative” ideas and ambitions. For those who celebrate the virtue of negative dialectics, defending and retaining what we have interpreted as a misunderstanding would, presumably, be a preferred option (see Böhm 2006). Our incli nation is to accommodate this possibility within CMS but to distinguish analytically be tween, on the one hand, technical peformativity that is narrowly instrumental and preoc cupied with reproducing the status quo and, on the other, critical performativity (see also Spicer et al. 2009, discussed below) that is emancipatory in its orientation and intended effects. Such critical performativity, we suggest, is fully consistent with Fourner and Grey's understanding that CMS has “some intention to achieve … a better world or end exploitation, etc.” (ibid.).9 In a recent effort to clarify and reconstitute the relationship between CMS and performa tivity, Spicer et al. (2009) have argued that Fournier and Grey's formulation of “anti-per formativity” is unfortunate if it discourages the making of important distinctions between good and bad performativities, with the former including the development of knowledge in support of “progressive” objectives like environmental protection or gender equality. We have already noted this danger. A casual reader of Fournier and Grey (2000) might jump to this conclusion. A misconceived conception of “anti-performativity” may be coun terproductive for engaging with those whose work situation does not permit its celebra tion. Yet, in the absence of “performativity,” the schools, hospitals, hotels, industries, air line companies, and other institutions upon which exponents of CMS—like people gener ally—rely, and are probably eager to see being well managed, would in all likelihood oper ate much less effectively. To counter this outcome, we believe that there is some merit in developing the concept of critical performativity (Spicer et al. 2009) in countering the dis torted and erroneous view, gleefully seized upon (p. 13) by CMS detractors, that it has a “crippling commitment to the belief that the outputs of CMS have no performative intent and impact” (ibid.). In addition, an emphasis upon critical performativity can be valuable as an antidote to hypocrisy and/or cynicism within CMS, where scholars are content to reap the benefits of applications of instrumental reason that produce the economic growth which, in turn, provides the resources for critical scholarship. For unless a selfcritical eye is constantly trained upon the institutionalization of CMS, the world of man agement and organizations may, perversely, come to be viewed instrumentally, and rather cynically, as a supplier of negativity to be exploited in writing critical articles in journals Page 11 of 26
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Introduction read only by other like-minded academics so that little is accomplished outside of this comfortably, career-facilitating space (Alvesson 2008; Hopwood, Chapter 25). The critical performativity advocated by Spicer et al. (forthcoming) involves active and subversive intervention into managerial discourses and practices (see Grant et al., Chap ter 10); and, in this regard, it echoes Fournier and Grey's (2000) identification of a “pragmatist” (and contrasted to “purist”) school of thought characterized by an “empha sis on engaging in dialogue with management practitioners and mainstream theo rists” (2000: 17). A purist line, in contrast, regards any such dialogue as “the weapon of the powerful” (Burrell 1996: 650, cited by Fournier and Grey 2000: 24) that will likely re sult in the cooptation and dilution of CMS by the mainstream. Spicer et al.'s (2009) prag matism favors affirmation, care, engagement with potentialities, and a normative orienta tion (the latter signaling an effort to clarify and pursue positive ideals and not just oppose forms of domination). For instance, exponents of CMS who draw inspiration from Habermas's ideal of communicative action (see Scherer, Chapter 1; Deetz and McClellan, Chapter 21) contend that the ideal of distortion-free communication offers a way of criti cally investigating communicative inhibition and spinning (based on hierarchy, gender di visions, power arrangements, cultural norms preventing an open raising of doubts and demands for clarification or revisions of positions). Invoking this ideal to reduce such dis tortions of communication has an affirmative, critically performative intent. By prioritiz ing critical performativity, Spicer et al. (2009) advocate and anticipate a variant of CMS that comes closer to saying something relevant but also critical to managers and other practitioners. Their conception of CMS accepts and promotes the idea that knowledge should be used to make a positive but also emancipatory difference, and thereby counter acts tendencies towards cynicism and hypocrisy. Focusing on engagement with theories of management in a spirit of critical performativity is seen, pragmatically, to provide a way for CMS to contribute to progressive social change in the form, for example, of mi cro-emancipation (Alvesson and Willmott 1996). Incorporating a performative dimension within criticality (or putting performativity in a critical context) underscores the under standing that critique can, and perhaps must, involve an affirmative, constructive impulse alongside its reflexive and deconstructive (p. 14) moment if it is not to become one-sidedly negative—and thus marginalized in any setting outside the esoteric domain of academic journal and monograph publication.
Recalling the Bigger Picture We now briefly consider a couple of other recent reflections on CMS that frame its dis tinctive features in somewhat different ways than Fournier and Grey—although they also focus, more directly and concretely, on the key objects or targets of de-naturalization. Alvesson (2008) has argued that the concerns of CMS may be broadly described as fol lows: (a) the critical questioning of ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities (the 4 I's) that are assessed to be (i) dominant, (ii) harmful, and (iii) under-challenged; Page 12 of 26
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Introduction (b) through negations, deconstructions, re-voicing or de-familiarizations; (c) with the aim of inspiring social reform in the presumed interest of the majority and/or those non-privileged, as well as emancipation and/or resistance from ideolo gies, institutions, and identities that tend to fix people into unreflectively arrived at and reproduced ideas, intentions, and practices; (d) with some degree of appreciation of the constraints of the work and life situa tions of people (including managers) in the contemporary organizational world, e.g., that a legitimate purpose for organizations is the production of services and goods (see also Fleming and Mandarini, Chapter 16). This formulation seems sufficiently broad to accommodate the different strands of CMS (see Part I) whilst demarcating the field from varieties of constructionist and interpretivist analysis. It in vites exponents of CMS to orient their activities to the critical illumination of under-challenged institutions, ideologies, interests, and identities that are assessed to be dominant and harmful. In this respect, CMS is delineated from interpretive studies that illuminate and appreciate iden tities, etc. but do not focus on those that are dominant or target and critique their domination (willmott 2007). By incorporating negations as well as deconstructions, this conception of CMS endeavors to appreciate and accommodate the contribution of both its structuralist and post structuralist variants (see Jones, Chapter 5). The idea of “re-voicing,” for example, points to how a managerial view of certain practices or groups of employees may be challenged by developing alternative narratives that not only subvert this view but also account for the dominant narrative in terms of an elite group's privileged access to key means of communication. As a movement, CMS is involved in striving to expand alternative means of communication in (p. 15) which ac tions and actors are re-voiced. Finally, with regard to point (d), it is worth acknowledging that for proponents of “purist” CMS this may be unacceptably compromising. Any measure of sympa thy for managers and other elites may be interpreted as a loss of nerve that renders CMS need lessly vulnerable to absorption within the progressive mainstream and thus disable its critical edge.
When considering key objects or targets of CMS de-naturalization it is relevant to return to a proposal floated by Fournier and Grey (2000). CMS, they suggest, might usefully free itself from the “straightjacket” of debates about whether to promote or refuse dialogue with managers in order to “re-imagine engagement in terms of a broader organizational constituency” (2000: 27). Teasingly, Fournier and Grey have little to say about the nature of this “broader organizational constituency.” Here we take up the challenge by connect ing its meaning and scope to the Domain Statement of the CMS Division of the Academy of Management where CMS is described as critical of practices that include “the profit imperative, patriarchy, racial inequality, and ecological irresponsibility” (ibid., emphasis added). Desirous of “changing this situation,” the domain statement presents CMS as am bitious “to generate radical alternatives” (ibid., emphasis added). This aspiration res onates directly with the objectives of broader social movements which we here under stand to form part of Fournier and Grey's “broader organizational constituency.” More specifically, we take this constituency to be inclusive of the Global Justice Movement in which the importance of self-determination is stressed as an alternative to continued de pendence upon corporate patronage or marginalization:
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Introduction We stand for the right of communities to control their own destinies and re sources, whether that is indigenous community preserving its land and culture or a neighbourhood deciding to keep its local hospital open. Enterprises and busi nesses must be rooted in communities and accountable to them. (Starhawk 2000; see also Cavanagh and Anderson 2002) The affinities between the aspirations of CMS and the Global Justice Movement suggest the pos sibility of forging connections with similar movements that could be mutually strengthening and enriching. Individual members of CMS already participate in movements opposing corporate-led globalization—for instance, by fostering a sustainability ethos that gives priority to biodiversity, water usage, and carbon emission (e.g., Saravanamuthu et al. 2007). Building upon and extend ing such involvements and initiatives has the potential to develop closer links—for example, by making connections between struggles for Global Justice and insights of CMS research into the operation of global institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, G8, and the World Trade Organization.
It is a connection made by Banerjee (2007: 102 ff.) in his analysis of the exclusion of hu man rights and inclusion of property rights (TRIPS) in World Trade Organization agree ments. He explores how the WTO succumbed to lobbying by powerful transnational cor porations in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and information (p. 16) technology industries and, in particular, points (2007: 105 ff.) to the damaging consequences of imposing a regime of intellectual property rights on indigenous knowledge. To address these con cerns, Banerjee urges that greater attention be given to the range of social movements and organized collective efforts—which could include CMS as well as groups participat ing in the World Social Forum, for example—committed to addressing the most pressing contemporary problems of corporate social responsibility with respect to poverty, democ racy, and climate change. Murphy (2008a, 2008b) has also sought to better understand and challenge the role and logic of “global managerialism” in supporting and legitimizing grossly unequal patterns of resource distribution presided over by global institutions. His work provides an empirical ly rich and disturbing analysis of the role of the World Bank in processes of global eco nomic homogenization. More specifically, Murphy shows how, as a dominant player within a complex of formal and informal transnational organizational networks (e.g., Davos, Bilderburg), the World Bank exports concertive control strategies into the international development domain. Through detailed, participant-observation case studies of the fi nancing of the Karmet steel mill in Kazakstan and World Bank education initiatives in Niger and India, Murphy illustrates how global elites colonize their clientele through an appealing invocation of ostensibly depoliticized programmatic rhetoric of “partnership,” “participation,” and “inclusivity.” Given the aspirations of the CMS Domain Statement referred to above, these signs that the critical study of management is being expanded from its current focus upon manage ment-in-organizations to a broader attentiveness to the management-of-key-institutions and vital resources—such as banks, oil companies, global institutions, regulatory bodies and so on—are to be welcomed. Another example of how exponents of CMS can deploy their expertise to raise big questions about key issues of management, such as the corpo Page 14 of 26
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Introduction rate governance of major institutions, is provided by the series of Guardian blogs posted by Prem Sikka (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/premsikka). Although it is rather invidi ous to single out a particular academic, Sikka has been an exemplary exponent of CMS, especially in using publicly available information to challenge self-serving wisdoms pro mulgated by corporate executives, accounting elites, politicians, and regulators. In addi tion to his Guardian blogs, Sikka has tirelessly briefed the media and policymakers as well as written numerous newspaper articles and policy papers, often with politicians as co-au thors (see http://www.aabaglobal.org/). For example, a recent blog comments on the role of auditors in endorsing the stability of major corporations where he refers to Lehman Brothers. Published prior to the company's spectacular demise in the financial meltdown, Sikka notes that their accounts listed derivatives contracts with a face value of $738bn and fair value of $36.8bn. Signing off these accounts, Ernst and Young, Lehman's audi tors, gave the company a clean bill of health for the year up to November 2007 and were paid very handsomely (p. 17) ($31,307,000)for this box-ticking service. Yet, it was Lehman Brothers' massive exposure to these same, inherently risky and volatile, derivatives con tracts, that led to the company's collapse into administration in September 2008, an event which considerably amplified the instability and panic characteristic of a rapidly es calating global financial crisis. In such ways, mobilization of critical thinking in CMS research reaches out beyond the self-referential sphere of scholarship to provide resources for informed protests and pro gressive challenges to the operation of corporations as “instruments of domination and exploitation” (CMS IG Domain Statement). By extolling and disseminating research in which corporations and managerialism are situated in a wider context (see Barley 2006), there is an enhanced prospect of making connections between CMS research, pressing public issues and resonant forms of activism. It is by forging such links that CMS can bet ter “connect the practical shortcomings in management and individual managers to the demands of a socially divisive and ecologically destructive system within which managers work” (CMS Domain Statement).
Business Schools: The Institutional Location of CMS Before becoming too carried away by the prospect of business school academics becom ing storm troopers in the fight against global injustice, it is relevant to recall their/our in stitutional location. This can undoubtedly act as a conservative influence and constraint upon the capacity of CMS to have a practical impact. Business schools are hardly renowned for the incubation of radical ideas and agendas. To the contrary, they are better known for turning out MBAs who run corporations like Enron and Lehman Brothers who extolled their “entrepreneurial approach to business” (Fortune 2008). In Chapter 9, Banerjee et al. consider the MBA in the context of globalization, exploring how this global business qualification rationalizes and homogenizes the canon of management knowl edge. Nonetheless, and perhaps inexplicably and temporarily, business schools enjoy a Page 15 of 26
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Introduction certain cachet. Potentially, this provides business school academics with access to media and policy-making arenas that is more difficult for scholars based in social science de partments. Moreover, so long as corporations, government departments, and increasingly third sector employers continue to recruit from business schools, management academics have the opportunity to shape and influence what and how they learn. That said, it is an uphill struggle. In most management departments or business schools, the content of curricula and research is predominantly conservative or “right wing” in orientation. Business schools are implicitly or explicitly supportive of the institu tions and values of corporate capitalism, especially where the teaching of MBAs and exec utive programs takes priority. Whether this will change in a context where key capitalist institutions, the banks, have failed spectacularly and large parts of the financial sector, in cluding banks, have been nationalized, remains to be seen. The neoliberal dream of capi talism has produced the nightmare scenario of a liquidity lock down. As the debt moun tain of risks and hedges associated with collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDSs) has ballooned and then punctured in the 2008 financial meltdown (Klimecki and Willmott 2009), questions will, or should, be increasingly asked about the value(s) and sustainability of capitalism, and not just about how the insolvency of finan (p. 18)
cial institutions can best be socialized to restore stability. To the extent that such questions are raised, and the insights of Marx as well as Keynes and Polanyi are rediscovered and reappraised, there will be a resonance with the critical performativity of CMS. In boom times, critiques of business and management are as sumed to be irrelevant or casually dismissed as the bleating of a tiny, disaffected minority. But when the capitalist credo of neoliberalism becomes so shockingly and comprehensive ly discredited, critiques, including CMS ideas and texts, can touch a nerve. That CMS ideas have been developed within such a pro-capitalist an institution as the business school could not have been predicted, was certainly not intended, and is nicely illustra tive of a key critical concept—contradiction. To make sense of how the critical study of management emerged within business schools, we must take some account of the history of business education in the context of higher education (Contu, Chapter 27). A key condition of possibility for the development of CMS is the positioning of most (but not all) business schools10 as departments within universi ties. As such, they are required to comply with the values and norms of the wider institu tion by exhibiting at least a degree of “academic respectability.” Gaining and retaining their place within institutions of higher education requires that they subscribe, at least minimally and ostensibly, to the liberal virtues of diversity, and to contribute to the devel opment of knowledge through processes of peer review. When located in universities where a reputation for independence is prized and guarded, business school deans can not simply hire consultants or gurus as professors, even though this might be the prefer ence of some corporate patrons and students. Instead, tenured staff are required to ex hibit a modicum of academic respectability—as demonstrated through publication in es
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Introduction teemed journals and supportive references from established academics in prestigious in stitutions. The outcome is that the hiring of most full-time staff within business schools tends to place academic qualifications and reputation above political allegiance or a (p. 19) track record in business and administration. Reputable universities as well as savvy students have a strong interest in their business schools conforming to the norms of academia even when they are mostly valued as “cash cows” that cross-subsidize other departments. On the other hand, because the funding of business schools (which in many countries in cludes fees from students who expect a return on their investment by improving their chances within the labor market) relies directly or indirectly upon corporate patronage and demand, the content of curricula tends to be rather conservative or, at best, partly lite-critical, even when taught by exponents of CMS. It is perhaps only in a situation where CMS staff comprise a majority of faculty, or form a well-organized, energetic, and influential minority, that a more extensively radical curriculum can be supported. In turn, it is only when radical content and teaching methods are widely introduced, rather than tolerated at the margin, that it becomes possible to test and debunk the (conservative) view that critical education will always be resisted by students. In short, the nesting of business schools within universities, primarily for reasons of sta tus on the part of students and necessity on the part of universities, has provided the con ditions of possibility for opening up a space for the emergence of CMS. Other supportive circumstances have facilitated its growth. These circumstances include a creeping disillu sionment with the (positivist) model of science that was assumed to provide the appropri ate foundation for business education. Despite vigorous attempts (e.g., Pfeffer 1993), it has so far proved impossible to establish and police a single, agreed set of criteria or a “paradigm” for determining what is “scientific.” This difficulty has been compounded by wider debates in the social sciences about the ethics of aspiring to develop value-free, ob jective knowledge, to which proponents of CMS have very actively contributed (e.g., Will mott 1997; Alvesson and Sköldberg 2009; Johnson and Duberley, Chapter 17). Over the past two decades, there has been a gradual but steady process of fragmentation and dis integration as diverse theories, perspectives, and schools have emerged to disrupt the pi ous hope of a single, unified social science. This disarray has tended to distract and di vide those who, armed with a totalizing formula, might otherwise have mounted stronger and more sustained opposition to CMS. In this context, allegiance to the CMS banner can be seen as a deft, or at least expedient, move that confers a degree of protection and legitimation on marginal orientations, espe cially for academics based in departments lacking a “critical mass” of critically oriented faculty. Such allegiance does not necessarily occur self-consciously but that does not un dermine the point. In a context where critical work has become more widely published in respected journals, where critical scholars are win prestigious research council grants, and where they are being promoted to senior positions, more open allegiance to CMS is becoming a less risky, more attractive option for those disillusioned with, or who had nev er been entranced by, the mainstream. As CMS has grown in profile and influence, it has Page 17 of 26
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Introduction also been occupied as a career platform by management researchers with (p. 20) “eso teric” interests in “management” (broadly defined). CMS as a label, identity, and affilia tion has helped to legitimize work focusing on diverse phenomena—cartoons, fictional lit erature, philosophy, etc.—some of which are conventionally seen as having very limited reference to management, however broadly defined. A purist conception of CMS would tend to seek the expulsion of such “misfits” from CMS on the grounds that their work is idiosyncratic rather than critical, and that its effect is to dilute rather than enrich CMS. A more pragmatic and liberal response would be to say that, balanced against any adulter ation associated with their inclusion, it is relevant to acknowledge the political value of their contribution to the size and related influence of CMS as a movement and, in addi tion, to recognise the possibility that such marginalized misfits may reinvigorate CMS with fresh and challenging insights. This brings us to a consideration of the prospects for CMS.
Future Challenges and Possibilities The institutional strength of CMS continues to grow, yet there are many continuing, emergent, and dislocating challenges. We have noted how the wider world is changing in ways that may make CMS more relevant and engaging. After 9/11, Enron, and the socalled “credit crunch” or debt binge there is an emerging awareness of the relativity and contingent viability of dominant, Western values and forms of knowledge. Associated with this, there is greater skepticism about many types of authority as well as evidence of re treat to apparent givens and certainties (e.g., fundamentalism, evidence-based policymaking, etc.). There is growing interest in issues—business ethics, diversity, environmen talism, neo-imperialism—that have direct relevance for the everyday conduct of manage ment, yet have been largely excluded from, or trivialized by, orthodox research and also from textbook accounts of business. Fifty years after the appearance of a post-affluent society (Galbraith 1958), where a very high material standard of living is enjoyed by a majority of people in the advanced or overdeveloped economies, there is a renewed questioning of the sense—and even sane ness—of a continuing emphasis on increased efficiency and productivity, economic growth and increased consumption, rather than a more enlightened focus upon attaining more equitable and ecologically sustainable resource distribution. Policy and practice on key questions of food, energy, and climate are in disarray. As we write, the neoliberal experi ment has resulted in chaotic, ignominious failure and is set to further damage the life chances of ordinary people around the globe public assets are being sequestered to bail out the squalor of (p. 21) private greed fueled by a neoliberal cocktail of economic naivety and political-cum-regulatory irresponsibility. And we have yet to feel the full impact of failures to honor (unregulated and virtually untraceable) credit default swaps (CDS)— what Warren Buffett has termed the “financial weapons of mass destruction.”11 For those who sense that management involves issues that extend beyond the standard fare of or
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Introduction thodox textbooks and leading journals, CMS commends an approach that is politically as well as epistemologically differentiated from the mainstream. In this changing and fragmented landscape of ecological degradation, extremes of afflu ence and poverty, and global capitalism in meltdown possibilities open up for CMS accom panied by immense challenges. Much CMS writing is criticized for being pretentious and obscure, rendering it inaccessible to a wider audience who, in principle, its exponents seek to reach, educate, and influence. In terms of theoretical and political orientation, CMS might appear to provide an ideal home for academics keen to take on activist roles. In practice, however, and with few exceptions, critical management scholars have tended to shy away from the public arena or, at best, have had limited impact when acting within it. An accusation might be made that the quest for academic credibility has become a (performative) end in itself; and that few critical scholars have been prepared to place their heads above the parapet. The focus and effects of CMS has, to date, been confined mainly to the realm of Academia—in terms of shifting teaching curricula, engaging in more critically-oriented research, establishing and running critical journals, organizing conferences, shaping the development of learned societies (e.g., Academy of Manage ment), etc. Considerable and perhaps unexpected progress has been made in institution alizing CMS in the curricula and research agendas of a number of business schools. On the other hand, it is perhaps salutary to acknowledge how few CMS academics have, for example, made any substantial contribution to public discussion of policies and practices, including scandals, relating to business—most recently, of course, the conditions and con sequences of the financial crisis of 2008 that has filled the news headlines as we have prepared this Introduction. The contents of this Handbook indicate what has been achieved over the past fifteentwenty years in the development of a scholarly body of critically oriented scholarship on management. During this period, CMS has come to occupy and institutionalize a niche for teaching and research within business schools. Despite these achievements, however, its presence remains marginal and precarious. The dissemination of CMS ideas is currently comparatively thin and patchy, as is their application in the development of a less didactic pedagogy (Contu, Chapter 27). Business schools in which CMS has a significant represen tation are largely restricted to the UK. In addition to the task of strengthening and ex panding its modest presence in North America, parts of Europe and Australia/New Zealand, CMS faces the daunting challenge of influencing the development of schools outside of the “First World,” especially in emergent and “developing” economies. The emergence and development of CMS has occurred with a specific context and set of circumstances conducive to its growth, as sketched earlier. As a marginal and frag ile movement, there is no guarantee that it will prosper. A change of circumstances, such as the expulsion of business schools from universities,12 could foreshadow its demise. In stitutionalizing CMS, not just in books but inside business schools, within journals and in learned societies can provide some degree of protection against this vulnerability. Accord ingly, much energy has been expended in building up, reproducing and reinforcing its (self-disciplining) networks, structures, and norms.13 Given the obstacles and challenges (p. 22)
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Introduction faced by exponents of CMS, it is, perhaps, a little too easy to subscribe to a one-sidedly hyper-critical view of CMS proponents harboring apparently “impure” (e.g., careerist) motives and pursuing “cynical” practices (e.g., empire-building). That advocates of CMS have mixed motives and equivocal aspirations is surely to be expected. CMS institutionbuilding activities are a necessary basis for extending and deepening its influence and im pact but this does not imply their sufficiency. Understood in this way, CMS is not so much a specialist area of management studies as it is a developing movement oriented to the emancipatory transformation of those aspects of management, as a dominant modern in stitution, that needlessly supports and sustains avoidable suffering and oppression.
References ALVESSON, M. (2003). “Critical Organization Studies,” in B. Czarniawska and G. Sevon (eds.), Northern Lights. Malmö: Liber, 151–174. —— (2008). “The Future of Critical Management Studies,” in D. Barry and H. Hansen (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of New Approaches in Management and Organization. Lon don: Sage, 13–30. —— and BILLING, D. (2009). Understanding Gender and Organiztions, 2nd edn. London: Sage. —— and SKOLDBERG, K. (2009). Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Re search, 2nd edn. London: Sage. —— and WILLMOTT, H. (1992). Critical Management Studies. London: Sage. —— —— (1996). Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage. —— —— (2003). “Introduction,” in Studying Management Critically. London: Sage, 1–22. ANTHONY, P. (1977). The Ideology of Work. London: Tavistock. BANERJEE, S. B. (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ug ly. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. BARLEY, S. (2006). “Corporations, Democracy and the Public Good,” Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Organization and Management Theory Division, Academy of Manage ment Meeting, Atlanta Georgia, August. BENDIX, R. (1956). Work and Authority in Industry. New York: Wiley. BÖHM, S. (2006). “Reading Critical Theory,” in C. Jones and R. ten Bos (eds.), Philosophy and Organization. London: Routledge, 101–115. BRAVERMAN, H. (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
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Introduction BURRELL, G. (1996). “Normal Science, Paradigms, Metaphors, Discourses and Genealo gies of Analysis,” in S. Clegg, C. Hardy and W. Nord (eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies. London: Sage, 642–658. —— and MORGAN, G. (1979). Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis. Aldershot: Gower. (p. 25)
CALÁS, M. B., and SMIRCICH, L. (2006). “From the ‘Woman's Point of View’ Ten Years Later: Towards a Feminist Organization Studies,” in S. Clegg, C. Hardy, and W. Nord (eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies, 2nd edn. London: Sage, 284–346. CAVANAGH, J., and ANDERSON, S. (2002). “What is the Global Justice Movement?” http://www.ips-dc.org/global_econ/movement.pdf (accessed 9 December 2007). CHILD, J. (1969). British Management Thought. London: Allen and Unwin. CLEGG, S., and DUNKERLY, D. (1980). Organization, Class and Control. London: Rout ledge and Kegan Paul. Critical Management Studies Interest Group of the Academy of Management (2007) “Do main Statement,” http://www.aomonline.org/PeopleAndCommunities/Division sAndInterestGroups/Domains.asp?other_code=CMS#CMS (accessed 9 December 2007). FLEETWOOD, S. (2005). “Ontology in Organization and Management Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective,” Organization, 12/2: 197–222. Fortune (2008). “Top 25 MBA Employers,” http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/for tune/0704/gallery.MBA_employers.fortune/15.html (accessed 28 October 2008). FOUCAULT, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House. —— (1980). Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon FOURNIER, V., and GREY, C. (2000) “At the Critical Moment: Conditions and Prospects for Critical Management Studies,” Human Relations, 53 (1): 7–32. GALBRAITH, J. K. (1958). The Affluent Society. Boston, Houghton Mifflin. GLYNOS J., and HOWARTH, D. (2007). Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Politi cal Theory. London: Routledge. GREY, C., and WILLMOTT, H. (2005). “Introduction,” in C. Grey and H. Willmott (eds.), Critical Management Studies: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1–20. HORKHEIMER, M. (1937). “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in P. Connerton (ed.), Criti cal Sociology: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1976, 206–224.
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Introduction KLIMECKI, R., and WILLMOTT, H. (2009). “From De-mutualisation to Meltdown: A Tale of Two Wannabe Banks.” Critical Perspectives on International Business, in press. KNIGHTS, D., and WILLMOTT, H. (1986). Managing the Labour Process. Aldershot: Gower. MARSHALL, J. (1984). Women Managers. Travellers in a Male World. Chichester: Wiley. MURPHY, J. (2008a). The World Bank and Global Managerialism. London: Routledge. —— (2008b). “The Rise of the Global Managers,” in S. Dar and B. Cooke (eds.), The New Development Management: Critiquing the Dual Modernization. London: Zed Books, 18– 40. PARKER, M., FOURNIER, V., and REEDY, P. (2007). The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization. London: Zed Books. PFEFFER J. (1993). “Barriers to the Advance of Organizational Science: Paradigm Devel opment as a Dependent Variable,” Academy of Management Review, 18/4: 599–620. PRASAD, A. (ed.) (2003). Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical En gagement. New York: Palgrave. PRASAD, P. (1997). “The Protestant Ethic and the Myth of the Frontier: Cultural Im prints, Organizational Structuring and Workplace Diversity,” in P. Prasad, A. Mills, M. Elmes, and A. Prasad (eds.), Managing the Organizational Melting Pot. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 129–147. SARAVANAMUTHU, K., FLANAGAN, J., and HOWIE, H. (2007). “Toolkit for De veloping Sustainable Practices”, http://www.searchsa.com.au/kala/Toolkit.htm (p. 26)
(accessed 10 December 2007). SAYER, A. (1992). Method is Social Science: A Realist Approach. London: Routledge. SPICER, A., ALVESSON, M., and KÄRREMAN, D. (2009) “Critical Performativity: The Unfinished Business of Critical Management Studies,” Human Relations, in press. STARHAWK (2000). “Turning the Trolls to Stone: Strategy for the Global Justice Move ment,” http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/trollstostone.html (accessed 9 December 2007). STEFFY, B. D., and GRIMES, A. J. (1992). “Personnel/Organizational Psychology: A Cri tique of the Discipline,” in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds.), Critical Management Stud ies. London: Sage, 181–201. THOMPSON, P. (2004). “Brands, Boundaries and Bandwagons: A Critical Reflection on Critical Management Studies,” in S. Fleetwood and S. Ackroyd (eds.), Critical Realism in Action and Organization Studies. London: Routledge, 54–70. Page 22 of 26
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Introduction WHITLEY, R. (1984). “The Fragmented State of Management Studies, Reasons, and Con sequences,” Journal of Management Studies, 21: 331–348. WILLMOTT, H. (1997). “Rethinking Management and Managerial Work: Capitalism, Con trol and Subjectivity,” Human Relations 50/11: 1329–1360. —— (2008). “Critical Management and Global Justice,” Organization, 15/6: 931–935. —— (2009). “Identities in Organizations: From Interpretive to Critical Analysis.” Working paper, available from the author. ŽIŽEK, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Notes: (1.) In preparing this Introduction, we have drawn upon and adapted a number of our ear lier commentaries on CMS that include Alvesson and Willmott (1996); Alvesson and Will mott (2003); Grey and Willmott (2005); Alvesson (2008); Willmott (2008). (2.) While we refer to “the mainsteam,” we recognize that this Other is much less coher ent, discrete, and static than the term implies. To elaborate the aquatic metaphor, the mainsteam comprises a large number of currents and tributaries whose influence ebbs and flows. The mainstream may also inundate, or selectively draw in, approaches that, when suitably diluted, can refresh or change its course. (3.) In reflecting critically upon our own experience in assembling the Handbook, it ap pears that this marginalization may extend to established exponents of CMS. Was it pure ly coincidental that a very high proportion of both US and female academics who were initially approached to prepare a contribution either declined or did not deliver? The lat ter might perhaps in part be explained by misgivings, if not hostility, to the exclusively male editorial team but can the former? (4.) The collection drew upon papers presented at a small conference held in 1989 which brought together scholars from Europe and North America to connect critical work that was emerging on both sides of the Atlantic. (5.) The growth, diversification and ongoing institutionalization of CMS is perhaps most evident in the spawning of conferences, notably, the bi-annual Critical Management Stud ies Conference that has attracted participants from over twenty-five countries; the devel opment of a major journal (Organization) that is explicitly critical in orientation, and the recent establishment of CMS as a full division of the Academy of Management. There have also been numerous CMS workshops and smaller conferences held around the world (e.g., Japan, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand), the emergence of other journals with a strongly critical flavor (e.g., ephemera, Electronic Journal of Radical Organization Theory, Tamara), special issues of more mainstream journals (e.g. Academy of Management Re
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Introduction view, Administrative Science Quarterly) as well as regular contributions to established journals (e.g., Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Management Learning). (6.) It was Max Horkheimer, Director of the Frankfurt-based Institute of Social Research in which critical theory was incubated, who identified white-collar employees, amongst whom may be included many managers and supervisors, as a social group that demanded urgent critical examination (Horkheimer 1937). In setting out his vision of critical theory, Horkheimer contrasted it with a view of scientific study that assumes a seemingly objec tive, instrumental relationship to its “objects,” a theme that remains of central impor tance for CMS analysis. (7.) Fournier and Grey (2000) refer to the non-performative or anti-performative stance taken by CMS, and do not use the term “anti-performativity.” (8.) We noted earlier how the development of CMS has been guided by a number of domi nant perspectives. In a later section we attend to the business school as the immediate in stitutional context in which CMS has developed. (9.) To illustrate their position, Fournier and Grey (2000) give the example of how gender is taken up in non-critical, performative analysis and contrast it with a critical approach: “In non-critical work, the issue might be one of harnessing diversity in the pursuit of ef fectiveness … gender inequalities are translated into problems of wasted resources … [In contrast], critical perspectives may concentrate on the making of gender differences and the ways in which organizational practices, including equal opportunity practices, are im plicated in the reproduction of gendered power relations” (ibid.: 17–8). Given that this ex ample of critical analysis presents an alternative to mainstream, performative accounts of gender, it is rather ironic that Thompson (2004) also takes Fournier and Grey to task for ignoring the politics of the workplace and diagnoses this omission as a consequence of their alleged obsession with epistemological and ontological quandaries. Concerns about knowledge claims and the nature of reality, Thompson contends, lead to the blunting, rather than a sharpening, of critique as they orchestrate a slide into relativism which makes it irrational to advance meaningful truth claims. And, allegedly, it is this slide that makes it impossible to distinguish between the rhetorical claims of the powerful and the underlying realities associated with these systems of power. To defend this assessment, Thompson appeals to critical realism. This move involves a further irony as the position of critical realism has been forged through an extensive and highly sophisticated engage ment with dominant strands of the philosophy of (social) science (e.g., Sayer 1992; Fleet wood 2005), an engagement which suggests that wrestling with ontological and epistemo logical quandaries is neither optional nor marginal. Moreover, it is questionable whether this engagement need displace a focus upon “the politics of the workplace” and beyond. The challenge is to be reflexively sensitive to the ontological and epistemological limita tions of each particular approach to advancing meaningful truth claims whilst undertak ing critical work with an emancipatory intent that reaches, and has relevance for, a broad audience that incorporates managers as well as students but it not confined to these con stituencies. The advocacy of critical realism is valuable in reminding us that if CMS is to Page 24 of 26
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Introduction be socially influential, it must focus on effective political engagement. However, it can be too quick to dismiss other traditions that share a concern to be politically relevant with out privileging elements of critical realism that have been assessed to be problematical— notably its positive, naturalized ontology and, relatedly, its bracketing of reflexivity about its own construction as a discourse (see Glynos and Howarth 2007). (10.) Our use of the term “business school” is intended to include similar institutions, such as schools and departments of management, and departments of business adminis tration. (11.) According to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, CDSs have an es timated notional value of around $62 trillion (as of September 2008), which compares to the Gross World Product in 2007 of approximately $54.35 trillion (World Bank estimate). (12.) This scenario is now rather unlikely as, perversely perhaps, universities have, in din ing with the business school devil, become increasingly dependent financially upon the expansion of business school education. (13.) These include its virtual elements—www.criticalmanagement.org and the list serve [email protected] whose archive can be found at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind0810&L=criticalmanagement
Mats Alvesson
Mats Alvesson is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Lund, Sweden, and at University of Queensland Business School, Australia. Recent books include Qualitative Research and Theory Development (Sage, 2011, with Dan Kärre man), Interpreting Interviews (Sage, 2011), Metaphor We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World (Routledge, 2011, edited with Andre Spicer), The Ox ford Handbook of Critical Management Studies (Oxford University Press, edited with Todd Bridgman and Hugh Willmott), Understanding Gender and Organizations (Sage, 2009, second edition, with Yvonne Billing), Reflexive Methodology (Sage, 2009, sec ond edition, with Kaj Skoldberg), Changing Organizational Culture (Routledge, 2008, with Stefan Sveningsson), and Knowledge Work and Knowledge-Intensive Firms (Ox ford University Press, 2004). Todd Bridgman
Todd Bridgman is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He was previously an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and Junior Research Fellow of Wolf son College, University of Cambridge. His PhD, completed at Judge Business School, was judged best doctoral thesis in critical management studies at the Academy of Management 2005. His research interests include poststructuralism, management education, and the role of the university in society. Hugh Willmott Page 25 of 26
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Introduction Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff, UK.
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies
Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Manage ment Studies Andreas Georg Scherer The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0002
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to provide an outline of the development and basic ideas of critical theo ry (CT), one of the most prominent philosophical foundations of critical management studies (CMS). CT has perhaps had even more influence on the development of CMS than related theoretical foundations such as labour-process theory, poststructuralism, or criti cal realism. It has a unique philosophical tradition and distinct paradigmatic characteris tics; and, in order to demonstrate how it has been used to study organizations, the article describes these characteristics and shows how they have impacted on CMS. Keywords: management, critical theory, theoretical foundations, labour-process theory, organization studies, philosophical tradition
Introduction: the Development of Cms and Its Relation to Critical Theory THE aim of this chapter is to provide an outline of the development and basic ideas of critical theory (CT), one of the most prominent philosophical foundations of critical man agement studies (CMS). CT has perhaps had even more influence on the development of CMS than related theoretical foundations, such as labor process theory, poststructural ism, or critical realism, which will be described in subsequent chapters of the Handbook. CT has a unique (p. 30) philosophical tradition and distinct paradigmatic characteristics (Rasmussen 1994; Rush 2004); and, in order to demonstrate how CT has been used to study organizations, we will describe these characteristics and show how they have im pacted CMS. Since a number of good historical overviews already exist (see, e.g., Held 1980; Wigger shaus 1994), we will consider the history and development of CT only in sofarasitisofdi rectrelevancetotheunderstandingoftheemergenceofCMS. The chapter focuses mainly on the principal contributors of CT—here equated with the Frankfurt School and the writ Page 1 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies ings of authors such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, as well as authors of the younger generation. We will review a number of criti cisms leveled at CT, from the aggressive to the more sympathetic types of critique, and show how these are relevant to CMS research. We also refer to Habermas's more recent work on political philosophy and deliberative democracy, as it is relevant for correcting dated understandings of his position and may suggest new directions for future work in CMS. What is critical theory?—CT is a socio-philosophical school of thought which is part of the tradition of the Enlightenment. CT's basic concern is to analyze social conditions, to criti cize the unjustified use of power, and to change established social traditions and institu tions so that human beings are freed from dependency, subordination, and suppression. Unlike traditional approaches to social theory, which merely aim to explain and under stand the societal status quo, CT is oriented towards the development of a more humane, rational, and just society. The success of the natural sciences in explaining natural phe nomena and the associated capability of bringing nature under technical control has seemed to demonstrate a superiority of the rational, scientific method. At the same time, the normative-ethical dimension of reason has been systematically excluded from scientif ic analysis. Values and normative judgments are considered subjective and, seen from the scientific perspective, cannot be generalized or verified. Therefore, science is obliged to refrain from value statements or normative theory (value-free thesis). The social sciences have emerged as a scholarly discipline whose claim to scientific status has been shaped and directed by the natural sciences insofar as the latter have been adopted as the bench mark for developing objective and general knowledge. As a result, positivism has as sumed a dominant mode of theorizing, both in the natural and social sciences. What is meant by positivism here is the search for regularities in the world by means of systemat ic observation and experimentation and also the explanation of observed social phenome na with the help of general theories about causes and effects (see Scherer 2003). For a long time, however, alternative “anti-positivist” and “post-positivist” schools of thought advocated the methodical and normative deficits of the traditional natural sci ence model of explanation as they have pointed to the idiosyncratic, subjective, and nor mative characteristics of social phenomena. Central to this (p. 31) tradition is the view that social phenomena are socially constructed and subjectively meaningful in contrast to natural phenomena whose existence and reproduction/transformation are unmediated by human understanding. Within this tradition one can identify phenomenology, hermeneu tics, symbolic interactionism, poststructuralism, critical realism, and critical theory, all of which have influenced the development of organization studies and of critical manage ment studies in particular (see Grey and Willmott 2005). In management studies these de velopments have spawned the increasing adaptation of interpretive approaches on the one hand, and the attempt to emphasize normative—ethical questions while critically ana lyzing the established social conditions on the other (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Reed 1985; Scherer 2003). We will now turn to CT and the Frankfurt School as one of the intel lectual roots of this development. Page 2 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies
Critical Theory: A Brief History of the Frank furt School2 In the 1920s and 1930s Horkheimer and Adorno were active at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. This Institute became known as the “Frankfurt School” and was dedicat ed to the multidisciplinary and critical analysis of modern capitalism. After the Nazi seizure of power, the institute was closed and the members of the Frankfurt School fled to Britain and the US. In a seminal statement Horkheimer (1937) rejected the claim that social science can produce objective, value-free knowledge of social reality. Instead, he argued that all social patterns take shape within specific historical and cultural condi tions and that the methods used to analyze these conditions are also embedded within the same social contexts. While he rejected the Marxian idea that social change would be brought about by the revolution of the proletariat, Horkheimer was convinced that any and all individuals can become aware of their conditions of oppression and subordination, that CT could provide the value-relevant knowledge for this process of maturation, and that the revitalization of the ideas of the Enlightenment may help them to strengthen indi vidual autonomy and civic liberties. Horkheimer and Adorno (1947a) also continued to challenge the positivist science model which is seen to blunt the capacity to develop critical analysis necessary for attaining the Enlightenment ideal. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, they argued that, although the Enlightenment aims “at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947a: 3), modern society and its dominant posi tivist model of science focus on a one-sided instrumental conception of reason. Using sci entific methods human beings are able to dominate (p. 32) nature and social institutions. Thus science becomes an efficient instrument of control for those who are in office and power. In effect, this leads to new forms of domination that are even more powerful and destructive than those grounded in tradition, common sense, and religion. After the war, Horkheimer and Adorno returned to Frankfurt and re-established the school. However, as a consequence of the Holocaust and the inhumanity of the totalitari an systems in Third Reich Germany, Fascist Italy, and Stalinist Soviet Union, their opti mism about the possibilities of bringing about social change in modern societies through education and enlightenment had faded (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947b). During this time, Adorno mainly focused on the cultural analysis of aesthetics and music. Adorno also criticized the status of empirical research in sociology and became one of the protago nists in the Positivismusstreit (positivism debate) in German sociology where, together with Jürgen Habermas, he argued against positivist philosophers such as Hans Albert and Karl Popper (Adorno et al. 1976). With the students' revolt in the 1960s, the critical ideas of the School's members gained practical significance and wider recognition. The work of Marcuse (1964) was especially well received at that time. Marcuse acknowledged that he had previously overestimated the pacifying effects of the mass media and that people at the margins—such as students, Page 3 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies intellectuals, and artists—were capable of rejecting the materialist lifestyle of capitalist societies and of remaining at a critical distance from the establishment. In his seminal lecture The End of Utopia he maintains that “we have the capacity to turn the world into hell, and we are well on the way to doing so” (Marcuse 1970: 62). However, he suggests that it is possible to envision a radical alternative and break with the historical continu um: “All the material and intellectual forces which could be put to work for the realization of a free society are at hand. That they are not used for that purpose is to be attributed to the total mobilization of existing society against its own potential for liberation. But this situation in no way makes the idea of radical transformation itself a utopia” (Marcuse 1970: 64).
Critical Theory: the Contribution of Jürgen Habermas It was Jürgen Habermas, a student at the Frankfurt institute in the 1950s and later a uni versity professor in Heidelberg and Frankfurt, who directly confronted the excessive pes simism of the previous generation of Frankfurt School thinkers. To this end, he sought to reconstruct its normative foundations by basing critique upon a (p. 33) possibility of undistorted communication, which, he argued, is built into the very structure of language. The early members of the Frankfurt School were unable to fully justify their (radical hu manist) normative point of reference upon which Critical Theory's critique of instrumen tal reason, for example, is grounded. Habermas developed an ambitious research pro gram intended to lay the rational foundations of critical social analysis. Referring to lin guistic philosophy (Charles S. Peirce) and speech analytic philosophy (J. L. Austin, John Searl), he analyzed the way in which people make use of their communication skills in or der to engage in social relationships. Habermas (1976) suggests that in any utterance a speaker raises four validity claims that can be challenged by a listener: the comprehensi bleness of what he or she says, the truth of the utterance, the speaker's right to say what he or she says, and the sincerity of the speaker. He maintains that these validity claims are part of a universal structure of communication—a universal pragmatics—that can serve as a basis for social analysis and critical theory. The normative core of his theory emerges only when Habermas refers to the conditions of an ideal speech situation. He suggests that in any conversation the participants necessari ly presuppose that under ideal conditions their claims can be assessed and verified (or falsified) in an open discourse, even though real communication is systematically distort ed and falls short of this ideal. It is claimed that this “counterfactual assumption” is rou tinely made by participants in a discussion because otherwise nobody would enter the conversation. These ideal conditions of communication can be characterized by the free dom to enter the debate, participation with equal rights, truthfulness of the participants, and “absence of coercion” (Habermas 1993: 56), so that only the “forceless force of the better argument” (Habermas 1990a: 23) will motivate the participants of a discourse to reach a consensus on what is true or false, right or wrong. These conditions of free and Page 4 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies transparent communication, it is argued, can be used as a (counterfactual) critical tool in the analysis of real conversations in scientific, moral, legal, or political debate. Habermas considers communication as the ultimate reference of rationality (communica tive reason) in his Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1984, 1987) and in his “Discourse Ethics” (Habermas 1990b) which are both core parts of his theory of society. In his Theory of Communicative Action he refers the work of Parsons, Weber, and Schutz and distinguishes between lifeworld and system. Lifeworld is the social world that is based on the taken-for-granted social skills and knowledge of its members. It is construct ed and maintained through face-to-face interactions and immediate conversations be tween ordinary people, thereby building on communicative reason in order to establish a shared understanding of the world as a meaningful place. System, by contrast, is the re sult of differentiation and specialization in modern society. Modern society is character ized by mass phenomena, anonymity, individualization, and the erosion of tradition. Sys tem (p. 34) differentiation is a response to the growing complexity in modern society. In order to cope with this complexity, social systems and subsystems emphasize the efficient realization of given objectives. Today one can identify various subsystems that specialize on certain societal functions, like the economy, politics, science. These subsystems oper ate according to their own internal logics—that is, costs for the economy, power for poli tics, and truth for science, etc. In the case of systemic coordination, the steering mode is not the communicative understanding among individuals based on negotiated and shared plans of action. Rather it is the restrictions and incentives of the (sub-)system that condi tion and govern human action. Unlike the lifeworld, in which communicative reason pre vails, social systems are governed by instrumental rationality, i.e. the efficient choice of means for given ends. There is a tendency, however, for strategic or instrumental ratio nality to become extended so that the logic of the system, driven by its efficiency, sup plants that of the lifeworld, and, finally, communicative reason is displaced by instrumen tal rationality (“colonization of the lifeworld”). Habermas suggests that the understand ing of the process of modernization requires a critical analysis of the organizational prac tices that sustain the pathologies of a one-sided rationalized lifeworld. Communicative reason is also the anchor point in his Discourse Ethics where he further develops his earlier Universal Pragmatics and builds upon the Discourse Ethics of KarlOtto Apel. Here Habermas (1990b, 1993a) focuses on the processes that people use to justify what they are saying or doing. He maintains that moral decisions are not merely assertions of subjective opinion that lie outside the scope of rational judgment. Instead, he suggests that moral decisions and actions can be validated by means of argument. Whenever a validity claim is challenged and the people involved want to clarify the status of the validity claim, they can do so by engaging in a discourse that aims at resolving the issue consensually. Habermas (1990b, 1993a) develops process rules for argumentations that can be used to guide the analysis of certain actions, norms and institutions in order to assess whether they can be considered rationally acceptable. The important point is that Discourse Ethics emphasizes this process of ethical decision making and not so much the results of this process. Finding a solution to a conflict or coming to a conclusion about the acceptability of a particular action or validity claim remains the task of the people in Page 5 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies volved in a concrete discourse. This cannot be predetermined or anticipated by the theo rist. All the theorist can do is to give guidance on how to undertake a reasonable argu mentation, i.e. a discourse. In his Discourse Ethics, Habermas (1990b) distinguishes be tween two principles: the principle of universalization (U) and the principle of discourse (D). Principle (U) says that moral decisions are only valid if all those who are affected can consent to them or agree to their consequences. This means that there must be consen sus among those affected. Principle (D) is about the process in which such a consensus might be achieved. Principle (D) says that the agreement of all must be achieved through open and free debate so that the agreement depends alone on the power of (p. 35) the bet ter argument. With the help of principle (D) Habermas creates a stronger link to the philosophical discipline of ethics and substantiates the communication rules of what he has called the ideal speech situation in his earlier universal pragmatics conception. In his later publications Habermas (1996, 1998, 2001) has focused on the analysis of the role of law and democracy in modern society, although these themes have always been of central concern in his work. Also, he has considered the consequences of globalization and what it means for democratic governance and international relations (Habermas 2001, 2006). We will refer to these issues later when we deal with the recent develop ments of CT and their potential for future research in critical management studies (CMS). But first we will show how CT contributed to the emergence of CMS.
Central Themes and Methods of the Critical Theory Tradition The work of the various proponents of critical theory mentioned above is rather heteroge neous when analyzed in detail (see Held 1980; Wiggershaus 1994). They share, however, some basic concerns that have inspired the development of critical management studies. These themes can be described as follows (Alvesson and Willmott 1996): (1) The critique of the dialectics of enlightenment. By relying mainly on the positivist methods of the natural sciences the process of enlightenment has focused one-sided ly on instrumental reason. As a result the sciences have developed knowledge that serves the interests of powerful elites rather than helping people to emancipate themselves from the social conditions of dependency and suppression (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947a). At the same time, the prevailing social conditions become natu ralized; they appear as objectively given, being beyond human control, and thus can not be changed. As we will show below, this critique becomes one of the main con cerns of critical management studies. (2) One-dimensionality and consumerism. In advanced capitalist societies individuals are socialized to become unreflective consumers and obedient workers who are inca pable of imagining alternatives (Marcuse 1964). By means of education and social control they become alienated and completely adapt to their roles as consumers, workers, housewives, family fathers, etc. without critically reflecting upon these roles and envisioning alternatives which could lead to lifestyles that support emanci Page 6 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies pation and self-realization. This point (p. 36) is reflected in critical management analysis and in the critical approach to marketing. (3) Critique of technocracy. The value-free thesis in the sciences leads to a focus on instrumental reason and to the denial of the relevancy of ethics (Habermas 1971; Adorno et al. 1976). As a consequence, only the choice of means is considered in so cial analysis while the ends of human existence are taken for granted, and are there fore beyond scientific scrutiny. Thus science focuses on efficiency and technical re search interests while emancipatory interests are widely neglected (see below). While Marcuse is critical of all natural science methods, Habermas (1971) acknowl edges the achievements of the natural sciences but suggests a comprehensive model of social research that is capable of embracing diverse cognitive research interests: the technical interest in the prediction and control of objectified processes, the prac tical interest in the understanding of actions and symbols, and the emancipatory in terest in critical reflection and change of the status quo of social systems so that sub ordination and discrimination is reduced and collective self-actualization is fostered. All three research interests are constitutive of management and organization stud ies, while CMS emphasizes the emancipatory interest (see Willmott 1997). (4) Emphasis on communicative action. Habermas (1984, 1987), in particular, points out that social rules and institutions emerge and change by means of communica tion. Here Habermas follows the linguistic turn in philosophy where it is proposed that the central task of philosophical analysis is the analysis of language use. Accord ingly, in social analysis critical attention is directed to the communicative conditions. Assertions, actions, social rules and institutions can be assessed according to their comprehensibility, truth, and legitimacy by way of discourse. This idea becomes cen tral as a point of reference for the creation of a free and just society where no social groups become marginalized and all interests are heard, as well as for the methodi cal orientation of social research. How can we describe the particular critical theory method or mode of explanation for the analy sis of social phenomena (Steffy and Grimes 1986; Alvesson and Deetz 2000)? Critical theory builds upon the interpretive understanding of social phenomena but goes beyond its conserva tive attitude to reflect critically upon established values and normative claims (Habermas 1984, 1987). The practical research interest of the interpretive paradigm is complemented by an emancipatory interest (Stablein and Nord 1985). While positivist science and interpretive hu manities take the social status quo as given, emancipatory knowledge reflects upon the status quo and seeks to change social conditions so that human beings are freed from domination and marginalization. As far as the understanding and critique of social actions and institutions is concerned, Habermas suggests that criteria for deducing (p. 37) what is right or what is wrong or with which one can objectively measure the ethical rationality of actions or institutions can not be justified monologically. Therefore, the “golden rule” and the categorical imperative for mulated by Kant do not qualify as a rational basis of critique as they are developed monological ly. Also, the isolated application of the Habermasian principle of universalization (U) (see above) is not yet sufficient. Rather, truth and legitimization of actions, practices, and institutions can only be determined in an uncoerced discourse by those concerned. As a result, the principle of universalization (U) must be supplemented by the principle of discourse (D) that defines the rules of argumentative discourse. Page 7 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies Even though the social scientist cannot determine or anticipate the results of an actual discourse, he or she can take the role of a critical interpreter (Habermas 1990a). In order to do so, the social theorist must renounce the position of a neutral (objective) observer, which, as the critique of the positivist model of science has shown, is unsustainable. In stead, as in the interpretive approach (Evered and Louis 1981), the researcher must take a participatory point of view (Habermas 1990a). However, unlike in the interpretive ap proach, the critical scientist need not simply accept the propositions of a speaker. Rather, he or she can question their truth and legitimacy through a rational discourse. Both the researcher and the actor can enter a symmetrical discourse in which the consensus (as long as it is achieved) will determine what is true or what is right and what can be consid ered ethically sound (Habermas 1984, 1987, 1990b). Habermas (1990b) has tried to de fine and to justify the special conditions under which such a discourse must take place (see above).
The Impact of Critical Theory on Critical Man agement Studies3 These themes of the CT tradition became relevant in management and organization stud ies during the 1970s when numerous doubts about the natural science mode of explana tion and its application in organizational analysis were voiced and paradigmatic alterna tives were considered (Silverman 1970; Benson 1977; Clegg and Dunkerly 1980). As men tioned in the introduction, the natural science model became widely accepted in sociolo gy, although there has always been an anti-naturalist tradition in the humanities (Burrell and Morgan 1979). These alternative approaches took account of the problems concern ing positivist methods and technocratic research interests that were also addressed by CT. In contrast to the dominant positivist approaches in the social sciences, such as con tingency theory or functionalism (Donaldson 1996), anti-positivist approaches treat the organization as an entity which is preserved and changed by cultural and political processes. (p. 38) While the positivist approach is searching for objective laws which de termine the behavior of organizations and of individuals who are ignorant of the driving forces of their behavior, the alternative approaches assume that organizations are operat ing according to rules which are created and developed by human decisions and actions (Benson 1977; Steffy and Grimes 1986). From the latter perspective, organizational reali ty is not objectively given or causally determined, but it is the result of a social construc tion (Berger and Luckmann 1964). In a social constructivist perspective social entities are constituted by processes of com munication and interpretation. For the analysis of this process of communication and in terpretation it is necessary to comprehend the subjective meanings leading the actors in their constructions of organizational reality. However, during his or her research the so cial theorist does not simply understand and report the reality (first order reality) that is enacted by the subjects under investigation, e.g., the members of a particular organiza tion. In addition, he or she also creates his or her own reality, i.e. a second order reality, Page 8 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies by interpreting the actors' meaningful actions. Essentially, there can be no “objective” in terpretation of action as this process is influenced by the researcher's socio-cultural back ground. Social analysis cannot escape these prejudices, but can only become aware of its roots and can attempt to make them transparent as far as possible (Steffy and Grimes 1986). While such an interpretive approach emphasizes the methodical deficits of the positivist model of explanation, there is also a line of criticism which attacks the latter's implicit but denied normative assumptions. This criticism questions the social-philosophical as sumptions of the positivist model of explanation. The complaint is that by default, posi tivist research, through its results, advances the interests of the most powerful interest groups in society, as it provides the socio-technical means to preserve existing relations of power. Other interests are taken into account only if they can be instrumentalized for the preservation of the status quo and the established distribution of power in society. As stressed earlier positivist social sciences ostensibly exclude normative questions from their analysis. By excluding such considerations the positivist model of explanation is al ways implicitly in the service of a specific interest—the interest in preserving the status quo by making the world technically controllable. In contrast, CT is inspired and guided by an emancipatory interest. This interest insists that rational inquiry includes the possi bility of criticizing the existing social conditions and their present distribution of power (Habermas 1971; Steffy and Grimes 1986). Though CT is directed mainly against the positivist model of research, it also highlights the limitations of the interpretive approach in the social sciences. In particular, CT rejects its conservative, status-quo-preserving effects (Stablein and Nord 1985). More specifical ly, it contends that critical analysis must encompass but also extend beyond the effort to enhance our understanding of others' interpretative (p. 39) frameworks. As Habermas (1966) puts it, with relevance for both empirical, analytical and hermeneutical sciences, the intent of CT is “to discover which (if any) theoretical statements express unchange able laws of social action and which, though they express relations of dependence be cause they are ideologically fixed, are in principle subject to change” (Habermas 1966: 294). These arguments contributed to the formation of a new paradigm in the management studies that began to emerge in the 1970s and has expanded and diversified during the following decades. This built upon the understanding that survival of social systems can not be explained in the same way as the survival of biological entities. The former is cul turally defined rather than determined by universal laws. Since power processes and the interests of participating actors play a significant role, cultural definition is seen to in volve a process of political interference (Benson 1977). As a consequence, “the study of reality construction is a study of power” (Brown 1978: 371). Following this line of argu ment, critical management scholars began to address the issue of who defines survival in social systems and controls the necessary means for this purpose. This discussion raises questions about the basis of legitimacy of social authority (Clegg and Dunkerly 1980). Not only the methodological shortcomings of the philosophical assumptions of contingency Page 9 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies theory and functionalism are examined, but the legitimacy of their technical research in terest is also questioned. In the 1960s and early 1970s it was widely accepted in organi zation studies that an increase in the productivity of an organization automatically leads to an improvement of social conditions. By the end of the 1970s, studies, often engaging critically with Braverman's (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital (Alvesson 1987; Knights and Willmott 1989; see also Thompson and OʼDoherty, Chapter 5), were offering a critical alternative to mainstream systems and contingency theories. These considerations were followed by a stream of research, which has now become known as “critical management studies” (Mumby 1988; Alvesson and Willmott 1992, 1996, 2003), in which the primary la bor process focus upon the point of production has been widened to encompass all as pects of management and organization (Linstead et al. 2004; Grey and Willmott 2005) and to reconsider the role of business in democratic society (Deetz 1992; Scherer and Palazzo 2007; Ulrich 2008). In addition, a number of critical theoretic traditions (e.g., gender studies, critical realism, poststructuralism) have been engaged to challenge and/or ex tend the scope and concerns of critical management studies. For example, proponents of CT maintain that the traditional approach to strategic man agement is ideological as it is focused on financial objectives and serves the interests of powerful shareholders (Shrivastava 1986) by providing a means of domination (Alvesson and Willmott 1995). The organization is considered to be instrumental for the execution of strategic plans that are formulated at the top of the hierarchy to serve the interests of powerful shareholders. The members of the organization have to be motivated by means of sanctions and control to implement the prescribed strategies. By contrast, critical analysis suggests that the (p. 40) formation of strategies and plans is a process of social construction in which various stakeholders and interests are involved (Forester 1985). In order to overcome the unjustified domination by powerful interests, critical management scholars suggest that strategic plans could be formulated discursively, drawing inspira tion from the ideal speech situation described above (Shrivastava 1986; Alvesson and Willmott 1995). In organization theory the critical approach to organizations attempts to analyze organi zational structures and cultures in order to show how these serve as means of domination and control (Barker 1993; Willmott 1993). The challenge is to change organizational structures so that human beings are released from suppression and marginalization. This can be accomplished by abandoning all forms of domination, creating work places that are more humane, establishing new forms of participation that help workers to preserve their autonomy, and to find alternatives to the bureaucratic model of the organization so that the technocratic rationality of the capitalist organization of work becomes substitut ed by practical reason (Marcuse 1964; Alvesson 1985). Crucial in this change process is the role of communication that has to become open and inclusive so that decisions can be based on reasoned argument rather than the mere application of power (Deetz 1995). Meisenbach (2006) has shown how Habermas's Discourse Ethics could be used as a framework for organizational communication.
Page 10 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies Likewise, students of business ethics and corporate social responsibility refer to the criti cal theory of Habermas and his Discourse Ethics theory, in particular. Numerous studies on this exist. Reed (1999) has developed a CT perspective on stakeholder theory, Gilbert and Rasche (2007) and Unerman and Bennett (2004) have analyzed the role of stakehold er dialogues in corporate accountability and ethics initiatives. Discourse Ethics has been applied to economic ethics (Ulrich 2008) and conflict resolution (French and Albright 1998). Critical human resource management reconsiders the various personal functions such as selection, appraisal, compensation, and development so that these functions are not so much a means for domination and control but rather serve the emancipation and self-ac tualization of humans (Steffy and Grimes 1992). A Critical Human Resource Development, for example, may help educating members of organizations so that they become con scious of situations of oppression and engage in processes of organizational change. This may even help “transforming society and making it more democratic or emancipatory” (Trehan et al. 2006: 3). In corporate governance theory students of CT consider approaches to corporate governance that offer an alternative to the dominant shareholder model. These models focus the participation of various company stakehold ers in order to bring decision making in corporate boards under democratic control (Park er 2002). Critical theory also plays a vital role in other subdisciplines of business administration such as marketing or accounting. In marketing critical issues are, e.g., consumption as the “route to happiness,” the manipulation of consumers' needs by (p. 41) way of advertis ing, brand management, identity creation, the displacement of the valuing of people by the valuing of objects (Alvesson and Willmott 1996: 128). As Morgan (1992) and Alvesson (1994) suggest the traditional approach to consumer marketing is biased towards influ encing and distorting the consumers' preferences so that they are unable to make in formed choices. These authors refer to the work on consumerism of Fromm (1955) and Marcuse (1964) and argue that this may even have corrosive effects on the wellbeing of society (see also Polley 1986). Therefore, they advocate a critical approach to marketing. Recently, Varnam and Costa (2008) refer to the distinction of system and lifeworld and propose a more complete view on the role of social norms in which consumer behavior and marketing systems are embedded. Other critical theorists point to the societal role of social movements and non-governmental organizations (Crossley 2003; McCormick 2006) and some students of marketing have begun to examine the influence of consumer boy cotts (Klein et al. 2004). From a critical perspective social movements and boycotts can be considered as a counterbalance to the distorting effects of an instrumental and manip ulative approach to marketing. The question of how to measure the value and performance of organizations is discussed in accounting. Orthodox approaches assume that accounting is a mechanical activity and that the value of assets, costs, and profits can be objectively measured. However, propo nents of a critical perspective on accounting suggest that accounting is based on conven tions and that the meaning and implications of its figures are subject to interpretation Page 11 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies and contest (Power and Laughlin 1992; Cooper and Hopper 2006). By contrast, the criti cal perspective suggests that accounting is not merely a passive reflector of economic re ality, but is both a product and a producer of socio-political processes. As a consequence, students of accounting have begun to consider alternative approaches that are based on the critical theory of Habermas (Power and Laughlin 1996; Lodh and Gaffikin 1997).
Critiques of Critical Theory and their Rele vance to Cms Research There are a number of critical issues that have been raised against CT, both from oppo nents who reject CT and from students who are more sympathetic to it. In the following, we will look at these concerns and briefly consider their implications for CMS. Students of modern systems theory hold that the social analysis of critical theory is inap propriate and outdated, as it does not sufficiently take into consideration the functional imperatives of segregated subsystems in modern society. (p. 42) These subsystems are in tegrated along their own subsystem-specific logics such as costs, power, or truth and not by communication and commonly agreed-upon plans of action. In particular, Luhmann (1982, 1995) rejects the Habermasian ideas that discursive action can be a central medi um of social integration in modern society and that communicative rationality can influ ence or even counteract the strategic rationality of economic or political activity. Rather, Luhmann holds that the economic subsystem works along its own profit imperatives and is not able to consider moral arguments as long as these are not translated into costs. This point of view at once reflects and reinforces the dominant view of the firm in main stream thinking on business and society, where economy and politics are treated as sepa rate domains (Willke and Willke 2008). Habermas (1984, 1987) acknowledges the role of systems integration in reducing complexity. However, he points to the danger of the “colo nization of the lifeworld” and the substitution of communicative rationality by efficiency imperatives of the system. He theorizes about possible structural changes that may help strengthen communicative reason in the political subsystem. This may help to limit and domesticate economic rationality even in complex and globalized societies (Habermas 1996, 2001). This discussion becomes relevant for organization studies when CMS schol ars critically consider the role of business in society (Palazzo and Scherer 2006; Scherer and Palazzo 2007). Some students of social and political theory consider Habermas's theory of communica tive action as too utopian a conception for real political institutions (Elster 1986). In par ticular, critics reject the concept of the ideal speech situation as overly idealistic. They hold that real communication in politics, economy and even in everyday life is character ized by the uneven distribution of power and by attempts to dismiss or even oppress oth er voices to promote one's own interests. Habermas has responded to these concerns and concedes that a radical conception of democracy only based on communicative reason is “too idealistic in that it makes the democratic process dependent on the virtues of the cit izens devoted to the public weal” (Habermas 2001: 244). In his deliberative theory of Page 12 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies democracy, he now suggests a more pragmatic conception of political theory. Habermas has developed an alternative model of democratic politics which maintains that one has “to take into account the multiplicity of forms of communication in which a common will is produced. That is, not just ethical self-clarification but also the balancing of interests and compromise, the purposive choice of means, moral justification, and legal consisten cy-testing” (Habermas 2001: 245). Other critics reject this proposal as a concession to the dominance of economic rationality. They advocate a more radical form of democratic par ticipation in political discourse in order to preserve the primacy of politics to economic rationality (see, e.g., Noonan 2005). Proponents of poststructuralism argue that any communication is influenced by power and that even the well-intentioned philosopher cannot escape these conditions (Foucault 1980). For poststructuralists knowledge is power in use. They hold that Habermas's at tempt to formulate universal rules of argumentation (p. 43) must be considered as a sub tle form of advancing a particular doctrine. They reject any claim to universalize philo sophical rules or methods, considering this a foundational endeavor that cannot be justi fied because this would result in the marginalization of the others' voice and a homoge nizing of minorities. Instead they point to the culture- and history-bound nature of knowl edge creation and call for more reflexivity in research (see, e.g., Calás and Smircich 1999). In response to these concerns, Habermas defends the rational content of a morality based on equal respect for everybody and on the universal responsibility of each for all … suspicion of an indiscriminately assimilat ing and homogenizing universalism fails to grasp the meaning of this morality … This moral community constitutes itself solely by way of the negative idea of abol ishing discrimination and harm … The community thus constructively outlined is not a collective that would force its homogenized members to affirm its distinc tiveness … The “inclusion of the other” means rather that the boundaries of the community are open for all, also and most especially for those who are strangers to one another and want to remain strangers. (Habermas 1998: xxxv–xxxvi) Related arguments are put forward by pragmatist philosophers who reject the positivist idea that truth is established through the representation of reality. Instead, pragmatists claim that truth is not based on representation or objective criteria but, rather, on social conventions that depend on a particular culture and history and cannot be universalized (Rorty 1985). This, finally, applies to ethical norms as well (see, e.g., Rorty 1985). Haber mas acknowledges the history-bound nature of knowledge creation but he defends a uni versal concept of reason based on argumentative discourse (Habermas 1990c, 1993b). “Argumentation,” he claims, “remains the only available medium of ascertaining truth since truth claims that have been problematized cannot be tested in any other way. There is no unmediated, discursively unfiltered access to the truth conditions of empirical beliefs” (Habermas 2003: 38). In his recent analysis of Truth and Justification he reformu lates the “normatively rigorous conditions of the practice of argumentation” (Habermas Page 13 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies 2003: 36–37). He concedes that a weak form of naturalism is almost unavoidable and pro poses a new “realism without representation” that takes the linguistic turn in philosophy into account. He maintains that knowledge creation should be considered as a learning process in which the actor interacts with his or her natural or social environment. “[T]he function of argumentation is to dispose of failing practices and unsettled practical certainties” (Habermas 2003: 40) As a consequence, “any current state of knowledge re mains relative to the best possible epistemic situation at the time” (41). In a similar way this also applies to moral judgments and norms (Habermas 2003). These considerations are important for CMS in two respects. On the methodological level they contribute to the discussion on the relation between CT, poststructuralism, and (crit ical) realism that has also influenced the development of CMS. On the theoretical level these ideas may help to further develop normative (p. 44) theory in organization studies, in business and society, and also in international management in which business firms op erating in environments with radically different moral demands are analyzed, and where the CT challenge is to find a position that goes beyond poststructuralism and positivism (see, e.g., Scherer and Palazzo 2007). Other critics, who tend to be more sympathetic, point out some blind spots in critical the orizing. Feminists, for example, criticize CT's dismissal of patriarchy as a source of op pression. They hold that critical theory is not aware of the gender-related forms of domi nation and suppression. This critique is considered in more recent approaches to CT that are also relevant to the analysis of discrimination and gender issues in organization.
More Recent Developments of Ct and their Sig nificance for Cms At the end of the 1980s Habermas, together with his students Klaus Günther and Bern hard Peters, began to analyze the emergence of the institutions of the rule of law state and to consider the role law plays in societal integration (Günther 1993; Habermas 1996; Wessler 2008). Diverging from his more abstract contributions to a “theory of commu nicative action,” Habermas's emphasis is upon the role of civil society, social movements, media, and the role of political discourses outside and beyond traditional political institu tions. This recent development contributes to the understanding of non-state actors' role in generating and enforcing rules in the global economy. This is important for current CMS work on the role of corporations and their relationship to society and for the critical analysis of corporations operating in a global environment (Scherer and Palazzo 2007). Throughout his career Habermas studied the accountability and responsiveness of gov ernment to its people. In his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1989) he dedicates a large part of his analysis to the history of democratic governance in Europe. In his book Between Facts and Norms Habermas (1996) focuses on the problem of the democratic organization of government under conditions of complexity and plural ism of values in late capitalist societies. A political theory that is based solely on ideal Page 14 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies conditions of communication, he concedes, is “too idealistic” (Habermas 1998: 244). In Between Facts and Norms he develops a theory of deliberative democracy that is more pragmatic, in so far as it takes the various forms of political coordination in real societies into account and does not focus on ethical discourse only. Unlike moral principles that have to be accepted (p. 45) universally, Habermas maintains that legal rules must simply work, so they may not always be morally perfect. Law is the set of rules according to which human beings relate to each other as citizens of a particular state. Law reflects the citizens' current values and concerns and is the best that can be achieved at a given point in time and in a given society. Therefore, valid legal rules must satisfy the discourse prin ciple (D) but not necessarily the principle of universalization (U). Habermas does not aim at a revolutionary alternative to liberal market societies. Instead, he acknowledges the complexity-reducing function of markets in the production and allo cation of goods in modern societies. However, his aim is to develop a political theory that helps establish a political order in which economic exchanges are circumscribed by de mocratic procedures and institutions. His challenge is to analyze the various forms of de mocratic governance that take place within traditional state institutions and in institu tions and processes above and beyond the state. Here the contributions of civil society, social movements, and NGOs are emphasized and considered as a necessary and legiti mate part of democratic will formation and control in society. Habermas (1996) stresses the role of public discussion outside the institutionalized forms of politics in governments or political parties. These discussions in the public sphere are understood to contribute to the increasing involvement of broader sections of society in political debate and help to control and legitimize decisions made by official political bodies. It is important to men tion that Habermas on the one hand hesitates to acknowledge a legitimate political role for corporations in the process of deliberations: “only states can draw on the resources of law and legitimate power” (Habermas 2006: 176). On the other hand, however, he sug gests that corporations—even though they cannot escape the economic logic—can engage in stakeholder dialogues that may help clarify positions and find better solutions to issues of common concern (Habermas 2008a) although participants in such dialogues “act in a wide range of suboptimal circumstances” (Fung 2005: 400). Other authors attempt to de velop these ideas further. In the political sciences students are beginning to discuss the political rights of corporations and the contribution of private business firms to democrat ic politics (Gerencser 2005), and in CMS some scholars have started to conceptualize cor porate responsibility with the help of deliberative theory in order to develop a political conception of business and society (Palazzo and Scherer 2006; Scherer and Palazzo 2007). During the course of the 1990s Habermas analyzed the consequences of globalization and began to look at new forms of legitimate governance and the role of democratic politics in the world society (The Inclusion of the Other 1998, The Postnational Constellation 2001, The Divided West 2006, Between Naturalism and Religion 2008b: 312–352). These issues were also explored by sociologists and political scientists who are sympathetic of the criti cal tradition (e.g., Giddens 1990; Beck 2000; Held 2004). This work is of most direct rele vance to CMS's discussion of globalization issues and the role of multinational corpora Page 15 of 23
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies tions (p. 46) (see, e.g., Banerjee and Linstead 2001; Scherer and Palazzo 2007; Levy 2008). Also, Habermas's analysis of the growing individualism and pluralism of lifestyles and values is of important concern in as much as CMS must establish a basic foundation of critique, despite the “postmodern” conditions we live in. Habermas (1998, 2003) demonstrates how such critique is still possible and attempts to justify a universal ethics, even under the conditions of a growing fragmentation and pluralization of the lifeworld. We cannot go into great detail about the “third generation” of the Frankfurt School whose members are far more concerned with subjectivity and the return of the local and con crete, while still appealing to normative standards as the indispensable reference point for challenging injustices of the social status quo (Anderson 2000). However, we briefly want to refer to the work of Axel Honneth, who is a former research assistant to Haber mas. Honneth is now the director of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and took over Habermas's chair at Frankfurt University after his retirement. In his book The Strug gle for Recognition Honneth (1996) argues that both Habermas and the first generation of the Frankfurt School have neglected the role of conflictual interaction among compet ing social groups as the driving force for human development. They were concerned with the role of macro structures and conflicts within these structures and/or the social and communicative interactions among individuals on the micro level of analysis. Honneth (1996) develops a concept of historical and social development based on the struggle for recognition among competing social groups. Unlike Habermas, he argues for a greater contextualization of the normative foundations of critical theory and suggests that the ul timate point of reference for social critique resides in the deep structures of subjective experience, i.e., lived experiences of disrespect, exclusion, and denigration. In particular, “he looks to the experience of being subjected to domination (especially in the context of labor) to find the normative core for social critique.” (Anderson 2000). Honneth's (1996) concept of CT provides a potentially valuable contribution to CMS and the critical analy sis of organizations as it builds on the contextualized experiences of real people and shares some of the skepticism toward universal criteria and the formal proceduralism as it is formulated even by sympathetic critics of critical theory (for a recent application of Honneth's ideas in CMS, see Fleming and Spicer 2006).
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies GREY, C., and WILLMOTT, H. (eds.) (2005). Critical Management Studies: A Reader. Ox ford: Oxford University Press. GÜNTHER, K. (1993). The Sense of Appropriateness. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. HABERMAS, J. (1966). “Knowledge and Interest,” Inquiry, 9: 285–300. —— (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. —— (1976). “What is Universal Pragmatics?” in J. Habermas (ed.), On the Pragmatics of Communication. Boston, Mass.: MIT Press 2000: 21–102. —— (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. —— (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 2. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. —— (1989). Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. —— (1990a). “Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences,” in J. Habermas (ed.), Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press: 21– 42. —— (1990b). “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in J. Habermas (ed.), Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, Mass.: (p. 49)
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Critical Theory and its Contribution to Critical Management Studies
Notes: (1.) Prof. Dr. Andreas Georg Scherer, IOU/University of Zurich, Universitätstr. 84, CH-8006 Zürich; www.iou.uzh.ch/bwl I would like to thank HughWillmott for his valuable input during the completion of this chapter draft and Ann Nelson (Zurich) for her kind help with the English language. (2.) For CT's history see Held 1980; Wiggershaus 1994; Alvesson and Willmott 1996: 67– 89; Rush 2004. (3.) This section builds upon some arguments that were developed in Scherer 2003.
Andreas Georg Scherer
Andreas Georg Scherer is Professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). His re search interests are in business ethics, critical theory, international management, or ganization theory, and philosophy of science. He has published nine books. His work has appeared in numerous journals and volumes.
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies
Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies Mike Reed The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0003
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to provide an overview of the core ideas associated with ‘critical realism’ (CR) as a distinctive philosophy of social science and their implications for criti cal management studies (CMS). Realizing this objective requires a focus on CMS as a broad-ranging intellectual movement and practice geared to developing a better under standing of the domination structures that characterize advanced capitalist societies and organizations. It also requires an ‘unpacking’ of the distinctive contribution that CR can make to the analysis of contemporary capitalist domination structures and its significance for the kind of political and ethical critique of the institutional status quo that CMS is po tentially equipped to mount and defend. Considered in this way, the article is intended to provide an exposition and assessment of the ‘promise’ that CR offers for CMS as a hetero geneous and pluralistic intellectual movement/practice challenging the orthodox socio-po litical theories, analytical models, and methodological paradigms lying at the center of mainstream business and management studies. Keywords: critical realism, management, capitalist societies, institutional status quo, intellectual movement, man agement studies
Introduction THE aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the core ideas associated with “criti cal realism” (CR) as a distinctive philosophy of social science and their implications for critical management studies (CMS). Realizing this objective, requires a focus on CMS as a broad-ranging intellectual movement and practice geared to developing a better under standing of the domination structures that characterize advanced capitalist societies and organizations (Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2006). It will also require an “unpacking” of the distinctive contribution that CR can make to the analysis of contemporary capitalist domination structures and its significance for the kind of political and ethical critique of the institutional status quo that CMS is potentially equipped to mount and defend.
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies Considered in this way, the chapter is intended to provide an exposition and assessment of the “promise” that CR offers for CMS as a heterogeneous and pluralistic intellectual movement/practice challenging the orthodox socio-political theories, analytical models, and methodological paradigms lying at the center of mainstream business and manage ment studies. Critical realist concepts and models have already made an impact across a broad range of subfields within business and management studies—such as information systems (Mutch 1999; Mingers 2000, 2004), policy evaluation (Pawson and Tilley 1997), manage ment education and learning (Welsh and Dehler 2007), strategic management (Tsang and Kwan 1999; Clark 2000, 2003; Kwan and Tsang 2001), economics (Lawson 1997) and or ganization theory/behavior (Tsoukas 1994; Reed 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005c; Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004; Mutch, Delbridge, and Ventresca 2006). But their wider implications for further development of the CMS research agenda and the form of socio-political critique that this likely to provoke and legitimate have yet to be ad umbrated and evaluated. This chapter is intended to fill this lacuna by providing an expo sition of the “domain assumptions” (Gouldner 1971) that are located at the core of CR and to tease out their significance for undertaking and assessing research on contempo (p. 53)
rary management practice. It will also consider the, often problematic, relationship be tween critical realist-inspired approaches to the study of management and other ap proaches that have been developed within the “broad church” of CMS—such as poststruc turalist approaches to organizational discourse analysis and neo-institutional theory/ analysis. Thus, the emerging points of creative intersection and tension between CR and alternative established intellectual traditions and discourses within CMS will be identi fied and evaluated. The chapter will open with an exposition of the core ideas associated with CR in relation to social ontology and epistemology. It will identify a number of different forms of realism and locate CR as a distinctive meta-theory or philosophy of (social) science developed within the realist intellectual tradition—broadly defined to encompass a range of identifi able realist positions that have historically been taken up within management/organiza tion studies. This will lead on to an assessment of the wider implications of these core ideas for the logic of understanding and explanation that CR legitimates (within social sci ence) and its impact on the form and content of the general research agenda that critical realists promote. The various ways in which this research agenda has been evolving with in contemporary critical management studies will also be reviewed. The concluding sections of the chapter will suggest that future work within the CR tradi tion needs to refocus on the emergence, reproduction, and elaboration of the domination structures through which systems of “position-practices” are generated within advanced capitalist societies. It will also need to address the complex ways in which these are cre atively utilized by collective or “corporate” agents—particularly strategic elites—to pro tect and advance their shared interests and values. Such an analytical refocusing follows Weber's lead of analyzing domination structures and their implications for the constitu
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies tion and powers of “ruling minorities in the top command situations of political, economic and other hierarchies” (Scott 2001: 25). In this way, it is argued, CR provides a coherent set of sensitizing concepts and ex planatory models that better equip us to understand “domination” (as a distinctive form of power) relationally—that is, as an institutionalized structure of power, embodying cer tain causal mechanisms which, in combination, have the inherent capacity to shape the way the social world is organized. Considered in this way, domination structures contain the “real underlying relations that structure behavioural interaction” (Marsden 2005: 146). Whether or not this potential capacity or power is exercised, in what specific ways and with what particular consequences, very much depends on the political skill demon strated by ruling minorities located in positions of command and control within a range of domination structures and the responses that this elicits from lower level elite groups and those formally excluded from participation within systems of ruling (Scott 2008). In this respect, CR-based analysis infers a symbiotic relationship between elite agency and domi nation structures, such that the latter provides the core material conditions and cultural resources from which the former emerges. How these material conditions and cultural re sources are “worked on” by elite groups located at various levels within a pre-existing (p. 54)
domination structure—whether or not they are working to preserve or change that latter —is very much dependent on the quality and effectiveness of the political skill and tech nique that they exhibit. As Wright Mills (1959: 23–4, emphasis in original) argues: the power of decision-makers is first of all limited by the level of technique, by the means of power and violence and organization that prevail in a given society … the means of oppression and exploitation, of violence and destruction, as well as the means of production and reconstruction, have been progressively enlarged and increasingly centralized … modern elites may smash one structure and set up another in which they enact quite different roles.
Varieties of Realism It is possible to identify three distinctive forms of realism that have been highly influen tial in social science and management studies for some considerable time. Firstly, we can focus upon scientific realism and its problematic philosophical association with positivist epistemology and methodology (Boal, Hunt, and Jaros 2003; McKelvey 2003). Secondly, it is possible to document a form of theoretical realism that is committed to the formulation of high level theoretical propositions detailing universal features of social reality that can be deductively derived from a relatively small body of core “behavioural axioms” (Sommers 1998). Finally, we can look at critical realism and its anchoring in a re lational ontology and a retroductive methodology (Bhaskar 1978, 1986; Blaikie 2000). Scientific and theoretical realism accept some, but not all, of the basic postulates of positivism—in that they both remain committed to a conception of social science as a quasi-natural science geared to the formulation and verification of predictive theory that (p. 55)
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies has, potentially at least, universal validity and applicability as encapsulated in covering laws. Critical realism, however, defines itself as an anti-positivistic philosophy of (social) science grounded in what scientists actually do rather than what they are supposed to do under the extremely idealized and abstracted models of “doing science” prescribed by “textbook positivism” (Bhaskar 1978; Pawsonand Tilley 1997: 57–63). It generates an inte grated conception of social ontology, causality, explanation and critique that are funda mentally at odds with positivism's fundamental philosophical, theoretical and method ological postulates. Scientific realism is a distinctive body of philosophical presuppositions that have in formed the theory and practice of “management and organization science” as it has been developed and applied, particularly in the USA, since the early decades of the twentieth century (McKelvey 1997). It recognizes that social phenomena are highly complex, sub ject to multiple, interacting causation, and that scientific explanations of such complex causation will require reference to unobservable factors or mechanisms that are not di rectly accessible through sense-experience (Boal, Hunt, and Jaros 2003: 86–90). This final characteristic violates the positivist/empiricist axiom that (scientific) theories can only be “scientific” if they are restricted to “observables”—that is, empirical entities and regulari ties that can be directly observed or indirectly inferred from theoretical statements con taining verifiable knowledge of the former. However, scientific realism remains commit ted to the core presupposition that scientific theories are the products of a process of sci entific research that seeks to explain, and hence predict, the existence and operation of the entities postulated by the theories through public tests that consistently demonstrate the empirical outcomes that the theories anticipate. In this respect, scientific realism “up holds objective measurement, replication, prediction, generalization, falsifiability, and, fi nally, self-correction—all traditional trademarks of good science” (Boal, Hunt, and Jaros 2003: 91). Positivism adapts a “minimal realism” (Manicas 1987, 1998, 2006) which ar gues that the world consists of entities that exist independently of our knowledge of them. But it insists that theoretical explanations—and hence predictions—of social phe nomena must contain only empirical observables or theoretical statements that can be di rectly or indirectly inferred from empirical regularities. Theoretical realism is committed to the view that science is about the generation and vali dation of general theories of real entities and processes that are derived from a complex combination of deductive logic and empirical verification that facilitate predictive ac counts of such phenomena (Sommers 1998). Consequently, theoretical realism assigns priority to the derivation of a set of core theoretical (p. 56) assumptions about the way in which certain entities or mechanisms are necessarily constituted and function that can only be disconfirmed through limited experiments in empirical testing. In this respect, scientific theories are seen to consist of a core set of ontological axioms about unobserv able entities and mechanisms that facilitate the production of more limited empirical hy potheses open to selective measurement and testing. The results of the latter are then se lectively “fed back” into the theory's “hard core” of ontological axioms which, in them
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies selves, remain largely beyond the reach of, relatively low-level, observational analysis and assessment. Critical realism (CR) argues that scientific understanding and explanation is concerned with providing accounts of how and why things happen in the way that they do, rather than in other ways. These accounts must be established and supported through the map ping of complex sequences of causal chains and the underlying, unobservable mecha nisms that generated them. In this way, CR is based on a “depth-ontology” that presup poses the existence and causal powers or potentialities of underlying structures and rela tions that shape surface level events and outcomes. Consequently, it makes certain key assumptions about how the world must be—that is, what objects or entities it contains, how they are constituted, and how their interrelations generate other objects or entities— for scientific research and understanding to be possible. CR also suggests that the logic and form of scientific explanation is entirely dependent on the ontological postulates on which it is based—that is, on the presumed character, con stitution, and configuration of the entities whose existence the theory articulates and le gitimates. In turn, this shifts the focus of scientific research and explanation away from hypothesis testing and deductively derived general theory and towards particular ex planatory problems and paradoxes as they emerge from the ongoing process and practice of “doing science.” This, more practice-based and experimental, in the broadest sense of the term, approach towards theory generation and “testing” gives much greater empha sis to a relational conception of causality in which causal mechanisms are seen to operate in a highly contingent, contextualized, and non-deterministic manner (Manicas 2006). Thus, CR tends to stress the vital importance of analytically structured narratives that identify certain causal sequences or relational pathways rather than others and uses these to construct and defend explanations of how and why things happen in the way that they do rather than in other ways due to the causal powers inherent in underlying mecha nisms. By working its way back from contemporary structural configurations to the underlying generative mechanisms that produced them, CR is committed to a “retroductive method ology”—that is, to a form of description and analysis, involving theoretical abstraction and model-building, geared to understanding and explaining concrete outcomes by recon structing the complex interplay between conditions (generative mechanisms) and con texts (structural and material (p. 57) “inheritances”) through which they emerge and be come the entities that they become over time. This methodological commitment to “retro duction” entails a rejection of the logical symmetry between explanation and prediction (assumed in both scientific and theoretical realism) in that it focuses on the existence and operation of particular causal mechanisms in specific contexts that are inherently open and dynamic. It also entails a rejection of deterministic and reductionist forms of explana tion that posit closed systems within which one or more factors, dimensions or variables— located at whatever ontological level—are deemed to necessarily preprogram or predeter mine outcomes at another ontological level (Sayer 2000: 93–102; Reed 2003).
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies Considered in these respects, what makes CR “critical” is, as Sayer (2000) contends, its commitment to an “emancipatory intent” in which social scientific research and analysis is seen to be, logically and necessarily, geared to identifying and critiquing mistaken or false beliefs and their impact on social practices and structures. In this way, the accounts that critical realist social scientific practice generates can provide forms of understand ing and explanation through which intellectual and institutional change, questioning and even resisting the hold that false belief has over us, becomes possible. Within management/organization studies, each of these variants of realism has its respec tive theoretical exemplars. Population-ecology research and theorizing can be seen as an exemplar of scientific realism to the extent that it focuses on the underlying adaptive and selective mechanisms that drive demographic changes in large populations of organiza tions by seeking to map general empirical regularities in rates of organizational founding, change and failure and to specify their relation to configurations of formal organizational characteristics (Baum and Shipilov 2006). Rational choice theory can be taken as a sub stantive theoretical expression of theoretical realism in that it follows the deductive ex planatory logic and form favoured by the latter (Sommers 1998). It also accounts for col lective behavior patterns in terms of underlying behavioural axioms that are derived from universalistic assumptions about individual utility maximization and intentionality-driven rational self-interest supported by highly controlled experiments in hypothesis testing. Fi nally, neo-Weberian control theory can be interpreted as one substantive theoretical mani festation of critical realism “in action”; this is so to the extent that neo-Weberian control theory accounts for complex movements in organizational control logics and regimes as the outcomes of changes in domination structures and their innate capacity, as underly ing causal mechanisms, to generate dynamic tensions and contradictions within the for mer. Having philosophically contextualized critical realism (CR) in relation to other forms of realist thinking and analysis, the chapter will move on to provide a more detailed and indepth appreciation of its core domain assumptions and their implications for research within the critical management studies tradition.
(p. 58)
On CR
Gouldner (1971) argues that “domain assumptions” are tacitly accepted, but strongly held, collective beliefs of social scientists concerning the nature (or “domains”) of the phenomena they study and the intellectual tools most appropriate to the conduct of that study. These sets of philosophical and theoretical assumptions are vital to our under standing and evaluation of the descriptions and explanations that social scientists proffer of the phenomena that interest them. This is so to the extent that they not only indelibly shape the formal structure and technical content of substantive theory but that they also mediate between the knowledge production processes that the former legitimate and the wider socio-political and cultural context in which this “knowledge work” is done. Consid ered in this way, Gouldner maintains, a focus on the domain assumptions that underpin Page 6 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies and sustain formally articulated explanatory theory sensitizes us to the fact that the process and outcome of “theory work” are necessarily embedded in and pervaded by his tory and society. While the former can, and must, attain a significant degree of material independence and intellectual autonomy from the latter—if it is to stand any chance of “doing its job” of offering rigorous and challenging accounts of why things are the way they are and not any other way—it is always open to the influence of a dynamic socio-his torical context that prevents established philosophical and theoretical positions ossifying into petrified intellectual orthodoxies. As a philosophy of social science, the core domain assumptions of CR offer a series of fun damental challenges to both orthodox and heterodox philosophical positions and theoreti cal traditions within management studies. This is the case in relation to three major ar eas: first, in CR's philosophical critique of the fundamental ontological assumptions on which both orthodoxy and heterodoxy have traded; second, in relation to the reformula tion of the model of understanding and explanation that this critique has encouraged and the conceptual and methodological tools thought most appropriate to its application; third, in relation to the rethinking that CR-driven critique and reformulation has generat ed over the complex relationship between values and explanation within the field. CR challenges the “ontological determinism” of orthodox positivism/functionalism and the “ontological conflationism” of heterodox constructivism/interpretivism (Archer 1995, 2000, 2003) by postulating a stratified social ontology in which the concept of “emer gence” plays a central explanatory role (Sayer 2000; Danermark et al. 2002; Fleetwood 2004; Reed 2005c, 2008). Positivism/functionalism assumes that “organization” has an on tological identity and status—that is, as a social entity that evolves independently of the social relations and practices through which it was originally generated—which gives it the innate power or capacity to determine autonomously its structural form and opera tional content (Blau 1968, 1974: Donaldson 1985, 1996). Constructivism/interpretivism makes the (p. 59) diametrically opposed ontological domain assumptions about “organiza tion”; that is, it treats the latter as a configuration of social practices into which its struc tural properties and institutional logic can simply be collapsed without any ontological or explanatory loss. CR rejects both of these positions and instead advocates a stratified or relational ontology (that is, “ontological dualism” Reed 1997) in which “organization” is defined as a structure of position-practices and the relations between them as they devel op over time and place. In this respect, CR argues for an ontological conception of “orga nization” as a social structure with innate causal powers or tendencies that can only be creatively activated and mobilized by corporate agents in pursuit of their collective inter ests and values. It is this complex interplay between “structure” and “agency” over time and place (Reed 2003, 2005c) that generates the potentially for dynamic change and inno vation in the pre-existing institutional architecture that configures the institutional land scape in which agents are temporally and spatially embedded. But, as a social structure, “organization” is held to exist independently of whether or not those corporate agents oc cupying the configuration of position-practices that the latter makes available “activate”
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies the potential powers and tendencies inhering within that configuration in particular so cio-historical situations. The extent to which, and specific ways in which, this creative potential—to reproduce, elaborate, and transform “organization” through “organizing”—is realized is dependent on the complex interaction between entities located at different levels of an ontologically stratified social reality and the “emergent phenomena” that it generates. Critical realists invest a considerable amount of “ontological stock” in the concept of emergence insofar as it helps them to distinguish between different strata of social reality and the new and innovative potentialities that emerge from the interplay and combination between mecha nisms located within these different strata. In this respect, critical realists are committed to a stratified social ontology consisting of different levels or domains of material and symbolic entities, interconnected through complex processes and relations that cannot be reduced to or collapsed into each other. Thus, the standard threefold CR distinction be tween “experience” (“the empirical”), “events” (“the actual”), and “structures and powers of objects” (“the real”) and the emphasis on the complex ways in which the distinctive causal properties, powers, and potentials of social phenomena, such as “organization”, emerge from the relational combinations between mechanisms operating at each of these levels. This stratified social ontology directs critical realist researchers towards an ex planatory focus on the real, underlying and unobservable mechanisms that generate ob servable phenomena at the level of the actual and the empirical. CR maintains that these distinctive ontological levels are stratified such that the causal properties and powers—that is, their innate potential or capacity to “make things hap pen”—of mechanisms located at the level of “the real” make certain events and experi ences possible at the level of “the actual” and “the empirical”. But whether or not the novel and innovative potential inherent in the complex interplay (p. 60) between different structures and mechanisms and different levels of a stratified social reality actually emerges, can only be determined on a case-by-case basis that combines elements of his torical, structural, and discursive analysis (Blaikie 2000; Sayer 2000; Danermark et al. 2002; Stones 2005; Fairclough 2005; Manicas 2006). Only in this way can we hope to be in a position to develop a better understanding of the complex ways in which different structures or mechanisms interact in specific socio-historical contexts to generate one set of outcomes rather than any other. As Archer (1998) reflects, generative mechanisms may be “transfactual”—that is, they possess relatively enduring properties and powers that ex ist whether or not they are actualized at the level of social events and the multifarious ways in which these are experienced and imbued with shared, collective meanings by the social actors who participate in them (Fleetwood 2004)—but their effects and conse quences are only displayed within specific historical situations and temporal contexts. This commitment to a distinctive “ontological dualism” also legitimates a distinctive mod el and logic of social explanation within CR. The latter promulgates a “mechanism-based” explanatory logic that rejects the “successionist” or “constant conjunction” view of
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies causality (Sayer 2000) inherent in positivism/functionalism and the “anti-causality” under lying the “process-based” explanatory logic legitimated by constructivism/interpretivism. Positivist/functionalist orthodoxy defines causality in terms of the regular succession of events, concatenated in time and space, which can be subsumed under, and hence ex plained and predicted by, universal covering laws. This view tends to justify a linear view of causality in which cause and effect relations are necessarily embedded in temporal se quences that always run from the past to the present and from the present to the future. In turn, this legitimates a “covering law” model of explanation in which repeated patterns of empirical regularity are explained through a combination of deductive reasoning and hypothesis testing. Social constructivism, and the forms of substantive social theorizing that it promotes (Fleetwood 2004; Reed 2005c, 2008), abnegates any form of causal ex planation and, in its place, advocates the interpretive understanding and reconstruction of meaningful social interaction through detailed engagement with everyday social processes and practices as its primary focus. Again, CR plots a “middle way” through both of the above positions in that it promotes a conception of causal analysis and explanation geared to the mapping and elucidation of the sequences of causal mechanisms that generate the objects, events, and outcomes that critical realist researchers are seeking to account for. As Sayer (2000: 16–17) also notes, this mechanism-based conception of causal explanation predisposes CR researchers to wards “counterfactual”, rather than “associational”, forms of reasoning in which account ing for empirical regularities in terms of patterns of regular succession between events is superseded by an explanatory logic that postulates alternative outcomes to those that are actually encountered and experienced by social actors. This counterfactual mode of think ing and analysis (p. 61) is based on the premise that “social actors may have little or no awareness of the mechanisms, and, in particular, the structures, which are involved in the production of the regularities in their social activities” (Blaikie 2000: 111). Thus, it rejects the ontological axiom underpinning social constructivism which insists that actors' mean ings and knowledge exhausts the explanatory concern and potential of social scientific understanding. Consequently, identifying generative mechanisms and the complex ways in which they operate in combination to produce outcomes requires a form of understand ing and explanation that is highly sensitive to patterns of causal sequences emerging at multiple level of analysis and triggered under variable contextual conditions within open systems (Sibeon 2004). An initial appreciation of these patterns may be gleaned from an in-depth understating of how participants in the situation read things. However, this ethnographic work—focused on “the situational logic of those causal mechanisms of structures constraining and enabling social action” (Marsden 2005: 157)—will only be the starting point for more abstract, theoretically-informed analysis focused on the interplay between configurations of generative mechanisms and how they became interconnected in ways that produced the outcomes that the researcher has focused on; that is, the “in stitutional logic” shaping the complex interplay between the social structures that pro duced such outcomes (Porter 2002).
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies Finally, this leads us to the issue of the implications of CR for “normative theory” develop ment and application in social science in general and management studies in particular. Critical realists maintain that explanatory critique and normative critique are necessarily, rather than contingently, related to each other; that is, there is an internal, logical link be tween them such that evaluation is intrinsic to explanation (Collier 1998; Sayer 2000; Danermark et al. 2002). Once we have explained something, in critical realist terms, then that explanation will—in and for itself—force us to ask, and to answer, questions as to why things are the way they are and how they differentially benefit/disadvantage certain groups rather than others. By their very nature, CR-based analysis and explanations will necessarily be focused on the underlying power mechanisms and control relations that generate and sustain institutional structures perpetuating inequality and injustice. The more detailed implications of this general position—that is, as whether or not critical real ist analysis must, necessarily and universally, be committed to (at a minimum) the promise and promotion of human emancipation or whether a more incremental, and cog nitively-based rather than ethically-based, approach to progressive social change is both more feasible and “realistic”—is still the subject of considerable internal debate within the critical realist community (Bhaskar 1998; Lacey 1998; Sayer 2000). Nonetheless, most, if not all, critical realists would subscribe to Sayer's dictum (2000: 161) that “any criticism presupposes a better way of life.” But how this is to be translated into appropri ate policy and practice-related interventions in our lived social reality that deliver a “bet ter way of life” is a moot point, given “that social change is inherently contradictory and dilemmatic and that while those (p. 62) contradictions and dilemmas continually mutate there is no sign of any reduction in their number or severity” (Sayer 2000: 169). This is not a recipe for ethical despair and political paralysis but rather a careful and cautious approach to the use of social scientific knowledge to facilitate social, and hence norma tive, change.
CR in CMS CMS is most appropriately regarded as a broad-ranging and relatively inclusive intellec tual movement containing “a heterogeneous body of work, a body that shares some com mon themes but is neither internally consistent nor sharply differentiable from more mainstream analysis (Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2006: 27).” These common themes are focused around a better understanding of the contemporary power structures through which strategic economic, political, and cultural elites sustain their domination and con trol allied to “a deep scepticism regarding the moral defensibility and the social and eco logical sustainability of prevailing conceptions and forms of management and organization” (Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2006: 3). More specifically, Adler, Forbes, and Willmott (2006: 7–11) identify a number of overlapping themes and interests—such as commitment to a broadly “progressive/social democratic” political agenda, a sustained fo cus on striving to elucidate and transform the basic power structures through which con temporary capitalism (in any of its various ideological manifestations and institutional forms) maintains itself, drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources and traditions Page 10 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies to achieve this explanatory/emancipatory objective, and an emerging concern to “radical ize” existing theoretical approaches, such as neo-institutionalism. This leads Adler, Forbes, and Willmott (2006: 24–7) to a consideration of research prac tice within the CMS community and the insights and benefits that have been realized from this activity. They suggest that this has been most evident in the domain of research in the field of work organization but other impacts can be detected in relation to the de velopment of more critical approaches to management education and learning and to emerging practical critiques of established corporate power structures and the everyday management practices that they legitimate and promote. They conclude with a somewhat plaintive assessment of the longer-term prospects for CMS in which they applaud the con temporary intellectual vitality of the latter but bemoan its relative lack of engagement with and impact upon the emerging public policy agenda in which the deleterious longterm effects of dominant discursive/cultural, economic, and political power structures are the major themes. Adler, Forbes, and Willmott's (2006) evaluation of the actual, as opposed to potential, con tribution that CR might make to CMS is also rather restrained. It (p. 63) makes a point of identifying the various ways in which the former's philosophical and theoretical enthusi asm for “social structures that have causal powers from which observable events emerge” (2006: 24) may present certain difficulties for other members of the “CMS fami ly.” Critical realists' unreconstructed enthusiasm for causally efficacious structural mech anisms, they argue, offends certain social constructionist and poststructuralist sensibili ties relating to the possibility of the reemergence of a form of “scientific authoritarian ism” and “structural determinism” in management studies (also see Contu and Willmott 2005; and Reed 2005a). This fear may seem exaggerated when we remember that the un derlying explanatory and political focus for the wide range of philosophical and theoreti cal traditions participating within the “broad church” of CMS are those very “basic power structures” through which contemporary capitalist elites protect themselves and their negative long-run impact on socio-economic equality and effective political democracy. How can we hope to question or oppose (that is, subvert) “the tendency for social rela tions to be taken for granted or naturalized” (Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2006: 9) unless we equip ourselves with the intellectual tools required to understand and explain the un derlying causal mechanisms (that is, social structures) that generate and sustain such a powerful and pervasive naturalizing/normalizing tendency? As we have noted earlier, CR has already made a number of distinctive contributions to CMS but, as will be subsequently argued, it has the potential to offer a great deal more than has already been delivered. In its role as “philosophical under-labourer” (Welsh and Dehler 2007), CR has provided a depth-ontology, an explanatory logic, and a conception of critique that have been extensively drawn on by management theorists and researchers operating within the broad intellectual parameters of CMS. In general terms, this has led to a sustained analytical focus on underlying shifts in the core domination structures of contemporary capitalist systems that have generated a complex series of interconnected material, ideological, and political transformations that seem to undermine the estab Page 11 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies lished institutional logics and forms through which management research and education has been undertaken in the OECD countries (Clegg and Palmer 1996; French and Grey 1996; Jones and OʼDoherty 2005; Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007; Khurana 2007; Welsh and Dehler 2007). More specifically, three distinctive streams of research and analysis have been developed within the critical realist community over the last decade or so that have expanded its in tellectual reach and influence within CMS (Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Clark 2000, 2003; Fairclough 2003, 2005; Reed 2003, 2005c, 2008; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004; Mutch, Delbridge and Ventresca 2006). First, an ethnographic stream of research, mobi lizing CR-based ontology, explanation, and critique in order to develop in-depth under standing of the micro-political power relations and processes that act as generative mech anisms in particular organizational settings and their embedding within wider institution al orders (p. 64) (Porter 1993; Delbridge 1998, 2004; Kennedy and Kennedy 2004; Taylor and Bain 2004). Secondly, a stream of research combining historical, comparative and dis cursive forms of analysis that has been focussed on the evolving corporate strategies of multinational businesses, operating within globalized capitalist political economies, and their impact on enterprise and workplace level control regimes (Whitley 1999; Clark 2000; Elger and Smith 2005). Thirdly, a stream of research that has been primarily con cerned with understanding the complex and shifting organizational discourses and ideolo gies through which contemporary institutional restructuring within public sector fields and organizations has been interpreted, mediated, and legitimated (Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer 2002; Fairclough 2003, 2005; Hesketh and Fleetwood 2006; Deem, Hillyard, and Reed 2007). Consequently, CR-based research on organizational discourse has been primarily concerned with the “performative impact” of discursive practices and texts on the internal deliberations of corporate agents—such as economic and political elites—and their implications for the strategic positioning and interventions that the latter are able to engineer (Reed 1998, 2004). In this respect, CR is primarily interested in “what discourse does” and “how it does it” and “why does it that way rather than another way”. As Jones puts it (2004), CR-based critical discourse analysis focuses on the complex ways in which discursive practices, texts and forms—particularly those produced by strategically locat ed economic, political and cultural elites—operate as socio-material and ideational mech anisms that embed, reproduce, and transform institutional hegemony and the domination structures that support and sustain it. Taken as a complete package, these three interconnected streams of CR-based research have offered analyses of changing domination structures and their implications for emerging institutional logics and organizational control regimes that have effectively combined intensive (in-depth, case specific) and extensive (historical and comparative) modes of understanding and explanation. But we need to look at how they might be fur ther developed in future CR-based management research and analysis and how these de velopments may, in turn, impact on CMS.
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies
Future Developments in CR Further development of the CR-based explanatory focus on the “emergent dynamics” of domination structures (that is, institutionalized power relations) and their impact on evolving intermediate systems of “position-practices” (Parker 2000) will require a deft combination of historical, structural and discursive research to enable critical realist re searchers to construct “analytical histories of emergence, of why it is so and not otherwise” (Archer 1998: 196). The kind of research questions (p. 65) that are likely to crystallize around this sustained research focus on the “emergent dynamics” of domina tion structures revolve around the complex interplay, over time and place, between preexisting structural constraint and evolving collective agency as it shapes and reshapes the open systems of “position-practices” in and through which corporate agents pursue their shared interests and values. More precisely, the kind of research questions that are likely to emerge from this focus are: (1) How are corporate agents—that is collective actors with the organizational ca pacity to mount strategic mobility projects (Archer 2000, 2003)—constituted (by their “structural inheritance” from pre-existing domination structures) and how does their structural and discursive positioning shape their emerging socio-political strategies and tactics? (2) What room for manoeuvre do corporate agents have and with what skill and dex terity do they use it to advance their priorities in interaction with other corporate agents as they strive to develop and sustain their mobility projects (Clark 2000)? (3) Why are certain socio-political strategies and tactics more successful than others in generating the kind of structural conditions and cultural contexts that are more supportive of the priorities of certain corporate agents rather than others (Stones 2005)? (4) Where are the most likely sources of questioning of and challenges to the institu tional status quo—such as those currently emanating from diverse and dynamic polit ical, ecological and religious social movements (Casey 2002)—to come from and what opportunities do they have of changing the established order to their advantage? (5) Where are the most powerful defenders of the institutional status quo and the es tablished domination structures and mechanisms underpinning it likely to be located and what kind of political strategies and tactics are they likely to pursue in their de fence of any emerging challenge to their position? CR-inspired analysis that attempts to develop this sort of research agenda for CMS is going to have to undertake a number of interlocking analytical and empirical innovations. Firstly, it is go ing to need a much better understanding of the dynamics of elite formation and power emerging under the constraints and capacities inherent in pre-existing domination structures (Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006). Secondly, it requires a more sophisticated appreciation of politi cal and cultural struggle within and between elite groups located at different organizational lev els—“strategic,” “intermediate,” and “local”- within the overall domination structure and of the generative mechanisms operative at each of these levels, as well as of the forms and degree of coordination between the latter (Scott 2001, 2006; Stewart 2001; Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006; Reed 2008). Thirdly, it will demand deeper insight into the modes of “internal” dis Page 13 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies cursive deliberation and calculation—that is, of “corporate reflexivity” (Archer 2003)—which elite groups (p. 66) exhibit as they attempt to come to terms with and exert effective control over collective struggles crystallizing around established domination structures and their impact on the allocation and authorization of both material and symbolic rewards. Fourthly, this sus tained analytical and empirical focus on elite formation, reproduction, elaboration, and transfor mation must be complemented by an assessment of actual and potential “oppositional corporate agents”—both in relation to the causal powers that they are able to generate under the patterns of constraints and opportunities imposed by extant domination structures and the impact of these generative mechanisms on the latter (Tilley 2005).
Thus, analysis of the mobility projects mounted by privileged corporate agents located at the strategic apex of a domination structure need to be complemented by analysis of those mobility projects enacted by corporate agents relatively disadvantaged by estab lished power relations and consequently excluded from effective participation in political life. Finally, much of the analysis that is focused around this emerging CR research agen da and its constituent elements will necessarily be concerned with the dynamic interplay between “structural” and “strategic” forms of power and the longer-term institutional consequences flowing from the generative mechanisms that emerge from it (Scott 2001; Sibeon 2004; Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006). While the analysis of “structural power” is centered upon institutionalized patterns of power relations that are relatively stable, resilient, and resistant to change, a focus on “strategic power” leads to a much greater interest in the inherently creative, dynamic, and fluid aspects of power practices and processes. But it is out of the complex interplay between them that emerging ten sions, and hence possibilities for change, are generated and get carried forward by new causal mechanisms that have the innate potential to transform the conditions under which corporate agents operate. Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips (2006: 341–362) and Savage and Williams (2008: 1–24) have recently suggested that the global domination structures supporting contemporary capitalism, and the various economic and political systems through which capital accumu lation and corporate profitability are sustained, are highly resilient and resistant to change. While the stratified and globalized elite network structures emerging out of this “structure in dominancy” are inherently dynamic and unstable in relation to positional movement and personnel turnover, the underlying power relations and mechanisms that they reproduce and legitimate remain in place, relatively untouched and unreformed. Elite groups located at the strategic apex of the domination structure remain socially and spatially remote from intermediate and local elites (Scott 2001, 2008), and even more so in relation to those corporate groups effectively excluded from any kind of participation within, and hence influence upon, strategic policy formulation and implementation. But they also indicate that these, relatively resilient and obdurate, mechanisms of elite repro duction and mobilization are being forced to respond to economic, social, political, and cultural change within the wider global environment that may be (p. 67) generating more complex—that is, “hybridized”—forms of power relations at intermediate and lower levels of the domination structure (Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006: 320–340). Thus, Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips (2006) point to the emergence of “polyarchic” political forms that leave the oligarchic domination structures controlled by strategic elites rela Page 14 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies tively untouched but that also make more social and organizational space available for a more pluralistic network of coalitions and groupings to emerge at the intermediate and local levels of political governance. As a result, the conduct of government becomes more complex, ambiguous and uncertain as strategic elites are forced to negotiate and bargain with intermediate and lower level elites—usually through more developed and elongated policy networks—that are much closer to the micro-level political realities that shape ac tual policy delivery and the “coal face” experiences that it entails (Clarke et al. 2007) Whatever the institutional pattern and logic of the emergent political formations taking shape within particular contemporary systems of domination and control and the specific substantive consequences that they entail—and a mounting body of evidence seems to suggest the more widespread adoption of hybridized forms combining continuing elite dominance with a limited degree of decentralized control made available at the interme diate and local levels (Harrison 1997; Castells 2000; Jessop 2002; Harvey 2003; Reed 2005b)—CR seems well placed to help better equip researchers operating within the broad church of CMS to advance their understanding of these outcomes and the genera tive mechanisms that produced them. CR provides CMS with a social ontology, a concep tual language, and an explanatory model that helps the latter acquire the philosophical foundations, analytical tools, and theoretical logic necessary to explore the dynamic structures and contours of power emerging in contemporary capitalism. By providing the intellectual raw materials through which analytical narratives of emergence—that com bine sociological analysis of general causal mechanisms with historical analysis of partic ular causal sequences (Manicas 2006)—can be constructed and evaluated, CR can ensure that we (as members of the CMS community) may be better placed to develop innovative theoretical ways for accounting for the simultaneous resilience and fluidity of contempo rary power relations and the underlying causal mechanisms through which they are re produced, elaborated, and transformed.
Discussion and Conclusion CR is a philosophy of (social) science which insists that the central explanatory focus for a critical management studies ought to be the constitution, powers and (p. 68) effects of “corporate agents” acting under conditions inherited from the past but differentially equipped to turn them creatively to their advantage in struggles with other “corporate agents”. As Archer (2000: 265–266) maintains, corporate agents have the capacity—that is, the power—to be “strategically involved in the modelling or remodelling of structure or culture … corporate agency has powers proper to itself.” If we want to understand and explain why and how the core domination structures underpinning contemporary capital ism are the way they are and exert the effects that they do, then we must equip ourselves to appreciate the powers that various corporate agents—located and operating within dif ferent levels of the various institutional hierarchies that these domination structures re produce— possess and to assess the impact of their powers, whether exercised or unexer cised, on our lives. Thus, as Whitley (2003: 494–495) puts it:
Page 15 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies These powers enable agents to struggle in specific ways to gain autonomy and in fluence, as the result of which some features of the [institutional] environments may change—though in path-dependent ways. Thus, institutions and structures neither impose their logics and standards on all agents and actors mechanically and isomorphically but, equally, nor are those agents themselves discrete and ex ternal entities endowed with universal asocial preferences and powers. Rather, their vested interests, learned identities, and capabilities result from their posi tions in the social structure and the associated institutions that differentially de velop particular powers and make available particular social roles. The formation of corporate agents of different kinds pursuing distinctive interests therefore re flects the nature of the institutional stratification systems and the distribution of cultural resources for articulating agents' social interests and organizing around these. As these vary, so does the nature of corporate agents, including firms, their powers and objectives. This would suggest the need for a much more sustained, but not exclusive, explanatory focus on the powers of strategic elite groups operating within the various interlocking domination struc tures—economic, political, social, cultural—constitutive of contemporary capitalism and their in terplay with the powers of intermediate and lower level elites. As Scott (2006: 129, emphasis added) has argued, “domination is power that is structured into stable and enduring structures … it is the means through which elites are formed as dominant groups”. There are established research areas and traditions within CMS that already engage with these issues (Hirst and Thompson 1996; Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997; Whitley 1999, 2003; Elger and Smith 2005) and there is a growing body of research on the formation, reproduction, and elaboration of strategic capitalist elite structures and the mechanisms that they potentially make available to corporate groups located at this level (Useem 1984; Scott 1996; Sklair 2001; Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006). But, as Pettigrew (1992), Thompson (2003), and Elger and Smith (2005) have ar gued, much more detailed research attention needs to be given to how capitalist corporate elites actually mobilize and utilize these powers/mechanisms and the impact of their mobilization strategies and implementation tactics on emerging governance structures, employment systems and work organization. CR-inspired research on the (p. 69) dynamics of elite power and their im plications for the reproduction, elaboration, and transformation of contemporary economic, po litical, and cultural domination structures can provide the intellectual basis for a powerful cri tique of the social costs that such structures unavoidably entail. It can also provide some indica tions as to how such structures might be reformed and changed for the benefit of those subordi nate groups that are materially and socially disadvantaged by their existence and operation.
Nevertheless, some within the CMS community may be reluctant to follow such an agen da—partly because of its grounding in a realist philosophy of social science that seems to presage the return of a diluted scientific authoritarianism that had been supposedly ex punged due to the eventual collapse of positivist orthodoxy and partly because of its puta tive explanatory flirtation with a form of theoretical reification and structural determin ism (Contu and Willmott 2005). They may also be very reluctant to accept some of the fundamental philosophical tenets on which CR is premised—in particular, the core CR be lief concerning the ontological priority to be attached to complex combinations of causal mechanisms that play a vital role in generating and sustaining the events and experi ences around which social actors invest their lives and actions with shared meanings and Page 16 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies collective values (Baert 1998, 2005). Management and organization researchers who draw extensively on critical realist thinking may need to guard against an overemphasis on structurally-based forms of explanation. But they remain convinced that the consider ably enhanced explanatory power that critical realist principles and modes of analysis makes available to them in their efforts to construct and test “analytical narratives of emergence” are vitally necessary to our understanding of the dynamics of domination in contemporary capitalism. An acceptance of the social ontology that CR presupposes and its radical implications for the logic of social explanation and practice of social research does not entail embracing an underlying “direction of intellectual travel” in which scientism and determinism are unavoidable, if not desirable, terminal destinations. Such an acceptance does entail a more serious and sustained engagement with a conception of organizations as complex combinations of social structures and corporate agents embodying certain generative mechanisms that potentially empowers them to operate in particular ways with specific consequences in identifiable temporal and spatial contexts. Whether or not these poten tial powers are mobilized, and with what consequences for the ongoing structuration of social interaction and relations, is entirely dependent on the multifarious ways in which corporate agents creatively pursue their collective interests under the constraints and op portunities that such structural contexts present to them. It is this dynamic interplay be tween “structure” and “agency” that lies at the very intellectual core of critical realism's explanatory quest. The domination structures in which corporate agents are necessarily embedded entail re sources, capabilities, and relations that are enduring, resilient, and resistant to change in ways that necessarily constrain and limit the intervention options (p. 70) available those agents. But they also contain dynamic, unstable, and contradictory tendencies that corpo rate agents, with the right kind of strategies, tactics, and skills, can, and do, take advan tage of to further their collective interests in power struggles with other corporate agents. This sort of explanatory focus suggests that: the proper domain of study for students of the interplay between structure and agency is what [is called] the intermediate temporality of historical processes. This is a scale of temporality within which one could specify both relations be tween specific events and agency, and relations between events themselves … It simply will not be possible to investigate the interplay of structure and agency in any meaningful sense without a sufficiently discriminating, austerely delimiting, focus of attention on a restricted number of germane points on the historical and geographical landscape. (Stones 2005: 81–2) If we accept Stones's argument that critical realist explanation must be focused on the construc tion of “analytical narratives of emergence in the intermediate temporality of historical process es,” then the incipient fears that some commentators within the CMS community have ex pressed over the return of a, more seductive but nonetheless pernicious, form of scientific au thoritarianism and theoretical determinism ought to be dispelled. The explanatory focus and re search agenda that CR articulates and legitimates can only be developed and pursued from an Page 17 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies initial philosophical starting point in which scientism and determinism are firmly and consistent ly rejected. Rather than diluting, or even obliterating, the explanatory focus on “agency,” CR gives overriding emphasis to the inherently open, dynamic, and emergent constitution of all so cial phenomena, such as “organization,” and to the need for explanatory theories and research methodologies geared to a detailed explication of the “potentiality for change” that agency nec essarily embodies. But it also reinforces the axiom that “a sociological understanding of agency, then, does not confuse it with individualism, subjectivity, randomness, absolute freedom, or ac tion in general, but recognizes it as embracing social choices that occur within structurally de fined limits among structurally provided alternatives” (Hays 1994: 65, emphasis added).
Developing such an explanatory focus and research agenda does not entail a rejection of the search for causal explanation, nor does it indirectly legitimate an ideology of “anti-sci entism” in which the search for underlying mechanisms and their critical role in generat ing new and “emergent phenomena” is abandoned. Rather, such a development recog nizes the complex interplay between necessity and contingency as it works its way through the contextually-specific phases or sequences of structuration through which so cial structures emerge, develop, and change over time and place. On this reading, causal ity is inherent in social interaction and the social structures through which it is made pos sible, rather than being regarded as some determinate entity or process that is exoge nously imposed by “social forces” which can only be known through the formulation and testing of universal scientific laws. Considered in this light, critical realism provides the philosophical foundations and the conceptual and methodological tools for engaging in forms of social research that will produce explanatory theories more penetrating in their analytical capacities and more en riching in their contextual sensibilities than those made available by either positivist or constructivist-based theories. At the very least, now may be an opportune time for mem bers of the wider CMS community to reflect a little more deeply on what critical realism has to offer them and to consider how this “promise” may be realized to their mutual ad vantage. (p. 71)
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Mike Reed
Mike Reed is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Wales, UK. He is an Honorary/Visiting Professor in Lan caster University Management School, an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. He is also one of the founding Page 24 of 25
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Critical Realism in Critical Management Studies editors of the journal Organization. Having published extensively on power and con trol in work organizations—with particular reference to professional knowledge-in tensive organizations and public services organizations—he is now working on a se ries of papers and publications focusing on the complex interplay between state pow er, elite agency, and public policy within political economies dominated by neo-liberal ideology and practice since the 1980s. This work draws extensively on critical real ism, neo-Weberian historical/political sociology, and elite theory.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies
Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies Campbell Jones The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0004
Abstract and Keywords Poststructuralism is the name that has been given to some of the most controversial, and for some, the most important, debates in critical management studies over the last two decades. This article, seeking to account for some of the vagaries of the use of the word poststructuralism in critical management studies, is divided into three sections. The first identifies some of the key themes that have been associated with poststructuralism in critical management studies. The second section revisits the emergence of poststructural ism in the responses to structuralism emerging in France in the late 1960s and 1970s, in order to call into question certain aspects of the partiality of the reception of poststruc turalism in critical management studies to date. In the light of this revisitation, the third section asks what poststructuralism might offer to critical management studies in the fu ture. Keywords: poststructuralism, management studies, structuralism, France, language, organizational life
POSTSTRUCTURALISM is the name that has been given to some of the most controver sial, and for some the most important, debates in critical management studies over the last two decades. This chapter, seeking to account for some of the vagaries of the use of the word poststructuralism in critical management studies, is divided into three sections. The first identifies some of the key themes that have been associated with poststructural ism in critical management studies. The second section revisits the emergence of post structuralism in the responses to structuralism emerging in France in the late 1960s and 1970s, in order to call into question certain aspects of the partiality of the reception of poststructuralism in critical management studies to date. In the light of this revisitation, the third section asks what poststructuralism might offer to critical management studies in the future.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies
Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies (p. 77)
In critical management studies, as elsewhere, poststructuralism has perhaps most com monly been used as a placeholder for a collection of proper names. This generally in cludes Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, sometimes Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, and sometimes others. Wherever the boundary falls, in this usage there is something rather “French” about poststructuralism, and also something specific to a set of texts published at a quite particular time. The dates in question are usually ac knowledged as belonging to a period following the 1950s and 1960, at which time it is held that something called “structuralism” was the dominant force or at least tendency in French thought. On this construal, poststructuralism emerges out of and comes after structuralism. Structuralism has something to do with Jacques Lacan, Claude LéviStrauss, and Louis Althusser, although in critical management studies this context and the works of the “structuralists” is often hastily overlooked, in order to get straight to the real stuff, to poststructuralism itself (but cf. Barley 1983a, 1983b; Turner 1983). In critical management studies, the pin-up boy of poststructuralism has certainly been Foucault, whose work has, from the mid-1980s onwards, had a significant impact on man agement studies and has arguably been one of the key crystallisation points of the emer gence of critical management studies. Following Burrell's crucially important publication of 1988, and a series of high profile publications in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Hoskin and Macve 1986; Knights 1992; Knights and Morgan 1995; Townley 1993, 1994), Foucault played a significant role in debates in areas as apparently diverse as labour process theory (Knights and Willmott 1989; Knights 1990) and accounting research (Neimark 1990, 1994; Armstrong 1994; Hoskin 1994). Almost as soon as Foucault appeared on the scene, there were responses and contesta tion of the merits of his work and the relevance of his concepts for the critique of man agement. By the mid-1990s Thompson and Ackroyd (1995, see also Thompson 1993) sus pected that a Foucauldian conception of power had led a generation of would-be critics of management to ignore the realities of control and resistance in actual capitalist organiza tions. By the end of the 1990s, most criticisms targeted Foucauldian conceptions of dis course, which by that stage had become widespread. At this time those who had often borrowed little more than the word discourse from Foucault were being accused of textu al idealism and linguistic determinism, among other things (see Reed 1998, 2000). Some efforts were made to bridge what appeared to be intractable oppositions between poststructuralism and its critics (Parker 1999). A set of critics emerged positioning post structuralism as excessive in its focus on language and therefore (p. 78) ill-equipped to furnish a critical theory of management. Instead, they argued, we would find more solid ontological and epistemological foundations, without falling into positivism, if we were to follow the alternative path of critical realism (Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Fleetwood
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies and Ackroyd 2004; Fleetwood 2005; Reed 2005, see also Reed, Chapter 3 in this Hand book). In all of these twists and turns, of which I offer only the briefest outline here, poststruc turalism appeared as an object of discourse and there was a certain regularity of state ments ascribed to it. There were particular enunciative modalities that offered stability and prestige to certain positions, and positions were taken in relation to that thing “post structuralism.” Here I suggest that it is possible to identify three key features that have been widely attributed to the poststructuralism that emerged in critical management. These were given by both critics and defenders of poststructuralism, and form something of the assumed consensus around which their discourses were organised. The three fea tures are the place of language, the subject, and the idea of anti-essentialism.
Language Perhaps the most visible feature of what has been called poststructuralism in critical management studies has been a focus on language in organizational life, to the point that it is today almost commonplace to identify poststructuralism with a concern with lan guage (see, for example, Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2008). The context of this turn to language is important for understanding the place that language has been given in dis cussions of poststructuralism in critical management studies. In the 1980s there was widespread concern in management studies with organizational culture, and in critical circles a concern to advance a project of interpretive research that would break with the restrictive mathematical functionalism that prevailed in management research. In the late 1980s and early 1990s efforts were made to bring an attention to language to the fore front of management studies (Astley and Zammuto 1992; Sandelands and Drazin 1989; Thatchenkary 1992), and for critical management scholars it was very often in the con text of a proposed “linguistic turn” to management scholarship that the work of post structuralist writers was proposed. So, for example, when Cooper (1989) promoted the work of Derrida this was framed as part of a concern with language. When Knights (1992; also Knights and Morgan 1991, 1995) sponsored the work of Foucault, one of the central focal points was a Foucauldian conception of “discourse.” And when writers such as Has sard (1993) and Gergen (1992) turned to poststructuralist texts they stressed the place of language and representation, in turning their attention to the “language of organization” (Westwood and Linstead 2001). This concern with language, and a focus on life in organizations as a matter of discourse, talk, or “text”, took central place in the subsequent emergence of (p. 79) “organizational discourse analysis,” even though for the most part poststructuralist writings were rarely drawn on other than by way of simplistic pigeon-holing (see, e.g., Alvesson and Karreman 2000; Grant et al. 2004) and what can probably best be described as rhetorical moves of legitimation, often in the effort to construct a method for the purposes of organizational discourse analysis.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies When critics suspected that this turn to language had gone too far and had desubstan tialised organizational life and was in any case unable to account for the economic reali ties of organization, poststructuralism was often identified as the culprit. Critics such as Reed (1998, 2000) objected against the excessive reliance on poststructuralist works and with them the prioritization of language. Against poststructuralism, critics would search for, or at least emphasize the need for, understandings of organization that were not guilty of textual idealism and linguistic determinism (see Armstrong 2001; Fournier and Grey 1999).
The Subject The second focal point of discussions of poststructuralism in critical management studies was in the concern with “the subject.” This was phrased in many different ways, some times in terms of “self” or “selves,” sometimes in terms of subjectivity or “identity.” The concern was often with the use of management technologies in, as Nikolas Rose (1990) famously put it “governing the soul” of the employee. This aspect of managing the subject at work, and the art of creating “designer employees” with useful subjective states be came a key concern in a number of important studies (Kondo 1990; Casey 1995; Townley 1994; Jacques 1996). Critical scholars, taking their lead from a vernacular often taken di rectly from Foucault, found earlier critical lines, such as labour process theory, to be ham pered by missing or having inadequate accounts of the subject, and hence proposed a movement away from deskilling and degradation of work towards account of subjectifica tion and subjection at work (Knights and Willmott 1989; Knights 1990; see also OʼDoherty and Thompson, Chapter 3 in this volume). A number of quite different conclusions were reached on the meaning of this turn to the subject. For some, following poststructuralism it was taken as read that the subject was dispersed and decentred (Hassard 1993). For Baack and Prasch (1997), by contrast, this newly discovered decentring of the subject could be easily incorporated with little dis comfort into existing organization theory. Then again, for others apparently drawing on poststructuralism, the subject was the target of managerial intervention, by which an in sidious “disciplinary power” was at work (Deetz 1992, 2003). For Newton (1998) the theo ry of the subject marked “the failure” of Foucauldian organization studies, while writers such as Knights and Vurdubakis (1994) and OʼDoherty and Willmott (2001a, 2001b) de fended what they took to be poststructuralism against all comers. It is difficult to know how to comprehend these various positions on the subject, in part because they are often stated so unclearly and in part because they rest on several often competing claims about the subject. In these debates, positions often carefully con structed in the original texts were rendered in an improbable fashion, with little sympa thy for context. Harry Braverman, for example, was remonstrated for lacking an adequate theory of the subject, by critics who almost always failed to account for why exactly Braverman had proposed to avoid explanation at the level of subjective states of “alien ation” or “job satisfaction” (Braverman 1974: 27 ff.). Against such allegedly foolish posi tions, poststructuralism was then given credit for “bringing the subject back in” by au (p. 80)
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies thors who also wanted to argue for the dispersal of the subject and the multiple determi nations of the subject (Knights and Willmott 1989; Knights 1990). Dualisms of subject ver sus structure were invented only to be overcome by “poststructuralism,” and often rather commonsensical notions of identity and the subject were passed off as the insights of poststructuralism (Knights 1997, 2001; Knights and Willmott 1999). Any comprehensive account of poststructuralism in critical management studies, which we are unable to pro vide here, would have to account for these overlapping and, most importantly, inconsis tent strategies with respect to question of the subject.
Anti-essentialism If poststructuralism promised new substantive areas of inquiry such as language and the subject, it has also had a significant impact in discussions about styles of thinking and ar gumentation. These have often been concerned with issues of ontology and epistemology, in which poststructuralism was associated with strategies of what is known as “anti-es sentialism.” Anti-essentialism has taken many forms, but in critical management studies it has typically involved an effort to criticize or to move beyond “essentialist” understand ings, whether these have been managerialist or part of the critical study of management. Essentialism here is not used simply in the technical philosophical sense of the division of the essential from the contingent aspects of an entity, but more as a descriptor of claims about the world that purport to be able to identify the “essence” or nature of things as they “really are.” Essentialism can therefore be found in scientistic and positivistic man agement research that claims to transparently know the nature of management, but es sentialism can equally characterize, for example, Marxist criticism that would speak of the “laws of history” or the essential characteristics of value extraction under capitalism. Against this essentialism, critical management scholars often turned to poststructuralism as a source for anti-essentialist ways of thinking. Chia (1995) proposed a “weak ontology” of becoming and Knights (2001) spoke of the need to hang out (p. 81) the “dirty washing” of labor process theory, that is, its essentialist and dualistic legacies. In many of these ar guments it was claimed that essentialism was as much a problem with critical manage ment studies as it was with management studies as a whole. Thus the distinctive contri bution of poststructuralism would be the promise of a new way of knowing that would dif fer both from the positivistic pretensions of management studies and the essentialism of traditional critical approaches. Often this anti-essentialism amounted to little more than modesty about truth claims, and particularly the need to be tentative about making such claims. In the hands of Alvesson and Willmott (1992), for example, poststructuralism required critical scholars to be much more circumspect, and to no longer make big claims for emancipation but instead to strive for what they called “micro-emancipation.” Anti-essentialist positions also stressed the need for an awareness of the position of the observer, and hence “reflexivity” was identified by Fournier and Grey (2000) as one of the three defining characteristics of criti cal management studies (see also Hassard 1993; Johnson and Duberley 2003). Modesty
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies about truth claims and reflexivity about the position of the observer would, apparently, construct a distinctive critical position, one that would be informed by poststructuralism.
Foucault Laughs Ideas change as they shift context, and it has often been noted that strange things have happened to “French Theory” as it has moved out of France (see, for example, Lotringer and Cohen 2001; Rapaport 2001; Cusset 2003;). Indeed, this focus on language, subjectiv ity, and anti-essentialism that has dominated reception in critical management studies represents one reading of the texts referred to as “poststructuralist.” It is not the only reading, and the particularities of the emphases that have been given to the term “post structuralism” in critical management studies are neither simply erroneous nor are they immune to rectification. We could, however, learn something about where we might move in the future, which is the concern of the third section of this chapter, by revisiting how poststructuralism was reflected in the location of its emergence. One thing that is important to note is that the term poststructuralism is not a French in vention, but is rather one that was used in Anglo-American commentaries in the late 1960s and 1970s to describe a new radical generation that was emerging at that time from under the wings of structuralism. When the word returned to France, there was of ten bemusement at the idea of a unified project of “poststructuralism.” But the label stuck, and is not a totally useless word to describe some of the movements around the cri tique and radicalization of structuralism during those years. (p. 82)
A lot has been written about what “structuralism” might mean. In the texts of the
1950s and 1960s structuralism was typically associated with the idea of constructing a “structural linguistics” out of the lectures that had been given in the early years of the twentieth century by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, which were widely taken up in France following the Second World War. Saussure (1983, orig. 1916) insisted that the meaning of a signifier or “sound pattern” was not contained in the signifier itself, but in its differential relations with all other signifiers, that is, in a language (langue). A sound pattern does not contain the concept within itself, but meets meaning via the differential character of the sign. If we were to break this down to the most simple, it would be to say that for the structuralism that we find in Saussure, any particular element within a lin guistic system is not fully present. It always contains traces of the structure of the signify ing system of which it is a part, and it is these traces that hold the key to meaning. It is surely unfair to identify a “school” of structuralism, although certain things can be identified that operate similarly in these works of the 1950s and 1960s. One of the the matics that can be clearly identified is an interest in language, and particularly in the ef fort to apply the ideas of Saussure beyond language as such, as a model for conceiving of the meaning of signs in general. Thus Barthes advanced a program for a “general semiol ogy” on the model of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss directly imported Saussurean ideas into his anthropology, and Lacan turned to Saussure in his radicalization of Freudian psycho analysis (see, for example, Lévi-Strauss 1963; Barthes 1967; lacan 2006). In these years Page 6 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies the claims made for Saussure and structural linguistics were grand. In an article first published in August 1945, Lévi-Strauss predicted that “Structural linguistics will certain ly play the same renovating role with respect to the social sciences that nuclear physics, for example, has played for the physical sciences” (1963: 33). The consequences of structuralism for social analysis can be found clearly, for instance, in the question of what gives power to a king. Often it is thought that the power of a king derives from some characteristic of the king, for example his insight, his divine right, or some other power that he alone possesses. But as history shows us, kings are over thrown, and this is not always because they doubt their own powers, but because their subjects no longer perceive those powers as legitimate, or as even belonging to the king. Structuralism is to stress that the king only has power because of the relations with his subjects or, seen from the other side of the structural relationship, it is the subjects of the king who give power to the king. If they were to withdraw this at any time, the king would have no power. We find this “structuralist” or relational account of power when, for exam ple, Marx writes that “one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the other hand, imagine that they are subjects because he is the king” (Marx 1976: 149 n. 22; see also Foucault 1978: 88–89). The important thing in this example is the shift away from analysis based on elements to wards the structures that hold those elements in place. This basic (p. 83) idea, that things are in relation to other things is perhaps the unifying thread that holds together struc turalism, although this basic idea can be inflected in a number of quite different ways. In the hands of Lévi-Strauss this idea was used to read structural coherences in the myths of indigenous peoples. For Roland Barthes it was used to comprehend how, for example, signs of “Italianicity” are used in the packaging and selling of spaghetti. Althusser argued that the key to understanding and criticizing capitalism is not an isolated alienated indi vidual but structured economic relations and of how people relate to those relations. Fou cault would find that the putting of human subjects in relation to one another would an nounce nothing less than the “death of man” (see Lévi-Strauss 1963, 1966; Althusser 1968, 1969; Foucault 1970; Barthes 1977).
Language Many structuralist works were criticized at the time, and often even more aggressively af ter the events of May 1968. In that time of upheaval, the slogan “structures don't march in the streets” was set against the formalism and academicism of the prophets of struc turalism. At the same time, scholarly criticism pointed to the scientistic and universaliz ing tendencies of, in particular, Levi-Strauss, and was voiced loudly from at least the time of the conference on the “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” in October 1966 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Derrida (1976, 1978) sought to demon strate the incoherencies in Saussure's position and his failure to take consistently the very principles he had advanced about, for example, the arbitrary character of the sign. lacan (2006) radically reinterpreted a number of Saussure's central maxims, arguing for example that the bar between signifier and signified was not merely a barrier but an Page 7 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies unassailable obstacle to meaning. Kristeva argued that “semiotics can only exist as a cri tique of semiotics, a critique which opens on to something other than semiotics, namely ideology” (1986: 78, emphases in original). Lyotard (1971) entered into a wholesale at tack on the privilege of linguistic sign, while Deleuze and Guattari (1984, 1988) railed against the privilege of language and the signifier, and argued that it is not meaning but its effectiveness in securing consent that is the important thing about language. As the polemic rose, Foucault sought to distance himself from all structuralism, and would say in an interview I believe one's point of reference should not be to the great model of language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history which bears and de termines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of pow er, not relations of meaning. (Foucault 1980: 114) Rather strangely, this radical questioning of the privilege of language by Derrida, Lacan, Kriste va, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, and others was often not even (p. 84) noticed. Indeed, very often quite the opposite position—one that would privilege the place of language and the model of linguistics—was often attributed to them. As Spivak puts it, making clear her anger:
I heard the other day a talk in New York, where once again it was said with confi dence that Foucault and Lacan and Derrida reduced everything to language. I don't think these people who are sort of working with speed-reading and criticism by hearsay have tumbled onto the fact yet that these three names, and a general movement after structuralism, was precisely to question the privileging of lan guage and to question the notion that the best way to understand everything was to reduce it to sign-systems. This is something that I think has still to be brought to people's attention. (1996: 302, emphases in original) In critical management studies this poststructuralist questioning of role and place of language has been significantly underplayed. In this sense, in critical management studies many of the things that have been described as “poststructuralist” on this count remain structuralist, that is, they take on and continue the privilege given to the idea of the importance of language, or in some cases even “pre-structuralist,” in the sense that they uncritically assume a decontextual ized, non-differential and “presentistic” conception of language that underplays or ignores the constitutively negative aspects of language.
Many of the criticisms of textual idealism and linguistic determinism that are made against “poststructuralism” in critical management studies therefore paradoxically mirror exactly the objections against linguisticism that we find through the late 1960s and 1970s in the texts of poststructuralist writers. What this history alerts us to is the continued and pressing need for a searching critique of the claims that have been made in critical man agement studies about the place of language. Moreover, such a critique would not take us to a position outside poststructuralism, but rather might bring us closer to it.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies
The Subject If poststructuralism involves a critique—whether noticed or not—of the privilege of lan guage, it involves more than this. While poststructuralism involves a critical questioning of the place attributed to language by structuralism, with respect to the question of the subject poststructuralism holds somewhat more of a relation of continuity to structural ism around the calling into question of the subject. It is important to stress here that structuralism involves exactly this calling into question of the subject that we often find attributed to “poststructuralism” in critical management studies. The subject is often called into question in different ways, but we should recall here that structuralism in volved a vast range of quite different ways of calling the subject into question. While there are a number of places from which we could consider the meaning of the questioning of the subject in structuralism, one particularly important source (p. 85) is a 1983 interview in which Foucault speaks directly about structuralism and poststructural ism. There Foucault says: “While I see clearly that behind what was known as structural ism, there was a certain problem—broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject—I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call ‘postmodern’ or ‘poststructuralist’” (Foucault 1998: 448). While much has been made of the latter part of this sentence, here the crucial aspect is Foucault's articulation of his reading of “structuralism”, and the way he places structuralism clearly in relation to the recasting of the subject. We find very similar statements in a 1978 interview: There was one point in common between those who, these last 15 years, have been called “structuralists” and yet who weren't that, with the exception of LéviStrauss, of course: Althusser, Lacan and myself. What was, in reality, this point of convergence? It was a certain urgency to pose again, differently, the question of the subject [reposer autrement la question du sujet], to stamp out that fundamen tal postulate that French philosophy had never abandoned. (Foucault 1991: 56, translation modified, see Foucault 1994: 52) He goes on to account for the questioning of the subject that he identifies in Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, and Althusser.
Setting out from psychoanalysis, Lacan shed light on the fact that the theory of the unconscious is incompatible with a theory of the subject …. From linguistics and the analyses of language, Lévi-Strauss gave rational support to this putting in to question …. Althusser put into question the philosophy of the subject, because French Marxism had been impregnated with a little phenomenology and a little humanism, and held that the theory of alienation of the human subject was the theoretical base capable of translating into philosophical terms the politico-eco nomic analyses of Marx. The work of Althusser consisted in going back to the analyses of Marx and asking if they actually manifested this conception of human nature, the subject, and alienated man. (Foucault 1991: 56–57, translation modified, see Foucault 1994: 52) Page 9 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies Foucault then concludes, identifying what he sees as the most radical aspect of structuralism: “Structuralism or the structuralist method in the strict sense has served as little more than a point of support or the confirmation of something much more radical: the putting into question of the theory of the subject” (Foucault 1991: 58, translation modified, see Foucault 1994: 52).
Exact phrasings are particularly important here. Notice, first, that one can envisage a questioning of the structuralist privilege of language combined with a continuation of the structuralist putting into question of the subject. It is also important given that this “call ing into question of the subject” was very soon associated with a complete abandonment of the subject, and with this an assumption that for structuralists the subject is the mere effect of structures (linguistic, economic, mythical, or otherwise). The problem here is that many took this critique of the subject for the imposition of a new dogmatic determin ism in which subjects could (p. 86) simply be “read off” structural locations. If that were the case then the contribution of structuralism would be simply to eradicate or to liqui date the subject. This situation has produced what Derrida describes in an interview of 1988 as a “clumsy mixing up of a number of discursive strategies.” Against this he argues that: “If over the last 25 years in France the most notorious of these strategies have in fact led to a kind of discussion around ‘the question of the subject,’ none of them has sought to ‘liquidate’ anything” (Derrida 1988: 113). Did Lacan “liquidate” the subject? No. The decentred “subject” of which he speaks certainly doesn't have the traits of the classical subject (though even here, we'd have to take a closer look …), it remains indispensable to the economy of Lacanian theory. It is also a correlate of the law …. Althusser's theory, for example, seeks to discredit a certain authority of the subject only by acknowledging for the instance of the “subject” an irreducible place in a theory of ideology, an ideology which, mutatis mutandis, is just as irreducible as the transcendental illusion in the Kant ian dialectic. This place is that of a subject constituted by interpellation, by its be ing-interpellated (again being-before-the-law, the subject as subject subjected to law and held responsible before it). As to Foucault's discourse, there would be dif ferent things to say according to the stage of its development. In his case, we would appear to have a history of subjectivity which, in spite of certain massive declarations about the effacement of the figure of man, certainly never consisted in “liquidating” the Subject. And in his last phase, there again, a return of morality and a certain ethical subject. For these three thinkers (Lacan, Althusser, Foucault) and for some of the thinkers they privileged (Freud, Marx, Nietzsche), the subject can be reinterpreted, restored, re-inscribed, but it certainly isn't liquidated. (Der rida 1988: 113–114) Such statements create a set of problems for the ways that the question of the subject has been treated in the reception of “poststructuralism” in critical management studies. First ly, it makes clear that the calling into question of the subject is not the exclusive reserve of poststructuralism, but is already at work in Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Lacan, and others. This offers considerably more resources for thinking and rethinking the subject or, put Page 10 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies negatively, the critical expansion beyond the excessive reliance on Foucault that charac terized thinking of the subject in critical management studies. Secondly, if the question of the subject is to remain a question, this requires a radically expanded account and cri tique of the idea of an isolated and individual subject, and of the privilege that is given to that conception of the subject in management studies and in economic discourse more generally. Thirdly, if we cast structuralism as a calling into question of the subject and poststructuralism as a continuation of that, then we do not have to begin from the idea that for structuralism there is an isolated “agent” to which structure is the binary pairing. Instead, we have a set of texts and concepts engaged in reinterpreting and reinscribing the subject. Fourthly, we can begin to sense the appearance in particular texts—including those called or calling themselves “poststructuralist”—of unexamined assumptions about the subject, in which the subject appears as an isolated whole rather than a terrain of conflict. Finally, we face the possibility and prospect of a continuing (p. 87) interrogation of the subject and the place of the subject in relation to Law, by which we mean all of the diverse apparatuses for the command of life and the imposition of what is.
Anti-essentialism At this point it might well be becoming clear that much that has been said about post structuralism in critical management studies is in need of radical revision. This we find al so in the case of the anti-essentialism claimed for poststructuralism, in which essential ism is identified as the fatal failing of understanding. Many anti-essentialist arguments made by critical management scholars who have drawn on poststructuralism have often made rather wide-ranging claims regarding the extent to which essentialism is in fact characteristic of management studies. Numerous examples of positions and claims about knowing could be identified which would point to the limits of the extent to which “main stream” management studies, and the traditional vocabulary of the critique of manage ment, actually do suffer from essentialism. In short, many claims for anti-essentialism paradoxically tend to “essentialize” both management studies and the critical tradition. But beyond such difficulties, it is certainly the case that there is here again a consider able distance between what has been said in critical management studies in the name of poststructuralism and what we find in poststructuralist texts. Consider, for example, Alvesson and Willmott's (1992) claims about the need to revise the goal of emancipation in the light of poststructuralism, and their argument in favor of replacing the classical discourse of emancipation with “microemancipation” Burrell's claims for a critical theory of management that would do away with the idea of emancipation (Burrell 2001: 16–17), or the efforts of others who have used poststructuralism as a justification for arguments against “totalizing emancipatory projects” and identify poststructuralism with reinscrip tion and small scale change (see, for example, Thomas and Davies 2005). We are here at some distance from, for example, Derrida, who writes that “Nothing seems to me less out dated than the classic emancipatory ideal” (1992: 28), and “I refuse to renounce the great classical discourse of emancipation” (1996: 82).
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies A considerable amount is at stake here, and there is a risk of simplifying complex argu ments. Instead of seeking to account for all of the various strategies of anti-essentialism that we can find in critical management studies—often in the name of poststructuralism— it is perhaps more productive here to outline something of a conception of the meaning of anti-essentialism that we can find in writers such as Foucault and Derrida, and show how this exceeds the limited meanings that have been given to anti-essentialism in critical management studies. This could then be tested against various texts that have made claims in the name of poststructuralism, (p. 88) and where these are found lacking they could be subjected to reformulation. This would be a task of considerable textual labor, and in line with this we might start with texts and pay attention to their twists and turns. To approach this question of the meaning of anti-essentialism, we might do worse than start out from Foucault, and to consider again the opening lines of the preface to his The Order of Things. Here Foucault offers an image that he presents in order to situate his project for an “archaeology of the human sciences” and with it his critique of the catego ry of “man”. He writes: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shat tered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—break ing up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a “certain Chinese encyclopaedia” in which it is written that “animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) em balmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) in cluded in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.” In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. (Foucault 1970, emphases in original: xv, translation modified, see Foucault, 1966: 7; cf. Borges 1964: 103) This passage is dramatic in its imagery, and indeed Foucault's style is not clearly distinct from his critical strategy. The starting point is his laughter, a disruptive laughter, a laughter that shat ters all the familiar landmarks of our thought. This laughter of Foucault is perhaps the most un noticed feature of his thought in the reception of his work in critical management studies. This laughter is not, to borrow a distinction from Sloterdijk (1988), the gentle laughter of this cynic who commits to nothing. It is the laughter of the kynic, a laughter that shakes the whole body, a laughter that disconcerts and disorients with the force of its seriousness. Foucault's is also a laughter that, as Michel de Certeau notes, is a laugh of invention that is also combined with a “concern for exactitude” (1986: 195). This laughter is one that proposes to disturb and threaten with collapse, to illuminate in one great leap, to show us the limitation of our systems of thinking and the stark impossibility of thinking otherwise. This is not a language of moderation, nor a cautious language from which the epistemological conclusion is one of restraint or hesitation in
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies making claims. It is certainly not a “new epistemological location” (Knights 1992), nor is it a “weak ontology” (Chia 1995).
The important point here is that Foucault does not, as some have come to realize, con struct a particularly novel philosophy of science (see Al-Amoudi 2007)—nor, we might add, a particularly coherent one, but that is an issue for another day. The problem is that as poststructuralism has been taken up in critical management (p. 89) studies there has been a marked tendency to identify poststructuralism as something distinctively episte mological, and in doing so to emphasize the epistemological level at the expense of other potential contributions (see for example, Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2008; cf. Parker 2000; Jones 2007a). This tendency of what we could call “epistemological drift” is particu larly pronounced when authors who have had little to say about epistemology and ontol ogy, or who have upheld positions already assumed in the French context, have been treated as if they augured a new epistemology, when in the texts of that author the action was, so to speak, elsewhere. Hence we might think that poststructuralism is not so much a different epistemology as it is a thinking of difference and an effort to think differently. But the question, as always, is how to think otherwise. If one were, for example, to “think otherwise” than all previous efforts to think otherwise, then one would arrive solidly in “the Same.”We must remem ber, then, that there is a long tradition of the effort to think otherwise, and one name for that is simply “the critical tradition.” As Derrida reminds us it, “Philosophy has always in sisted on this: thinking its other” (Derrida 1982: xxiii). In anti-capitalist movements over the past decade, the call has often been heard that “an other world is possible.” The idea of another possibility is the step of destabilization, of recognizing the contingency and lack of essence to what is currently done. It also in volves, and this is perhaps the harder part, a notion that the other is somehow desirable, that it is somehow “better.” It is opposed to the idea that “there is no alternative,” that things could not be any different. Interestingly, it is with exactly these movements that, at the end of his life, Derrida unequivocally sided. Speaking of the anti-capitalist and alterglobalization movements, Derrida spoke of them as Movements that are still heterogeneous, still somewhat unformed, full of contra dictions, but that gather together the weak of the earth, all those who feel them selves crushed by the economic hegemonies, by the liberal market, by sover eignism, etc. I believe it is these weak who will prove to be strongest in the end and who represent the future. (Derrida 2006: 268) Derrida is keen to stress his defense of a “weak messianism,” which is at the same time a mes sianism of the weak, as we see it here, or of the “nameless others” as he puts it elsewhere. By contrast, in critical management studies, poststructuralism has far too often been reduced to lit tle more than a “weak ontology” (Chia 1995) which has been more concerned with a softening of thinking than with producing a hopeful, even messianic, thinking of the weak.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies In this disjuncture we can perhaps identify two quite distinct aspects or forms of anti-es sentialism, which bear different relations to Law, language and the task of critique. The first opposes essentialist claims, and tries to formulate a language that is cautious, re fined, and tentative. The second opposes the things that are, that is, it struggles and con tests the being—the esse—of the world. These two demands are (p. 90) clearly at times in conflict with one another, and one could read the reception of poststructuralism along the line of a conflict between these two demands. But the conflict between these two de mands is not a new one, and is certainly not one that is distinctive or unique to poststruc turalism. This issue of how to resist the way the world is and at the same time the need to formulate new strategies of resistance that depart from previous critical strategies, is part and parcel of what it means to be involved in criticism. If we look at the way that this issue has been dealt with in the critical tradition we find ways that might well be far more satisfactory than in what has been described as post structuralism in critical management studies. We might consider the example of Marx, a critic who has often been identified by poststructuralist scholars in critical management studies as “essentialist” and that therefore needs to be superseded. For Marx, the achievement of philosophy becoming “worldly” by turning its attention to the world of business put conflict on center stage, including conflict about the intellectual tools with which we will criticize that world. Hence, he writes to Arnold Ruge in September 1843: Now philosophy has become worldly (verweltlicht), and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally. If constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to the ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense that this critique is not afraid of the results it ar rives at and is just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be. I am there fore not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions to themselves. (Marx 1975: 142, emphasis in original, translation modified, see Marx 1972: 344) We find in this passage both senses of anti-essentialism: both a critique of dogmatism and a worldly and engaged criticism, a ruthless critique of all that exists. In the texts that we have briefly cited from Foucault and Derrida above, and in many others, we find this same sentiment, that of the need for a relentless and searching criticism of the world and of the ways that it has been represented. In the French poststructuralism of the 1960s and 1970s, this criticism fo cused on particular objects, and even if we are later to find that this focus was sometimes ap plied to the “wrong” objects, this does nothing to confound the critical standpoint of that work. What has been called poststructuralism in critical management studies has offered a set of local criticisms of particular dogmatisms in management studies and in the critique of management. But it has often assumed positions—such as the privilege given to “traditional” questions of epis temology and with this an excessive subjectivism—that are often quite palatable to the powers that be. Indeed, in the way that “essentialism” has been used as a term of abuse rather than as something we must all struggle with, critical management studies has tended to choose an antiessentialism of moderation over an anti-essentialism that would embark on (p. 91) a ruthless Page 14 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies criticism of management. As we turn to the future, one might rightly wonder why one would have to make that choice.
After Poststructuralism One of the oddities of the reception of poststructuralism in critical management studies has been a set of strategies of conflict-avoidance, in which many have presented post structuralism as, paradoxically, a space of resolution and closure, a space beyond conflict. Poststructuralism has often been claimed as a place that is somehow above or beyond previous thinking. Conflict has come, but often from those who position themselves— much too assuredly—outside of poststructuralism. Another source of conflict rises from those who are perhaps more ambitious and who see more fight left in what has been called poststructuralism than the first generation of critical management scholars did when they discovered poststructuralism in 1980s and 1990s. If those years were, in the UK where critical management studies largely formed, years of relative consensus re garding what poststructuralism might be, today this conflict is barely concealed, and many of that first generation now openly recoil from the ideas that are present in the texts that they first proposed to open. So while some have made efforts to distance themselves from poststructuralism, others have sought to take poststructuralism in different directions. Some have looked for new ideas in thinkers such as Lacan and Levinas, who were central in France but were not un til very recently taken up in critical management studies in a detailed way (Jones and Spicer 2005; Business Ethics: A European Review 2007; Jones 2007b; Contu 2008; Vidail let 2007; and Aasland 2009; Cederström and Hoedemaekers forthcoming). Others have turned to thinkers that emerged out of and in relation to poststructuralism, such as Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek (Contu 2002; Willmott 2005; and De Cock and Böhm 2005, 2007). Some proposed significant rereadings of poststructuralist authors (Jones 2002, 2003, 2004; Caldwell 2007, Weitzner 2007), while others have made productive and exciting use of the ideas of authors associated with poststructuralism, but without any re course to the idea of a thing called “poststructuralism” (Sørensen 2005; Brown 2007; Dey and Stayaert 2007;). The future for poststructuralism in critical management studies is therefore very much an open question. It will be the result of a conflict over ideas and authors, over locations and strategies for critique. I propose that it is possible to identify at least three possible fu ture scenarios for poststructuralism in critical management studies, without having any clear idea which of these will come to pass. One possibility is that little will change and that poststructuralism will continue to be used in much the way that has been described here. Thus, poststructuralism (p. 92) might continue to be used as something that draws attention to language and the formation of subjects, and as the avatar for an anti-essentialism that entails principally cautiousness, modesty, and reflexivity. In this sense it might be used as it currently is, aligned with ideas about the “social construction of organizational reality,” to deposition claims about Page 15 of 25
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies the substantial nature of organization, the lack of importance of language, and the objec tivity of the world. In this sense poststructuralism might participate in critically interro gating the most unreconstructed and uncritical positions that, if we are to be realistic, continue to dominate in popular and academic understandings of management. A second possibility is that poststructuralism might be crushed under the weight of ef forts towards a conservative or critical positivism. If the extension of anti-theoretical, an ti-reflective, and hastily “pragmatic” management studies were to continue, then what has been known as poststructuralism might be closed out, eliminated from even the mar ginal position it has known in management studies over the past two decades, and might one day be a memory as distinct as, for example, the place of psychoanalysis in marketing theory in the interwar period. Alternatively, poststructuralism might continue to be at tacked by those keen to establish, for example, a critical realism that would seek to close off the prospect of a radical consideration of language or subjectivity and would find the essence of organizational life in a set of “generative mechanisms” that could be ever more accurately comprehended. While these first two possibilities reflect particular responses to what has been called poststructuralism in critical management studies that pretty much agree on what has been meant by the term “poststructuralism,” other possibilities would shift the meaning of that term, as some have proposed (see for example, Böhm 2006; Linstead 2004). Thus, a third possibility is that poststructuralism might reveal itself as an important but passing moment in the history of French thought. The dating of that movement would be open to debate, but would probably be roughly located from 1966 (Johns Hopkins) or May 1968, and would run through to 1981 (the election of Mitterand's “socialist” government) or 1984 (the death of Foucault). This would then be followed in French thought by what has been characterized by Eribon (2007) as a “conservative revolution” and by Rancière (2005) as the institution of “consensual times.” It would also be a time in which, in French thought there was a search for new forms of thought that positioned themselves against poststructuralism, whether in the form of a return to academic sobriety or in the militant philosophy of Alain Badiou. If this third possibility were followed, the idea that there is a thing called “poststructural ism” might one day be remembered as a temporarily useful legitimizing fiction in the ef fort to open management studies up to a wave of critical scholarship that might have oth erwise gone unnoticed. But at the same time there might be a recognition that there is equally another wave of critical scholars that have emerged out of the ashes of what we here called poststructuralism, and who continue (p. 93) to engage in ruthless criticism, with and beyond the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Kristeva, and company. In France this would include the work of Luce Irigaray, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Ran cière, but would be dispersed well beyond France and would include the work of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Antonio Negri, Peter Sloterdijk, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. And several others.
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Poststructuralism in Critical Management Studies Which of these pathways critical management studies will take is in no way determined. Indeed, the lack of determination of what must be thought and what must be done is something that perhaps unites all of the thinkers that we have discussed under the label of poststructuralism. But if we take the “poststructuralist” critique of the privilege of the signifier seriously then we will perhaps not be so much worried about the label, and more concerned with the critical function and its consequences. To the extent that the work that has been labeled “poststructuralist” has opened up management studies, and critical management studies in particular, towards a thinking that is less dogmatic and superfi cial and more responsible and radical, then it is to be celebrated. But the continuation of exactly the opposite tendencies, in work described and describing itself as poststructural ist, might remind us that poststructuralism is something on which, for the critical mind, a decision between an affirmative or a critical position is not yet available.
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Campbell Jones
Campbell Jones is Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory and Business Ethics at the Uni versity of Leicester School of Management, UK, and Visiting Professor in the Depart ment of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Den mark. His publications include Contemporary Organization Theory (Blackwell, 2005), For Business Ethics (Routledge, 2005), Philosophy and Organization (Routledge, 2007), and Unmasking the Entrepreneur (Edward Elgar, 2009).
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory
Perspectives on Labor Process Theory Paul Thompson and Damian P. OʼDoherty The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0005
Abstract and Keywords Theoretical perspectives are invariably partial, comprising variants and factions. There is a legacy of debate and disputation in critical theory. In the case of labour-process theory (LPT), development has taken the form of a heated debate in recent years between struc turalist and poststructuralist perspectives. To reflect this position, proponents of the two variants – Paul Thompson and Damian O'Doherty – present a short half-article on their re spective approach and understanding of labour-process theory so that the article as a ‘whole’ conveys a sense of a perspective in ferment. Rather than replay the original de bates, the contributors have been sensibly asked to consider the following: (1) What is LPT and what kind of problems (as a theory) is it intended to address/solve? (2) How suc cessful has it been in addressing those problems and issues? and (3) What are the actual and potential relationships between LPT and CMS? Keywords: critical theory, labour-process theory, structuralist perspectives, poststructuralist perspectives, Paul Thompson, Damian O'Doherty
Editorial Note THEORETICAL perspectives are invariably partial, comprising variants and factions. There is a legacy of debate and disputation in critical theory. In the case of labor process theory (LPT), development has taken the form of a heated debate in recent years between structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives. To reflect this position, we have invited proponents of the two variants—Paul Thompson and Damian OʼDoherty—to each present a short half-chapter on their respective approach and understanding of labor process the ory so that the chapter as a “whole” conveys a sense of a perspective in ferment. Rather than replay the original debates, the contributors have been sensibly asked to consider the following: • What is LPT and what kind of problems (as a theory) is it intended to address/solve? • How successful has it been in addressing those problems and issues? Page 1 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory • What are the actual and potential relationships between LPT and CMS?
I Paul Thompson: Labor Process Theory and Critical Management Studies (p. 100)
Labor process theory (LPT) is conventionally and rightly listed as one of the analytical re sources for critical management studies (CMS). Yet, the relationships between the two have been, in the words of a classic of the former, a contested terrain. This is hardly sur prising. Even if we set aside the inevitable multiplicity of perspectives, there is a tension in potential objects of analysis. Before CMS burst on to the scene, LPT was being criti cized at its peak of influence in the 1980s for paying too much attention to management and too little to capital (ism) and labor. This was sometimes attributed to the location of many of the protagonists (in the UK at least) in business schools, but was, more likely a reflection of wider theoretical and ideological divides. Throughout the 1990s a battle took place—“the labor process debate”—between what some would regard as the materialist and poststructuralist participants inside and out side the annual UK-based conference. The emergence of a separate CMS conference and related initiatives was shaped, in part, by the nature and outcomes of those debates. Where do we stand now—to what extent is LPT part of, separate from or hostile to CMS? It is important to make one qualification about the debates discussed below. As social the ory so clearly indicates, institutions matter. The existence and location of an annual and successful labor process conference and book series based in the UK has meant that a particular weight is given to theorizing and research within its boundaries. Yet clearly the conference, critical theory and research and LPT are not the same things. For example, there are lively traditions of LP scholarship in North America that have proceeded on overlapping but often very distinctive paths (e.g. Shalla and Clement 2007). Whilst some effort will be made to refer to a wider set of debates, in a short review of this kind, the scope for doing so will inevitably be limited and our focus must be the LPT-CMS interface.
The Theory: Territory, Tensions, and Tantrums What is LPT and what does its “field” consist of? It is convention to refer to a number of “waves” of development (see Thompson and Newsome 2004). The first wave is seen as Braverman and supportive arguments, the second as the major studies from Richard Ed wards, Friedman, Burawoy, Littler, and others that followed in its wake from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Perhaps more controversially, we could identify an overlapping third wave over the following decade characterized largely by a series of paradigm wars between, on the one hand, LPT and a number (p. 101) of “new production and society” perspectives such as flexible specialization and post-Fordism, and on the other within those attending the annual conference about territory and tasks. It is in the second cate gory of the third wave that the UK-based “labor process debate” took place. This debate Page 2 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory was initially between consolidators and reconstructionists. The former saw the second wave as consisting of a number of common concepts vital for analyzing the trajectories of capitalist economies and work systems, but in danger of being drowned in a welter of seemingly contradictory empiricist case studies about skill, control, and related issues. The main proposed solution was the development of a core theory that synthesized and extended the insights of post-Braverman research with a view to producing more or less coherent statements of what the contemporary labor process looked like and the concep tual tools to understood it. In the influential Labour Process Theory volume published at the end of the decade (Knights and Willmott 1990), this was the clear intent of a number of the contributors— notably myself, Paul Edwards, and Craig Littler (all 1990). In my case, that involved the elaboration of a core theory based on a number of propositions about the structural char acteristics of the capitalist labor process that shaped and constrained workplace rela tions. Part of the purpose was to distinguish between identification of strong tendencies deriving from those structures and mechanisms and particular outcomes, such as deskilling and Taylorism, with which LPT had become associated because of the influence of Braverman. So for example, the core referred to a control imperative given that market mechanisms alone cannot address the indeterminacy of labor (the conversion of labor power into profitable work), rather than specifying a particular control strategy. The core theory became a reference point for many later studies and we will return to its character and status later. However, in that same volume, the two editors, in separate but mutually supportive chapters, put forward a very different conception of territory and task: “the systematic reconstruction of labour process theory…to develop a more adequate, materi alist theory of subjectivity” (Willmott 1990: 337). Thus was born the “the missing subject” debate, There was some common ground between consolidators and reconstructionists. Both agreed that Braverman's preference for analyzing only the objective characteristics of the capital—labor relationship had left a hole where agency and subjectivity should have been, but differed sharply on how it should be filled, Consolidators tended to believe that (re) inserting resistance, the capacity of creativity in labor power and the importance of consent (Burawoy 1979) as part of the range of worker responses to its commodity status was a substantial, if not wholly sufficient contribution to a revised LPT. For Knights, Will mott, and their collaborators, such developments, particularly Burwaoy's emphasis on consent, was an advance on objectivism, but nowhere near enough. At first this was framed in terms of “complementing” a structural analysis through a focus on the subjec tive conditions that facilitate the reproduction of capitalism. In itself, this is uncontroversial, but there are three problems. First, are the cho sen means. It may have been “materialist,” but the raw material was a discussion of exis tential problems of identity and power located in the general human condition. Second, there was a substantive displacement effect through the rejection of all of the available resources of LPT and search for new ones, initially in critical theory and then, increasing ly in Foucault and post-structuralism. Every critique more or less followed the same path (p. 102)
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory —well-known labor LPT texts would be picked over and critiqued with same ultimate punchline—the absence of an adequate theory of subjectivity. Third, though issues of sub jective reproduction of capitalism and work relations are a sub-plot, they are not the plot. It is necessary to address and explain the changing political economy of capitalism, some thing that poststructuralists have generally shown little interest in. Whilst Marx, Braverman, and others were extensively and knowledgeably discussed in pa pers by Knights and Willmott, this was reconstruction without building on or from any prior empirical or theoretical foundations. As a result of these problems, the 1990s de bate was not actually about the labor process. That it was presented as the “labor process debate” was an accident of history—a convergence of two factors. The first, that the La bor Process Conference was the focal point for most critical scholarship on work, employ ment and organization and, therefore, provided the textual resources for debate. Second, that Hugh Willmott and David Knights were, for a long time, its prime movers. They and their various colleagues have produced a large body of work. Some of the more empirical ly-based work is closer to mainstream labor process concerns (Knights and McCabe 2000; Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2001). Nevertheless, my contention is that their main interest was less the labor process itself than in critiquing labor process theory in order to take it somewhere else— as we have seen, towards a general theory of subjectivity. Let's return to the proposition of a core theory. Space prevents a discussion of its content (Jaros (2005) gives a very fair account), so I want to focus on the idea of a core. Whilst ex tensively used, it always caused a certain amount of anguish. Critics of a core tend to de ny that LPT has an “essence” and describe any attempt to theorize one as a rhetorical move to marginalize or exclude dissenting voices. If you believe that all the world is a text and we are all mere players in language games, then theory can be anything you want it to be. But if, on the other hand you believe that the world consists of real structures and relations that require particular analytical resources to explain them, theory must be about something. In terms of a core, we can debate what features, what powers, and what effects in what circumstances. But it is difficult to imagine a credible LPT that does not start from some attempt to elucidate the characteristic features of capitalist political economy and their potential causal powers, mediated by labor market and other institu tions and the strategies of economic actors, with respect to work relations. Though there are exceptions (Gibson-Graham 1996), poststructuralists do not generally produce work that tries to address “structure problems,” for example the changing nature of regimes of accumulation, state formations, the organizational forms of the contemporary firm. Such things are only glimpsed indirectly through the foggy lens of discourse. Nor do they recognize labor as an agency with distinctive (though discursively articulated) interests in the employment relationship. Rather they focus on the general in determinacy of human agency, expressed primarily in concerns about identity. As they progressed, the 1990s conflicts became a variant on the more general paradigm wars be tween materialists and poststructuralists and for many reconstruction of LPT became a casualty of a more general rejection of the former framework. As Delbridge notes, “While (p. 103)
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory rarely carrying the LPT banner, these debates rumble on, particularly on the ontological status of social structures and over duality and dualisms” (2006:1210). Amongst the exceptions have been OʼDoherty and Willmott particularly in the Sociology (2001) paper, their last significant attempt to intervene in the “labor process debate.” They presented their arguments as a post but not anti-structural way out of the “impasse” in LPT. However, the paper largely rehearsed the same critiques of “structuralism” and arguments of a decade earlier: subjectivity is the source of capitalism and its reproduc tion (p. 461), the system's individualizing tendencies accentuate existential insecurity and exploitative relations are immanent in the human condition. At the end they declare that they have “stopped short of abandoning the central concerns and familiar linguistic ter rains of labor process analysis” (p. 472). But the paper had already revealed that capital and labor are viewed as only as “signifiers,” useful for their “epistemological convenience” (p. 466) rather than as conceptual building blocks of explanation. Nor, as Friedman (2004) demonstrates, have their methods changed. Having exhausted the clas sics, OʼDoherty and Willmott turn to less well-known pieces by Sosteric and Ezzy to pick apart and then chastise for the standard sins of not understanding subjectivity properly. Friedman goes on to observe that it would be better to develop approaches to subjectivity in the labor process that build on rather than dismissing previous work. This is the theme of the next section.
Theory Building: Successes and Sins Contrary to what OʼDoherty and Willmott (2001: 466), LPT is not primarily a “dis course”—it is, or should be, a theory building project. The existence of an “impasse” at a meta-theoretical level does not prevent theory building through research programs asso ciated with the “consolidated” form of LPT. Such interventions have typically proceeded from the following questions: • Has there been a shift in managerial strategies towards normative controls, what might such controls consist of, towards what are they directed (reshaping identi ties and/or interests) and how successful have they been? (p. 104)
• To what extent has labor retained a capacity for resistance or dissent, what forms is that resistance taking and how successful are they? Whilst this way of addressing issues is clearly conceptually distinctive, it does offer opportuni ties for common empirical or conceptual meeting points between the rival perspectives.
The idea that there has been a shift in control regimes away from traditional Taylorism, Fordism, and bureaucracy toward those in which management use value-based practices to shape employee identities has been associated with wider claims about a “cultural turn.” However, as Thompson and Harley (2007) have demonstrated, from the mid-1980s onwards LPT had anticipated the idea of a shift to soft (er) and sometimes more indirect controls. Though associated with the service sector and, for instance, control through customers (Fuller and Smith 1991), LP researchers highlighted the way that under lean production regimes, management focuses more on the normative sphere in order to by Page 5 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory pass trade union representation and encourage worker identification with the company (e.g., Danford 1998). A further generation of researchers have been in the forefront of studies of call centre work, noting the trend towards integrated systems of technical, bu reaucratic, and normative controls (Callaghan and Thompson 2002), intended to create an “assembly line in the head” (Taylor and Bain 1999), within a characteristic high-com mitment, low-discretion model (Houlihan 2002). A similar story of expanded categories to take LPT beyond conventional wage-effort transactions and into analysis of new sources of labor power and emotional effort bargains can also be told (Bolton 2008). Despite this degree of common argument, mainstream LP research has consistently criti cized claims made by HRM and many poststructuralist writers concerning the extent and effectiveness of normative controls. With reference to extent, emphasis has been put on the continued presence and often centrality of traditional controls. More pertinent to the debates in this chapter, doubts have been cast on assumptions that management can shape identities in a way that overcomes divergent interests and the associated actual and potential worker resistance (and see Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2004). Such arguments can be found in well-known studies such as Casey (1995), whose Foucauldianinfluenced perspective produces the view that that new organizational discourses and practices produce designer employees and “corporatized selves.” As Leidner (2006) notes, such perspectives take for granted that the identities held out by employers are at tractive to workers and would uphold their sense of themselves as autonomous individu als. Issues of culture and identity are certainly important in some contexts, but are seen as new sources of contestation. Whilst such observations are consistent with wider (p. 105)
survey and case study evidence on the limited nature of attitudinal transformation in the context of organizational restructuring and change programs, it is one of the distinctive strengths of LPT that it can draw on the central concept of the indeterminacy of labor to show that control can never be complete and is always contestable. Whilst poststructural ists draw on a notion of indeterminacy, it refers largely to the existential insecurity of in dividuals (and the self-defeating character of resistance) rather than the specific charac teristics of labor power under capitalism. Within LPT, this theoretical orientation has been strengthened by new inputs, notably Ackroyd and Thompson's (1999) mapping of or ganization misbehavior in which identity is key territory in which management and em ployees compete to appropriate material and symbolic resources. The new categories have been successfully applied in studies such as Taylor and Bain's (2003) account of how call-center workers use humor and other informal action as a tool of resistance. It would be unfair not to acknowledge that there has been a drawing back from determin istic readings of Foucault and the (self-) disciplining effects of discourse and surveillance. In a widely-cited paper, Thomas and Davies (2005) argue that individuals are not passive recipients of discourses, but resist (in this case the discourses of new public manage ment), utilizing the tensions between different subject positions. However, they explicitly critique and reject conceptions inspired by “negative” labor process theory, as such stud ies reply on an oppositional (and “dualistic”) conceptualization of resistance as the out Page 6 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory come of structural relations of antagonism between capital and labor. Whilst the rediscov ery of resistance is welcome, as Fleming and Spicer note, in moving from a situation where resistance was nowhere to it being everywhere, CMS runs the “risk of reducing re sistance to the most banal and innocuous everyday actions” (2007: 3). LPT would argue that this trivialization of resistance arises, in part, from its removal from the context of the employment relationship and the potentially divergent interests therein. In contrast, mainstream LPT demonstrates a research program that maintains continuity with core theory, a capacity to respond to new empirical conditions and for incremental conceptual innovation. That is not to say that there are no sins of omission and commis sion, but these have been openly recognized and discussed (Smith and Thompson 1998). Even on the “missing subject” territory, there are welcome signs that scholars sympathet ic to labor process approaches have been developing more materialist readings of identi ty that connect macro structures of political economy with micro-level concerns of every day life (Leidner 2006; Webb 2006:194), as well as seeking to link the formation of identi ty and interests together in a common conceptual schema (Jenkins and Delbridge 2007; Thompson and Marks 2007). (p. 106)
LPT and CMS: Past, Present, Future
Looking back, it is possible to view LPT as a territory where those critical of mainstream approaches could gather and debate—a forerunner, in other words, of critical manage ment studies. This war of words now takes place largely across the trenches of rival con ferences, journals and networks. LPT and CMS now compete for the radical work and or ganizations franchise, particularly in Europe and the US. But is this competition a paradigm war or peaceful co-existence? The answer depends largely whether CMS is conceived in big or small tent terms. A recent comprehensive mapping of the territory by Adler, Forbes, and Willmott (2007) makes a heroic attempt at the former. It outlines even-handedly the heterogeneous theoretical resources contribut ing to CMS and gives a prominent role to LPT. The paper also pushes forward a reason ably consensual perspective to address the question critical of what? And it answers in terms of the varied structures of domination and inequality, as well as seeking to change management practices. However, if we interrogate the “critical of what” issue more closely the fault lines shift from a simple critical versus mainstream. The summaries provided by Adler, Forbes, and Willmott of postmodernism/poststructuralism reinforce what we already know—that such perspectives include many “critical” theories— including Marxism – in their definition of the mainstream. This is because the “other” is modernism (which is taken as incorporat ing capitalism, though not reduced to it) and positivism. Amongst the evils attributed to these “isms” are belief in rational (social) scientific enquiry, a reality independent of our perceptions, and so-called meta-narratives that seek to order and explain broad social and historical patterns.
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory It is unarguable that most of the leading figures in CMS adhere to the social construction ist approaches that generate such critique. Where this is dominant, it leads, intentionally or otherwise, to a small tent version of CMS in which its radicalism is epistemological rather than ontological. In other words, the focus of the critical is more on the way that the studies are done than the position and practices of management. Though doubts about the substantive claims made about the world by mainstream scholars may be the starting point of critique, the ultimate focus tends to be on the means of and motives for making them. I have argued elsewhere (Thompson 2004) against a restrictive branding of CMS, particu larly as articulated by Fournier and Grey (2000). Hyper-reflexivity about our own labor processes and radical relativism concerning knowledge claims are not adequate ways of challenging managerialism in theory or practice. Whilst some contributors maintain an in terest in social change and emancipation, too much small tent CMS tends towards selfreferential textual games and (often obscure) meta-theorizing, whose emphasis on decon struction and denaturalization problematizes everything and resolves nothing. As a result epistemological radicalism makes it harder to conduct debates through common cate gories and criteria. The (p. 107) “impasse” in the 1990s labor process debate was as much to do with lacking any common means of addressing and resolving contending claims as the arguments themselves, some of which, as we saw earlier, had more in common than sometimes thought. If we dig beneath this somewhat asymmetric warfare, a genuine difference of territory and theoretical orientation emerges. Whilst I entirely accept the distinction between studying management as category and practice and managerialism as discourse and per spective, the focus of criticality on management is inherently partial and restrictive. Even for those of us who work in business schools, the broader social sciences, rather than the Academy of Management, should set the context for critical engagement. This relates to the previously noted tension concerning an overemphasis on management strategy rather than capital-labor relations and wider circuits of capital. One dimension of the core theo ry emphasizes that given the role of the labor process in generating the surplus and as a central part of human experience in acting on the world and reproducing the economy, the role and experiences of labor and the capital-labor relationship is privileged for analy sis. This does not mean a universal privileging over (for example, gender relations and the family), but for an analysis of the dynamic interactions between political economy and workplace change. In this sense, LPT is more accurately described as a form of critical la bor studies, but without the teleological emphasis on labor as a universal, liberating class destined by its location in the process of production to be the gravedigger of capitalism. Finally, the test of a good theory is, ultimately, whether it explains a particular reality in a more complex and comprehensive way than its rivals, and gives us some tools for chang ing it. Fetishizing being critical per se is ultimately a sectarian cul-de-sac and fails to ad dress the issue that in some spheres of academic life, such as organization theory (at least in Europe) CMS is now the mainstream.
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory
Conclusion In a review in 1990 Gibson Burrell remarked that as a classic narrative, LPT “no longer put bums on seats” (p. 294). It is certainly true that LPT has long ceased to be fashion able and a lot of bands and wagons have passed us by on the other side of the road. Whilst the continuing success of the conference might be considered by some as institu tional inertia, there is plenty of evidence that the perspectives influence and inspire a body of relevant and radical work about the many facets of the politics of production. Re viewing a number of recent books, Delbridge notes, “There is nothing particularly novel in this agenda. These remain the core features of labour process analysis and so they should…critical and theoretically informed research into the labour process, its contexts and outcomes, retains a central place” (2006:1219). This is not just a question of core features, but of theory. As Jaros (2005: 23) has noted, the core theory discussed earlier has survived postmodernist and orthodox Marxi an critiques as a “robust perspective from which to study the dynamics of capitalist pro duction.” However, I also agree with Jaros and with other sympathetic commentators (El ger 2001; Smith 2006) that it is underspecified and requires some reworking and expan sion, for example to incorporate better understandings of the dynamics of corporate com petition, labor markets and mobility. (p. 108)
Though there will inevitably be some requirement for meta-theoretical debates and cri tique of new economy perspectives of various kinds, mainstream LPT has to learn and move on from paradigm wars. Previous waves have been marked by foundation, consoli dation and innovation. LPT needs to go through a serious, integrative theory building phase, elucidating patterns and propositions discovered through relevant research pro grams (see Thompson and Harley 2007). Though, as Willmott, Knights, and others have never tired of reminding us, the reproduction of capitalist political economy is accom plished through agency, the “greatest task” is not a theory of the missing subject. It is (to quote Talking Heads) the same as it ever was: to develop a credible account of the rela tionships between capitalist political economy, work systems and the strategies and prac tices of actors in the employment relationship.
II Damian P. OʼDoherty: Retrieving the “Miss ing Subject” in Labor Process Analysis: To wards Emancipation and Praxis Subjectivity and identity refers to those dimensions of the labor process in which individ uals and their collective associations are preoccupied with the interpretation of experi ence and the mobilization of organizational and “world-making” action based upon these interpretations. Labor process theorists use the term “subjectivity” to delineate the cogni tive and sensuous, emotional qualities of individuals that mediate and stimulate reflexive self-consciousness and wider sense-making activities associated with being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1962). “Identity” refers to that sense of uniqueness and distinctiveness we be Page 9 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory lieve defines the essence of our individuality. These interests in subjectivity and identity are informed by a reading of critical and existential social-psychology (e.g. Fromm 1942; Laing 1965; Lasch 1979), and relate to those traditions of phenomenological sociology that sought to extend the philosophical work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Alfred Schutz (p. 109) (1899–1959). Various forms of sociology build upon this phenomenology and have helped contribute to the development of this distinctive form of labor process analysis including “ethnomethodology” (Garfinkel 1967), symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969), and the dramaturgical analysis of social relations developed by Erving Goffman (1967). Drawing on these traditions, a series of studies by colleagues based around the “Man chester School” (Collinson, Contu, Grey, Kerfoot, Knights, McCabe, OʼDoherty, Sturdy, Willmott, Worthington, Wray-Bliss) challenge romantic interpretations of shopfloor resis tance to show how many forms of conflict and struggle in the labor process actually help to supplement and indeed support a conservative and hegemonic managerial control of organization. The illusory quest for identity and its confirmation provides one of the key analytical motifs of this approach helping to explain the complexity and paradoxical na ture of workplace resistance. Developments in the Manchester School approach have more recently turned to a range of post-existential and post-dualistic literature including the mid-period and later work of Michel Foucault, the deconstructive writings of Derrida, the poststructuralism of Laclau and Mouffe, and the feminist analysis of Henriques et al. (1984), Judith Butler (1990), and Ann Game (1991). We will see how these developments in retrieving the “missing subject” help open up sources of volatility and disorder in orga nization inaccessible to the traditions of core theory.
The Making of the Labor Process (Debate): Another Politics of Pro duction The ongoing disciplinary project of making “the labor process,” both as an object of en quiry and a site of practical action and intervention, remind us how we have to be taught to “see” and talk about the labor process. Classic studies in the ethnography and sociolo gy of work show how this education is made available through apprenticeship and social ization on the “shopfloor” (Beynon 1973; Nichols and Beynon 1977; Burawoy 1979; Pollert 1981). Less widely accepted is the argument that academic theory also contributes to a disciplinary formation providing discourse and concepts for students to speak about and make sense of the world in terms of a “labor process.” Academics and practitioners alike collude in producing and reproducing discourse that secures the labor process as an ob ject of scholarly enquiry and political praxis. Reflexivity is often acknowledged by propo nents of core theory but remains little more than polite lip service that elides and misun derstands the full import of its practice (see Blum 1974; Ashmore 1989). A capacity to suspend doubt in the representational and constitutive effects of power/knowledge en courages analysis to be more open to the ambiguity and complexity of organization and helps destabilize the managerial reifications that condition and restrict (p. 110) opportuni
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory ties for struggle and change. This is one of the major intellectual advances offered by the treatment of subjectivity and identity developed in the Manchester School. Core theory tends to confine its study of the labor process to the analyses of wage-effort bargaining and a depiction of the organizational outcomes secured by economic calcula tion. In so doing it misses important dimensions of social relations through which organi zation is rendered fragile and precarious. Indeed, the pragmatic and materialist preoccu pation with wage levels and the terms and conditions of employment may actually rein force the logic and discipline of capitalist organization. Attending to the dynamic play of subjectivity and identity in work organization allows research to re-vision struggle in more expansive and “existential” terms and helps to develop what Foucault calls a “think ing otherwise.” Recontextualizing the subject outside the restrictive economy of what core theory calls a “structured antagonism” encourages sensitivity to lines of connectivity and affective relationality through which the subject contracts and mediates the wider forces and desires of “Being.” As this chapter-half progresses we will endeavor to enter this wider realm of “organiza tion” from where we can better explore the disciplinary limits of core theory. We find that there is not only indeterminacy in empirical “labor processes” but also indeterminacy in how such processes are represented once analysis takes seriously this excess of organiza tion. The “labor process” escapes discursive control when working with such reflexive awareness and thereby helps resist the intellectual and theoretical collusion with a “man agerialist” reification of organization. This temptation is one that core theory finds diffi cult to avoid. Critical management studies, on the other hand, proves attractive in part because it seems to offer a more open space for discursive and conceptual development free from the weight of associations sedimented in the discourse of labor process analy sis. Writing is then given chance to transgress the restrictions of normal science so that it might work towards a subversion of our co-implication in (re)producing the labor process as subject/object of enquiry.
Manufacturing Consent: The Limitations of Sociological Dualism The development of empirical research that has worked outside the conventions of core labor process theory maintains an openness to phenomena in work organization that can not easily be classified according to the dualistic presuppositions of orthodox labor process theory where structure is opposed by agency, management is pitted against la bor, and control is confronted by resistance. Burawoy's (1979) interest in how consent is organized or “manufactured” in the labor process was (p. 111) central to the articulation of this thinking. In his ethnographic study of Allied, Burawoy found that consent was se cured not so much by management design or intention but by a form of collusive and col lective action through which individuals were able to acquire a sense of competence and dignity by “making-out” or meeting and exceeding production targets (Burawoy 1979: 46– 94). In ways that chimed with the work of Willis (1977), who showed how rebellion amongst working-class children ensured that they got working-class jobs, Burawoy noted that “we were active accomplices in our own exploitation” (Burawoy 1985:10). Work was Page 11 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory turned into a game of making-out that required all kinds of interpersonal skills of negotia tion, persuasion, and deal-making. As individuals sought to evaluate one another in terms of their capacity to succeed and “make out,” status hierarchies and social stigma emerged consolidating a social system that helped secure and obscure the extraction of surplus value. What Burawoy does not answer, however, is the question why employees want to appear successful and to be held in high regard by their colleagues and peers. Burawoy is seem ingly unable to move beyond the naturalized and mundane, commonsensical idea that in dividuals seek relative satisfactions from tedious work by pursuing such things as peergroup recognition and status. Such a superficial and unpersuasive “compensatory” ac count of identity undermines the critical coherence and credibility of his contribution. Collinson (1992) extends the work of Burawoy by building on the theoretical analyses of Knights and Willmott (1983, 1985, 1989) and a related series of pioneering empirical studies of labor process conducted in the financial services industry (Collinson and Knights 1986; Knights and Collinson 1987; Knights and Sturdy 1989). His study of Slavs shows how an understanding of subjectivity and identity is central to a full explanation of the behavioral and organizational nature of the capitalist labor process. Typically roman ticized in labor process study, Collinson shows how working-class shopfloor culture can be vicious and victimizing in its defense of these privileged norms and values. His studies help explain why employees want to appear successful and to be held in high regard by their colleagues and peers and is so doing goes further than Burawoy, proposing a non-es sentialist and existential theory of subjectivity and identity. In simple terms, non-essentialist conceptions of subjectivity understand identity as a his torically relative and contingent condition of possibility—to which individuals are various ly subscribed and invested. This conceptual innovation is important because it alerts em pirical research to forms of struggle and resistance where identity is disconfirmed and draws attention to the ways in which subjects deal with this denial and negation. Collinson argues that the precarious nature of wagelabor stokes up basic anxieties and insecurities associated with the “primordial” and existential nature of being-in-the-world. This anxiety is deemed to stimulate forms of individualized ego-defence that become man ifest as destructive projection (i.e., what Collinson calls “critical narcissism”) and efforts to maintain socially (p. 112) valued forms of personal identity. These struggles take us be yond the most obvious expressions of management/labor wage-effort bargaining to reveal the (absent) presence of deferred and displaced features of the labor process. His study shows how a pervasive system of “competitive” masculine humor consolidates a form of group discipline that helps to maintain the values and norms of hard-work, honesty, prac tical “common sense,” and productiveness. These are values which, paradoxically, sup port a conservative status quo and assist managerial exhortations to production and out put. Confusion arises when individuals assume that these values are somehow “authentic” or real, reflecting an inner autonomous essence that is product of their own biography and unique personality and therefore something that can be acquired, possessed, and defend Page 12 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory ed (Knights and Willmott 1989). The quest for the realization or confirmation of identity inevitably exacerbates the competitive and systemic effects of power and inequality espe cially evident in contemporary forms of consumer capitalism where media and advertiz ing is complicit in circulating images of an idealized ego-self. Individuals remain vulnera ble, therefore, to regressive and reactive forms of behavior that dispel the sense of anxi ety and insecurity. Insecurity and identity are best seen, therefore, as parasitical on each other. These self-defeating routines that Collinson identifies can only be effectively chal lenged if subjects are able to penetrate the more intangible and abstract realms of social relations where one's sense of self is revealed as illusory and historically contingent. In the absence of critical self-reflexivity subjects will tend to behave in ways that inevitably reproduce and amplify conditions of insecurity and anxiety. This self-defeating nature of resistance in the labor process poses a serious problem for core-theory. One way in which we might excavate and delineate these contingent and precarious “foundations” of identity is by listening to workers and attending closely to their behavior and activity in the labor process. In this endeavor, empirical research must seek to avoid an over-hasty desire to objectify and label or categorize phenomena as evidence of work er resistance or managerial control. Instead, analysis is better served where researchers are mindful of the possible inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities, and tensions of empirical data. Whether this data takes the form of observation, ethnographic field notes, interview transcripts, or other documents, these artefacts provide occasion for insight in to the provisional and processual contingency of phenomena. In this respect, a careful reading of Collinson helps show how subjects are rarely consistent or unified in terms of “identity” or economic class—such as “manager” or “waged labor.” We see how “manag er” or “worker” is not an entity or category, but rather emergent phenomena always in the process of being defined by individuals and collectives preoccupied with doing (Garfinkel 1967) manager or worker. Through various forms of “impression management” (Goffman 1959) and identity-affirming exercises individuals represent and display for one another their managerial or worker credentials. (p. 113)
Developing Poststructural Analyses of Struggle and Resistance
More recent contributions to the understanding of subjectivity and identity in labor process analysis have proceeded along three main lines. First, there are those who have worked with the ideas of Foucault to develop the traditions of ethnographic and casestudy empirical research. These studies help to show the precarious nature of subjectivity and identity by examining the ways in which subjects get “discursively” constituted. This conceptual opening to labor process study allows us to see how resistance and consent are not mutually distinctive but instead entangled and co-implicated. Identity is often “subjugated” by self-disciplinary modes of self-understanding, reflection and conduct (through practices of HRM and corporate culture, for example), but this discipline always remains provisional and incomplete generating unpredictable and often contradictory ef forts to stabilize and confirm one's sense of self. In their study of MultiBank, Knights and McCabe (2000) show how managerial power can never be exhaustive, in part because subjectivity can never be discursively “completed” or fixed. This makes the dynamics of Page 13 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory organizational behavior complex and volatile. Struggles for power and control are shown to be diffuse and multidirectional, lateral and transversal across social relations, “circu lating” in ways more complex than allowed for in the predominant top-down conception of power and its dualistic mode of power/resistance. The ethnographic research of Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington (2001, 2004, 2008) al so bears the influence of Foucault to show how research interested in the question of sub jectivity does not necessarily lead to a retreat from political economy. Their study of Northern Plant shows how one can integrate the traditional sociological themes of shopfloor labor process study (concerned with the detail of work practices) with wider changes in capital ownership, work technology and financial accounting (see also Ezza mel and Willmott 1998, 2008). Their tracking of management/labor relations as a struggle mediated by “discursive practice” provides the analytical basis upon which this political economy of labor process study proceeds. This approach allows their research to show how Collinson may have exaggerated his argument that shopfloor resistance is inherently counterproductive and self-defeating. Moreover, in Northern Plant, management and la bor are understood and represented not so much in the form of categories or layers of vertical stratification in organization but instead as processes co-implicated and copresent in cross-cutting alliances that reveal the multiple antagonisms out of which the struggle for organization emerges. The second main line of research has sought to advance our conception of subjectivity and identity by drawing upon post-Lacanian psychoanalytical alternatives to Foucault (Contu and Willmott 2006). Slavoj Zizek has been particularly attractive to emerging scholars in labor process study. Fleming and Spicer (2003) use elements of Zizek to show how individuals, in rationalizing their behavior as cynical and (p. 114) autonomous, blind themselves to an “ideological fantasy” to provide an “alluring breathing space” and a “semblance” of freedom in work organization. Workers “still act as if they believed in the prescribed values of the organization” (p. 163; emphasis added), but describe and explain their behavior in ways that suggest distancing through irony and resistance. This distinc tion between actions and “beliefs” helps extend our understanding of the paradoxes and double-binds associated with humanist self-delusions of freedom and autonomy. In decon structing essentialist notions of subjectivity and identity, the work of Zizek offers an alter native language to Foucault and one that retains important links to the psychoanalytical traditions of social science. A third major line of development has been more explicitly theoretical in nature, introduc ing and expositing the work of Laclau and Mouffe (du Gay 1996; Contu and Willmott 2005; Willmott 2005; Spicer and Böhm 2007). The publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) by Laclau and Mouffe introduced a complex and radical rethinking of the nature of ontology that challenges many of the structural and dualistic traditions in Marx ist and neo-Marxist thought. For our purposes here it is important to note that Laclau and Mouffe work with a form of “negative ontology,” i.e., one that is forever incomplete and inexhaustible and emergent out of a processual complexity in social relations that can never realize a final state of representational fixity. One consequence of this is the under Page 14 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory standing that “management” and “labor” are not predetermined in their actions or rela tions by a logic of economic wage-effort bargaining. This is one possible and indeed pow erful articulation of subject positioning to which subjects might become nominally at tached so that they embody, articulate, and reproduce a version of “labor” defined as an economic agent seeking to maximize “benefits” whilst minimizing its “costs.” The ad vance made over the work of Burawoy is the understanding that these subject positions are maintained through discursive articulation and reflexive ways of speaking about self (and hence the importance of identity as a medium of these articulatory practices) that are contingent and never fully exhaustive of possible self-definition. Indeed, “labor” and “wage-effort bargaining” both have to be discursively constituted and represented, brought into life—so to speak—by agents of representation in ways that discipline and mobilize social relations around privileged points of contestation and struggle (“undecid ability” and “dislocation” in the language of Laclau and Mouffe).
Beyond Subjectivity and Identity What Laclau and Mouffe offer is a way of thinking that shows how struggles in the labor process are far more diverse and radical than it is possible to capture in traditional em pirical representations of work organization. Individuals are “sites” of multiple identities and subjective investments—part class and part gender, most obviously, but also in scribed within discourses of race, religion, age, nationality, (p. 115) etc. These multiple as sociations make behavior radically uncertain and contingent in ways that undermine the predictive and totalizing ambitions of orthodox forms of theoretical control in labor process analysis. Once we are prepared to acknowledge that there is no referential back stop or foundational bedrock to secure and guarantee reality we are better prepared to examine subjectivity and identity as a medium and outcome of a social construction of power and inequality. This helps show how “structure” is a more recursive and immanent phenomenon and possibly more fragile than we have been led to believe, emergent out of unpredictable and improvizational activities in the labor process instead of rooted in some inaccessible realm of capitalist political economy far removed from the everyday re flexive struggles of “labor.” All three lines of research change the way we think about how organization acquires pat tern or structure. The focus on subjectivity and identity encourages analysis to show how organization becomes patterned or institutionalized through ongoing social construction and practical accomplishment. Careful attention to those features of the workplace asso ciated with the performance of subjectivity and identity shows how the labor process is an important site of this ongoing production of organization where things are held in con tingency and suspension, and, therefore, possible transformation. It is in this “realm” of organization (Chia 1998) where we can study how systemic effects immanent to the prac tical accomplishment of the labor process emerge “behind the backs” of individuals and collectives. Hence, there is no claim or assumption that organization exists in an idealist or textual free play of interpretation lacking in enduring pattern or structure. Instead, we are offered ways of thinking that destabilize the boundaries of the labor process to dis play organization as a radically contingent phenomenon, a medium and outcome of incon Page 15 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory sistency and ambiguity in a process of realization that is fraught with incompletion and uncertainty. This “deconstruction” of capitalist organization is not possible in core theory where pow er and inequality are seen as something that emerges out of deep structure or underlying ontological reality in ways that mechanistically restrict the constitutive and reflexive ac tivities of social agency. The linguistic and discursive conventions of sociological repre sentation that inform mainstream labor process theory tend to over-stabilize these processual features of organization and thereby grant too much order and structure to or ganization. In so doing core theory also undermines the transformational potential inher ent to the labor process, a “potentia” that is more successfully opened up by research that is sensitive to the ambiguous and “interstitial” dimensions of organization. Advances in contemporary sociological theory help to explore this intermediate domain that lies be tween the traditional divisions of macro/micro, structure/agent, and the material/ideal. Structuration theory, for example, offers one way of engaging with this dimension in orga nization (Giddens 1979), and the work of Giddens has been particularly influential in the development of thinking about subjectivity and identity in labor (p. 116) process analysis. We can see this influence most obviously in the work of Collinson (see above), but also Willmott (1984), and OʼDoherty and Willmott (2001). However, the recent turn to Fou cault opens up the question of subjectivity and identity in ways quite different to that af forded by Giddens and brings with it a greater attention to what Foucault (1979) calls the “microphysics of power.” This offers a promising and exciting way of treating the empiri cal in future labor process study helping to show how subjects and objects are formed out of a swarm of contingent and relational “matter.” What we have called the “performance of subjectivity and identity” then, can be analytically broken down and interpreted as an ongoing orchestration (or narration) of an “assemblage” of fragments and materials dis tributed across space and time (media images, role models, the family, memories, hopes, etc.). At this level of analytical detail labor process reveals phenomena in its more primor dial state, where matter subsists in ambiguous and processual agitation. The study of subjectivity and identity provides one way of thinking this metastability where structure and agent are co-implicate and co-present in the recursive practices of social agents preoccupied with questions pertaining to existential matters. The critique of essentialist conceptions about identity provides a vital but preliminary stage in opening up these immanent dimensions of organization. Beyond the narrow limits of wage-effort bargaining, struggle and contestation becomes understood as a more universal and gen eralized feature of social relations at work, a complex and multifaceted medium out of which organization is constructed and deconstructed. It is out of this wider, more “open field” (Cooper 1976) of organization/disorganization that we can extend our understand ing of the ways in which the reproduction of “labor” and the labor process is made contin gent and problematic. Attention to these realms allows us to (re)contextualize the actions, behaviors and reflections of employees and reconnect the labor process with these wider forces of organization/disorganization. The three main lines of research that have ad vanced the study of subjectivity and identity all retain an acute sensitivity to the empiri cal minutia of phenomena providing an attention to detail that shows how events in the Page 16 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory labor process exceed those customary boundaries and categories that separate structure from agent and object from subject. However, recent developments in actor-network theo ry (Law 2004; Latour 2005) have more rigorously taken up the challenge posed to social science by the work of Foucault and has arguably been more successful in representing phenomena in this “meta-stable” state—i.e., before the dualistic division between struc ture and agent. Insights such as this will help labor process study build upon its pioneer ing research into subjectivity and identity.
Conclusions The retrieval of the “missing subject” helps teach how transformation and change is es sential to emancipation and praxis. To this end it is sometimes necessary to (p. 117) aban don institution and identification. In recent years we have seen a number of protagonists in the labor process debate migrate to the field of critical management studies where they have been able to extend and develop elements of reflexivity, anti-performativity, and the denaturalization of work organization (see Fournier and Grey 2000). Core theory is more skeptical of the feasibility and potential of critical management studies because it argues these elements promote relativism and an epistemological skepticism that pre vents research from knowing “reality” in the form of trends, laws and generalisable knowledge (Thompson and Newsome 2004). There is a legacy of vanguardism and latent social engineering in this kind of social science, where the theoretician or academic is deemed to know best. What core theory appears to want is an accurate mapping and tabulated description of the reality of work organization so that it might best advise labor and its agents how best to struggle against management in ways that will democratize or collectivize the owner ship of the means of production. At the same time, there is an undecidable and tautologi cal quality to these ambitions. The claim seems to be being made that to be “critical” we have to be critical of something, and, moreover, of something that preexists our efforts to know it. This prompts us to ask how we might presume to know what preexists if we can not know it. It is precisely this kind of (in its own terms) anti-scientific faith in reality that surely undermines critical potential and leads to a whole series of curious and paradoxi cal claims—of the kind we see where Thompson writes that “while there cannot be an ex act correspondence between reality and our representations of it, good research aims to grasp the real with as much accuracy and complexity as is feasible in given conditions” (Thompson and Newsome 2004; 58). Implicit in what we have been arguing, however, is that this retrieval of the missing sub ject in labor process analysis is really a recovery of a lost “ontology” in organization. Studies of the labor process, attentive to the importance of subjectivity and identity, have discovered organization to be a medium and outcome of a far greater ontological com plexity than allowed by core theory, given core theory's greater commitment to the ortho dox methods of social science. Where subjectivity and identity are explored as factors that mediate the management and control of work, organization becomes a precarious ac complishment, a balance of power that is constructed and contested at multiple points of Page 17 of 24
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory struggle and desire. As a consequence, research soon discovers that organization oper ates in ways that do not conform to the logic and rationality associated with wage-effort bargaining. If there are “forces” or “dynamics” of management—labor interaction, they are “faulty,” incomplete, manifold, and erratic, maintained through an in media res of dis course/practice and the multiple realms of consciousness that constitute individual and collective subjectivity. This allows us to begin to study how established patterns of power and inequality are re newed through difference and repetition in each instance of the becoming and actualiza tion of organization. One consequence of this alternative conception (p. 118) of ontology is the reflexive recognition of one's own possible complicity in the reproduction of reified conceptions of capitalist organization. Participating in the circulation and deployment of customary discourse and their analytical and methodological strategies of representation helps legitimate and validate a certain way of looking at, relating to, or being in the world (Blum 1974). The legacy of research associated with the Manchester School challenges us to interrogate our own labor process so that we might invent forms of research and writ ing that recover the immanent potentiality of organization where things are held in greater suspense and potentiality. To invite students of the labor process to tap into the precarious volatility associated with ontological “becoming” demands a capacity to sus pend the ego-identifications of authorial identity that also entails a collective and social challenge to predominant modes of being-in-the-world. Research becomes “critical action learning” when self and world begin to change through collective participation in which we collectively create and work towards emancipation instead of prescribing change on the basis of an apriori commitment (faith) to a restrictive version of “worker” emancipa tion.
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory HOULIHAN, M. (2002). “Tensions and Variations in Call Centre Management Strate gies,” Human Resource Management Journal, 12/4: 67–85. JAROS, J. (2005). “Marxian Critiques of Thompson's (1990) ‘Core’ Labour Process Theo ry: An Evaluation and Extension,” Ephemera, 5/1: 5–25. JENKINS, S., and DELBRIDGE, R. (2007). “Disconnected Workplaces: Interests and Identities in the ‘High Performance’ Factory,” in S. C. Bolton and M. Houlihan (eds.), Searching for the Human in Human Resource Management, London: Palgrave. KNIGHTS, D., and COLLINSON, D. (1987). “Disciplining the Shopfloor: A Comparison of the Disciplinary Effects of Managerial Psychology and Financial Accounting,” Accounting, Organisation and Society, 12/5: 457–477. —— and MCCABE, D. (2000a). “‘Ainʼt Misbehavin?’ Opportunities for Resistance under New Forms of ‘Quality’ Management,” Sociology, 34: 421–436. —— —— (2000b). “‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’: The Meaning and Experience of Teamworking in an Automobile Company,” Human Relations, 53/11: 1481–1507. —— and STURDY, A. (1989). “New Technology and the Self-Disciplined Worker in In surance,” in M. McNeil, J. Varcoe, and S. Yearley (eds.), Deciphering Science and Technol ogy. London: Macmillan. —— and WILLMOTT, H. (1982). “Fromm's Contribution to a Theory of Work Organiza tion,” Praxis International, 2/2: 204–225. —— —— (1983). “Dualism and Domination: A Critical Examination of Marx, Weber and the Existentialists,” Australia and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 19/1: 33–49. —— —— (1985). “Power and Identity in Theory and Practice,” Sociological Review, 33/1: 22–46. —— —— (1989). “Power and Subjectivity at Work: From Degradation to Subjugation in Social Relations,” Sociology, 23/4: 975–995. —— —— (eds.) (1990). Labour Process Theory. London: Macmillan. LACLAU, E. (1990). New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. —— and MOUFFE, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. LAING, R. (1965). The Divided Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin. LASCH, C. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton. LATOUR, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LAW, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge. Page 21 of 24
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Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson is Professor and Head of the Department of Human Resource Man agement at the University of Strathclyde. His research traverses the labor process, organization theory, and workplace misbehavior and conflict, and he is the co-editor of the recent Oxford Handbook on Work and Organization (Oxford University Press) with Stephen Ackroyd, Rosemary Batt, and Pamela Tolbert. Damian P. OʼDoherty
Damian P. OʼDoherty is Senior Lecturer in Organization Analysis in the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester. He has published widely in the fields of labor process theory, critical management studies, and organization theory. His most recent project takes “the city” as a subject of management and organization in which he is testing various methods of intervention and study that include the cre ation of an experimental travel agency which will be launched as a new business start-up.
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Perspectives on Labor Process Theory
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Organizations and the Natural Environment
Organizations and the Natural Environment Tim Newton The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Business Policy and Strategy, Social Issues Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0006
Abstract and Keywords Given the current strength of media concern with climate change, it is perhaps surprising that this issue has remained somewhat tangential to writers within critical and main stream management studies. This article considers why greater attention must be paid to the natural environment as well as to the tensions that are raised by such study. The rela tive inattention to the natural environment within management and organization studies (MOS) is in marked contrast to that apparent in Western media. Barely a day goes by without some media report concerning climate change, and the subject has moved in creasingly center stage within mainstream political agendas. In part, this reflects the per ception of a growing ‘scientific consensus’ that climate change and environmental degra dation are proceeding apace. Keywords: natural environment, climate change, management studies, organization studies, Western media, envi ronmental degradation
Introduction GIVEN the current strength of media concern with climate change, it is perhaps surpris ing that this issue has remained somewhat tangential to writers within critical and main stream management studies. In this chapter, I shall consider why we should pay greater attention to the natural environment as well as to the tensions that are raised by such study. The relative inattention to the natural environment within management and organization studies (hereafter, MOS) is in marked contrast to that apparent in Westernmedia. Barely a day goes by without somemedia report concerning climate change, and the subject has moved increasingly center stage within mainstream political agendas. In part, this re flects the perception of a growing “scientific consensus” that climate change and environ mental degradation are proceeding apace. On the one hand, some writers have ques tioned the significance of environmental risks (e.g., Lomborg 2001). On the other, there Page 1 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment are increasing concerns that changes to the natural environment may be more pro nounced than previously anticipated. For instance, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raised its forecast for global warming from 3C to the possibility of almost 6C by 2100 (Houghton et al. 2001). In addition, environmental threats such as global warming occasion a (p. 126) variety of risk scenarios. These include the flooding of dense ly populated land, as in Bangladesh and the Nile delta, the “disappearance” of Pacific is lands, and the loss of low lying land in Western countries such as the Netherlands and the Mississippi delta (Houghton 2004). There are also concerns that global warming will ex acerbate water shortages and falling crop yields in developing countries, and accelerate desertification in areas such as the Southern Mediterranean, Northern and Southern Africa, and the Sahel. In so doing, there are fears that such environmental stress will lead to, or exacerbate, major armed conflict. In other areas of the world, there is the possibili ty that the melting of the North polar ice caps will cause sufficient cooling of Atlantic wa ters to “turn off” the “conveyor belt” that brings the warmair and water of the Gulf Stream to North and West Europe. Though considerable hype can surround such doomladen scenarios, whether through the alarmist briefings of green pressure groups or Holywood blockbusters such as The Day After Tomorrow, this does not detract from their significance. As Peter Dickens argues, “While the apocalyptic visions of irreversible envi ronmental degradation may still turn out to be over-stated there is still plenty of evidence of widespread environmental destruction” (1996: 27). In particular, the heavily media tized debate about global warming can detract from other environmental concerns such as species extinction and loss of bio-diversity, soil degradation, and depletion of the ozone layer, air and water pollution, toxic waste, nuclear radiation, and so on. Furthermore, there are concerns relating to nitrogen emissions caused by fertilizers and fossil fuels, with some environmental scientists suggesting that nitrogen emissions may be more sig nificant to climate change than those of carbon. In addition, there still remains a remark able lack of knowledge on the cumulative and interactive effects of the vast array of chemicals which humanity routinely deploys (Carson 1962; Jermier et al., 2006). Surrounding all these debates are anxieties about the geopolitics of energy. For example there are predictions that we will experience short-falls in oil production at some time be tween 2007 and 2025 from organizations as various as the Peak Oil Association, Green peace, and Shell. Although there is considerable debate and contestation in this area (e.g., see Odell 2004), there remains concern that “the tip over point”—where oil demand exceeds supply and prices accelerate—will be, or may have been, reached before alterna tive supplies of energy are on stream. Such predictions arouse “Doomsday” fears that have as much to do with the possibility of an entrenched global recession as the pursuit of a green agenda. These concerns illustrate the way in which human beings appear closely dependent on, and interdependent with, the natural world (Elias 1991; Newton 2003a, 2007). In addi tion, given that climate change and higher energy and food costs are likely to impact most on the world's poor, they remind us of the gross inequalities between people in their access to the world's resources since, for many people, the need to degrade the natural Page 2 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment environment is interrelated with the threat of famine, disease, and poverty (Banerjee 2003; Dryzek 2005).
(p. 127)
A Critical Agenda?
Although there are exceptions, the field of “organizations and the natural environment” (hereafter, O&E) is characterized by a lack of critical awareness in the sense that might be recognized within critical management studies (hereafter, CMS). Within O&E, the term “critical” is most often used to advance the replacement of “anthro pocentrism” assumptions—wherein “nature” is seen a resource to be used and exploited by humans—with “ecocentric” rationales that place nature center-stage and stress the need for an “attitude of reverence for life” (Purser, Park, and Montuori 1995: 1073). Al though small in number, this “critical ecocentric” agenda has been argued to form part of “a critical dialogue in organisation studies” (Bansall and Roth 2000: 793) and has made some appearances in major MOS journals. Yet though ecocentrism represents the closest thing to a critical agenda within most O&E, its advancement has been hampered by its inherent contradictions. In particular, ecocentrism, and its cousin “deep ecology,” have long been criticized for adopting an ide alized view of nature that seeks to give equality to “pathogenic microbes [and] animal vectors of lethal diseases” (Bookchin 1994: 22). Ironically, the ecocentric desire to treat all life forms equally can be attacked on the grounds that it represents an anthropocentric ambition that seeks to project “equality” on to a natural terrain that can often appear characterized by inequality (Luke 1988; Newton 2002). For instance, equality can hardly be said to exist between carnivores and herbivores given the tendency of the former to eat the latter. Similarly, there have been numerous other criticisms of the “logically incon sistent and simplistic position” of ecocentrism (Egri and Pinfield 1996: 467; cf. Dryzek 2005). In addition to doubts about environmental philosophy, there has also been critique of the O&E field. Critics suggest that the “evangelism” of earlier O&E writers lead them to un critically “adopt whatever organizational change rationales were to hand” (Newton and Harte 1997: 88), and that as a result, the field lacks “quality” and is characterized by a “sparseness of introspection” and a failure to produce “big ideas” (Bansal and Gao 2006: 471; Kallio and Nordberg 2006: 440, 450). Yet there are some signs that the O&E field has started to question some of its previous assumptions. For example, there is a less of a blanket assumption that “greening” of business represents a win–win scenario for both business and the environment, as was previously witnessed in a plethora of “little vi gnettes illustrating success” (Newton and Harte 1997: 79). As Tomi Kallio and Piia Nord berg note, “O&E-related research is today more often considered legitimate without the continuous need to find win-win solutions” (2006: 446). In part, this shift may have re flected the collapse of the confidence and evangelism that characterized the early devel opment of the field. For example, Kallio and Nordberg contrast the highly optimistic lan guage (p. 128) witnessed in Richard Welford and Andrew Gouldson's comment that “in the Page 3 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment last five years we have seen a fundamental change in the way that industry views the pro tection of the environment” (1993: ix) with the pessimism expressed by Welford only a few years later when he declared that it was “simply surprising how dominant the busi ness conservative (or business-as-usual) viewpoint has become” (1997: 37, cited in Kallio and Nordberg 2006: 443). In sum, there are varied concerns about the current state of the O&E field. In addition, it seems odd that O&E writers should advance the “ecocentric” centrality of nature to hu man welfare without considering what we mean by nature, or questioning its romanticiza tion within ecocentric thought (Dryzek 2005; Newton 2002). As we shall see, “nature” is nothing if not an ambiguous term.
What Do We Mean By Nature? “Nature” has long been an ambiguous and dangerous term because of the various ways it has been used to define and enrol (Soper 1995). On the one hand, it has been co-opted in order to abuse and exploit, as witnessed in attempts to define the “natural” superiority of Caucasians, the subjugation of women through their assignment to their “naturally” sub ordinate position, or the repression of lower social classes through the erection of a “nat ural” social hierarchy or caste system. On the other hand, nature is also increasingly per ceived as the subject of cultural abuse through activities such as the degradation of the natural environment or the human impact upon climate change. Nature can therefore ap pear Janus faced, as repressed and repressor. It is therefore not surprising that it has been subject to considerable variation in its historical representation, from the medieval depiction of nature in the “Great Chain of Being,” to Enlightenment distancing and “progress over” nature, to Romanticist desires for human reintegration with nature, to counter-Romanticist “denunciations of the quest for humanist redemption through ‘na ture’ ranging from Baudelaire to Oscar Wilde to Foucault” (Soper 1995: 32). In this context, the problem with O&E writing is that it rarely seriously questions what wemean by nature even though demands aremade to place “nature … at the center of management/organizational concerns” (Shrivastava 1995: 127). This position is problem atic because “justifying human actions in the name of ‘nature’ leaves the unresolved problem of whose (human) voice will be legitimate to speak for ‘nature’” (Darier 1999: 24). As Soper comments, “romantic conceptions of ‘nature’ as wholesale salvation from cultural decadence and racial degeneration were crucial to the construction of Nazi ideol ogy” (1995: 32). In sum, work such as that of Soper suggests that our notions of nature are open to wide-ranging contestation and (p. 129) dispute. Even though that the natural world may exist in some “real” sense, how we represent it remains partly a matter of hu man social construction. This last comment draws attention to another limitation of the existing O&E field, namely its reluctance to engage with wider social science debate. An illustration comes from the lengthy social science dispute between social constructionists and realists over the con ceptualization and treatment of “nature” (e.g., Soper 1995; Burningham and Cooper Page 4 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment 1999; Hacking 1999). In brief, constructionists assert that whatever the “reality” of na ture, our understanding of it remains necessarily socially mediated. In response, realists argue that the constructionist position entails several limitations because of a failure to actively theorise the “material reality” of nature (Newton 2003a, 2007). This pivotal social science debate has been largely ignored by O&E writers even though it can directly in form their concerns. For example, the shift from “optimism to pessimism” among O&E writers (see above) appears as less of a surprise if one attends to social science debates surrounding realism and constructionism. In particular, constructionism draws attention to the way in which the representation of natural science came under increasing scrutiny in the twentieth century because science appeared “double-edged” in its outcomes. For instance, along with the “goods” of remarkable scientific progress came the “bads” of, say, biological warfare, the atomic bomb, or rapid environmental degradation, etc. (Beck 1992). At the same time, lay publics became increasingly bombarded with supposed sci entific information relating to their health, their diet, their psychology, and much of this information could appear contradictory or confusing. In this context, it is not surprising that people have shown ambivalence about the messages of climate change science, espe cially when people in the 1970s were being told that the earth's climate was becoming cooler rather than hotter. If science, and environmental science, is not seen as a clear ar biter of “truths” about the natural world, it is unlikely that people will readily respond to its message. Indeed environmentalists such as the controversial biologist, E. O. Wilson, have complained that “environmental … science is still regarded widely, all the way up to the White House, as just another worldview” (Wilson 2008: BBC Podcast). Such com ments reflect the increasing contestation of scientific “conclusions” over the past century. If O&E writers had paid attention to the kind of constructionist logic given above, they might have questioned the overly optimistic expectation that the environmentalist mes sage would be widely received by lay publics, businesses, or governments. In other words, in ignoring social science debates concerning constructionism and realism, O&E writers had little analytical purchase as to why their early optimism was unwarranted or why it rapidly turned to pessimism. Equally, these same social science debates between realists and constructionists can directly inform more recent developments relating to en vironmentalism, especially the indications of a renewed optimism following events such as the award of the Nobel Laureate to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli mate Change. (p. 130) On the one hand, realists can assert that this shift represents the response to the “reality” of the steady accumulation of data supporting the effects of hu man impact upon climate change. On the other, constructionists can point to the way in which this “real” data has been socially constructed through increasingly intense popular mediatization, whether through Hollywood blockbusters like The Day After Tomorrow, or Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, or the daily outpourings from print and broadcast me dia. In sum, social science debates concerning realism and constructionism continue to inform our understanding of environmentalism, and as Phil Sutton comments in respect of sociology, it “was and is an absolutely necessary [debate] for sociologists to engage in if the discipline is to have useful things to say about environmental issues” (2004: 75).
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Organizations and the Natural Environment
Changing the Agenda In part the pessimism felt by some writers on the greening of business reflects the domi nant philosophies that have informed both business and government. In brief, these are the doctrines of “sustainable development,” “reform environmentalism” as well as “weak” forms of “eco-modernisation theory” (Dryzek 2005). Although these doctrines vary in em phases, they share a broad concern to promote “the coexistence of industrial capitalism and environmental protection” (Pulver 2007: 48, added emphasis). The proponents of these strategies argue that a coexistence model represents a pragmatic realpolitik that acknowledges the “need for a balance … between evolving human and natural systems of existence” (Egri and Pinfield 1996: 477, added emphasis). Capitalist societies remain committed to economic growth and therefore the only sensible strategy is to find an ac commodation between growth and environmental protection. This argument is reinforced by the perceived failings of more radical eco-philosophies such as ecocentrism, ecofemi nism, and deep ecology. In this sense, approaches such as ecocentrism and ecofeminism act as a “foil” to accommodation and coexistence strategies, a convenient illustration of the need for more pragmatic policies. At first sight, the pragmatics of accommodation can appear compelling. Even though cap italism is unlikely to constitute the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992), it appears likely that environmental policies will need to accommodate to the continuing desire for eco nomic growth amongst citizens and governments of the developed and developing world. In this context, it seems reasonable to champion a “mid-range reform environmentalism” that champions the “need for balance” (Egri and Pinfield 1996: 475, 477, added empha sis). Yet as we shall see, questions (p. 131) remain as to the feasibility of realizing this bal ance given that those seeking to affect environmental policies rarely have equal influ ence.
Flying the Flag: The Example of UK Aviation Recent history has not been kind to the proponents of the “need for balance” since it pro vides numerous examples where the language of pragmatic accommodation has been em ployed by business or government in ways that can appear detrimental to the natural en vironment (Newton 2005). For example, the UK government's White Paper, The Future of Aviation, repeatedly stressed the need for a “balanced strategy” (Department for Trans port 2003a: 28, added emphasis) between the economic benefits of aviation and the need for environmental protection. In this manner, it adopted the accommodation language of sustainable development, reform environmentalism, and moderate ecological moderniza tion. On the one hand, the White Paper sought to encourage the remarkable “freedom of travel” that aviation has brought to consumers in the developed world. As The Times noted in its front page, the White Paper purported to have “taken a balanced approach which ‘reflects people's desire to travel further and more often by air’” (Webster 2003: 1, added emphasis). On the other hand, the White Paper continually acknowledged the
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Organizations and the Natural Environment threat of environmental degradation occasioned by this rapidly increasing consumer de mand. The need for a “balance” between economic growth and environmental protection is con tinually reinforced in the White Paper, with thirty-eight references to the desire for “bal ance”, a “balanced approach,” or a “balanced strategy”. As part of this supposed balance, the White Paper professes its commitment to “sustainable development” (Department for Transport 2003a: 26) and to “mitigate the impact air transport has on the environment, including its impact on global warming” (Department for Transport 2003a: 8). Yet one could question this commitment when its proposals will endorse the building of four new runways across the UK, several runway extensions, and the wide-scale expansion of UK airports (see Department for Transport 2003b). This is at a time when the government's own figures suggest that UK aviation carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will grow by about 70 per cent by 2030, from 11 to as much as 18 million tonnes (Department for Transport 2003a: 25, 39). They further acknowledge that the anticipated aviation carbon emissions in 2030 “could amount to a quarter of the UK's total contribution to global warming by that date” (Department for Transport 2003a: 39). Far more alarming figures have been presented by the UK House of Commons (p. 132) Environmental Audit Committee. They estimate that “by 2030, aviation could account for nearly 90% of Government's 2050 CO2 target of 229 million tonnes” (House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee 2003: 9). They further suggest that “even by 2010 … the increase in aviation emissions would entirely negate the reductions achieved by the Government under the Kyoto Protocol” (House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee 2003: 9). In addition, the government White Paper itself admits that CO2 “emissions are significantly more damag ing at altitude” and “thought to be 2–4 times greater than CO2 alone” (Department for Transport 2003a: 40). As the Environmental Audit Committee conclude in their appraisal of the White Paper: The aviation White Paper actively promotes a huge growth in air travel over the next 30 years. The environmental impact of this—in particular in terms of emis sions and the contribution of aviation to global warming—will be massive. (House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee 2004: 7) The above arguments collectively suggest that the UK government will dramatically increase UK carbon emissions in spite of earlier commitments by the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, to “move to a new, low carbon economy” (Department of Trade and Industry 2003: 3). Most sig nificantly, the British government plans are embedded within the accommodation discourse of sustainable development and reform environmentalism, especially through reference to the “need for balance.” Indeed, such was the stress on balance that the House of Commons Environ mental Audit Committee described it as a government “mantra” (House of Commons Environ mental Audit Committee 2004: 17).
Examples such as that of UK aviation reinforce the arguments of those who suggest that sustainable development and reform environmentalism represent a compromise “too far.” As Pushkala Prasad and Michael Elmes note, accommodation strategies deliver “business almost as usual” outcomes that “frequently fall short in terms of conserving natural re Page 7 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment sources or reducing industrial pollution” (Prasad and Elmes 2005: 863). The problem with the language of balance, or the need for compromise between stakeholders, is that it of ten downplays and disguises “self-interest, political power and institutional influ ence” (2005: 861). The net result is that “rather than reshaping markets and production processes to fit the logic of nature, sustainable development uses the logic of markets and capitalist accumulation to determine the future of nature” (Banerjee 2003: 153). In effect, the power of the “pragmatic” language of accommodation and balance lies in its ability to draw attention away from the fact that climate change constitutes a highly politicized and contested terrain where differing “stakeholders” do not have equal influ ence over decision-making processes. As we shall see, this language also overlooks the considerable evidence that particular businesses and business coalitions have endeav oured to cast doubt on climate change science and thereby downplay the risks of global warming and environmental degradation.
(p. 133)
The Mediatization of Climate Change
A number of writers have drawn attention to the fact that there are businesses, and busi ness coalitions, that appear concerned to deliberately “de-rail” climate change science (Newton and Harte 1997; Banerjee 2003; Levy and Egan 2003; Dryzek 2005; Rowell 2007). This suggests that if, as a reader, you have felt unsure about “the whole climate change business,” it may be because of the success of certain businesses in fostering cli mate change “misinformation.” Exxon, one of the world's largest petrochemical companies (associated with brands such as “Exxon,” “Esso,” and “Mobil”), provides an exemplar of the use of “misinformation tac tics.” Exxon has received sustained criticism from a wide range of eminent scientists and scientific authorities including Sir John Houghton (former chair of the IPCC and Chief Ex ecutive of the UK Met Office) and the UK Royal Society. John Houghton argues that: Straight after the Earth summit in 1992 the Exxon company and the coal compa nies in the US set up a massive misinformation campaign, telling people that the science was flawed and that the IPCC was a collection of untrustworthy green ac tivists. They hired top lawyers to spread this message and put it out over the US media. They also lobbied members of Congress and tried to discredit the IPCC and its chairman in a very serious way. This is still happening. It's the big problem in getting something done about climate change. The US is the biggest emitter of CO2 per head of population and the country's emissions have increased by 20 per cent since 1990. (2007: 1) In a similar fashion, Bob Ward of the preeminent British scientific body, the Royal Society, refers to another Exxon report which details “evidence” from organizations which have “misrepresent ed the science of climate change, by outright denial of the evidence … or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge, or by conveying a misleading impression of the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change” (Royal Society 2006: 2). Page 8 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment Environmental advocacy groups add to this criticism. For example, members of the USbased Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) include Nobel Laureates, leading natural sci entists, and “concerned citizens.” UCS argues that between 1998 and 2005 Exxon “fun nelled approximately $16 million to carefully chosen organizations that promote disinfor mation on global warming” (Union of Concerned Scientists 2007: 10), even though many of these organizations publicized the work “of a nearly identical group of spokespeople” whose work has been “repeatedly debunked by the scientific community” (Union of Con cerned Scientists 2007: 10, added emphasis). Through such tactics, UCS argue that Exxon has influenced mainstream media (cf. Rowell 2007) and played a key part in shap ing the energy policies of the US Bush administration. UCS asserts that Exxon “success fully urged the Bush administration to renege on the commitments to the Kyoto Protocol made by previous administrations” (2007: 20) as well as successfully lobbying the (p. 134) Bush administration to replace a former chair on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In reviewing the above argument, it is of course important to remember that climate change science is open to debate and contestation. In addition, there are indications of in creasing disquiet amongst some Exxon shareholders with regard to its environmental policies. Yet at the same time, there is a broad range of evidence that suggests that cer tain organizations and business groups have deliberately subverted the terms of the cli mate change debate to suit particular commercial interests rather than those of open dis cussion (Jermier et al., 2006; Rowell 2007). In addition, these observations are illustrative of the way in which environmental debate is not simply a reflection of an impartial “ac commodation” and “balance” between the interests of different stakeholders. Instead, such debate takes place in a highly politicized terrain where “balance” may not form the central criteria. In sum, the “accommodation” language of sustainable development, reform environmen talism, and weak ecological modernization has struggled over the past two decades to provide a platform capable of addressing ecological concerns. In part, this is because the achievement of “balance” is continually compromised by the likelihood that some “stake holders,” whether elements of the aviation or the oil industry, may have a louder voice than others. Such observations suggest that O&E studies need to move beyond the earli er language of evangelism (Newton and Harte 1997), accommodation (Prasad and Elmes 2005), and “the greening of business-as-usual” (York and Rosa 2003: 274, cited in Jermier et al., 2006: 637) and embrace a more critically oriented agenda.
Critical Theorization Though small in number, critically oriented treatments of O&E do exist. Principal amongst these are the studies by David Levy and his colleagues. These writers loosely employ Gramsci's sense of “hegemony,” defining it as the “ideologies that convey amutu ality of interests” between certain social groups (Levy and Egan 2003: 805). Following Gramsci, they assert asset that this hegemony “is not dependent on coercive control by a Page 9 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment small elite, but rather rests on coalitions and compromises” (Levy and Newell 2005: 49– 50). As an illustration, they cite the attempt by the US oil and automobile industry to “un dermine the credibility and legitimacy of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change” (Levy and Egan 2003: 818). Following Levy, the aforementioned activities of Exxon represent part of this attempt at “sustaining hegemony” (Levy and Egan 2003: 819). The advantage of Levy's Gramscian analysis is that it underscores the way in which climate change debate takes place within strongly politicized contexts where busi ness and other coalitions may seek to protect their own interests rather than that of the natural environment. Yet at the same time, it is impossible to mention Gramsci without noting established critique of his argument (e.g., Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner 1980; Clegg 1989). Although Levy and Egan (2003) present a detailed defence against such cri tique, it is perhaps the case that a neo-Gramscian analysis works best when it works “both within and against Gramsci” (Morton 2003: 137, original emphasis). For example, there remains a need to question “whether there is a predetermined essentialist percep tion of human nature underpinning Gramsci's analysis” (Morton 2003: 136) or “whether one needs to be reticent about the primary role attributed by Gramsci to social classes as (p. 135)
the agents of political change” (ibid.), and whether these kind of questions limit Gramsci's contemporary relevance (Martin 1998). Yet notwithstanding these questions, Levy and his colleagues have undertaken some very interesting analyses that are attentive to the need for a more nuanced interpretation of Gramsci. In addition, Gramscian analysis remains of interest because it draws attention to the “relative autonomy of civil society” (Levy and Egan 2003: 806) and the “public rea son of private citizens” (Peters 1993: 542, cited in Jermier et al., 2006: 638). As John Jer mier and his colleagues have noted, such “public reason” is significant to environmental debate. Drawing on the work of Habermas and Dryzek, they have formulated a “neoHabermasian critical environmental theory” (Jermier et al., 2006: 638) that highlights the significance of the “public sphere,” “communicative rationality,” and “discursive design.” Firstly, Jermier et al. argue that environmental debate can be furthered by an “active green public sphere … emanating from civil society” (2006: 638, original emphasis). Se condly, they draw on Habermas's sense of communicative rationality to attack “instru mental reasoning” on the grounds that it “circumvents ethical discourse” (2006: 638). Thirdly, they employ Dryzek to argue for a “discursive space” governed by “goals of col lective learning, growth and mutual understanding” (2006: 639). Although Jermier et al.'s (2006) analysis is perhaps a little thinly sketched, it remains relevant if only because of the attempts of certain organizations, such as Exxon, to circumvent open discussion, and because the broader activities of business remain interwoven with those of wider civil so ciety, such as that of non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. In my own work, I have been influenced by the feeling that the implicit model of social change within O&E is often misguided. In particular, there has been a tendency to as sume that “eco-change” could happen in a semi-linear fashion. This is reflected in procla Page 10 of 19
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Organizations and the Natural Environment mations which assert that “environmental strategy must … begin with real commitment on the part of the whole organisation” (Welford 1995: 11, added emphasis). The main problem with these evangelical desires is that such “mass conversion” to the green cause is unlikely to occur. As Bauman observed, (p. 136) “all power has its limits” (Bauman 1990: 184) and we need to realize that “a shift to greener strategies … is not the effect of a sin gular agency, no matter how powerful” (Orsatto and Clegg 1999: 274). Drawing on Nor bert Elias and actor-network theory, I therefore argued that “a greener network is likely to involve a host of different actors, such as scientists, governmental and intergovern mental agents, clean technologies, audit mechanisms, and a range of texts, technologies and personnel” (Newton 2002: 532). Following Michel Callon (1991) and Norbert Elias (1991), the key “problem is how to make this heterogeneous network converge” (Newton 2002: 532), especially when many existing networks are entrenched, asymmetrical, and environmentally degrading (such as that of the oil and automobile industry). The above review of critically oriented treatments of O&E is illustrative rather than ex haustive. Other relevant work exists, such as political ecology and postcolonial theory (Orsatto, Hond, and Clegg 2002; Banerjee 2003), narratival analysis (Starkey and Crane 2003), and studies drawing on Bauman (Fineman 1998; Crane 2000) and Marcuse (Jermi er and Forbes 2003).
What Might a More Critically Oriented Ap proach Look Like? As noted above, the O&E literature tends to adopt a narrow definition of the “critical” agenda which equates it with the desire to challenge anthropocentrism. Yet although there remains a need to question anthropocentrism, a critical analysis also means explor ing a broader social, economic, and political terrain. In what follows, I shall suggest some further avenues that CMS scholars might productively explore:
1. Environmental Degradation and Global Social Inequality Bobby Banerjee (2003) argues that it is impossible to divorce ecological considerations from the activities of global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. Specifically, Banerjee asserts that such institutions still deserve the labels, “imperialist” and “colonial”. These epithets appear ap posite to global institutions such as the IMF because when it “declared that a country should remove barriers to currency transactions, and the like, it had to do so” (Miller 2005: 9). In addition, as Daniel Miller observes, (p. 137) such dictates were characterized by an “imperviousness to the local” since “the conditions it imposed … were largely the same irrespective of whether this was Trinidad or Kenya or Poland” (2005: 9). At the same time, the World Bank “has since 1992 funded more than $25 billion worth of fossil fuel exploration and development” (Jermier et al., 2006: 626). Although we can debate whether institutions such as the IMF or the World Bank are becoming more responsive,
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Organizations and the Natural Environment there remains a need to situate O&E within the politics of globalization and global institu tions (Waters 2000; Levy and Newell 2005).
2. O&E and the Geopolitics of Energy As the work of a variety of writers suggests, (e.g., Klare 2004; Levy and Newell 2005; Pul ver 2007; Watts 2007), it is impossible to separate O&E from other geopolitical issues, es pecially those relating to energy. For example, there is currently a strong contestation with regard to the desirability of biofuels. Is it the case that current rises in global food prices, such as the doubling in the price of wheat and rice, are a result of a “rush” to bio fuel (especially in the US and Brazil), with the consequence that “every time we fill up the car [with biofuel] we snatch food from [hungry] people's mouths” (Monbiot 2008). Or are the current high prices typical of previous “spikes” in food costs that are likely to disap pear as the global “market” adjusts (Overseas Development Institute 2008)? In addition, given the current controversy over biofuels, will it really be possible to deliver sustain able biofuels through “an environmental certification system” as Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, suggests (Mandelson 2008)? Addressing any of these questions requires consideration of the geopolitical issues sur rounding negotiations between the developed and the developing world. The need to ad dress the global political economy is similarly required by attempts to understanding the world's most potent source of carbon emissions, namely the oil industry. The latter evokes a host of ethical and environmental concerns, from the tendency of some “oil states” to be characterized by violence, human rights abuse, and wealth inequality (Watts 2007) to the scramble of the developed world to secure possibly diminishing supplies of the “black gold.” As Michael Klare observes, the area surrounding the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea represents one “grand chessboard on which Washington, Moscow, and Beijing will play out their struggle for primacy” over oil (2004: 151, original emphasis). It is in this sense that any understanding of the carbon economy needs to address the geopolitics of energy where “as in a game of chess, power lies not just in the playing of pieces, but in the con figuration of forces, and … set of moves and counter-moves” (Levy and Egan 2003: 807). (p. 138)
3. Beyond the Business
Within O&E, “very little research takes place on strategies for activist groups and organi zations, and the theories and practices required to oppose corporate actions” (Banerjee 2003: 163; cf. Levy and Egan 2003). There remains a need to further interrelate the activ ities of private and public sector organisations with those of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Earth First!, etc. (Crane 2000), as well as local grassroots movements (Jermier et al., 2006), government agencies, and intergovernmental agreements and bodies (Levy and Newell 2005).
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Organizations and the Natural Environment
4. Regulation There also remains insufficient attention to the role of governmental and intergovernmen tal regulation (Newton and Harte 1997). On the one hand, some studies have questioned the efficacy of governmental regulation since it may be “far less substantial, and far less green, that it appears” (Fineman 2000: 71). On other hand, there is considerable doubt as to whether voluntary change by business will ever be sufficient (Newton and Harte 1997). Should we be surprised that many organizations merely exhibit a marketing “greenwash” or “green spin” if there is little meaningful incentive to do otherwise? Furthermore, com parative studies indicate that regulatory regime can impact on the environmental orienta tion of organizations, as appears to be the case with the oil industry (Levy and Newell 2005; Pulver 2007).
Conclusion It may be felt that this review has been rather disparaging in its comments on the O&E field. Perhaps so, but I have not intended to suggest that there is nothing of interest to the critical scholar, or that there is little that can be done to pursue a greener agenda. On the contrary, the work of writers such as Levy, Jermier, Banerjee, or Orsatto and Clegg represent significant developments that attempt to connect the study of O&E to CMS con cerns. In addition, there remain other interesting theoretical and substantive avenues to ex plore, such as those emanating from economic sociology and the “new” sociology of fi nance (e.g., Callon 1998; Mackenzie, Muniesa, and Siu 2007). This work is especially in teresting in relation to the rapid construction of “carbon markets.” In effect, carbon mar kets represent an intergovernmentally sanctioned “creation” of markets that allow orga nizations and nation states to either earn “credit,” by limiting their (p. 139) carbon emis sions, or “buy” permits to enable them to emit greenhouse gases. Some writers go as far as to suggest that carbon markets constitute “an attempt to change the construction of capitalism's central economic metric: profit and loss, the ‘bottom line’” (MacKenzie 2008: 3). More prosaically, they may be seen as a partial attempt to compensate for the “indif ference of money” (Simmell 1990: 441) by reconnecting producers to some of the envi ronmental consequences of their products or services (see Newton 2003b). In this sense, carbon markets challenge what Marx saw as a significant characteristic of capitalist mar kets, namely the way in which “individuals seem independent” (1973: 163, original em phasis) in spite of their close interdependence. In other words, as consumers we need not care whether our clothes are manufactured using child labour, or as producers, we need not worry about the effects of our pollution, and in this sense, we may feel independent and can, if we so wish, often act with utter indifference to the interdependency networks in which we are located (Newton 2003b). Carbon markets potentially challenge this sense of independence by reminding producers that they are interdependent with the ecos phere. And although there remains some distance between their potential and their actu
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Organizations and the Natural Environment ality, carbon markets nevertheless represent an interesting development in relation to markets and environmental degradation. Another area of interest is that of biotechnology, new genetics, and genomics (Andrée 2005; Newton 2007, 2008a, 2009). It is surprising how little attention O&E writers have given to this field given its potential to “rewrite” nature. In addition, as Banerjee (2003, 2008) notes, it constitutes a significant “North/South” issue, especially when internation al agreements appear to privilege biotechnology companies of the “North.” As Banerjee asks, “what are the consequences for the global economy and society of reducing the world's gene pool to patented intellectual property controlled exclusively by a handful of transnational corporations?” (2003: 169). More generally, shouldn't O&E writers attend to the “spectacle of genomics and its promise to ‘clone money’”(Newton 2008a: 3), espe cially given the wide ranging ethical issues that are raised, from dystopian visions of a “new eugenics” to the spectre of a “biopostmodernism” where “nature” becomes as mal leable as the social domain (Newton 2007).We do not have to agree with Jürgen Habermas's (2003) concern that genomics represents a fundamental threat to human morality in order to perceive that this admixture of finance, commerce and science should be of concern to critical scholars. Finally, it may be that the most important thing for CMS students to do is to start re searching the environmental terrain. In a review of “top” US and European MOS jour nals, Pratima Bansal and Jijun Gao found that, excepting two special issues, less than 1 per cent of journal space covered issues relating to organizations and the natural environ ment (2006: 462; cf. Jermier et al., 2006; Kallio and Nordberg 2006). Given the rapidly ac celerating media and policy attention to climate change in the period reviewed by Bansal and Gao, namely 1995–2005, this very low percentage figure is surprising. It is also deeply ironic when there have been numerous articles (p. 140) published during the same period that have bemoaned the failure of MOS writers to influence management practice or public policy (Newton 2008b). Yet it is hardly surprising that we do not influence prac tice and policy issues when we so signally fail to address them.
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Organizations and the Natural Environment BANSAL, PRATIMA, and ROTH, KENSAL (2000). “Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness,” Academy of Management Journal, 43: 717–736. —— and GAO, JIJUN (2006). “Building the Future by Looking to the Past: Examining Re search Published on Organizations and Environment,” Organization & Environment, 19/4: 458–478. BAUMAN, ZYGMUNT (1990). Thinking Sociologically. Oxford: Blackwell. BECK, ULRICH (1992). Risk Society. London: Sage. BOOKCHIN, M. (1994). Which Way for the Ecology Movement? San Francisco: AK Press. BURNINGHAM, KATE, and COOPER, GEOFF (1999). “Being constructive: Social Con structionism and the Environment,” Sociology, 33/2: 297–316. CALLON, MICHEL (1991). “Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility,” in J. Law (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. Sociologi cal Review Monograph 38. London: Routledge, 132–161. —— (ed.) (1998). The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell. CARSON, RACHEL (1962). Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. CLEGG, STEWART (1989). Frameworks of Power. London: Sage. CRANE, ANDREW (2000). “Corporate Greening as Amoralization,” Organization Studies 21/4: 673–696. DARIER, ERIC (1999). “Foucault and the Environment: An introduction,” in Eric Darier (ed.), Discourses of the Environment. Oxford: Blackwell, 1–33. Department for Transport (2003a). The Future of Air Transport, Cm 6046. Norwich: The Stationery Office. —— (2003b). The Future of Air Transport: Summary, Cm 6046. Norwich: The Stationery Office. Department of Trade and Industry (2003). Our Energy, Our Future—Creating a Low Car bon Economy, Cm5761. Norwich: The Stationery Office. DICKENS, PETER (1996). Reconstructing Nature: Alienation, Emancipation and the Divi sion of Labour. London: Routledge. DRYZEK, JOHN S. (2005). The Politics of Earth: Environmental Discourses, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p. 141)
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Organizations and the Natural Environment —— and NEWELL, PETER J. (eds.) (2005). The Business of Global Environmental Gover nance. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. LOMBORG, BJØRN (2001). The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LUKE, TIM (1988). “The Dreams of Deep Ecology,” Telos, 76: 65–92. MACKENZIE, DONALD (2008). “Making Things the Same: Gases, Emission Rights and the Politics of Carbon Markets.” Paper presented to a workshop on “Carbon Markets in Social Science Perspective,” Durham University, 7 November 2007. MACKENZIE, DONALD, MUNIESA, FABIAN and SIU, LUCIA (2007). Do Econo mists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton NJ: Princeton Uni versity Press. (p. 142)
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Organizations and the Natural Environment STARKEY, KEN and CRANE, ANDREW (2003). “Toward Green Narrative: Management and the Evolutionary Epic,” Academy of Management Review, 28/2: 220–237. SUTTON, PHILIP W. (2004). Nature, Environment and Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Union of Concerned Scientists (2007). Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Union of Concerned Scientists. WATERS, MALCOLM (2000). Globalization, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. WATTS, MICHAEL (2007). “The Rule of Oil: Petro-Politics and The Anatomy of an Insur gency.” Paper delivered to a conference on Oil and Politics, Goldsmiths College, Universi ty of London, 10–11 May. WEBSTER, B. (2003). “The Sky's No Limit in Flights Free-for-All,” The Times, 17 Decem ber 2003: 1. WELFORD, RICHARD J. (1995). Environmental Strategy and Sustainable Development: The Corporate Challenge for the 21st Century. London: Routledge. —— (1997). Hijacking Environmentalism, Corporate Responses to Sustainable Develop ment. London: Earthscan. —— and GOULDSON, ANDREW (1993). Environmental Management and Business Strat egy. London: Pitman. WILSON, E.O. (2008). Interview with E. O. Wilson broadcast on the BBC Radio 3 “Arts and Ideas” Podcast, 6 January. YORK, R., and ROSA, E. A. (2003). “Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory,” Organization & Environment, 16: 273–288.
Tim Newton
Tim Newton is Professor of Organization and Society at the University of Exeter. His current research interests include social and organization theory; sociology and “na ture”; interdisciplinarity; the historical development of credit and commercialization; organizations and the natural environment; organizations, new genetics, and ge nomics. Recent publications include Nature and Sociology (Routledge, 2007) and pa pers in Organisation Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, Academy of Management Review, Sociology, and the British Journal of Sociology. He serves on the editorial boards of Sociology and Organization Studies.
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Power at Work in Organizations
Power at Work in Organizations David Knights The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Social Issues Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0007
Abstract and Keywords This article is organized as follows. While not entirely ignoring everyday views of power, the first section provides a general historical overview of the concept in political and so cial theory from classical to postmodern perspectives. With this broad framework as background, the second section focuses on power as utilized in mainstream organization theory. A selection, including theories of contingency, resource dependency, institutional ism, and pluralism, is examined, albeit critically. Although the mainstream is important since it provides the context to which critical approaches are responding, it generally re mains comparatively under-theorized such that commonsense conceptions of power as a property of persons, groups, institutions, or systems remain central to their analyses. This is also far from uncommon within certain examples of critical approaches to manage ment, organization, and work, especially those grounded in such a version of Marxism as labour-process theory, which is discussed in the third section. Keywords: power at work, social theory, mainstream organizations, resource dependency, institutionalism, plural ism, labour-process theory
Introduction IN common sense and everyday life, power is treated in different ways; at one level, it can be seen as a mere capacity or ability to act and, at another, as a determining force. Seen as an individual capacity, power is something that people envy or aspire to possess. As a possession, power is seen to be the source through which to secure for the individual all that he or she desires or demands—freedom, happiness, status, and wealth. Of course, it is recognized that there is often some mutual dependency between these personal attrib utes such that status or wealth may give people power and that it may also reside in col lectives like corporations, institutions, or nation states. However, it is generally seen to be the property of the person or collective. This has also been the case in the humanities and social sciences until quite recently. From the classics of political analysis to the modern writers in social theory, power has been seen as the property of persons or collectives. As Page 1 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations a determining force, however, power is seen to be more abstract, residing in systems or societies that have access to scarcely valued natural or social resources such as raw ma terials, energy, armies, trading wealth, etc. Powerful systems or countries are then seen as determining the present or future potential well being of the lesser powerful or subor dinate. Like the very term itself, power is seen here to do a lot of work—to be the dynam ic that drives change in political and social systems as well as a major, if (p. 145) not the most important, outcome of such change. While power is treated generally as a property of persons, collectives, or systems, there are a large range of theoretical frameworks or perspectives that guide its particular usage: for example, critical theory, discourse theory, feminism, gender and diversity, organizational politics, and labor process theory. Each of these will figure briefly in this chapter although, given that many of them are treated elsewhere in this book, the focus will be more on discourse theory, Foucault, and femi nism, since these have been central to how a number of poststructural critical manage ment studies (CMS)2 academics develop their critique of mainstream organization and management theory. The chapter is organized as follows: While not entirely ignoring everyday views of power, the first section provides a general historical overview of the concept in political and so cial theory from classical to postmodern perspectives. With this broad framework as background, section two focuses on power as utilized in mainstream organization theory. A selection, including theories of contingency, resource dependency, institutionalism, and pluralism, is examined albeit critically. Although the mainstream is important since it pro vides the context to which critical approaches are responding, generally it remains com paratively under-theorized such that common sense conceptions of power as a property of persons, groups, institutions, or systems remain central to their analyses. This is also far from uncommon within certain examples of critical approaches to management, organiza tion, and work especially those grounded in some version of Marxism such as labor process theory that is discussed in section three. However, those influenced by Foucault have tended to reject “juridical” conceptions where power is seen to derive from a sover eign or legal source. Foucauldian approaches espouse a relational view where there is at least a minimal degree of consent or compliance among those over whom power is exer cised. This consent or compliance is forthcoming usually because power is not simply negatively coercive or repressive but also positively productive and enabling. This is illus trated through a selection of studies that have attempted to theorize management prac tice especially in the area of accounting and strategy. In the fourth section, I turn to three other critical approaches to power—organizational politics, the ecological debate and dis courses of inequality. These critical studies draw eclectically on a number of theoretical approaches but, as might be expected, political theory, environmentalism, and feminism respectively are much in evidence. Finally a summary and conclusion draws the analyses together and discusses their implications and limitations.
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Power at Work in Organizations
Brief History of the Concept As a concept, power has a long history stretching back to the ancient Greeks who, despite being the first Europeans to experiment with democracy, believed (p. 146) that power should remain the prerogative of wise or wealthy men. For Plato, the ideal society can on ly be approximated when political power and philosophy coincide such that there are philosopher kings or rulers that “really and truly become philosophers” (Plato 1964: 233). His legacy was to provide legitimacy for elite theories of politics from Machiavelli at the end of the fifteenth century to Pareto, Mosca, and Michels in the nineteenth century. There is not space to discuss each of these theorists other than to say that their elite views of power rendered them deeply undemocratic whilst having to fight a rearguard ac tion against certain empirical developments that encouraged rule by the people. As Nye (1977) argues, the basis of all their theories was a conception of collective psychology that understood the masses to be non-logical (Pareto), inferior and prone to mass hysteria (Mosca) and in need of elite guidance and leadership because they are defective in terms of spiritual and physical capability (Michels). Under the influence of Marx and Weber, twentieth century political theorists such as Bukharin, Domhoff, and C. Wright-Mills were somewhat more critical of elite theory. Against this background, power began to be theo rized within the context of formal democracy and pluralistic notions of pressure groups lobbying centers of power to secure their special interests. In management and organiza tion, these concerns are reflected in and reproduced by what has been termed stakehold er theory (see below) and in studies of the social backgrounds of corporate executives; but apart from this, the impact of elite theory has been marginal. Much less marginal has been the work of Marx and his legacy.
Marxism—Power of Property and Capital While Marx tended to link power to the oppressive capitalist state and to ideology as the distortion of truth, some of his other theoretical arguments such as the dependence of capitalism on the socialization of labor as a co-operative productive force anticipated Fou cauldian concepts of power as positive and productive of subjectivity. However in the hands of pro- and neo-Marxian theorists, power remains as an oppressive and coercive force that deprives people of freedom and the ability to realize their human potential. For Marx, power was an attribute of owning private property (capital) that determines the wage relation and the exploitation of labor through the appropriation of surplus value or profit. Described by Marx as alienation, workers were separated from the products of their labor both materially and symbolically; they were dependent on the capitalists for their livelihood and only through collective resistance and political revolution would they be able to free themselves from the slavish chains of their wage labor. Knowledge for Marx was systematically distorted by bourgeois (capitalist) ideology in that it concealed the truth of power from proletarian labor—repressing its capacity to advance a revolu tionary struggle for emancipation. The focus on emancipation from power is taken up in Critical Theory but at the level of social interaction and communication.
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Power at Work in Organizations (p. 147)
Critical Theory
The Frankfurt School of critical theory (and, in particular, its leading exponent, Haber mas) believed that power was the major cause of distorted communication because in stead of promoting “ideal speech situations” where rational argument prevailed, power was exercised to attain particular technical rational purposes that secured self-interest. Through exposing how this was self-defeating by virtue of the neglect of its own very grounding in symbolic interaction and communicative competence, Habermas (1986) be lieved that such power could be eradicated whereupon social relations would be emanci pated from unnecessary constraints. Because of synthesizing a range of theoretical ap proaches—Marx, Weber, and symbolic interactionism and his focus on emancipation— Habermas has been an inspiration for critical management studies, but his theory has been found wanting by some for its idealistic and over-rational tendencies and its neglect of gender, and by others for its limited applicability in empirical research on management and organization. Another theorist who stands in a similar kind of relationship to CMS is Steven Lukes who provides a synthesis particularly of sociological and political analyses of power. His neat classification of power has considerable heuristic value and has been drawn on extensively by CMS academics in their teaching.
The Three Dimensions of Power (Lukes) Lukes's main contribution (2005, first published 1974) to social science is his analysis of the three distinctive approaches to studying power. The first one-dimensional approach (Dahl 1961) is where power is seen to exist in situations of observable conflict when an in dividual or group is able to assert its will to secure the compliance of those initially resis tant. The problem with this approach is that it neglects to consider situations in which visible conflict has been deflected, so he turns to Bacharach and Baratz (1970) who devel oped a two-dimensional perspective where it is argued that potential conflicts are kept beneath the surface since those exercising power control the agendas and/or remove is sues of contention. Lukes's contribution is to offer a third dimension where power is not just about removing potentials for conflict off the agenda but also involves defining the situation such that subordinates internalize norms and comply even when it is against their interests to do so. Critically examining Lukes's analysis, Knights and Willmott (1999) conclude that he subscribes to a “radical humanism” that is both essentialist and dualist in relation to the autonomy of the self and the power that constrains it. In the later edi tion, Lukes engages with Foucault's work and although he is not wholly dismissive of some of the analysis, he in the end rejects it as leaving no escape from domination, since power “is ‘everywhere’ and there is no freedom from (p. 148) it or reasoning independent of it” (Lukes 2005: 12). This ignores the important distinction between domination and power (Foucault 1982) where it is precisely because subjects exercise freedom that pow er is necessary to redirect it. Domination could only exist where this freedom was absent and the lives of subjects determined. Lukes notes some of this distinction in his account of Foucault but does not recognize its importance. Instead he subscribes to a view of pow er as a capacity and therefore a property of persons rather than relations, thus falling in to the trap of essentialism.3 For those like Lukes who have faith in Enlightenment autono Page 4 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations my, Foucault is depressing and ultra-radical. However. Lukes's belief that the self can be autonomous and has interests independent of power, suggests that his training in analyti cal philosophy has overridden his sociology. Lukes's conception of power reflects binary or dualistic thinking that sees power as oppressive and autonomy as emancipatory where as the situation is much more complex than this (Knights and Vurdubakis 1994). In order to explore this complexity, I now turn to the view of power/knowledge developed by Fou cault.
Foucault—Power/Knowledge Relations and Subjectivity Foucault provided a radical transformation of conceptions of power by linking power with knowledge and showing how they are mutually reinforcing rather than diametrically op posed. Power, for Foucault, was synonymous with social relations and thereby impossible to eradicate; resistance to it merely resulted in a change in its form. However, he did make a distinction between power and domination. Power could be as productive and pos itive as it was destructive and negative whereas domination precluded the exercise of power since the behavior of its target was already determined. Domination is difficult to sustain not least because it is the creative and productive potential of others that is of val ue (Marx's view that labor is the only source of value) and this can only be secured through embracing the creative freedom of subjects over whom power is exercised. I re turn to his work when examining CMS later.
Selective Overview of Power in Organization Studies Introduction While providing only a selective summary of mainstream organization theory, in the spirit of this book it will be examined from a CMS point of view. Within (p. 149) mainstream or ganization theory, there are two diametrically opposed ways of understanding power: ei ther it is a crucial mechanism in managing and sustaining an organization's survival in complex environments or it is disruptive of organizational functioning because it is exer cised outside of its formal hierarchical limits by those seeking to challenge it (Knights and Murray 1994). For both, however, the prevailing theoretical assumptions are value con sensus drawn from a functionalist or systems model of organization and society. This is a model that approves of power insofar as it sustains rather than threatens the existing so cial, management, and organizational order with its unequal distribution of scarce re sources. It is based on a belief that organization theory is about providing management with “better” ways of managing their organizations (Willmott 1995). Consequently none of these approaches understand power in terms of its exercise as a medium and outcome of major social inequalities relating to class, gender, race, age, disability or religion. Of the four perspectives examined in this section, only the last pluralist approach is not en tirely dismissive of power that is potentially threatening of the status quo. Instead of Page 5 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations seeking to undermine by stigmatizing the power of those outside the formal structure of the organization, pluralists seek an accommodation to the point of being prepared to al low them a legitimate existence but only then for purposes of negotiating a reconciliation of conflicting interests. Historically the organization theory literature has drawn from the classical theorists such as Barnard, Fayol, and Taylor in speaking about power but the mainstream has been sig nificantly more influenced by Weber and his view of authority as the legitimate form of power. From a CMS perspective, the problem was that this soon resulted in authority dis placing power since it was readily assumed that organizations and their members conced ed legitimacy to those in the hierarchy. As part of a unitary liberal consensus, an analysis of power seemed unnecessary since in order for authority to remain legitimate it has to respond to conflicts through reform. This was also reinforced by Weber's conception of bureaucracy as the most rational, often later translated into the most efficient (c.f. Al brow 1970), form of organization. The value consensus implicit in the unitary model of or ganization and the various functionalist or systems theoretical models was eventually challenged by a pluralist alternative (Fox 1966), which suggested that a range of conflict ing powers, interests and objectives might prevail. These would have to be managed by hierarchical powers or collective negotiations where, for example, trade union represen tatives of employees and the employers or their associations would reach bargains that reconciled their different interests—the success in so doing granting the legitimacy nec essary to translating their power into authority. Fox (1974) acknowledged later that this was a limited departure from a consensual or functionalist model in that divergent and conflicting interests were accommodated only so far as they were not too threatening to the prevailing structure of class (p. 150) inequality and power. Nonetheless the pluralist model became the basic rationale for stakeholder theory that remains a dominant strand of the analysis of power in organizations to this date.
Contingency Theory Contingency theory was a reaction against the classical contention that power was a function of the ability to develop a one-best-way of organizing (e.g. Taylor 1911; Fayol 1949), facilitated by the prescriptions of the theorists. A range of empirical researchers in the US and Europe maintained that successful organizations were those that best adapt ed to their market, technological, and social environments. While some saw technology as the main determinant of organizational structure (Sayles 1958; Woodward 1958), others argued that stable environments generated formalized and hierarchical forms of organi zation whereas uncertainty and instability demanded more flexibility and informality (Burns and Stalker 1961; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967). Seeking to quantify the variables, the Aston School (Pugh et al. 1963) adopted more strictly positivist methods4 of seeking to assign metrics to the various concepts that could be linked to power. Power was under stood to be a product of resources and those able to allocate and distribute these re sources were seen as powerful. The attempt was to produce a causal analysis of organiza tional structure through developing metric measures of variables such as hierarchy, for malization of rules, and centralization of authority seen as indices of power and their de Page 6 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations terminants in the contextual or contingent environment measured in terms of markets, supply chains, and technology. Generally contingency theory was criticized for being too deterministic. Later the arch positivist Derek Pugh accepted that the theory was more about interdependencies between structure, behavior, performance, and context such that, as Sorge (2001) expressed it, “A general causal theory appears more dubious now than it did originally.” John Child (1984) developed a more realistic version of contin gency theory when he rendered it less abstract and deterministic by incorporating a no tion of agents and their strategic choices. While it is still oriented around the notion of or ganizations adapting to the demands of their environments, strategic action on the part of those in positions of power is open to some degree of choice and although still con strained by, it is not just a direct determinant of, contingencies in the environment. CMS challenges the way in which organizations are perceived as discrete entities separate from the so-called environment since the latter is frequently defined so as to support a particular exercise of power. So, for example, marketing managers will support a view of environments being turbulent as part of their claim for organizational resources designed to respond. On the other hand, environmentalists will draw on knowledge about global warming, pollution, and finite resources to challenge organizations to consider stakehold ers other than shareholders or managers. For (p. 151) CMS, organizations, environments, and the boundaries between them are not independent of the discourses of power and knowledge that participate in their constitution.
Resource Dependency Theory In relation to power, a clear line of inheritance can be seen between contingency and re source dependency theory since the central thesis of the latter is that power is a function of the control over resources and that organizations succeed through their effectiveness in competing for such control. Some of its principal advocates—Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salencik (2003)—believe that inter- and intra-organizational alliances were determined solely by the demand for resources that could secure or enhance organizational power. For maximizing organizational power is the path to success, according to resource depen dency theory (Pfeffer 1981) and, in this sense, it is seen essentially as a resource that is instrumental in reproducing itself as an outcome of achieving the goals of those that exer cise it. From a critical management perspective, this theory has to be seen as tautological in that it views power as simply a “capacity” that cannot be identified independently of a resource dependency and vice versa—a problem that is partly a function of it treating power “as a thing without considering that it must also be a property of relations” (Clegg 1989:190). More of this later when Foucauldian inspired CMS is discussed.
Institutional Theory and New Institutionalism Institutional theory has its genesis in a sociological and behavioral economic rejection of individual economic rational self-interest as the driving force of institutional life. It is as sociated with concepts such as “bounded rationality” (March and Simon 1958) where in dividuals might seek to satisfice rather than maximize their interests or objectives, and “incrementalism” (Quinn 1978), which is about making gradual and marginal, rather than Page 7 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations instant and comprehensive, changes in organizations and institutions. To do otherwise would demand information, skill, and knowledge of proportions ordinarily unavailable. A new institutionalism emerged in the 1980s in which culture began to be the dominant fo cus partly to ensure that practices were always examined in context and institutional be havior linked to the situation in which actors are embedded. While, historically, power was always a central focus of institutional theory albeit often converted into legitimate authority, it was somewhat neglected in new institutionalism although this has been par tially corrected by DiMaggio (1988) and Brint and Karabel (1991).5 However, in the sense that institutional theory tends to focus on how organizations strive to conform to (p. 152) sets of rules and values in order to secure legitimacy, power remains somewhat marginal to their analyses. Insofar as power is a focus within institutional theory, it tends to take the form of a stakeholder view and this has its own limitations, as indicated below.
Pluralism and Stakeholder Theory Pluralist conceptions of power have been implicit if not explicit in many studies of organi zation since the 1960s when there was some resistance to the then dominant structural functionalism and/or systems theory within the subdiscipline. These latter unitary and value-consensus perspectives were unable to account for conflicts of interest and resis tance to power that were so evident in the union militant days of the 1950s and 60s in Western economies and especially in the UK. While the most significant challenge to man agerial prerogative derived from collective protest through formal or informal union orga nization, theorists could see other groups such as distributors, environmental protesters, the government, intermediaries, professional bodies, regulators, suppliers, and trade as sociations having interests that did not necessarily coincide with producers. Pluralism provided a framework for examining these different interests (see Fig. 7.1) but, as has al ready been noted, this was only a modification not a break with value consensus perspec tives since the assumption was that managers were politically neutral in their arbitrations and thereby readily able to reconcile conflicting interests.
Fig. 7.1. The pluralist or stakeholder model
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Power at Work in Organizations Neither of these assumptions could be upheld since, as major players, managers have a material and symbolic interest in the outcomes of any negotiated reconciliation and given the potentially mutually incompatible interests of owners in profits, employees in wages and consumers in low prices, any agreement is usually a compromise rather than an ac ceptable reflection of interests. Theoretically perhaps what most discredits pluralist theo ry is its failure to recognize how interests are not independent of power as power/knowl edge relations very often constitute such interests and indeed both are socially construct ed (see the critique of Lukes and the alternative Foucauldian perspective below). Despite these criticisms, there has been a steady revival of stakeholder theory across a range of the social sciences of recent time. For example, it is the dominant paradigm or framework for studies of corporate social responsibility (e.g., Werther and Chandler 2006; cf. Banner jee 2007) and debates on the problems of relevance and the gap between theory and practice in management research and teaching (e.g., Starkey and Madden 2001; c.f. Alferoff and Knights 2010). Supporters seem oblivious of these criticisms largely because of the compartmentalisation of different spheres of research and the comparative immu nity of mainstream organizational analysis to critical management studies, to which I now turn. (p. 153)
Critical Management Studies (CMS) As in any area of analysis including the mainstream discussed above, we cannot speak about CMS as if it were some homogeneous and universally agreed discourse for to do so would be to commit the sin of speaking on behalf of a constituency that would probably speak otherwise. Indeed this is precisely one of the targets of CMS—a challenge to those who in the name of established relations and the status quo claim to speak on behalf of everyone and, in the process, silence all alternatives. It is therefore necessary to be aware of a diversity of views and approaches within CMS, for example, between those of a liberal, Marxist, critical theory, feminist or poststructuralist persuasion, and between those from different cultures and political regimes to the dominant advanced economies of the Western world.6 Power is at the centre of any critical management studies research or writing since orga nizations are seen as sites for its social reproduction. Whether the preoccupation is the enhancement of shareholder value, the maintenance of organizational stability and/or growth, the pursuit of career or a particular cause, it is also through the exercise of both individual and organizational power7 that social inequalities (class, gender, race, etc.) are invariably sustained. It is through resistance (equally a form of power) that they, or at least the culture supporting their institutionalization, may be challenged and sometimes transformed. This has clearly happened as much through democratic enactments of law as by more unconventional political (p. 154) means such as feminist or racial protest movements. In the absence of such transformations of the legal and cultural conditions of management, managers in Western economies tend to follow their own white masculine commonsense. Insofar as this reflects a white, Anglo—Saxon, protestant, masculine, het erosexual hegemony,8 it leads to discrimination by default against a whole range of “oth Page 9 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations ers”: the working class; women; racial, religious, and sexual minorities; the young and el derly; as well as those suffering a mental or physical disadvantage. While claiming a wholly neutral attitude, such managers position these “others” as morally inferior subor dinates to their power. This moral inferiority reflects and facilitates a reproduction of the material and economic inequality of the disadvantaged. Stimulated by Braverman's (1974) revival of Marxist labor process theory, earlier modern critical studies of work and organization was focused primarily on this economic or class inequality.
Labor Process Studies In labor process theory, power was seen as oppressive and debilitating of those who were its victims—primarily working-class labor. The comparative popularity of Braverman's thesis rested on its simplicity but this equally stimulated a proliferation of critiques re flected in several classical texts and an annual international conference that still contin ues over thirty years after the original interest in Braverman. Critiques of his technologi cal determinism, craft romanticism, neglect of inequalities other than class, and of the uneven development of capitalism have been insightful but rarely has labor process analysis challenged the negative and repressive conception of power that remained cen tral to Marx and to neo-Marxist thinking. It was partly to break with the neo-Marxist stranglehold on critical thinking about power, management, organization and work that CMS in Europe and later in the US was born. In the UK, the CMS conference was set up largely in order to focus more directly on the institution of management but also partly because of an increasing dissatisfaction with the preoccupation of left fundamentalists at labor process conferences to pour scorn (and worse) on what they saw as poststructural heretics (Parker 2002). The US CMS activity came some time after and ironically (al though perhaps understandably, given the history of anti-communism) sought to stay clos er to the labor process position although not in as precious a manner as in the UK. While poststructural theory in general was an inspiration for CMS researchers, because of shared Marxian empathies, Foucault was often adopted as a theoretical authority.
Foucauldian Studies Foucault's conception of power breaks with a long tradition in which it has been seen as coercive and oppressive, concentrated in certain central locations such as (p. 155) the state, and in binary or polar opposition to knowledge, freedom, and resistance. For Fou cault (1977, 1980), such conceptions of power are resonant with classical or juridical regimes in which any deviance or resistance was perceived as an affront or insult to the sovereign and punished through public spectacles of torture, as portrayed in the opening pages of Discipline and Punish9—in language that makes the flesh creep and is a re minder that no physical cruelty is adequate when there has been a transgression against the sovereign. on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, …, and on those places where the
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Power at Work in Organizations flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sul phur. (1977: 3) Power for Foucault cannot be a target for eradication because it is synonymous with social rela tions; moreover, it can be positive as well as negative, productive as well as destructive, and sup portive as well as constraining. Power is productive and facilitating in that it is action upon the actions of others; only insofar as subjects are active and free is power exercised over them. It is exercised in order to realize subordinates' powers not simply to determine their behavior pre cisely in the image of those exercising the power. If it were the latter, another label—that of domination would be attributed to the event and while this may occur, for example, in institu tions of incarceration, totalitarian regimes, and in war, it is rarely productive and indeed often counterproductive. Power is necessary precisely to mobilize the power of others.
Another distinctive contribution of Foucault is to recognize that power is never indepen dent of knowledge such that he only talks of power/knowledge relations. This does not mean that he is endorsing the commonly held twentieth-century view that knowledge is power; they are not identical or synonymous but in a relationship such that when power is exercised it invariably draws on knowledge but is also productive of further knowledge and when knowledge is created it generally stimulates some exercise of power. Other as sociated concepts that previously have been perceived as binary opposites—power/resis tance and power/subjectivity are treated similarly by Foucault (Knights and Vurdubakis 1994). Famously he argued that wherever there are exercises of power, there you will find resistance, for power: depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support or handle in power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the network. (Foucault 1980: 95) It has already been noted how Foucault refuses to see power as concentrated in a single central location in the state or at the top of a hierarchy. For this reason, he preferred the term govern mentality since this could be seen as distributed throughout various institutions and agencies. He sees power as widely dispersed and spread throughout society to the point at which no ac tion or agency is devoid of (p. 156) power. It runs in a capillary-like fashion throughout every corner and interstice of a society's relationships. Foucault's conception of power and subjectivity provided an analytical framework through which a whole range of management practices could be re-examined or reinterpreted.
Theorizing Management Practice The management subdiscipline that took a critical turn even before CMS became estab lished was accounting and Foucault was established early on as its leading theoretical in spiration. A large number of academics (Burchell et al. 1985; Hoskin and Macve 1986; Hopwood 1987; Miller and OʼLeary 1987) sought to intellectualize and examine the disci pline of accounting in its social, historical and political context. Escaping from simply en hancing its traditional role as a functional and technical management tool, these acade mics analyzed the conditions and consequences of accounting as an exercise of power and discipline over professional and organizational subjects in both academic and busi ness practice. Drawing on Foucault's (1982) notion of power consisting of hierarchical Page 11 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations surveillance, normalization, and the examination, some began to see that accounting and accountability through writing, case records, and examinations constituted the knowl edge conditions that made it possible for management to develop plans and strategies, thereby exercising power not just over the present but also over the future (Hoskin and Macve 1988). Through the proliferation of governmental strategies and interventions, not only employees but citizens in general are constituted as a target for representation, cal culation, and evaluation. Strategy whether as a part of governing citizens or corporations can begin to be seen as an exercise of power/knowledge that transforms individuals into subjects who secure their sense of themselves—their meaning, identity, reality—through engaging in the discourses and practices that it invokes (Knights and Morgan 1991). In short, strategy may be more important for its effects in disciplining subjectivity as a tech nology of the self (Foucault 1988) than necessarily for the content of its designs on the fu ture, albeit when managers and employees are well disciplined to comply with organiza tional norms there will be both present and future benefits. These understandings of power/knowledge relations and their effects on subjective selfformation have also been applied in other subdisciplines of management, such as the fi nancial sector (Hodgson 2000); marketing, and consumption (Knights and Morgan 1994; Winiecki 2006); information technology (Poster 1990; Knights and Murray 1994); human resource management (Townley 1993); but there is not space to go into any detail. Suffice it to say that the yare all concerned with how in modern regimes, the target of power is the body and soul of the person and it is exercised through dividing practices, normaliza tion, and surveillance so as (p. 157) to transform citizens, clients, consumers, employees, managers, and patients into subjects that identify with and thereby reproduce the prac tices that define them. In this sense, subjectivity is not only one of the conditions that make knowledge and its relationship to power possible but it is also a self-fulfilling effect of such power/knowledge. This is because knowledge is grounded in representations of reality that cannot be constructed independently of certain constitutions of subjectivity that it goes on to reproduce (Knights 2002).10 Within organization studies, the appeal of Foucault has predominantly revolved around his book Discipline and Punish (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992; Fernie and Metcalf 1998; Winiecki 2006) and the view that workplaces and other institutions such as schools, hos pitals and the military parade ground resemble prisons (Foucault 1977: 228) insofar as they all involve hierarchical observation, normalizing judgments and the examination as technologies of correct training, discipline, and surveillance. These technologies have the effect of individualizing and totalizing at one and the same time for they grade through hierarchy, differentiate the “good” from the “bad,” marginalize the incompetent, and ren der everyone like one another in exercising “over them a constant pressure to conform to the same model” (ibid.: 182). There is little question that drawing on Foucault's distinctive conception of power—even within the limits of his most accessible book Discipline and Punish— has provided critical organizational analysis with an alternative to the mainly Marxist view of power as an op pressive force to be eradicated. However there has been a tendency for authors to appro Page 12 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations priate Foucault in this way without being affected strongly by his distinctive way of think ing (Knights 2002). This requires us to extend our reading of Foucault beyond Discipline and Punish to encompass his radical departure from dominant epistemological para digms. For in his early work, Foucault (1973) sought to position the humanities and social sciences in a location that resided between the representations of the positive knowl edges such as biology, economics, and linguistics and the conditions that make them pos sible. Each of these disciplines is dependent for their representations on fundamental as sumptions about the human subject—the organism (biology), the rational pursuit of mate rial self-interest (economics), and the competent speaker (linguistics). If we are to engage with Foucault's original notion of power/knowledge relations from which representations can then be made we have to understand how knowledge, which takes for granted partic ular notions of the subject, is mobilized in the exercise of power to constitute subjects in that self-same image. Refusing this subjectivity is part of a strategy that would disrupt such knowledge and the vicious circle in which its conception of subjectivity is routinely reproduced through the exercise of power (Knights 2002). This would introduce a new ethics into organization where individuals could transform themselves into morally sensi tive, aesthetic subjects—the conditions of possibility for emancipatory power/knowledge relations (Knights 2006). However, this focus on aesthetics has to be on its guard against managerial incorporation by the demands of the service economy for the self as an em bodiment of style and the body as pleasurable and sexual, “animate hardware” (Wolkowitz 2006: 88). While this chapter has displayed Foucault's work on power in a more favorable light than other selected authors, it has not done so in ignorance of a number of critics. The most ef fusive of these are some feminists who object to his anti-humanism and refusal to theo rize gender identity since, in their view, this denies space for an active subject as the agent and recipient of feminist demands for emancipation (Bartky 1988; Hartsock 1990; Benhabib 1992). However, there are almost as many feminist supporters of Foucault as critics but few of either is in organization theory. An exception is Newton (1998), an orga nization theorist who draws on some feminist critics to criticize Foucauldian-inspired or ganization theorists for failing to offer a theory of resistance and an “ethics of individual and collective change” (ibid.: 442) that is grounded in a materiality and human agency. He ends by intimating that we could forget Foucault, as does Baudrillard (1998), so as to consider “other theoretical perspectives to inform our understanding of power and subjectivity” (Newton 1998). Neither he nor I have had space to consider these alterna tives11 but it is possible to examine three non-Foucauldian approaches to power.
Alternative Approaches to Power Organizational Politics (OP) A considerable critical literature has revolved around OP since despite the presumptions of agency theory that managers should or will only pursue shareholder value, it is recog nized that securing resources in an organization whether for personal career, team devel Page 13 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations opment, departmental or professional interests is a political process. In an early survey of the field, Drory and Romm (1990) concluded that OP was a focus either on conflict or on power that was seen to be disruptive of formal organizational goals. Later studies reject ed this view, arguing that struggles in pursuit of individual career and the symbolic and material achievements of success need not be in conflict with formal organizational goals. Indeed invariably, career and success are achieved through the achievement of organiza tional goals such as growth, profit and shareholder value. However, within organizations there is a reluctance to admit to organizational politics largely because, despite its poten tial to stimulate creative and productive power, for managers it is the practice that dare not speak its name (Knights and Murray 1994). (p. 159)
Power and Inequality
Power in organizations has always been closely associated with inequality whether in terms of class, as for example in the ownership—control debate, or in terms of discrimina tion regarding age, race, sex, sexuality, religion, or other disadvantages. Critical manage ment studies has tended to focus on inequality in general although it has acknowledged, albeit in a rather taken for granted fashion, the most vociferous of the movements against established power relations—feminism and its struggle against gender and sex discrimi nation. Gender research has deployed Marxian frameworks but poststructuralist femi nists have criticized this as preeminently masculine in orientation. For these theorists, power reflects and reproduces masculine discourses so that only by challenging masculin ity are power and its negative effect on gender relations ever undermined. In examining the three broad mutually incompatible feminist perspectives—liberal, structuralist, and poststructuralist—Halford and Leonard (2001) argue that power is the only common ground that may help to achieve an integrated understanding of the relationship between gender (and other inequalities) and organization. Their conclusion is that power is multi ple in its meaning and agency, is mobilised by individuals, structures and discourses, and its consequences are rarely singular for it may be both repressive and productive, overt and covert, and be exercised from above as well as below. While providing a comprehen sive coverage of positions, this attempt to be exhaustive weakens the critical purchase that feminism ordinarily brings to analysis. Indeed this attempt to provide exhaustive accounts has been described by some feminists as part of a preoccupation with represent ing an orderly and predictable world as part of a masculine desire12 to secure the self (Clough 1992).
Power and Ecology A major concern of critics of organization is to challenge the power of management and their corporations to destroy the environment in pursuit of profit. In the absence of legal regulations, ecological responsibility is rare but as with critical theory's demonstration of the self-defeating effects of power, environmentalists can point to the irresponsible corpo ration destroying the very resources it depends on. Of course, it is the aggregate impact of each organization's exercise of power without concern for the environment that ren ders the damage irreversible and it can readily be in an organization's self-interest to act Page 14 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations as a free rider and ignore the demand for collective responsibility. CMS studies have pro vided a critical interrogation of the theory and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which has been the corporate response to these environmental pressures. They (e.g., Franketal 2001; Bannerjee 2007) have shown how CSR is invariably a public rela tions (p. 160) exercise rather than a genuine concern to protect the planet and future gen erations from ecological catastrophe. It could be argued that through the development of global capitalism and transnational trade, multinational corporations have secured a pow er that renders almost futile any attempt to make them environmentally responsible, un less they can see a competitive advantage. Invariably this leads to more resources being directed to giving the appearance of environmental responsibility than to its substance as what matters most is how they are perceived not what they do.
Summary and Conclusion This has necessarily yet purposely (see point about masculinity above) been a selective review of the literature on power and its role in critical management studies. As the inspi ration for CMS, it has focused more on Foucault than on Marx largely because the latter tended to subscribe to what has been described here as a common-sense notion of power where it is seen predominantly as a property of persons, groups, institutions, or systems. By contrast, Foucault made a radical break to recognize that power is a relation whereby its exercise is predominantly about appropriating the power of the other for specific pur poses and that this invariably involved both the utilization and production of knowledge. It also has effects in transforming individuals into subjects that secure their sense of themselves (i.e. meaning and identity) through engaging in the practices that such power/ knowledge relations invoke (Knights 2002, 2006). While this conception of power is com patible with the spirit of Marx's view, it is more incisive in pursuing critical research on management and organization since as well as encapsulating the idea of exploitation it al so draws attention to subjugation through subjectification and self-discipline. Resisting such power/knowledge is limited and liable to incorporation (e.g., trade unions and collec tive bargaining) in the absence of a refusal on the part of subordinates to be what they (we) have become; that is, by reflecting critically on the sense in which power constitutes us (them) as subjects. It has been intimated that the implications of this analysis is to lead us, as it did Foucault, to a concern with the ethics and possibly the aesthetics of self where an alternative power/knowledge discourse may have the effect of constituting us differently but for such a transformation of subjectivity to be effective, we may need to be radically reflexive about our desire to secure ourselves through power/knowledge. An implication of Foucault's analysis of power is to focus on an ethical or aesthetic self that would have the potential to refuse the subjectivity imposed upon (p. 161) us though so many exercises of power/knowledge by managers both at work and in everyday life. However, the CMS concern to encourage resistance to power might be rendered political ly more fruitful if, in addition, attention were paid to our preoccupation with identity and how this makes us vulnerable to power—ready to be transformed into subjects that se cure the self (identity) through participating in the practices that such power/knowledge Page 15 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations invokes. Otherwise, the discourse of ethics or aesthetics may subjugate us to its demands in ways that change only the resource for identity, not our relationship to it.
References ALBROW, M. (1970). Bureaucracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ALFEROFF, C., and KNIGHTS, D. (2009). “Making and Mending your Nets: The Manage ment of Uncertainty in Academic/Practitioner Knowledge Networks,” British Journal of Management, published early online January 2008, forthcoming June 2009. BACHARACH, M., and BARATZ, H. (1970). Servants of Power. New York: Macmillan. BANNERJEE, S. B. (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar. BARTKY, S. L. (1988). “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Pow er,” in I. Diamond and L. Quimby (eds.), Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resis tance. Boston: Northeastern University Press. BAUDRILLARD, J. (1998). Forget Foucault. Boston: MIT Press. Benhabib, Seyha. (1992). Situating the Subject. London: Sage. BRAVERMAN, H. (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press. BRINT, S., and KARABEL, J. (1991). “Institutional Origins and Transformations,” in W. W. Powell and P. J. Dimaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BURCHELL, G., CHUBB, C., and HOPWOOD, A. G. (1985). “Accounting in its Social Context: Towards a History of Value Added in the United Kingdom,” Accounting, Organi zations and Society, 10: 381–413. BURNS, T., and STALKER, G. M. (1961). The Management of Innovation. London: Tavis tock. CHILD, J. (1984). Organization. London: Macmillan. CLEGG, S. R. (1975). Power, Rule and Domination: A Critical and Empirical Understand ing of Power in Sociological Theory and Organizational Life. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. —— (1989). Frameworks of Power. London: Sage. CLOUGH, P. T. (1992). The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.
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Power at Work in Organizations DAHL, R. A. (1961). Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press. DIMAGGIO, P. (1988). “Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory,” in L. G. Zucker. (ed.), Institutional Patterns and Organizations. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. DRORY, A., and ROMM, T. (1990). “The Definition of Organizational Politics: A Review,” Human Relations 43/11: 1133–1154. FAYOL, H. (1949). General and Industrial Management, trans. C. Storr. London: Pitman. FERNIE, S., and METCALF, D. (1998). “(Not Hanging on the Telephone) Payment Sys tems in the New Sweat Shops,” Centre for Economic Performance. London: LSE. FOUCAULT, M. (1973). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books. —— (1977). Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Peregrine Books. —— (1979). The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972–77, trans. and ed. C. Gordon. London: Tavistock. —— (1982). “The Subject and Power,” in H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds.), Michel Fou cault: Beyond Structure and Hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester Press, 208–226. —— (1988). “Technologies of the Self,” in L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hut ton (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock, (p. 163)
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Power at Work in Organizations HOPE, A. (2008). “The Mind/Body Dualism: Conceiving an Alternative to the Western Subject.” Presented at the Critical Management Studies Conference, University of South California, 7–8 August. HOPWOOD, A. G. (1987). “The Archaeology of Accounting Systems,” Accounting, Organi zations and Society, 12: 207–234. HOSKIN, K., and MACVE, R. (1986). “Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11: 105–136. —— —— (1988). “The Genesis of Accountability: The West Point Connection,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 13: 37–73. HUNTER, F. (1953). Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. KNIGHTS, D. (1992). “Changing Spaces: The Disruptive Power of Epistemological Loca tion for the Management and Organisational Sciences,” Academy of Management Review, 17/3: 514–536. —— (2002). “Writing Organization Analysis into Foucault,” Organization, 9/4: 575–593. —— (2006). “Passing the Time in Pastimes, Professionalism and Politics: Reflecting on the Ethics and Epistemology of Time Studies,” Time and Society, 15: 251–274. —— and KERFOOT, D. 2004 “Between Representations and Subjectivity: Gender Bina ries and the Politics of Organizational Transformation,” Gender, Work and Organization, 11/4: 430–454. —— and MORGAN, G. (1991). “Corporate Strategy, Subjectivity and Organizations,” Or ganization Studies, 12/2: 251–273. —— —— (1994). “Consumption, Organisations and Financial Services,” in J. Hassard and M. Parker (eds.), Towards a New Theory in Organisation Studies. London: Routledge, 131–152. —— and MURRAY, F. (1994). Managers Divided: Organizational Politics and IT Manage ment. London: Wiley. —— and VURDUBAKIS, T. (1994). “Foucault, Power, Resistance and All That,” in J. Jermi er et al. (eds.), Resistance and Power in Organizations. London: Routledge, 167–198. KNIGHTS, D. and H. WILLMOTT (1999). Management Lives! Power and Identity in Work Organisations. London: Sage. (p. 164)
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Power at Work in Organizations LAWRENCE P. R., and LORSCH, J. W. (1967). Organization and Environment. Boston: Harvard University Press. LUKES, S. (1974). Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan. —— (2005). Power: A Radical View. London: Palgrave Macmillan. MARCH, J., and SIMON, H. (1958). Organization. New York: Wiley. MILLER, P., and OʼLEARY, T. (1987). “Accounting and the Construction of the Govern able Person,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12: 235–265. NEWTON, T. (1998). “Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The Failure of Fou cauldian Studies,” Organization Studies, 19/3: 415–447. Nye, R. A. (1977). The Anti-Democratic Sources of Elite Theory: Pareto, Mosca, Michels. London and Beverley Hills: Sage. PARETO V. (1991). The Rise and Fall of Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology. New York: Transaction Books. PARKER, M. (2002). Against Management: Organisation in the Age of Managerialism. Cambridge: Polity. PFEFFER, J. (1981). Power in Organizations. New York: Pitman. —— and SALANCIK, G. R. (2003). The External Control of Organizations: A Resource De pendence Perspective (Stanford Business Classics). Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press. PLATO (1964). The Republic, trans. H. D. P. Lee, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. POSTER, M. (1990). “Foucault and Databases: Participatory Surveillance,” in M. Poster. (ed.), The Mode of Information, Poststructuralisms and Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. PUGH, D. S., HICKSON, D. J., HININGS, G. R., MACDONALD, K. M., TURNER, C., and LUPTON, T. (1963). “A Conceptual Scheme for Organizational Analysis,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 8/3: 289–315. QUINN, J. B. (1978). “Strategic Change: Logical Incrementalism,” Sloan Management Re view, 20/1: 7–21. SAYLES. L. R. (1958). Behaviour of Industrial Work Groups: Prediction and Control. New York: John Wiley. SEWELL, G., and WILKINSON, B. (1992). “Someone to Watch Over Me: Surveillance, Discipline and the JIT Labor Process,” Sociology, 26/2: 271–289. SKINNER, Q. (1981). Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Page 19 of 21
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Power at Work in Organizations SORGE, A. (2001). “Book Review of Derek S. Pugh. (ed.), The Aston Programme, Vols. 1– 111. The Aston Study and its Developments, Aldershot: Ashgate 1998,” Organization Studies, 22: 717–724. STARKEY K., and MADDEN, P. (2001). “Bridging the Relevance Gap: Aligning Stakehold ers in the Future of Management Research,” Special Issue British Journal of Management, 12: S3–S26. TAYLOR, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper. TOWNLEY, B. (1993). “Foucault, Power/Knowledge, and its Relevance for Human Re source Management,” Academy of Management Review, 18/3: 518–545. WERTHER W. B. JNR., and CHANDLER, D. (2006). Strategic Corporate Social Responsi bility. London: Sage. WILLMOTT H. (1995). “What's Been Happening in Organization Theory and Does it Matter?” Personnel Review, 24/8: 51–71. (p. 165)
WINIECKI, D. (2006). Discipline, Governmentality, Work: Making the Subject and Subjec tivity in Modern Tertiary Labor. London: Free Association Books. WOLKOWITZ, C. (2006). Bodies at Work. London: Sage. WOODWARD, J. (1958). Management and Technology. London: HMSO.
Notes: (1.) Thanks to Mats Alvesson for his assistance in his role as editor of this chapter. (2.) The question of how broad or narrow CMS is perceived is itself not unconnected with exercises of power designed either to expand or limit the discourse. For reasons of my own limitations, this chapter will be more narrowly conceived than the book as a whole. (3.) This is the philosophy that attributes basic unchanging characteristics or features to a subject or object such that it closes debate or any alternative interpretations of a phe nomenon. (4.) Positivist methods are those that perceive no discontinuity between natural and so cial phenomena such that the techniques of the physical sciences are adopted (without qualification) to research the social world. (5.) See website http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/institutionalism.htm (6.) While the inclusion of diverse cultures and political regimes is an admirable objective in a Handbook on CMS, invariably it can only be accomplished by a sleight of hand since the discourse is inescapably dominantly Western.
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Power at Work in Organizations (7.) Following actor network theory, Clegg (1975: 188) makes it clear that organizational power is a collective agency but that the power of agency can equally be vested in other non-human entities such as “machines, germs, animals and natural disasters.” (8.) As Hope (2008:14) has argued “bodies of women, bodies of color, malnutrition bodies, indecent and queer bodies are necessarily scapegoated or sacrificed in order to preserve the ‘saved’ or no longer sinful status of the objective white male body.” (9.) Foucault is here quoting verbatim from Pièces originales et procédures du procès fait à Robert-François Damiens, 3: 1757. (10.) While any positive knowledge can be examined in this light, perhaps economics is the most vivid example of knowledge both relying on, but then reproducing, the individ ual as an economically rational subject. (11.) It is also the case that there is not space here to develop a critique of Newton's hu manism and tendency to reproduce a binary dualism between discourse and agency that Foucault always sought to avoid, albeit not always successfully (Knights and Vurdubakis 1994). (12.) That the authors here are women does not preclude their internalization of mascu line sensibilities for they are equally subject to, or indeed subjugated by, discourses of hegemonic masculinity (Knights and Kerfoot 2004).
David Knights
David Knights is Professor at Bristol Business School and Swansea University’s Col lege of Business, Economics and Law, and Visiting Professor at Stockholm University and Lancaster University.
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain
Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain Robyn Thomas The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0008
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to present some of the key debates on, and contributions of, critical work on identities. Before doing so, it is necessary to clarify that, in focusing on CMS, other bodies of work on identity in, and of, organizations are excluded. Notable exclu sions include, first, work based largely on social-identity theory. This has inspired many of the functionalist studies into organizational identity, focusing on the degree to which indi viduals define themselves in relation to the organization, with the assumption that greater congruence between the two leads to enhanced commitment, loyalty, and motiva tion. The article discusses studies that have sought to analyse the interrelation of power and subjectivity in identity formation, and which are oriented towards challenge and change. It sets out some of the key tensions underpinning critical studies on identity, con sidering fundamental debates over the ontology of identity and of agency. These are then developed and discussed in the main body of the article, focusing firstly on issues of sub jectification, identification, and identity regulation; secondly on identity resistance and dis-identification; and thirdly on crafting identities. Keywords: interrelation of power, management studies, subjectivity, identity formation, identity regulation, orga nizational identity
Introduction “identity” is “the loudest talk in town,” the burning issue on everybody's mind and tongue. (Bauman 2004:17) IDENTITY, identity work, identification, subjectivity, and the subject: interest in identity seems to have reached a level not previously known in critical management studies (CMS). Concepts of the self are not new to the study of management and organization. Page 1 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain From Durkheim's anomy and Marx's alienation, to the socially constructed self of Cooley (1983); first published 1902) and Mead (1934), and the dramaturgical self of Goffman (1990; first published 1959), through to the social identity theory of Tajfel and Turner (1979), identity has underpinned many ideas in sociological and psychological studies on individuals and organizations. In contemporary theorizing, one might also point to the in fluence of a disparate range (p. 167) of theorists, including: Barth, Bruner, Ricoeur, Elias, Butler, Lacan, Laclau, Žižek, and, probably the most influential in critical management studies on identities, Foucault. It is perhaps because of the appeal to both the individual and the collective that identity has proven to be a particularly attractive area for research (Hardy 2004). Notwithstanding the analytical appeal offered by the concept there is no denying the cur rent interest, which begs the question: “why this obsession with identity?” Is there some thing peculiarly prescient about contemporary society that makes identity issues more salient (Giddens 1991; Žižek 1999; Bauman 2004)? Have we become more questioning and anxious about our selves in these “liquid modern” times (Bauman 2004)? Have cur rent configurations of capitalist relations and neoliberalism, resulting in increased em ployment insecurity, heightened mobility, and a corrosion of many of the traditional iden tity anchors such as family, work, and neighborhood, created an identity crisis, fuelling the search for alternative forms of belonging and attachment (Jackall 1998; Sennett 1998; Collinson 2003; Kallinikos 2003; Webb 2006)? Has the rise of consumerism in contempo rary societies, together with the decline in craft-based industries and worker solidarity, presented an individualized identity increasingly defined by consumption rather than pro duction? And, in turn, does this speculation then fuel our academic concern? Or, might an explanation be found in the introduction of poststructuralist philosophies to organization studies, with their concerns over subjectivity, 1 power, and knowledge? Of course, identity might merely be the latest academic fashion (Jenkins 2005), and one that is already pass ing (du Gay 2007), no doubt, to the delight of some radical structuralist critics (Thompson 2005). Nonetheless, issues of identity form a core concern within CMS. The aim of this chapter is to present some of the key debates on, and contributions of, critical work on identities. Before doing so, it is necessary to clarify that, in focusing on CMS, other bodies of work on identity in, and of, organizations are excluded. Notable ex clusions include, first, work based largely on social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979). This has inspired many of the functionalist studies into organizational identity, fo cusing on the degree to which individuals define themselves in relation the organization, with the assumption that greater congruence between the two leads to enhanced commit ment, loyalty and motivation (Ashforth and Mael 1989; Elsbach 1999). Also excluded are interpretivist studies on identities in organizations which, building on the concept of nar rative identities (Bakhtin 1981; Ricoeur 1983), have sought to produce meaning-centred and descriptive accounts of the processes that individuals undergo in constructing a co herent story of self, and to document the organizational sources that influence the craft ing of a self narrative (Davies and Harré 1990; Gergen 1994; Czarniawska-Joerges 1997). Rather, the chapter will discuss studies that have sought to analyze the interrelation of power and subjectivity in identity formation, and that are oriented towards challenge and Page 2 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain change. The following section sets out some of the key tensions (p. 168) underpinning crit ical studies on identity, considering fundamental debates over the ontology of identity and of agency. These are then developed and discussed in the main body of the chapter, focus ing first on issues of subjectification, identification, and identity regulation; secondly on identity resistance and dis-identification; and thirdly on crafting identities. The chapter then moves on to examine some of the new directions in critical studies on identity before concluding by highlighting aspects of current research which remain underdeveloped.
Mapping the Terrain of Critical Studies On Identities: Key Tensions and Debates CMS is a term applied to a loosely coupled range of theoretical influences drawn from radical humanism and poststructuralism (Alvesson and Deetz 2006), together with some feminist and postcolonial theories. While reflecting diverse interests, the common con cern is to document and challenge asymmetrical power relations: to “ferret out” (Alvesson and Deetz 2006) forms of domination and oppression in organizations, with the goal of emancipation (variously defined and envisaged). The attraction for CMS schol ars to the concept of identity is its ability to offer powerful ways to interrogate the exclu sionary practices by which subjects are constituted in organizations. Without wishing to underplay the tensions and debates among the different approaches, a broad terrain may be mapped out with regard to how identity is conceptualized, and the key influences on its construction2 concerning, first, the ontological status of identity (and the extent to which it is understood as an ongoing process); and secondly, agential issues (and the dy namic relationship between self and other in the constitution of identity). Before consid ering in detail critical studies on identities, therefore, it is useful first to map out the de bates and tensions underpinning the topic. These debates are then returned to in the sub sequent sections of the chapter.
The Ontology of Identity CMS on identities have challenged the notion of the fixed and unified essential self.3 Instead, studies have sought to understand the dynamics of identity regulation and resis tance in contexts of power and knowledge, thus working with a conceptualization of iden tity that is fluid, fractured, and reflexive.4 Identity can be understood, therefore, as a re flexively ordered narrative (Giddens 1991), its (p. 169) construction being stimulated by social interaction and ordered by institutionalized patterns of being and knowing. Con ceptualizing identity in this manner facilitates a focus on the operation of power relations in context, as well as opportunities for micro-political resistance (Deetz 1992; Alvesson and Willmott 2002). The individual as “identity worker” is a popular metaphor in conceptualizing the process es of identity constitution and contestation within work organizations. Identity work de scribes the ongoing activity that an individual undertakes in constructing an understand ing of self that is coherent, distinctive, and (in the main) positively valued. Identity work Page 3 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain is defined as “forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising constructions that are productive of a precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (Alvesson and Willmott 2002: 626). Identity work is prompted by social interaction that raises questions of “who am I?” and “who are we?” In attempting to answer these questions, an individual crafts a self-narrative by drawing on cultural resources as well as memories and desires to reproduce or transform their sense of self. People engage in identity work when the routinised production of a self-identity is challenged, through, for example, uncertainty and anxiety. For Alvesson and Willmott (2002), self-identity is constructed from a range of identity resources, such as language, symbols, and values, to which individuals are ex posed in their day-to-day experiences: “It forms a complex mixture of conscious and un conscious elements, an interpretive and reflexive grid gradually shaped by processes of identity regulation and identity work” (Alvesson and Willmott 2002: 626). Identity work involves, therefore, an element of choice and intentionality in making up the self. For example, Musson and Duberley (2007: 147) observe: “Appropriating certain discourses and rejecting others is thus central to identity construction.” However there remains a black box surrounding how individuals might “choose” one identity rather than another and the motivation for this. This draws attention to the second key concern, that of agency.
Agency and Identity Issues of agency lie at the core of theorizing on identity, as will be seen in the rest of the chapter. Agency refers to the thinking subject possessive of intentional actions. The ex tent to which the individual is viewed as someone who is active and/or acted upon in the crafting of self is an enduring tension in the study of identities (Thompson and McHugh 2002). Socio-psychological studies in organizations, for example in the study of motiva tion, take a relatively naive humanist stance, where a unified and essential self has unim peded access to the realisation of their self-actualisation. Conversely, neo-Marxist analy sis has traditionally viewed the individual as the “personification of economic categories” (Marx 1976: 92), where agency is structurally determined by the location in the sphere of production. (p. 170) Appropriations of Foucault in the study of workplace re lations have been criticized for suggesting overly deterministic portrayals of discourses exercising their iron grip over the fragile individual. This has led some to reject the dual istic thinking of the autonomous individual, separate from but located within social struc tures, arguing that identity can be understood as the outcome of the interaction between discourse and human agency, rather than determined by one or other (Bergström and Knights 2006). Discourses provide the resource by which identities may be constructed yet at the same time, discourses can constrain because their normalizing effect bears down on the individual attempting to inscribe what can be said and who can “be.” Howev er, discourses can never fully constrain given that they operate within discursive fields where their polyvalence and saturated meaning means that there is always indetermina cy: “while discourses endeavour to impose order and necessity on a field of meaning, the ultimate contingency of meaning precludes this possibility from being actualised” (Howarth 2000:103). Thus, individuals are located in social contexts that both Page 4 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain constrain and sustain identity construction. Nonetheless, the tensions around agency as for ontology, previously discussed, remains an enduring theme in the CMS of identities, as will become clear in the remains of this chapter.
Critical Management Studies and Identities Critical management studies on identities have been concerned broadly with forms of, and the dynamic interconnections between (a) identity regulation at work; (b) resistant and resisting identities; and (c) the crafting of identities in contexts of power/knowledge.5 Common to these studies has been the concern not so much with understanding how indi viduals construct identities, or what forms of identification they take but to expose to crit ical scrutiny how power operates to construct and stabilize identities in organizational contexts, themselves located within particular configurations of culture and history. This section presents some of the more influential theoretical and empirical studies on identities within CMS. It commences with an overview of the “manufacturing subjectivi ty” thesis, derived from the introduction of Foucault's work on disciplinary power and the subject into organizational analysis. Following these early appropriations of Foucault's ideas, the debate widens to consider the relationship between discursive and reflexive processes of identity constitution and contestation in the workplace. The final part of this section considers studies that have sought to understand identities within a multidimen sional and fluid understanding of power and agency. (p. 171)
Subjectification and Identity Regulation
Concerns with remedying inadequate theorizing of subjectivity within labour process studies—the so-called “missing subject” (Thompson 1990: 114)—together with the appro priation of Foucault's ideas on disciplinary power, marks out a number of contributions as playing a pivotal role in developing and directing the interest in CMS of identities. Here, studies have been concerned with highlighting the ways in which the exercise of manage rial power, through individualization, fragmentation, and intensification of work in con temporary capitalist relations, works to commodify the individual's identity, transforming them into subjects, by which they come to know themselves, while at the same time re ducing the opportunities to seek alternative sources of sustainable identities from outside the workplace. Arguably, the starting point in exploring CMS of identities is a number of influential articles concerned with the “manufacturing of subjectivity” in organizations (Knights and Willmott 1989).
Manufacturing Subjectivities Inspired by the (albeit selective) ideas of Foucault on disciplinary power, the subject and panoptic surveillance (Foucault 1977), studies have drawn attention to new forms of sur veillance and the self disciplining subject in modern organizations (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992; Townley 1993, 1994; Willmott 1993; Grey 1994; du Gay 1996; Casey 1999). These studies have illustrated the many ways in which organizations attempt to produce certain Page 5 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain identities, or “subject positions.” Through a range of techniques of discipline, for exam ple, performance appraisal (Townley 1993), career structures (Grey 1994), mentoring (Kosmala and Herrbach 2006), strategy (Knights and Morgan 1991), Total Quality Man agement (TQM) (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992), and Management by Objectives (MBO) (Co valeski et al. 1998), individuals are subjugated to these subjectivities through forms of control and dependence, and by which they come to know themselves (Foucault 1982). Thus disciplinary technologies work to conjoin an individual's notion of self with the organization's values and goals such that the individual participates in their own subjuga tion, removing the potential for opposition (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992). Furthermore, as these disciplinary technologies operate in a climate of heightened insecurity and vulnera bility, often stimulated by the organization, this presents a heady mixture of anxiety and a hunger for existential security to which an organizationally manufactured identity is served ready on a plate. While presenting a welcome counterbalance to the naive unitarist accounts of culture management, the “manufacturing of subjectivity” thesis has been vilified for presenting an overly deterministic and totalising view of subjectification as subjection, leaving little room for individual agency. This seems to be the portrayal of an utterly passive subject, a discursively constructed “docile body” upon which power (p. 172) relations and institu tions impose their impression (Thompson and Ackroyd 1995). What seems to be missing from these accounts is an active agential subject who is capable of manoeuvring between different subject positions. As Newton (1998:428) observes, “the subject is ‘done to,’ she does not appear to do much ‘doing.’”6 Part of the limitation with some of the applications of Foucault to CMS arise from the fact that a repressive view of power still underpins the research agenda and, despite claiming to take a Foucauldian approach to power and the subject, the ghost of radical structuralism is ever present in the research framing.
Identification and Identity Regulation Unlike the totalizing thesis on manufactured subjectivity, more recent theorizing on iden tity regulation within organizations has incorporated a stronger reflexive element to iden tity construction. Individuals are not merely the throughput for management inspired dis courses. Rather they are thinking creatures with the capacity to draw on a range of iden tity resources, which, together with a life history and desires and aspirations, make up an individual's identity. Identity regulation involves “the more or less intentional effects of social practices upon processes of identity construction and reconstruction” (Alvesson and Willmott 2002: 625). Alvesson and Willmott (2002) set out the processes by which both the individual and the organization are active in the constitution of identities in ways that result in the “self po sitioning of employees within managerially inspired discourses” (ibid.: 629), and with the belief that this attachment will secure commitment, motivation, and loyalty to the organization's goals and values. Furthermore, this identity regulation applies to man agers as well, given their equivocal position as both recipients and bearers of control (Willmott 1997). Identity control is likely to be effective, they suggest, if the management discourses are compatible with other salient sources of identity formation, and if there is Page 6 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain an absence of alternative or counter discourses. A range of techniques of control are highlighted for producing the “appropriate individual,” including defining individuals or groups in relation to others, and in providing specific vocabularies. Identity control is thus a strategy of normative control, aimed at the individual's thoughts, feelings and understandings (Kunda 1992; Barker 1993; Casey 1995; Deetz 1995; du Gay 1996; Halford and Leonard 1999; Alvesson and Willmott 2002; Musson and Duberley 2007). Alongside interest in cultural control, identity controls are seen to be increasingly prevalent in contemporary organizations, supplementing (indeed, some argue, replacing) more traditional controls aimed at controlling the acts and behaviors of individuals. Kun da (1992: 12) refers to this as a “creeping annexation of the workers' selves.” Through the use of normative controls, workers are induced or seduced to take on the organiza tions' identity as if it were their own. However, attempts to control the identities of em ployees are, at best, precarious and contested (Ezzamel and Willmott 1998). Organiza tions are (p. 173) not the only, or necessarily the most important, resource drawn on in the crafting of self, nor are employees passive consumers of management inspired discours es. This leads the discussion on to studies concerned with identity resistance and disidentification.
Identity Resistance and Dis-identification The relationship between identities and resistance can be traced back to sociological studies of work, which have made a significant contribution to understanding gendered subjectivities, power and resistance (Willis 1977; Pollert 1981; Cockburn 1983). More re cently, a distinct strand of research in CMS of identities can be seen in studies concerned with identities as a source of, and a site for, resistance. Studies of identity resistance have contributed to an appreciation of the role of subjectivity in resistance, extending the fo cus and definition of resistance to include more routinized, informal, and often inconspic uous forms in everyday practice (Kondo 1990; Edwards, Collinson, and Della Rocca 1995; Ezzamel and Willmott 1998; Knights and McCabe 2000; Fleming and Sewell 2002; Flem ing and Spicer 2003; Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2004). In other words, the rise in interest in cultural, normative, and ideological forms of control has shifted the focus to understanding how resistance operates at this level. In addition, interest in resisting iden tities has been in response to the overly deterministic portrayal of disciplinary power that gave the impression that “all was quiet on the workplace front” (Thompson and Ackroyd 1995). Theoretical and empirical contributions from those concerned with identity politics at work, coming from feminist (Weedon 1987; Butler 1992), queer (Sedgwick 1990, 1999) and postcolonial (Spivak 1987, 1990; Said 1979; Bhabha 1994) theories have also drawn attention to the political arena of identity.
Micro-political Resistance A significant strand of research has concentrated on forms of micro-political resistance in organizations, defined as “resistance to the dominant at the level of the individual subject” (Weedon 1987:111). Micro-political resistance takes place at the point of critical reflection—those “moments of difficulty” (Rajchman 1991, quoted in Sawicki 1994) that Page 7 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain arise from clashes between an individual's notion of self (itself derived from discourse) and the subject position offered in the dominant discourse. Thus, “where there is a space between the position of a subject offered by a discourse and individual interest, a resis tance to that subject position is produced” (Weedon 1987:112–113). For example, in their study of social worker managers' experiences of the implementation of a new managerial ist regime in the UK public services, Thomas and Davies (2005b) highlight how beneath a broad-brush portrayal of a professional cadre experiencing deprofessionalization, lies a more complex (p. 174) and varied set of experiences. Their study illustrates how individu als draw on understandings of self (as: professional; upholder of public service ethics; manager; union member; gendered person; provider of a caring service; parent; older worker) as resources from which to resist attempts to redefine their understandings of social work practice and identity. These moments of micro-political resistance are both contingent and processual, occurring as individuals confront and reflect on their own identity, recognizing contradictions and tensions, and in doing so unsettle and subtly shift meanings and understandings. Micro-political resistance is aimed precisely where power resides—in action. The effects of such resistance are low levels of disturbance, weakening the hegemonic grip of dominant discourses, presenting opportunities to exploit spaces that enable the construction of alternative identities and meanings within forms of domi nation (Thomas and Davies 2005a). Studies on micro-political resistance have been strongly influenced by feminist theories and concerns, emphasizing how identities are both the source of oppression and the site of emancipation, and therefore organizations are a site for political contestation (Kondo 1990; Meyerson and Scully 1995; Katila and Meriläinen 2002; Thomas, Mills and Helms-Mills 2004; Thomas and Davies 2005b).
Dis-identification and Resistance Studies on dis-identification have focused on how individuals pitch themselves in opposi tion to identity positions offered to them in organizations. Functionalist studies have con centrated on dis-identification with rather than within organizations, concerned with en couraging individuals to define themselves as having the “same attributes that he or she believes define the organization” (Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail 1994: 239). Dis-identifi cation for CMS of identities is a critical element of resistance, expressed through cyni cism, irony, humour, and other forms of disengagement (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999; Fleming and Sewell 2002; Kosmala and Herrbach 2006). Fleming and Sewell (2002), in spired by the satirical novel The Good Soldier, Svejk, by Jaroslav Hašek, note examples of “Svejkian transgressions” that stop short of out and out rebellion such as foot dragging and feigned ignorance, whereby the self is disengaged from the normative prescriptions of managerialism through a state of detached cynicism. In their study of middle managers in the “Big Four” audit firms, Kosmala and Herrbach (2006) showhow audit managers disidentify through a mild form of cynicism. Drawing on Žižek (1999), they argue that disidentification provides a fantasy of the autonomous subject who still, nevertheless, com plies with the demands of the organization. Cynicism provides a bogus sense of self-deter mination, which ultimately serves to support ideological controls because of the illusory sense of freedom it affords the individual. Thus cynicism is a sort of dis-identified identifi cation (Žižek (1999). Such approaches to dis-identification do, however, present a rather Page 8 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain pessimistic and (p. 175) self-defeating appreciation of agency and resistance that echoes back to the critique of the manufactured subjectivity thesis.
Crafting Identities A core focus of CMS of identities has been the dialectics of control and resistance. As a result, the complexities and ambiguities around the dynamics of identity work have tend ed to be lost in the focus on oppositional responses to identity control. Contrasting with this, some studies have sought to develop a more generative theorizing of power and the subject (McNay 2000), recognizing that power can create in as much as it constrains iden tities, in so far as it disciplines as well as offers culturally available pathways for fulfil ment (Kondo 1990). Therefore, some studies have focused on dis-identification as a key element in constructing who we are (Holmer-Nadesan 1996; Thomas and Linstead 2002; Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003; Thomas and Davies 2005a). Here, dis-identification is reconceptualized, moving from a reaction to repressive power, to a multidimensional, flu id, and generative understanding of power and agency. There is greater emphasis in these studies of the complex interweaving of identification and dis-identification, confir mation and contradiction, with subject positions located within discourses in the ongoing process of identity construction. For example, Holmer-Nadesan (1996) examines attempts to control service workers employed to clean university accommodation in a North Ameri can university. She explores how organizationally inspired discourses of performance, en shrined in work manuals and training courses articulate a formal role for women service workers in the university. Her study illustrates how these managerially inscribed dis courses are underpinned by wider societal discourses of class and patriarchy which serve to undermine the veracity and expose the contradictions in the formal articulation of the “ideal” service worker. Holmer-Nadesan's study shows how the women service workers engage in counter and dis-identification with the subject positions offered in the formal discourse and in doing so serve to both challenge and reinforce the managerially inspired discourse. In their study of change and restructuring in public service organizations in the UK, Thomas and Davies (2005a) note the way in which the public service profession als involved in the study draw on alternative subject positions to assert, deny, and rewrite the discourse of change. Through processes of dis-identification, individuals critically en gaged with “self as other,” a subject position with a positive value that distanced them from that offered in the discourse. However, by engaging with the discourse, they also privilege and legitimize the dis-identified subject position as an arena for political con test. Again, this study emphasizes the coexistence of dis-identification and identification and highlights the contradictory processes of identity construction as individuals negoti ate the complex constructions of self, located in a matrix of discourses. Within studies that examine the complexities around (dis)identification, there is something of a conceptual leap, however, in explaining how individuals undergo critical reflection to challenge the subject positions located in discourse, without resorting to ver sions of voluntarism. We end up on one hand with deterministic understandings of identi fication, where the body is a throughput for disciplining discourses, constituted by the op erations of power, or on the other hand a somewhat freely constituting self that underem (p. 176)
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain phasizes the role of power relations. More broadly, there still remains, in many CMS of identities, a struggle in conceptualizing a reflexive subject with the will and capacity to reflect upon and challenge the hegemonic ways of being. In revisiting some of these en during tensions around the ontology of identity, agency, and power, raised in the early part of the chapter, the chapter now turns to consider some of the new directions taking forward critical studies of identities.
New Directions In a chapter of this length, setting out recent contributions that might inform the future direction of the topic is inevitably selective. A number of different theoretical influences have recently contributed to theorizing the subject, notably, the post-Freudian psychoana lytical discourse theory of Lacan (du Gay 1996; Jones and Spicer 2005; Roberts 2005) and Laclau and Mouffe's political theory of discourse (Holmer-Nadesan 1996; Carpentier 2005; Willmott 2005; Bridgman 2007). Lacan's (1977, 1979) ideas provide us with an ac tive desiring agent behind the act of identification and have been attractive to critical scholars seeking to understanding why as individuals we are so vulnerable to disciplinary power (Roberts 2005). For Lacanian analysts, the answer lies in the narcissistic relation ship we have with our own image—a misrecognized fantasy of an integrated and objec tivized self, gained from the mirror stage in early infancy. What we take as selfhood is the exteriorized and ephemeral image that we see in the mirror; an image which is both uni form and objectified and in which we subsequently invest throughout our lives, in the de sire to achieve this “attribution of permanence, identity and substantiality of the self” (Lacan 1977: 17, cited in Roberts 2005: 629). The motor for identification, therefore, is the need for the individual to gain confirmation of existence. We collude with discipli nary power in a doomed quest to gain recognition by others and to gain a sense of a stabi lized self. Lacan's concept of the Imaginary contributes to unpacking the “black box” of identification, however, as with the ideas of the Lacanian theorist, Žižek, the implications appear pessimistic with regards to resistance and there are echoes of essentialism. The empty subject, at the heart of Lacan's thinking, constituted through lack and marked by the impossibility of fulfillment of recognition of (p. 177) the actuality of the other, seems to offer little prospect for resistance at the level of subjectivity, and from which to craft al ternative ways of being and alternative lives. The political adequacy in theorizing of the subject within CMS is picked up in another, though not unrelated direction with the ideas of Laclau and Mouffe (1985). The discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985)7 is attractive in the possibilities it offers to break out of the dualistic debates of agency/structure in identity formation, raised early on in the chapter, and because of its political orientation of radical change found in the concept of the “democratic imaginary” (Holmer-Nadesan 1996; Contu 2002; Carpentier 2005; Will mott 2005; Bridgman 2007; Fleming and Spicer 2007). Lacla and Mouffe's (1985) ap proach to identity draws on ideas developed by Foucault, Lacan, and Gramsci. They aban don dualistic framing of structure and agency, collapsing epistemology with ontology, ar guing that the material world is part of discourse (in so far as we may only know it Page 10 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain through discourse) and so too are identities. As Laclau comments: “it is not that discourse produces some kind of material effect, but the material act of producing it is what the dis course is” (Laclau and Bhaskar 1998:13). Further discussion of a Laclauian approach to discourse can be seen in Chapter 10 “Discourse and CMS” of this Handbook. More specifically in relation to identity, in devel oping their post-Marxist thesis, 8 Laclau and Mouffe critique the reductionist and deter ministic overtones of Althusser's ideas on the self as interpolated (or recruited) as subject through ideological practices. Rather, identities are both contingent and fluid: the individ ual is over-determined by competing and complimentary subject positions in discourses with which they identify. Agency is rooted in the act of identification: identification lies at the heart of agency, guaranteeing the possibility of subjectivity and individuality. Dis courses are partial fixings of meaning, formed when specific elements are linked into a discursive structure. These elements are drawn from the discursive field, which is charac terized by a surplus of meaning. Nodal points are empty signifiers that provide the “ce ment” to partially fix or sediment elements into a meaningful identity (Torfing 1999). The second part of their theory of identification relates to political subjectivity, thus linking the individual to the wider social sphere. Antagonisms or social struggles that cause rup tures in embedded social relations create identity crises. This is due to the failure of the structure to present an identity for the subject and therefore compels the subject to act: “The very logic of identification requires a decision as a condition of moving beyond undecidability” (Willmott 2005: 752). In other words, you have to make a decision to iden tify with—and this identification involves both agency (making the decision) and structure (hegemonic discourses). In reference to Lacan, this means that subjectivity emerges out of the lack within structure which compels subjects to identify with those social construc tions that are capable of “suturing the rift in the symbolic order” (Howarth and Stavrakakis 2000:14). For example, in his study of media professionals, Carpentier illus trates how four nodal (p. 178) points articulate the media professional as objective, as a manager, as autonomous, and as a member of a professional elite, linked to media organi zations. Carpentier examines a series of “vox-pop” style programmes designed by the edi torial staff of a Belgian talk show in response to the societal crisis following the infamous Dutroux case where a number of children were kidnapped and murdered. This event, Car pentier argues, resulted in a social crisis, or “dislocation” (Laclau 1990) in Belgium, de fined as a “dramatic collapse in popular identifications with institutionalized subject posi tions and political imaginaries” (Smith 1999: 164, cited in Carpentier 2005: 209). These dislocations point to a moment of social crisis which disrupts existing discourses and identities as well as providing the possibilities for alternatives. Carpentier's study ex plores the effects of this dislocation in challenging hegemonic articulations in the mean ing of media professional identity. The few critical writers on identities who have been thus far drawn to the ideas of these psychoanalytical and post-Marxist theorists have done so, in particular, for their promise in resolving some of the enduring tensions around political agency within CMS of identi ties. It remains to be seen whether they will have a significant impact on the theoretical direction of identity studies. There still remains, however, the need to reconnect with the Page 11 of 20
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain political aspirations of CMS and it is with regard to this matter that I now turn, in the concluding section.
Conclusion The raison dʼêtre of CMS is its political imperative. Its call to arms is twofold: first to doc ument and challenge forms of exploitation and oppression in organizations; and secondly to engage in research oriented towards changing things for the better. This raises two concerns. With regard to the former, the attraction to CMS scholars of the concept of identity is the analytical promise of its ability to bridge the micro-political and the wider organizational, socio-cultural and temporal context. In doing so, studies draw attention to how power relations operate in organizations and wider society to construct and stabilize identities within specific historical periods. However, there is still the tendency with stud ies to either deemphasize the “global” in concentrating on the local and vice versa. Con sequently, the conceptual promise in analyzing the dialectic and dynamic relationship be tween self and social remains underdeveloped in many empirical studies. In other words, studies that take a micro-political approach, focusing on identity work in local situational contexts can under-emphasize the wider socio-political and historical context and it is of ten difficult to appreciate the links between the individual and larger social constructions and institutions. Studies that have analyzed the complex (p. 179) and contradictory ways in which organizations provide a setting for the construction and constraint of identities, conversely, can under-appreciate the nuances of identity work and the myriad of ways in which individuals challenge attempts to inscribe their identities. Thus there is still the op portunity to develop better understandings of the complex and mutual constructions of self and organization, each in themselves bound up with wider social, historical, and polit ical settings. In particular, this calls for empirical studies that examine how individuals might craft sustaining identities located within particular configurations of discourse. The second concern is over the relationship between critical studies of identities and the self-conscious emancipatory orientation of CMS. This issue has not gone wholly unappre ciated within the literature, where it is tentatively suggested that an understanding and awareness of how power operates through the subject may equip individuals to “engage with the subject as a subject” (Townley 2005: 647). Some writers have, for example, ex plored how we might release ourselves from disciplinary power, letting go of the “fanta sy” of the integrated and autonomous self (Deetz 1992; Willmott 1994; Roberts 2005). The question remains, however, as to how ideas on forms of micro-political resistance might take on a political character to provide the necessary tools for critique in order to chal lenge and transform social relations. For Laclau and Mouffe (1985) this involves identify ing the discursive conditions which enable the emergence of collective action, i.e., collec tive forms of identification, expanding chains of equivalent identities into a collective “we,” and directed towards struggles against inequalities and challenging relations of subordination. Future research needs to be directed towards gaining a greater under
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain standing of the connections between micro-political agency and the constitution of sus taining identities with a radical force for change. Finally, as critical scholars of identity, we need to remind ourselves that theory should not be viewed as separate from politics (Butler 1992). In the brave new world of globalized la bor it is not only the exploited identities but also the excluded—those with an absence of identity—the migrant and transient workers who are “the most conspicuous cases of so cial polarization, of deepening inequality, and of rising volumes of human poverty, misery and humiliation” (Bauman 2004: 41). We need to question further how our work might in form and empower the embattled, individualized and exploited in contemporary configu rations of capitalism (Sennett 2006)? What difference might our studies make in inform ing policymakers directing decisions on the nature of society, and informing the debates over varieties of capitalism, and the subject positions promoted (Webb 2006)? We need to be constantly vigilant that our critical studies of identities are oriented towards docu menting and challenging, rather than obfuscating, the central concerns of oppression and exploitation that mark the experiences of many in organizations. Let us never forget that the political identity of CMS is fundamental to the CMS of identities.
(p. 180)
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council's Advanced Institute of Management (award RES-331-25-3009).
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Notes: (1.) Subjectivity is a term used to denote an understanding of individual identity as the product of discourse, ideology and institutional practices, at any given moment of time. (2.) I am aware of the irony of constructing the identity of a “CMS on identity.” Inevitably, attempting to capture and put boundaries around such a theoretically complex issue not only necessitates pragmatism but is also an exercise of power. (3.) See Kondo (1990) for a detailed exploration and deconstruction of the binary divide between self and social.
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Critical Management Studies on Identity: Mapping the Terrain (4.) The anti-essentialist assumption of identities, as fluid and constituted through dis course, has become almost a hegemonic discourse in itself. For a critical questioning of anti-essentialist positions, see Sayer (1997). (5.) This is of course a somewhat arbitrary division of the literature and will inevitably re sult in compromising much of the complexity around the debates. The difference between these bodies of literature is often a matter of emphasis. Furthermore, framing the litera ture around control and resistance may serve to reemphasize the notion of a sovereign subject responding to and resisting structures of control, a dualism, which many of the writers discussed, would wish to collapse (Townley 2005). (6.) For a detailed account of the agential tensions in Foucauldian studies of subjectivity, see Newton (1998) and McNay (2000). (7.) For the sake of simplicity, I refer here to the key text jointly authored by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), which has been drawn on by CMS scholars. However, Laclau has subse quently taken these ideas forward in sole authored publications, while Mouffe has similar ly published extensively, developing an anti essentialist stance on radical democracy, citi zenship, and community. (8.) For an overview of the contribution of Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) political theory of discourse for CMS, see Willmott (2005). For an introduction to their ideas and the subse quent ideas of Laclau, see Howarth (2000) and Torfing (1999). For a critique of the appli cation of Laclau's work to discursive studies of organization, see Jones (2006).
Robyn Thomas
Robyn Thomas is Professor of Management at Cardiff Business School, and Ghoshal Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. Her main research inter ests center on managerial and professional identities, and forms of identification in relation to change and restructuring in organizations. Robyn's work has appeared in a range of management and organization journals and books, including Organization Studies, Organization, Public Administration, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting.
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Managing Globalization
Managing Globalization Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, Chris Carter, and Stewart Clegg The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, International Business, Business Policy and Strategy Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0009
Abstract and Keywords This article discusses some approaches to globalization that contribute to a critical man agement studies (CMS) agenda. The vast majority of the literature in management and organization theory takes an inveterately mainstream approach to globalization and lacks a critical perspective. Articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies and the Colombia Journal of World Business tend to focus on the oppor tunities and risks posed by globalization and how firms can leverage competitive advan tage in a global market. Topics that are studied include entry strategies into developing markets, cross-cultural marketing and management issues, outsourcing, technology transfer, and joint ventures. Few scholars question the naturalness or implied superiority of Western economic development models and their links to globalization, focusing in stead on the problems with knowledge that either limit researchers' ability to recognize divergence or the inability of existing theories to explain or capture such divergence. Keywords: globalization, competitive advantage, global market, entry strategies, divergence, organization man agement
Introduction THIS chapter discusses some approaches to globalization that contribute to a critical management studies (CMS) agenda. The vast majority of the literature in management and organization theory takes an inveterately mainstream approach to globalization and lacks a critical perspective. Articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Interna tional Business Studies and the Colombia Journal of World Business tend to focus on the opportunities and risks posed by globalization and how firms can leverage competitive advantage in a global market. Topics that are studied include entry strategies into devel oping markets, cross cultural marketing and management issues, outsourcing, technology transfer, and joint ventures. Few scholars question the naturalness or implied superiority of Western economic development models and their links to globalization, focusing in stead on the problems with knowledge that either limit researchers' ability to recognize Page 1 of 27
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Managing Globalization divergence or the inability of existing theories to explain or capture such divergence. While the primary focus of most of the organization and management literature is on eco nomic globalization or on the degree and extent of its reach (whether convergent (p. 187) or divergent), few management scholars have questioned what globalization itself is con stitutive of or constituted by, let alone explored the imperial formations of globalization. There are some exceptions to the tendencies depicted in the previous paragraph: these can be drawn from emerging scholarship in the fields of postcolonialism and organiza tional analysis (Prasad 2003), sustainable development (Banerjee 2003), and the imperial formations of globalization (Banerjee, Chio, and Mir 2009). Works such as these have cri tiqued the universalist assumptions underlying management approaches to globalization and have highlighted less positive aspects of globalization. Another exception is the jour nal Critical Perspectives on International Business, which encourages research from mul tidisciplinary perspectives that, according to its website, “challenges the hegemony of global and transnational corporations, of managerial orthodoxy and of dominant academ ic discourse.” For the most part, however, the scholars who adopt the discursive formula tion that is termed CMS have been more engaged in philosophical parlor games rather than with the impact of globalization. To build a CMS perspective on globalization we first define globalization, drawing on soci ological rather than economic approaches, in order to prepare an approach that focuses on issues of identity, sustainability, and postcolonialism, as well as the political economic relations that constitute globalization. Secondly, we develop a specific model for thinking about globalization as a phenomenon centered on capitalist relations of production on a global scale. Consequent upon these are a number of other important relations: global re lations between states and transnationals; relations of identity—people's conceptions of who they are and what they might be; relations of multicultural diversity of organizations and communities; and relations of sustainability. Global relations between states and transnationals provide the constitutive framework which enacts globalization. It is a framework of sometimes aligned but often different interests, in which transnationals seek to align states more closely with neoliberal economic models, in a model of align ment which increasingly uses markets to reconstitute citizens as consumers. A powerful “management ideas” industry has successfully oriented people's ideas of who they are and might be in terms of social relations that are increasingly marketized and stratified: just as there is a globally emergent ruling elite of corporate managers so there is a glob ally emergent strata of “service proletarians” that support and sustain them, as well as proletarianized white collar service workers, found, archetypically, in call centers. Often defined by distinct relations of ethnicity and gender, we find that the higher we go in terms of the structure of global elites the more male and ethnically privileged the ranks tend to be; the lower we go into the proletarianized service ranks the more female and the less ethnically privileged their composition will be. The CMS approach that best illus trates these relations is that of postcolonialism.
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Managing Globalization A future agenda for CMS approaches to globalization would seek to advance strategies for activist groups and organizations, and develop theories and practices able to oppose corporate actions. It would seek to articulate more “popular” elements of glob alization that invoke positive notions of diffusion, democracy, market, empowerment, flex ibility, multiculturalism, and collectivity, by critically examining and investigating how corporate objectives, values, and ethics increasingly dominate all other “social” agendas giving rise to a new corporate colonialism as well as a new popular front that opposes the reduction of human identities to the primacy of being either producers or consumers. CMS needs to be alert to the ecological consequences of globalization and their forms of representation: discourses of sustainability concern themselves with Western notions of environmentalism and conservation, seeking to repair the ecological ravages of two cen turies of global capitalist production, extraction, and agriculture but are less concerned with issues of sustainability in impoverished and rural communities. Poorer countries are tutored to be “austere” in their development while richer nations seek to maintain stan dards of living unrelated to the “austerity” measures of the poorer nations. (p. 188)
Defining Globalization Globalization can be thought of as worldwide integration in virtually every sphere (Parker 2003: 234), achieved principally through markets. For some theorists this amounts to the financialization of the everyday (Martin 2002). The second aspect of globalization is the tendency to see it in terms of the Americanization of the world (Ritzer 1993). What is overwhelmingly being posited as the global is American: American products, designs, and politics dominate the global world—even when they are being manufactured by Japanese and Chinese companies. The US military dominates this world; it is the only global super power, though military misadventures from Vietnam to present-day Iraq highlight the lim its of this power. American consumption, especially of energy, drains natural resources from this world. America is not only hugely globalized; it is also massively indebted, with much of that debt held in Chinese and Japanese banks. The global world floats on a sea of oil and other energy resources that, according to some analysts, are at a tipping point in terms of exploitable reserves and existing price mechanisms. Future reserves will only be had at historically much higher prices. What are increasingly being globalized are North American values, products, force, and debt, and unsustainable modes of production and consumption. The 2007/2008 credit crunch, skyrocketing oil and food prices are also ex amples of how global trends adversely affect local economies. Globalization is marked by the integration of deregulating markets and technology and fa cilitated by telecommunications and ease of transport. International activities enable firms to enter new markets, exploit technological and (p. 189) organizational advantages, as well as reduce business costs and risks. These organizations are known as transnation als because they extend beyond national space in their routine activities, they are able to exert control either through ownership and/or through the coordination and control of op erations, as a result of other mechanisms, such as a multisubsidiary form based on capital interdependency. Only a small number of transnational corporations are truly global, and not all transnational corporations are necessarily large, in conventional definitions of that Page 3 of 27
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Managing Globalization term. Global patterns differ markedly according to the national origin of the firms. New supplies and sources of transnational corporations evolve as the world economy evolves, so that we now have emergent markets transnational corporations in newly industrializ ing countries. The characteristics of contemporary globalization include: • The internationalization of financial markets and corporate strategies. • The diffusion of technology, related R&D and knowledge worldwide. • The emergence of global media. These help transform consumption patterns into cul tural products through the construction of worldwide consumer markets. • A global political economy. (Therborn 2000) The global political economy is largely skewed by Western interests, as we shall see when we look at the phenomenon from a postcolonial perspective, from the vantage point of the losers rather than the winners from globalization (Banerjee and Linstead 2001). Globalization has a technical core, which is organized in terms of flows of inputs, their distribution globally, trans formation, and outputs, organized through global supply chains. These are embedded in techno logical and logistical systems, which, in turn, are coupled with financial and governance sys tems. The key actors, without doubt, are transnational firms, many of which are bigger than some states in the world economy. They are the key because they are spatially mobile and it is their agency in being spatially mobile that sets in play the dynamics that flow through the cir cuits. Usually, their spatial mobility results from designing production and marketing circuits that flow globally, often thought of in linear terms as “chains.” However, as Dicken (2007: 15) makes clear, they are less a chain and more a circuit.
Modeling Globalization
Fig. 9.1. Global flows, systems, and effects
At the core of the circuit is a production complex, incorporating material and other in puts, transformation processes, distribution networks and marketing interfaces for the consumption of goods. Each of these is reciprocally interconnected, with feedback loops. Supporting the core are technological and logistical systems, (p. 190) which, in turn, are contained within a financial system and a governance system of regulation, coordination, Page 4 of 27
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Managing Globalization and control (see Figure 9.1). Financial systems, as the example with which we began this chapter indicates, are extremely important: they control the supply and value of the un derlying key commodity, which of course is capital. Circuits of global production have an impact in several ways: • On the global relations between states and transnationals, as we see states flourish as a result of globalization, such as China and India in recent times, and new transna tional relations emerge. • On relations of identity—people's conceptions of who they are: it reaches into soci eties and enables people to migrate and move from one society to another—the mil lions of “guest workers” in the Middle East Oil Rich countries of the Gulf, for instance —or the people who become illegal migrants from Africa and Asia in search of a better life; so it has a considerable impact on changing conceptions of personal identity. Peo ple only develop a sense of self in relation to others. For most of human history, these others were framed by what was available at the local, often village, level. Today, even the most remote villagers can see themselves against the mirror that the media projects into their communities. In almost any of the world's great cities today there are people working with each other, competing with each other, and playing with each other whose ancestors come from villages all over the globe. Multicultural society is normal. • On relations of sustainability, as places such as China and India industrialize on the back of a fossil fuel industry which is ecologically most damaging. The (p. 191) levels of pollution in the Pearl River Delta, for instance, which is China's main export route, are poisonous for life. In what follows we shall tease out the impact of globalization through each of these circuits.
National Societies Organized as a Global Sys tem of States, the World System of Transna tionals and the Ties that Bind Them Together What characterizes globalization are a multiplicity of processes in a complex circuitry, with many linkages and feedback loops (Hudson 2004), as well as a few key nodes in the boardrooms of Tokyo, New York, London, and a few other centers. Thus, production, dis tribution and consumption flow through many circuits and networks linking the transit of material and non-material phenomena (such as services) in relationally patterned ways. The key agencies in these flows are transnational firms, states, and global institutions such as the United Nations (UN), International Labor Organization (ILO), World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the G8—which frame the institutional rules of the global economy, which are largely neoliberal economi cally—and international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) such as Greenpeace or Human Rights International, as well as civil society organizations (CSOs), such as the var Page 5 of 27
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Managing Globalization ious anti-globalization movements. These circuits and networks are in various stages of flux; shifting in the search for alliances and pathways that suit their interests. They tra verse varieties of capitalism in a global economy where to speak of capitalism per se is far too abstracted (Hall and Sostike 2001), leaving the imprint of deeply asymmetrical inter national power relations, skewed in terms of the key nodal points (Clegg 1989). Power re sides in the boardrooms of multinational firms, more often than not located in the salubri ous quarters of world class cities; such corporate elites have the capacity to mobilize re sources for the good or ill of society. Often, they have greater range and resources than the national states over whose territories their business interests run, except where those states exercise a monopoly or oligopoly control over a key resource base, such as the OPEC states. They are also more flexible: at best, in terms of flexibility, they are private equity; if middling flexible, they only have to account to shareholders in terms of a bot tom line; if slightly less flexible they may be accountable to a wider range of stakeholders on a wider range of measures, such as “triple bottom line” (p. 192) accounting for profits, people, and nature (though it is difficult to see Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives as little more than a sham). Such relations between states, transnationals, and other in terested parties such as the institutions, unions, NGOs, and CSOs, can at various times be located anywhere on a continuum from cooperative collaboration to mutual conflict and loathing. Sometimes the same firms, unions, states, NGOs, and CSOs, may be collaborat ing in one arena, while they are competing ruthlessly in another. Transnationals' managers typically seek to realize a number of scenarios, including unre stricted access to resources and markets throughout the world; freedom to integrate manufacturing to other operations across national boundaries; an unimpeded right to try to coordinate and control all aspects of the company on a worldwide basis; to maximize shareholder value and minimize taxes by establishing corporate headquarters in low tax regimes such as the Dutch Antilles or the Cayman Islands, and light regulatory frame works and minimal government expenditures, so less tax is required. Ulrich Beck (2008) puts it well when he contrasts the basis of state with corporate power: “the power of states (according to the national rationale) grows through territorial conquest, the power of players in the global economy grows precisely to the extent that they become extra-ter ritorial actors” (Beck 2008: 796). By contrast, governments are ineluctably territorialized and government scenarios—at least those in liberal democratic countries—typically focus on reelection. Electors enjoy low taxes but also want extensive social programs for health, education, and retirement, which require an extensive and efficient tax system, which, in turn, means strong economies and sound streams of tax revenue. The rationalities of government and commerce differ greatly as a result of their relative spatial embeddedness and the ubiquity of the interests that they must represent. In terms of the former, transnationals have a global and highly consequential presence in other in dependent states in a way that competitor states tend not to have, governmentally. In terms of the latter, transnationals have a bottom line to which they can reduce costs and benefits unambiguously, while governments have to mediate an enormous number of forms of representation: their only bottom line is the number of democratically elected seats they hold. To control these involves negotiating and compromising with a broad Page 6 of 27
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Managing Globalization coalition of interests and representations that cannot be simply reconciled in a balance sheet. Amongst these powerful interests are transnationals who see government as an op portunity for what economists call “rent-seeking” behavior; for instance, they want gov ernments to offer grants and subsidies that encourage them to make local investments; they want tariffs and quotas to soften foreign competition; they expect governments to cover the costs of basic infrastructure, such as the funding of conceptual and high-risk re search, universities and vocational training systems, as well as the promotion and funding of the dissemination of scientific and technical information and technology transfer; they require economic and physical security and a communications (p. 193) infrastructure, such as up-to-date and high-speed international rail links, and seek tax incentives for in vestment in industrial R&D and technological innovations, as well as guarantees that na tional enterprises from the given country have a stable home base. They expect privi leged access to the domestic market via public contracts (defense, telecommunications, health, transport, education, and social services) and want appropriate industrial policies, particularly for those in the high technology strategic sectors (defense, telecommunica tions, and data processing). To get their way transnationals can always threaten govern ments with talk of capital mobility and consequent loss of jobs and revenues; if the state does not provide the required sweeteners, mobile capital will simply exit the scene and set up where the benefits sought can be ensured. The threat is more often gestural than accomplished, because, of course, transnationals have to abide by the rules of the states in which they invest and often are not so liquid that they can easily move. The threat re mains potent, however, as Ulrich Beck has observed “There is only one thing worse than being overrun by big multinationals; not being overrun by multinationals” (Beck 2008: 796), a statement that pithily captures the complex relationship many governments have with multinationals. Transnationals do not just work on economic relations. There are many other ties that bind. It is to these that we shall turn next, focusing in particular on the global manage ment ideas industry, the emergence of global accounting as a system of legitimation, the emergence of the MBA as a global business degree, and the development of a world of global work and global workers—at both ends of the status spectrum.
The Global Management Ideas Industry Over the last twenty-five years there has been an emergence of a powerful management ideas industry which has successfully packaged, communicated, and sold discontinuous innovation as a cultural ideal and a desirable good (Townley 2002a, 2002b), changing people's ideas of who they are into increasingly corporate forms and social relations that are increasingly marketized. One major arena for this development has been the organi zation of military capabilities. Western state capitalism was dominated for much of the twentieth century by the military—industrial complex—a phrase first coined by President Eisenhower in his valedictory address—which saw the coalescence of interests between major corporations and those of the military. In the US the military—industrial complex reached its zenith during the escalation of the Vietnam War. More recently, the largely privatized war in Iraq highlights that the military—industrial complex still exists, albeit in Page 7 of 27
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Managing Globalization a very different form—of which the American corporation Halliburton provides an excel lent example. This different form is perhaps best characterized as a business-consulting complex which promulgates privatization and outsourcing as the “best” (p. 194) way to or ganize. Thus, much of the Iraq occupation is secured on the basis of private contracting. The management-ideas industry has been fueled by the rise of Business Schools, especial ly through the provision of MBA degrees, the growth in management consultancies, and the emergence of self-styled management gurus. Taken together this amounts to an actornetwork that has successfully packaged and commoditized managerial initiatives. These models of “best practice” have been disseminated throughout the organizational world. These create blueprints of what organizations “should” look like and what managers “should” do. Collectively the key players of the management ideas industry have helped produce management fashions. The emergence of a global management project is, in part, a phenomenon spread through hugely influential “guru” books. There is now a large commercial market in popular man agement books and a circuit of celebrity for those who write them. They are the gurus of the modern age, the “management gurus.” Gurus are generally self-styled and known for their image and rhetoric intensity. Producing airport lounge best-sellers and conducting world lecture tours, gurus hawk their homespun nostrums throughout the corporate world. Large-scale management consultancy has grown exponentially and consultants have become major actors in the creation and transmission of management ideas. Man agement consultants simultaneously instill a sense of security and anxiety in their clients: Security, because they imbue managers with a sense of certainty and control over the fu ture or whatever organizational problem it is that the consulting is concerned with; anxi ety, because the managers are in a sense emasculated—unable to manage without the guidance of consultants (Sturdy 2006). While many US consultancies had been in exis tence for much of the last century—coming out of the systematic management movement of Taylor's day—it is over the last twenty or so years that demand for their services has boomed. Organizations such as McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group have become high-status brands in their own right. Other consultancies emerged out of the large ac countancy partnerships. Uniquely placed as the auditors to large firms, most large ac countancy partnerships commercialized to the extent that their consultancy operations became at least as important as the core auditing business, which was notably the case with Arthur Andersen and their most infamous client, Enron. Enron has fast become a morality tale for our times: the shredded documents; a suicide of a senior employee; the premature death of the former chairman; and lengthy prison sen tences for many of the chief protagonists will be images forever associated with Enron. Once the darling of Wall Street, Enron, eulogized by Gary Hamel—the strategy guru—and listed by Fortune magazine as America's most innovative company for much of the 1990s, became a watchword for accounting fraud and corporate greed. While the demise of a self-styled corporate colossus was quick, the fallout was spectacular. Many senior execu tives had pocketed millions of dollars through cashing in their share options, while other employees were less fortunate. While the Wall Street analysts and large banks who Page 8 of 27
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Managing Globalization lent Enron billions pleaded ignorance and claimed that had been duped, a trip to the developing world, where Enron had been operating a corporate wrecking crew for al most two decades, would have provided a harbinger of what was to come. In the case of Enron, like so many clashes between the “first” and “third” world, the developing coun tries lost out badly. Bill Cooke, a professor of critical management studies at Lancast erUniversity, invites us to look at the relationship between management, a quintessential ly Western subject, and the developing world. He makes a shrewd observation about the colonizing nature of Western management theory. His work resonates with our notion of the existence of a business-consulting complex which is hugely important in shaping ideas and, consequently, in creating worlds. The role that the Washington consensus has played in restructuring the economies of much of sub-Saharan Africa is a case in point. He argues: (p. 195)
Missing from any analysis of management thus far, is the recognition of its specif ic role as global, institutional (more than organizational), modernizing change agent [suggesting] a need to extend analyses of management to consider its role in interventions in the international (or, some would have it, global) political econ omy. (Cooke 2004: 625)
Global Accounting The role of the large accounting firms is pivotal to understanding the Enron story as a global tragedy. By the mid 1980s the market for financial audit was mature and had stag nated. In any case, outside of a few accounting firms in a few geographical locations, competition between these firms was frowned upon and, for the most part, regarded as being somewhat aggressive and ungentlemanly. What the large accounting firms pos sessed was a monopoly over the provision of audits to large firms and a capacity to man age—and charge for—large projects. The “full professional jurisdiction” (Abbott 1988) was protected by law. The large accounting firms developed a number of capabilities, one of which was the ability to cultivate and sustain long-term relationships with clients. These connections were often cemented by their own accountants going to work in client firms after a number of years with the accounting partnership. Accounting partnerships also possessed highly sophisticated means of charging for audits and managing largescale interventions into organizations. The shifting context of accounting firms in the 1980s allowed them to diversify outside of audit activities, though their clients were gen erally those that they also sold audit services to. Audit became the wedge that opened the corporate door to the on-selling of additional services. Hanlon (1994) has demonstrated the way in which the large accounting firms commercialized themselves—pursuing capi tal accumulation strategies. Equally, Greenwood et al. (1999) have written extensively on the unique characteristics of accounting firms that allowed them to globalize so success fully. Power (1994) has argued that we increasingly live in an audit society, one in which the principles of verification (p. 196) and calculability underpin society. During this time accountants and management consultants have risen to powerful positions within civil so ciety. In the UK, for instance, large accounting firms played an important role in drafting Page 9 of 27
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Managing Globalization privatization and private finance initiatives. They were simultaneously to profit from the implementation of such policies. Government work, that was once the sole preserve of mandarins, is now often carried out by accountants and management consultants. What marks out a mandarin from a management consultant or an accountant is a different type of intellectual capital: the mandarin was most likely to be a classicist, schooled in a classi cal discipline, educated at a socially elite university, and drawn from a wealthy family background. The moral sentiments of the knowledge born by a management consultant are more technocratic and democratic, and are likely to be premised on less concern with social origins, and education in a business school, usually through the study of an MBA.
The MBA: The Global Business Qualification Management education has penetrated the Anglo-American university system to a consid erable degree. Sturdy (2006) reports that “25% of US university students currently major in business or management and in the UK, 30%ofundergraduates study some manage ment.” Equally, fast emerging economies such as China and India have embraced the MBA with great enthusiasm. A small number of business schools' MBAs are rich in sym bolic capital, while some, such as Harvard, enjoy iconic status. Thus, from being, once up on a time, the province of an elite cadre of American business aspirants, the MBA is now offered in ever-increasing volumes across the world, fast over-shadowing the traditional undergraduate domains of academic endeavor. In one sense, the growth of the MBA may be taken as a casein-point of what some critical scholars have seen as the neocolonial domination of an American educational model on a global scale (Miller and OʼLeary 2002). Hence, the cultural logic of the MBA, from its beginning in the neoclassical archi tecture and green pastures of HarvardUniversity, has developed in the latter part of the twentieth century to become the model of management education. As such it is the princi pal vehicle for the normalization of disciplined expectations in the managers of tomorrow, while offering practical opportunities for the consultants of today to enroll others who will soon be influential, to their ideas and to expound them in settings that proffer great legitimacy and legitimation. The interconnections become almost seamless; the managers in training are normalized into the idea that consultancy is a solution provider; the con sultancies gain exposure to attract the brightest and the best from the top MBAs. The MBA-speak of PowerPoints and spreadsheets prepares the student of today for the con sulting and management presentations of tomorrow. Thus, the MBA acts as a rationaliz ing device. The canon of management knowledge is increasingly homogenized through inter national credentialing bodies such as the (Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business AASCB) and (European Quality Improvement System EQUIS). Most particularly, the move towards centralized standardization has been achieved by the AACSB and its emergence as the standards making body par excellence. To win member ship of the AASCB grants global legitimacy; one consequence of the AACSB and its fram ing of the field is that, across the world, students will be tutored in similar lessons in strategy, finance, marketing, human resources, and so forth. (p. 197)
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Managing Globalization That the MBA should have achieved such talismanic and iconic status might seem surpris ing when one contrasts the market reality with the conclusions drawn by significant fig ures in the field such as Jeffrey Pfeffer (Pfeffer and Fong 2002), who suggest that, in prac tice, “there is scant evidence that the MBA credential, particularly from non-elite schools, or the grades earned in business courses—a measure of the mastery of the material—are related to either salary or the attainment of higher level positions in organizations” (p. 92). It would seem that the cultural potency of the MBA is stronger than the realities of its effects or the vigor of its critique. Recently, there have been two factors that have further influenced the development of the MBA—the introduction of ranking systems for business schools, and the growing pressure towards, and internationalization of, formal accreditation systems. Together, these have placed management education in a “regulatory field” (Hedmo, Sahlin-Andersson, and Wedlin 2006). In relation to the former, it was in 1988 that the US media introduced rank ing systems for business schools—allowing prospective students and potential employers to make easy cross comparisons about the “value” of different institutions.
Global Work and Global Workers Globally skilled knowledge workers generate less skilled job opportunities in the ranks of a global “service proletariat.” Supporting the cars, shopping, apartments, and travel of these wealthy symbolic analysts is all the dirty work done by those who cook, wash, and clean up, who pack and sell convenience foods, who park and service cars, who tend and care for appearance: the face workers, nail workers, and hair workers—the necessary body maintenance to keep all the wealthy and beautiful people sweet. In global cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore, you can see street-level globalization in the form of the mainly Filipina and Sri Lankan female domestic workers who congregate in the public spaces of the central business district on Sunday, their day of rest. The rest of the week it is more likely to be thronged with global businesspeople while the maids, chauffeurs, and other domestic servants make global households run smoothly. In addition, there is a shadow labor force of workers in the symbolic sphere— workers who are tightly scripted, operating in unambiguous and simple environments, unlike their symbolic analyst counterpoints; a proletarianized white collar service class. Outside the confines of the corporate glitterati and the symbolic analyst elite we find that category of disaggregated work quintessentially associated with globalization: that of call centers. Enabled by developments in technology, call centers were ushered into existence in the 1990s, the idea being particularly attractive to corporations, as it allowed them to downsize parts of the organization and establish call centers in relatively deprived areas where wage rates were lower and the workforce more pliable. The growth of information technology allowed for the increasing codification of knowledge, reducing the need for physical contact between producers and consumers, of which call centers are the perfect example—they can be located anywhere. Work is cheapened by the routinization of exist ing tasks; reengineered tasks can then be moved to places where wages are lower. The transaction costs associated are not great: satellites and computers can ensure virtual (p. 198)
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Managing Globalization linkage. The blueprint is clear: rationalize parts of the organization; introduce jobs at just over minimum wage in deprived, post-industrial parts of the country or another country; institute a system of surveillance aimed at maximizing efficiency. In terms of globalization, there are also “grunge jobs” (Jones 2003: 256). Jones sees grunge jobs as essentially bifurcated. First, there are the semiskilled workers who work in the lower reaches of the supply chains established by the global giants. It is a contin gent, easily dismissible, and reemployable mass of people who can be used and laid off to absorb transaction costs and cushion demand for the core transnational companies glob ally. When these transnational companies react to signs of economic distress, then it is these subcontract workers in the supply chain who bear the pain first, buffering the core company employees. These workers are low skill, add little value, and are easily dispos able, but at least they may have social insurance and do work in the formal economy. The second element in the composition of the grunge economy comprises an underclass of workers who are often illegal immigrants working sporadically in extreme conditions outside the formally regulated labor market: think of sweatshops in the garment industry, for instance. As Jones (2003) reports, there is research from Deloitte & Touche (1998) that suggests that informal sector activity ranges from 40 per cent in the Greek economy, through to 8 to 10 per cent of the British economy. States often encourage the informal sector as an arena from which street-level and taxable entrepreneurs might develop in enterprises other than the marketing of drugs, prostitutes, and the proceeds of crime (De loitte & Touche 1998; Sassen 1998). The global economy is sustained by a huge under class of illegal immigrants, some of whom exist in more or less contemporary conditions of bondage and slavery, unable to escape their employers, due to violence, and their often illegal and undocumented status.
Globalization and Relations of Identity: People's Changing Conceptions of Who they are (p. 199)
Globalization and Relations of Multicultural Diversity The spread of the mass media, especially television, means that in principle, almost every one can be instantaneously exposed to the same images. However, the world is becoming less a “global village” and more a “global market,” in which privileged commodities for sale are often based on hybridization, created from the intermingling of peoples and items from different cultures. Music is a good example, with the huge growth in the world music market from the 1990s, when, encouraged by the 1970s example of Jamaican reg gae superstar Bob Marley, third world musicians became global stars in the new niche market. But to do so they had to move through the circuits of power of the global record ing companies, such as BMG, Sony, and so on. (Now, in the days of MP3, iPod, Sandy
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Managing Globalization Thom, and the Arctic Monkeys, this may no longer be the case as music flows digitally and seamlessly in the global economy.)
The Globalization of Rights Globalization in the cultural sphere has meant the global proliferation of norms of individ ualized values, originally of Western origin, in terms of a discourse of “rights” (Markoff 1996). Such discourse is not unproblematic. It meets considerable opposition from reli gious, political, ethnic, sexual, and other rationalities tied to the specificities of local prac tices, but it does provide a framework and set of terms through which resistance to these might be organized. Managers seeking to standardize HRM (Human Resource Manage ment) practices globally will probably follow a “rights-based” template that will often con flict sharply with local realities. One theorist who has realized this is Barber (1996), who has popularized the idea that the world is set on a collision between McWorld and Jihad, where convergence in the form of primarily US business interests meets stubborn and deep-seated sources of local resistance, embedded in religious worldviews. From this per spective, the trajectory of convergence produces a globalization of culture, technologies, and markets against which local forms of retribalization will react. Perhaps the clearest expression of the emergence of a discourse of global rights occurs in relation to the status of women. Moghadam (1999: 368), for instance, suggests that the singular achievement of globalization is the proliferation of women's movements at the local level, the emergence of transnational feminist networks working at the global level, and the adoption of international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth Conference on Women. (p. 200)
Such doctrines are clear expressions of a global discourse of rights applying to just over a half of humankind. Clearly, however, they do not apply universally—and here it is more likely to be states rather than transnationals that are the main upholders of rights inequality. The lack of rights of women in many more fundamentalist Islamic states is not a result of the strategies of the large transnationals, such as Shell and BP, that invest there, but is due to capture of the state by fundamentalist interests.
Globalization has contradictory effects. In many ways, suggests Moghadam (1999: 376), working-class and poor urban women have been the “shock absorbers” of neoliberal eco nomic policies. Structural adjustment policies that increase prices, eliminate subsidies, diminish social services, and increase fees for essentials hitherto provided by the state place women at greater risk of ill health and poverty. However, to the extent that transna tionals enter into employment in these regions, then they represent unparalleled opportu nities for employment outside of either the informal sector of dubious work and condi tions or outside domestic service—opportunities that are often accompanied by education programs, as governments seek to equip their human capital with the upgradeable skills that will attract further investment.
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Managing Globalization
Global Postcolonial Trade Most people in the so-called third world remain desperately poor in regions that comprise the former colonies of Europe. Independence from their former colonial masters has meant little to millions of impoverished people who bear the brunt of globalization. Colo nial modes of development are still dominant in many of the former colonies that are forced to sell their natural resources to the industrialized countries at cheap prices and are unable to escape the twin traps of debt and poverty. In the postcolonial era the colo nizer—colonized relationships are played out in trade conflicts between the developed and underdeveloped countries resulting in the so-called North—South divide, a divide that has left nearly every trade agreement meeting of the World Trade Organization unre solved since the organization's inception. Some globalization theorists dismiss mod ernistic categories that divided the world economic regions based on their “development” into “developed countries, developing countries or less developed countries” as being ir relevant in a postmodern global world. They argue that such terms and others that de scribe the world such as “first world,” “third world,” “core,” “periphery,” (p. 201) “devel oped,” “underdeveloped,” “traditional,” “modern,” “colonizer,” “colonized,” “North— South” can be described as essentialist and reduce the many complexities and contradic tions of globalization into binary categories. However, dismissing these categories intel lectually does not unfortunately erase the material conditions of poverty that exist in many third world regions. There are third worlds within first worlds and first worlds with in third worlds. Daily life for a certain class of African Americans and Latin Americans in the first world of Los Angeles is not very different from the lives of their counterparts in the “third world” of Mexico (Davis 1990). The fact that a majority of the poor live in the former colonies of Europe is often dis missed as a coincidence (poverty is a “natural” condition) by some; more critically, it should be seen as a direct consequence of more than 200 years of colonialism. Organiza tional theorists, with a few exceptions have tended to neglect postcolonial theory, the most appropriate indigenously developed device for understanding the globalized world from below.1 Radical critiques of colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism drive post colonial theory. Inspired and informed by political activists, freedom fighters, anti-colonial activists from Africa, India, South America, and other regions, postcolonial perspectives called for nations emerging from colonialism to “decolonize their minds” (Ngugi wa ThiongʼO 1986) and to contest the unquestioned sovereignty of Western epistemological, economic, political, and cultural categories (Prasad 2003). In a broad sense this school of thought seeks to understand contemporary problems in developing countries through a “retrospective reflection on colonialism” (Said 1986: 45). As Prasad (2003) points out, a postcolonial perspective can be productive in the sense that it can reveal the neocolonial assumptions that underlie management disciplines, especially in the field of international management and cross-cultural management. Neocolonialism can be understood as a continuation of Western colonialism without the traditional mechanism of expanding fron tiers and territorial control but with elements of political, economic, and cultural control.
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Managing Globalization Employing a postcolonial lens to look at the political economy of globalization will allow us to see how social relationships are shaped by continuing colonial modes of develop ment. Discourses of political economy after all are not just about relationships between wages, profits, interest rates, employment rates but are also about relations of power. To understand relations of power in the political economy of globalization we need to ask dif ferent questions. Rather than seeking the relationship between wages and profits, a criti cal approach will ask who owns the means of production? Who owns the land and mineral rights? Who does the grunge jobs and who is unemployed? And perhaps most importantly, who has the power to “portray inequality as the natural order of things or socially necessary” (Gibson 1998: 5)? In the so-called postcolonial era governments, global insti tutions, corporations and transnational managerial elites constitute what Gramsci (1971) called a “transnational historic bloc” that in the present time has established a (p. 202) particular form of “neoliberal globalization” (Scholte 2000). The basic principles of ne oliberal globalization are: (1) protection of private capital interests and expansion of the process of capital accumulation by giving greater freedom of actions to corporations and curbing trade unionism; (2) primary reliance on market forces to achieve economic, politi cal and social goals through the homogenization of state policies and reducing the role of states in economic management; (3) development of a system of transnational institution al authority above and beyond the authority of the state (Gills 2000; Payne 2005). The state is a key player in the political economy and while some theorists believe that the power of the state has greatly diminished in an era of global neoliberalism (Boggs 1986; Rifkin 1999), others argue that state power in recent years has been redistributed to be “more tightly connected to the needs and interests of corporations and less so to the pub lic interest (where) the diminishing role of the state in protecting citizens from corpora tions is accompanied by the expanding role of the state in protecting corporations from citizens” (Bakan 2004: 154). In his analysis of macroeconomic country data from the World Bank, Payne (2005: 237) found a “complex pattern of structured inequalities.” The policies of global institutions, such as the World Bank, World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, tended to favor the interests of the richer nations either through their voting mechanisms or as in the case of the World Trade Organization, by means of gentle and not so gentle coercion, threats of sanctions, and promises of sweeteners to dissenting countries. Bor rowing countries are unable to influence the normative frameworks of the World Bank and the IMF and are forced to comply with stringent conditions that raise the cost of bor rowing which is ultimately borne by their already impoverished citizens (Randeria 2007). Some critics argue that inequality is not an outcome of the global politics of development but is “fundamentally constitutive of contemporary global geopolitics” (Payne 2005: 245). Power and global politics of unequal development can be described as a “new imperialism” (Harvey 2003). While imperialism is primarily conceptualized as controlling the political sovereignty of another region, it is also an economic system that creates and sustains dependence through external investment, market capture and control of re sources (Williams 1976). Thus, rather than signify the “end of corporate imperialism” as some scholars will have us believe (Prahalad and Lieberthal 1998), globalization becomes Page 15 of 27
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Managing Globalization a new form of imperialism without colonies but with the collusion of postcolonial political elites in the former colonies where local states have emerged as sites of power for capi talist accumulation. Instead of marking the death of the nation state, the globalization of markets is dependent on a system of multiple states governed by a process of extra-eco nomic coercion by the various global institutions that determine the parameters of global trade. Placed in the context of imperialism, the operation of international finance capital becomes significant in its hegemonic institutionalization through the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. Therefore, conflicts between North—South countries in (p. 203) various interna tional trade fora as well as protests by peasants and workers in the poorer countries of the world over property and resource rights are often aptly framed as anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles. Imperialistic practices such as the creation of monopolies oligopo lies, restricted capital flows and rent extraction exploit uneven geopolitical economies by taking advantage of existing structural inequalities in the political economy. Patterns of inequality, concentrations of wealth and zones of poverty are thus created which in turn sustain inequalities in power. Harvey (2003) argues that a key task of states is to create beneficial economic arrangements by leveraging their power, for example using their power to influence policies of the World Bank, IMF, and WTO to serve the interests of wealthy member states. Imperialism in this domain amounts to “foisting institutional arrangements and conditions upon others, usually in the name of universal wellbeing” (Harvey 2003: 133).
Globalization and Relations of Sustainability Relations of global sustainability are informed by colonial modes of development and gov ernance (McAfee 1999). Discourses of sustainability elide the problems of sustainability in impoverished, mainly rural, communities while privileging Western notions of environ mentalism and conservation. While environmental problems like pollution do not recog nize national or regional boundaries, the “global” solutions advocated by the industrial ized countries perpetuate the dependency relations of colonialism. “New economic gi ants” like China and India are blamed for pollution and deforestation and media reports of the world's environmental problems are inevitably accompanied by images of polluted Third World regions with little recognition of the responsibility of industrialized countries who consume 80 per cent of the world's aluminum, paper, iron and steel; 75 per cent of the world's energy; 75 per cent of its fish resources; 70 per cent of its ozone-destroying CFCs; and 61 percent of its meat (Renner 1997). The poorer regions of the world destroy or export their natural resources to meet the demands of the richer nations or to meet debt-servicing needs arising from the “austerity” measures dictated by the World Bank. It is ironic to the point of absurdity that the poorer countries of the world have to be “aus tere” in their development while the richer nations continue to enjoy standards of living that are dependent on the “austerity” measures of the poorer nations. Neither the dan gers of environmental destruction nor the benefits of environmental protection are equal ly distributed: protection measures continue to be dictated by the industrialized countries often at the expense of local rural (p. 204) communities. Thus, the “teeming millions” in the third world are responsible for damage to the biosphere whereas “sustainable con Page 16 of 27
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Managing Globalization sumption” in the first world is a necessary condition for “sustainable growth” (Harvey 1996). For much of the last century the Third World has been told to develop. In an era of globalization it is still in need of development but now needs to be told how to develop sustainably. The ecosystem as a whole is now often ascribed rights and interests, in the name of sus tainability. Other entities incapable of interest representation, such as fetuses, those who are on life-support systems, and so on, are also ascribed rights. Animals are ascribed rights (Singer 1976). Whales have rights that are violated by global organizational actors from Japan; domesticated farm animals such as factory-farmed pigs, hens, and turkeys are routinely treated in ways that deny their right to a “natural” life. It matters not whether a cow is British or French in an economy where meat, sperm, livestock, and meat-derived products, such as gelatin and cosmetic additives, as well as avian influenza, mad cow, and foot-and-mouth disease can trade globally. Greenpeace, as an organization for expressing a standardized moral consciousness that can mobilize activists anywhere, can represent Canadian seals as easily as those that are Russian and, through the global media, can act its way into the global consciousness. Local species can become global icons. Economic growth and population growth place simultaneous demands on the natural en vironment by depleting resources, eliminating species, and spreading disease. Globaliza tion is resource hungry: the boom in the Chinese economy is swallowing finite raw mate rials such as wood, rubber, minerals, ores, or oil from every part of the world. In recent years China, making huge investments in Africa and Latin America, has followed an ex press strategy of securing its energy and mineral requirements for a generation. Global interdependence between human and ecological health is both causing and spreading global diseases such as HIV/AIDS (Garrett 1994; French 2003) and avian influenza. In creasingly, we live in “risk societies” where national and geographic boundaries cannot insulate us from man-made or natural disasters generated elsewhere (Beck 2002). Recall the 2004 tsunami—with good management and prediction in place of the likely impact of such events we can better cope with them. Whereas the Pacific had in place such man agement systems (in Hawaii) the Indian Ocean (for reasons of the relative poverty of the region compared to the Pacific) did not, and many thousands of people died, partially in consequence. Another example, which Beck discusses, is Chernobyl but the examples are legion: the illegal logging of Sumatran rainforest and the burning off of waste that casts dense smoke palls all over the South East Asian region, causing health problems in far away Singapore. The pollution from industrial China blankets Hong Kong. The use of cyanide in mining in Romania, at Aural Gold Plant, allowed 3.5 million cubic feet of cyanide-contaminated waste (p. 205) to enter the Tisza River on January 30, 2000, poison ing the Danube and infecting over 250 miles of rivers in Hungary and Yugoslavia. Cyanide leaching is widely used in the global mining industry. That engagement ring may not only be potentially tainted with “Blood Diamonds” but also cyanide leached gold. Local actions can have global consequences.
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Managing Globalization
Critical Perspectives on Globalization Critical management studies with its multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives can pro vide a fertile ground for researchers interested in developing critiques of globalization and international business. In their call for a more critical approach to management stud ies, Grice and Humphries (1997) argue for a non-managerial position whose purpose is “not performativity but emancipation.” Critically oriented research on globalization would shift the current focus on performativity to examining the disempowering effects of glob alization, the strategies of resistance movements, and alternate forms of organizations with a view to creating a more democratic political economy. Critical management per spectives of (non)performativity, de-naturalization, and reflexivity are useful lenses to study globalization and it discontents (Fournier and Grey 2000). An overwhelming propor tion of research in management focuses on traditional profit-oriented corporations. The bulk of research on not-for-profit organizations is also framed by similar corporate goals: how can we raise more money for charity, how can we get more people into museums or libraries or zoos? There is very little research on strategies for activist groups and organi zations, and the theories and practices required to oppose corporate actions (Frooman 1999). Popular dimensions of globalization that invoke notions such as diffusion, democ racy, market, empowerment, flexibility, multiculturalism, and collectivity, also need to be critically examined and countered by investigating how these corporate objectives along with notions of “values” and “ethics” increasingly dominate all other “social” agendas giv ing rise to a new corporate colonialism (Goldsmith 1997; Grice and Humphries 1997). Countering positive knowledge is a definite item on the agenda for critical management studies along with an understanding of “how management knowledge results from and contributes to a particular disciplinary regime” (Knights 1992: 519). Developing critical ways of thinking and seeing globalization requires an investigation of forms of domination in other locations than the office or factory workplace; perhaps this will be more effective in initiating revolutionary change (Poster 1989).
Summary and Conclusion: The Global Bal ance Sheet (p. 206)
In this chapter we have discussed how the internationalization of financial markets and the diffusion of technology create a particular form of globalization that transform con sumption patterns into cultural products through worldwide consumer markets. We have examined how different circuits of global production inform new transnational relations and the emergence of a multicultural transnational managerial class. We have also dis cussed the downsides of globalization—rising inequalities, environmental destruction, and social dislocation that have produced winners and losers. The main beneficiaries of globalization are undoubtedly the senior employees of the transnational companies and those symbolic analyst professionals who service these companies: lawyers, researchers,
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Managing Globalization consultants, IT experts, and so on, especially those who work for the major IT companies, such as SAP and Cap Gemini. With the emergence of global brands, international outsourcing, and supply chains, there is a natural tendency for the market leader to get further ahead, causing a monopolistic concentration of business (Arthur 1996). Real dangers attach to winning when the losers are excluded and abandoned to their situation. The winners can come together and in creasingly integrate with one another. Where such processes occur within societies, seri ous consequences may result in terms of increased poverty, unemployment, alienation, and crime. But the consequences are of a higher order of magnitude when the processes of exclusion and alienation involve countries and whole regions of the world. The share of world trade in manufactured goods of the 102 poorest countries of the world is falling as the share of the developed world increases. There is a delinking of the less from the more developed world, particularly in Africa. The core of an increasingly globally integrated world economy excludes those countries from the margins. For instance, the World Bank Poverty Report (2001) highlights that “[o]f the world's 6 billion people 2.8 billion live on less than $2 a day and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day. Eight out of every 100 infants do not live to see their fifth birthday. Nine of every 100 boys and 14 of every 100 girls who reach school age do not attend school.” One can only speculate on the political conse quences of such a new global division; they are unlikely to be integrative for the world system as a whole (Petrella 1996: 80–81). The primary casualties of globalization appear to be low-skilled grunge workers in tradi tional manufacturing countries who either lose their jobs as they slip overseas or experi ence a painful slide in their wage rates as employers strive to reduce costs. Particularly vulnerable are the relatively unskilled and undereducated, especially in labor market sys tems that do not develop very active and interventionist labor market policies. Wood (1994) reckons that trade with developing countries is the prime suspect for the increase in inequality within industrial countries. He (p. 207) estimates that it has reduced the de mand for low-skilled workers in rich economies by more than a fifth. Against this, howev er, you must balance the fact that most jobs are still in spatially discrete and nontrade able sectors. A wharfie in Australia cannot easily relocate to become a longshoreman in the United States. And even for the 16 per cent of US workers who make their living in manufacturing, the overlap of production with low-wage countries is relatively small. Their main competitors in most sectors are workers in other high-wage countries, as is true of most OECD states. Resistance to globalization began to be seen from the late 1990s onwards in the “antiglobalization movement.” Since then, terms such as the “social justice movement” have gained currency. The first major protests took place in 1999, often taking the name of the date on which they occurred (e.g., J16 for “June 16th”) or the city where the protests were held (e.g., the “Battle for Seattle”). Protests regularly occur in connection with eco nomic policy-making institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as conferences such as the Davos World Economic Forum and the G8 Summits. The political and business elites who gather Page 19 of 27
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Managing Globalization at these are seen as the chief architects of globalization by the protestors. The protests often have a libertarian and carnivalesque quality to them. The resistance often conceives of itself as “globalization from below” opposed to “globalization from above,” expressing a global solidarity. Since 2001, the World Social Forum has been held as a sort of annual counter-summit to the World Economic Forum. The World Social Forum has done a great deal to place issues such as environmental destruction, the need for sustainability, and Third World Poverty on the agenda. The New Right sometimes meets the Old Left in the shadows cast by politics. We also find S11 anarchists, agreeing, in Sklair's (1999: 158) words, that “globalization is often seen in terms of impersonal forces wreaking havoc on the lives of ordinary and defenceless people and communities.” As he goes on to say, it “is not coincidental that interest in globalization over the last two decades has been accompanied by an upsurge in what has come to be known as New Social Movements (NSM) research” (Spybey 1996; Sklair 1998). NSM theorists argue for the importance of identity politics (of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, community, and belief systems) in the global era. S11 are a perfect exam ple of this—and their strategies are based on global tactics. They do not seek to build ef fective conventional political alliances and positions, but use the tools of globalization, such as the Internet, to create activist happenings as spectacular media events whenever the leading global players meet internationally. But if you are against a concept such as globalization, which seeks to capture a broad array of social detail, which bits of it are you most against? And what is the alternative to globalization? Is it protectionism? Of course, there is an argument that sometimes protectionism, especially where it preserves unique intellectual/cultural property, such as national cinema or television, is necessary if the juggernaut of cheap US mass-produced and McDonaldized products is not to (p. 208) eliminate cultural differences. Such arguments are common in France, for example. But it is not only technologically sophisticated anti-establishment people in the West who mobi lize against globalization; indigenous peoples everywhere who are affected by its circuits also resist through demonstrations, protests, and rebellions. Not all are as well reported as the protests in Chiapas State in Mexico, but just about everywhere globalization touch es there are local politics resisting it. A critical research agenda on globalization would go beyond examining the conditions for profit-maximization but identify how goals like emancipation, social justice, ecological balance, community and human development, can be integrated with the governance of economic activity (Alvesson and Willmott 2003). Much of the strident voices against cor porate power draw attention to issues such as the exploitation of labor in developing countries, abusive labor practices and environmental destruction. These are practices that are easy targets. We need more research on the social consequences of apparently beneficial economic development policies leveling terms of people's experiences; for ex ample detailed ethnographic accounts of the social transformations and dislocations cre ated by foreign direct investment, industrial development, industrial agriculture, privati zation, offshore production, and export processing zones (Ong 1987; Harvey 2003).
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Managing Globalization A second research direction is to investigate, using a variety of theoretical and method ological perspectives, the rise of social movements and organized collective efforts to ad dress social problems all over the world. The environmental movement is a case in point: from a fringe movement in the 1960s it has now become a mainstream issue. Public con cern and media pressure have changed policies and practices at governmental, institu tional and corporate levels (Banerjee, Iyer, and Kashyap 2003; Bansal 2005). The World Social Forum (WSF) represents one such movement. The WSF is an annual meeting orga nized as a challenge to the World Economic Forum meetings. The WSF is “not an organi zation, not a united front platform, but an open meeting place for reflective thinking, de mocratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and in ter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centered on the human person” (Sen et al. 2004). Obviously, any alternative vision of the world will contain an economic dimension. The challenge is to integrate political, social and cultural dimensions into this vision.
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Managing Globalization TOWNLEY, B. (2002a). “Managing with Modernity,” Organization, 9/44: 549–573. TOWNLEY, B. (2002b). “The Role of Competing Rationalities in Institutional Change,” Academy of Management Journal, 45/1: 163–179. WILLIAMS, R. (1976). Key Words: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana. WOOD, A. (1994). North—South Trade, Employment and Inequality. Oxford: Clarendon.
Notes: (1.) Using the term “post” in postcolonialism is problematic since it assumes that colonial ism as a historical reality has somehow ended (Mani 1989) without acknowledging the complicity of colonial relations in contemporary discourses of “development” and “progress” in North—South relations. As a result, the post absolves itself of any claims for present consequences of the damages caused by colonization (Said 1986). A variety of disciplines including history, anthropology, sociology, Black studies, literary theory, cultur al studies, history, philosophy, and political science have employed postcolonial analysis to understand and critique the social, cultural, economic, and political conditions of the world. Explicit political agendas have always resided in an uneasy position in the disci pline of organization studies and postcolonial theory is no exception. The few studies us ing a postcolonial framework have examined how contemporary notions of “development” and “progress” are informed by colonial practices (Esteva 1992; Escobar 1995), how colo nial discourses inform organization-stakeholder relationships (Banerjee 2000), organiza tional control (Mir et al. 2003), organizational culture (Cooke 2003); workplace resistance (Prasad and Prasad 2003); and cross cultural studies in management (Kwek 2003). Post colonial theory can serve as a powerful foil to subvert the “objective,” “scientific” claims that privilege Western forms of knowing.
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee is Professor of Management and Associate Dean (Re search) at the College of Business, University of Western Sydney. His research inter ests are in the areas of corporate social responsibility, sustainability, postcolonialism, indigenous ecology, and globalization. He has published widely in scholarly interna tional journals and his work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Marketing, Organization, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and Human Re lations. His book Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good The Bad and the Ugly was published by Edward Elgar in 2007. Bobby is also a senior editor at Organization Studies. Chris Carter
Chris Carter is from Cornwall and currently works as a Professor of Organization Studies at the University of St Andrews. He also holds a visiting professorship at the University of Technology, Sydney, which is a congenial intellectual home from home. His current research investigates the politics of strategy and the organization of cam Page 26 of 27
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Managing Globalization paigns. Chris received his PhD in Organization Theory from Aston Business School. He lives in Edinburgh. Stewart Clegg
Stewart Clegg is Research Professor and Director of Centre for Management and Or ganization Studies Research at the University of Technology, Sydney; Visiting Profes sor of Organizational Change Management, Maastricht University Faculty of Busi ness; Visiting Professor and International Fellow in Discourse and Management The ory, Centre of Comparative Social Studies, Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam; Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School and EM-Lyon. A prolific publisher in lead ing academic journals in social science, management, and organization theory, he is also the author and editor of many books.
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies
Discourse and Critical Management Studies David Grant, Rick Iedema, and Cliff Oswick The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0010
Abstract and Keywords This article discusses several prominent critical management studies (CMS) approaches to discourse analysis that are embedded in critical traditions. It also considers the limita tions of these prevailing forms of engagement and presents a way of enhancing and pro gressing a discursively informed CMS agenda. There are three main parts to the article. The first explores a number of different approaches to the study of discourse that are dis cernible among CMS scholars and highlights four in particular: the micro-sociological ap proach, critical discourse analysis, the postmodern approach, and the Laclauian ap proach. The article then argues that each of these approaches provides an important and distinct critique of the management of work and organization. Keywords: management studies, CMS scholars, critical discourse analysis, postmodern analysis, Laclauian ap proach, work management
Introduction THIS chapter discusses several prominent critical management studies (CMS) approach es to discourse analysis that are embedded in critical traditions. It also considers the limi tations of these prevailing forms of engagement and presents a way of enhancing and progressing a discursively informed CMS agenda. There are three main parts to the chapter. In the first section we explore a number of dif ferent approaches to the study of discourse that are discernible among CMS scholars and highlight four in particular: the micro-sociological approach, critical discourse analysis, the postmodern approach, and the Laclauian approach. It will be argued that each of these approaches provides an important and distinct critique of the management of work and organization. The second part of the chapter highlights a key challenge faced by CMS re searchers involved in the study and application of discourse theory and analysis. It sug (p. 214)
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies gests that, to date, CMS research has tended to focus on discourse as “objectifiable set of practices.” It is argued that a fresh approach is required that foregrounds the political in terestedness and the affective dynamics that permeate any kind of discourse enquiry and research engagement. In particular, CMS scholars are advised to move beyond the di chotomy of discourse (as process of meaning and feeling making) and materiality (as the physical realization and inscription of linguistic, gestural, visual, kinesic, and technolo gized meanings and feelings on bodies and “exosomatic materials”). This shift involves at tending to the affective and creative aspects of meaning (feeling) making by both the re searcher and “researchee.” In the third and final section, we conclude by drawing together the various arguments presented in the chapter. We also consider the need for CMS scholars to embrace affect (as a critical pre-discursive phenomenon) and, in doing so, compliment organizational theorizing with empirical engagement.
The Transposition of Discourse Studies to CMS The field of discourse studies draws on a range of literatures that have emerged from the fields of sociology, linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, anthropology, communication studies and broader social theory (Taylor and Van Every 1993; Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick 1998). Such variety has inevitably led to debate and tensions about what exactly consti tutes “discourse.” Indeed, as van Dijk (1997: 27) has pointed out: “given the different philosophies, approaches and methods in its various ‘mother disciplines,’ the various de velopments of discourse analysis [have] hardly produced a unified enterprise.” Transposed to CMS, discourse analysis inevitably reflects the various dimensions and multidisciplinary characteristics that it draws upon. Nonetheless, CMS approaches to dis course studies do share some common understanding of discourse and its properties. Within CMS there is broad agreement that discourse comprises a set of interrelated texts that, along with the related practices of text production, dissemination, and consumption, brings an object or idea into being (Parker 1992). Discourses are therefore seen to play an important role in constituting material reality; they realize rules, identities, contexts, values, and procedures, and these in turn—insofar as they shape what can be said and who can say it—can be seen to determine social practices. Less clear from this literature is the comparative status of, and difference between, “dis course” and “text.” CMS has yet to resolve the question of whether (p. 215) discourses and texts are the (ontological) performances of meaning (and feeling) making, or the researcher's (epistemological) representations of such activities. On the one hand, dis course is frequently described as constructing the social, a move that in effect attributes discourse with ontological qualities. On the other, the notion “discourse” fulfills a heuris tic or epistemological role to the extent that those such as Foucault (1974) and Laclau (2002, 2005) take great care to qualify “what discourse does.” Similarly, texts are often talked about as unproblematically representative of what people do and say, without much thought being given to their constructive or ontological properties, let alone to the Page 2 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies constructive properties (the ontological impacts) of researchers' analyses of those texts. By simplifying the complex role and effect of notions and operations that underpin its po litical project, CMS discourse research risks depoliticizing its own analytical armamen ture. Put differently, an unreflexive stance towards “discourse” and “text” enables the re searcher to re-present what people did, said and wrote as discourse-analysable construct (“text”) without having to declare the social-constructionist (i.e. political) dimensions of their own analysis. As will become clear in the course of this chapter, this sleight of hand glosses over political, moral-ethical, and affective issues and CMS scholars ignore these at their peril. In the remainder of this section four streams of literature are identified within the field just sketched. These streams respectively reflect: (1) a “fine grain” engagement with lan guage—i.e. a “micro-sociological orientation”; (2) a multilevelled engagement which con siders context and aspects of materiality—i.e. “critical discourse analysis”; (3) anti-repre sentationalist and “heteroglossic” perspectives on discourse—i.e. a “postmodern” empha sis; and (4) a broader and more politicized engagement which collapses a distinction be tween the social and the material in terms of discourse—i.e. a “Laclauian-based” treat ment. This categorization is not to suggest that these are the only four approaches that merit at tention, but rather that they encompass the most significant discourse analytic strands within CMS and exemplify the discursive turn that some have identified in CMS (Contu and Willmott 2006). Readers may well take issue with the extent to which these approach es are faithful to, and meaningfully contribute to, CMS. To justify inclusion of work that realizes these approaches, we move through our discussion of them by highlighting key debates relevant to CMS as well as apparent tensions. At the same time, it is not our in tention to provide hard and fast categorizations of different authors' work (some authors appear in more than one approach) or suggest that each of these approaches are mutual ly exclusive in their aims and execution.
CMS and Micro-Approaches to Discourse Discourse socially (re)constructs meaning (and, in some cases, feeling). As such, dis course manifests in the form of practices that are required for its realization (p. 216) (Hardy 2001: 27). As part of this manifestation, the practice of discourse “rules in” cer tain ways of talking about objects and subjects that are deemed as acceptable, legitimate and intelligible while also “ruling out,” limiting and restricting the way we talk about or conduct ourselves in relation to them or construct knowledge about them (Hall 2001). In this respect, while appearing to emerge thanks to the speaker's conscious volition, dis course “acts as a powerful [sub/unconscious] ordering force” (Alvesson and Kärreman 2000: 1127). Within CMS, considerable attention has been paid to the shaping influence of discourse at the micro level. Researchers have utilized approaches based upon ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and interaction-oriented discourse analysis to offer descriptions of Page 3 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies particular institutional settings and types of social interaction within organizations (e.g., Watson 1994; Woodilla 1998; Huisman 2001). These approaches place emphasis on dis course as the study of everyday spoken language (Potter and Wetherell 1987). Thanks to their concern with the micro-sociology of everyday life, they offer in-depth insight into the social dimensions of attitudes, affiliations, orientations, motives, and values of a given or ganizational stakeholder (e.g., Grant 1999). For example, the structuring of interactive turns (who speaks when and how is someone's turn initiated) and the use of personal pro nouns (such as “we” and “they”) by workers may be highly significant in articulating, con firming and challenging power relations, their mode of sensemaking (Weick 1993), and in situ positioning as performance of social identity (Garsten and Grey 1997). While immensely rich in their own right, these micro-sociological approaches have two key limitations. Firstly, while a primary strength of such approaches is that they are a valuable means of revealing the real-time effects and the everyday enactment of position ing, they tend to downplay the material conditions and institutional structures which sur round and impact on the interaction (Oswick and Richards 2004). In effect then, micro-ap proaches tend to focus on the “how” of in situ relations of control rather than the “why” of the more durable power relations that contextualize such interactions. By focusing on instances of micro-level discursive interaction confined to particular moments in time these studies may ignore the significance of specific social, political, and historical con texts in which the discursive interaction takes place, and thus may fail to appreciate what might have shaped and will shape their relations. In short, it is important to appreciate the contexts in which particular discourses arise so as to acknowledge the broader sociomaterial weave of meanings and feelings as part of which those discourses are produced, as well as their effects (Keenoy and Oswick 2004). This contextualizing principle does not always accompany micro-situational analysis. Secondly, micro-approaches downplay the inevitably multi-modal nature of discourse. For example, because of their emphasis on the study of discourse as purely language, the approaches in question marginalize the multisemiotic aspects of speech (gestures, dress, symbolic actions, etc.), thereby limiting inter pretation and understanding of the discursive interaction under scrutiny (Grant and Iede ma 2005). (p. 217)
CMS and Critical Discourse Analysis
If the focus for micro-sociological analyses is the ritualized performance of meaning (and feeling), the focus of “critical discourse analysis” (CDA) is the link between power and discourse (e.g. Clegg 1989). CDA draws upon two theoretical sources. First, poststruc turalist theorists such as Bourdieu, Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard are mobilized to argue that the actor-agent is at once influenced by and plays a central role in the realization of power relations (Fairclough and Wodak 1997). To illuminate such power relations, rather than the actor-agent's ambiguous role in them, CDA utilizes structuralist and micro-lin guistic forms of textual analysis (Fairclough 1992).
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies Of those social theorists whose work has informed CDA, perhaps the most influential has been that of Foucault. Space does not permit us to provide an exhaustive review of his work and its relevance to CDA, but given its significance it is helpful to briefly summarize the main tenets of his contribution. For Foucault language in the form of discourses con stitutes objects and subjects. Discourses arrange the social world in ways that inform so cial practices. These social practices constitute forms of subjectivity in which human sub jects are given what is perceived to be a rational, self-evident form that manages who they are and what they do (Foucault 1976, 1980). Foucault's work examines discourses in two ways: through archeology and genealogy. Ar chaeology refers to the identification of a set of anonymous, historically constituted rules (Foucault 1974)—an underlying body of ritualized knowledge practices (discourses) by which people make sense of their world and produce their world. Genealogy focuses on identifying the nature and operations of power and how power relations influence and shape discursive practices (Foucault 1980). Within this approach is an appreciation of the inseparability of knowledge and power (Hall 2001), with discursive practices being consti tuted by and constituting “knowledge” or “truth” in a way “that is far from neutral and which is intimately bound up with considerations of power and control that need to be made explicit and critically evaluated” (Jacobs and Heracleous 2001: 116). That CDA, especially Foucauldian-influenced CDA, brings to the fore and acknowledges the importance of the relationship between discourse and power has made it an attractive proposition to CMS scholars. The way in which the power-discourse link underpins CMS work has been highlighted by Hardy and Phillips who observe that in the context of man agement and organization: power and discourse are mutually constitutive: at any particular moment in time, discourses … shape the system of power that exists in a particular context by hold ing in place the categories and identities upon which it rests…. Over time, … dis courses evolve as this system of power privileges certain actors, enabling them to construct and disseminate texts…. Thus, the power dynamics that characterize a particular context determine, at (p. 218) least partially, how and why certain actors are able to influence the processes of textual production and consumption that re sult in new texts that transform, modify or reinforce discourses. (Hardy and Phillips 2004: 299) CMS scholars have drawn on CDA in order to examine the power dimensions of various objects such as knowledge, identities and relationships. It has been used to further illuminate our under standing of organizational strategy (Knights and Morgan 1991), institutions (Phillips, Lawrence, and Hardy 2004) and interorganizational collaboration (Hardy, Phillips, and Lawrence 1998). Specifically, it has explained how discourse brings these objects into being and the implications of this for social action and behaviour in the workplace (Hardy 2001). For example, in a detailed exposition of the links among discourse, power, and ideology, Mumby (2004) shows how dis course brings oppression and domination into existence and how these are experienced as un challengeable reality through the practices that they invoke. Mumby's argument is that critical discursive studies incorporating this perspective can unpack the complex power-related dimen Page 5 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies sions that permeate the construction of knowledge that fosters gendered and race-based identi ties and which in turn affect work and processes of organizing. His work is an example of how critical modes of engagement with discourse aim to make visible the ways in which discursive practices are predisposed to favor what conventions define as possible and sayable.
Within CMS, those who have utilized CDA have drawn heavily on its emphasis on intertex tuality; that is, its concern with textual features that reappear across contexts and prac tices to do subtly related kinds of work. Intertextuality emphasizes the importance of see ing any text as “a link in a chain of texts, reacting to, drawing in and transforming other texts” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997: 262). In doing so it “mediates the connection be tween language and social context, and facilitates more satisfactory bridging of the gap between texts and contexts” (Fairclough 1995: 189). In this respect CDA seeks to over come criticisms levelled at the micro-sociological approach to discourse for failing to ap preciate context and dispel concerns that textual analysis of the real cannot explain orga nizing or organization. Instead, CDA suggests that in order to understand the construc tive effects of discourse, researchers must contextualize discourses historically as well as socially. It compels organizational researchers to acknowledge that discursive activity does not occur in a vacuum, and that discourses do not simply “possess” meaning (Hardy 2001: 28). As Kress (cited in Hardy 2001: 27) observes: Texts are the sites of the emergence of complexes of social meanings, produced in the particular history of the situation of production, that record in partial ways the histories of both the participants in the production of the text and of the institu tions that are “invoked” or brought into play, indeed a partial history of the lan guage and the social system. CDA has encouraged those studying management and organization to look at the means by which social reality is constructed and sustained and at the reasons why (p. 219) it is produced (Phillips and Hardy 2002). Specifically, CDA shows organizations to be “sites of struggle where different groups compete to shape the social reality of organizations in ways that serve their own interests” (Mumby and Clair 1997: 182). It achieves this by focusing on the discursive con stants that enable actors to exercise or resist social control, such as linguistic agency, syntactic complexity, and modality (“may,” “should”). In doing so CDA seeks to demonstrate how discur sively realized inequalities help control the production, distribution, and consumption of particu lar meanings in the form of texts. Moreover, and linking in with analyses of the performance of identity and subjectivity, CDA illuminates individuals' self-initiated production of such meanings and the implications of such conduct for how organizations and managers control (or facilitate) such social action and behavior.
Within CMS and organization studies more broadly, there has been a tendency to view CDA as an approach that is commensurate with a social constructionist perspective and which therefore facilitates a better understanding of processes of social construction. The work of, for example, Fairclough and his collaborators (Fairclough 1995; Fairclough and Wodak 1997) has been appropriated and applied in this way. Recently however, Fair clough (2005) has argued that a version of CDA based on a critical realist ontology would be of potentially greater value to the study of management and organization and in par ticular organizational change. Fairclough's (2005) argument is that while social phenome na in and around organizations are often socially constructed through discourse, it is Page 6 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies wrong to reduce the study of organization to the study of discourse alone, effectively denying discourse a material dimension. To accommodate his non-materialist view of dis course, he argues for a critical realist position which locates the analysis of discourse in stead within an analytically dualist epistemology: there is agency (process and events in cluding discourse) in contrast to non-discursive structure (materiality). How material structure can be conceived, perceived or engaged with outside of discourse remains un explained however (Iedema 2007). This dualist position is commensurate with the critical realist perspective put forward by Reed (2004). For Reed, “organization” comes about primarily as a result of interactions between agents and the various structural conditions and contingencies that affect and determine their conditions of action. Here, discourse is seen as a representational or per formative practice that is located within and reproduced through overarching generative mechanisms or structures which are taken to be non-discursive but nevertheless genera tive of discourse as well as generated by discourse. As already indicated, this view leads to difficult questions however about where the boundary between structural-material and discursive phenomena can be drawn, and about what the nature of that boundary means for the ways in which these domains interact. In practice, such boundaries are notorious ly difficult to locate and “influence” between these domains is equally difficult to pin point. In effect, this duality replicates the age-old sociological problem of how to recon cile social structure and individual agency (Iedema 2007). (p. 220)
CMS and Postmodern Approaches to Discourse
Earlier it was noted that the turn to discourse acknowledges that structures and process es that were once explained and understood through a positivist epistemology require a perspective that recognizes the constructionalist potential of meaning making. But if the discourse theories reviewed thus far emphasize social construction as a way to explain how structure and agency are mutually mediated, postmodern discourse theory goes sev eral steps further. It regards the organization—or rather, organizing—as constituted of paradoxical, fluid, and contradictory processes and practices (Cooper and Burrell 1988), thereby rejecting the agency–structure dichotomy (Cooper and Law 1995). These charac teristics mean that postmodernism is believed to help better explain the incoherence and inconsistency underlying what organizations and their managers do as they attempt to cope with the escalating demands of globalization and the increasing unpredictability of “the market.” Postmodern discourse theory argues that the global meltdown of structures and agencies is, in part, manifested by the rising intensification of communication on a variety of lev els. The postmodern perspective on discourse emphasizes the fluidity and contradictory nature of what workers and managers do communicatively (Deetz 2003). Communication, instead of being made up of routinized, ritualized, and therefore power-implicating prac tices, becomes a dynamic, complex space where action has greater levels of freedom
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies while at the same time being subject to higher levels of community scrutiny and social ac countability (Iedema 2003). At the same time, postmodern discourse theory does not believe discourses to simply start out in possession of “meaning.” Instead, their meanings are contextually created, supported and re-created via discursive interactions or performances among key actors. This indeterminate process involves the ongoing negotiation of meaning among different actors with different views and interests. The negotiation results in the emergence of a meaning that may congeal into a particular recognizable but inevitably contested dis course. The emergence of such meaning occurs as alternative meanings are subverted or marginalized. As may be surmised from what has been said thus far, central to postmodern views of dis course are irrationality and undecidability (Cooper 1989). This facet of discourse theoriz ing links-in with the argument made in the final section of this chapter. Where discourse theory to date has privileged the ideational dimensions of meaning making by analyzing the recurrent features of social practices and by seeking to articulate discourse practices as routines, limited attention has been paid to the non-ideational or affective features of organizational life. Cooper's work, as well as that of Chia (2000), plays an important role in opening up discourse theory to the pre-discursive dimensions of organizing where sym pathies and antipathies, enthusiasms, and fears, and energies and counter-energies are worked out (Ledoux 1996). (p. 221)
Drawing on these characteristics, postmodern perspectives of discourse have con
tributed to CMS in several ways. Some studies have rendered the dominance of manage ment and organizational meanings visible on the basis of individuals' narratives and sto ries (Boje 1991; Boyce 1996; Czarniawska-Joerges 1998; Gabriel 2000). In these studies organizations are viewed as dialogically-produced entities, explicitly seen as comprising a struggle among a multiplicity of discourses which reflect the “plurivocal” meanings brought to bear by the various participants and stakeholders who contest a dominant dis course (Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick 1998). Boje's work, for example, shows how the various stories and narratives recounted by or ganizational members—be they workers managers or other stakeholders—make up orga nization. The stories are indicative of the fact that the story teller is inevitably party only to some instances of social interaction and not others, understands part of what is going on and never the whole, and has to rely in opportunistic ways on incoherent bits of infor mation. This analysis also explains why organizational actors who are “locked into” par ticular discursive practices may experience and interpret the same discursive event— such as a conversation—differently. Boje's (1991: 106) analysis of organizations as “collective story telling systems” offers a powerful exposition of how discourses can co-exist and helps foreground the multiplicity of interpretations that constitute the organization. Unlike other narrative based perspec tives on organization, Boje's analysis radically de-emphasizes the socio-economic depen dency relations between organizational actors. It is thus left to others to suggest that the Page 8 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies very plurivocality Boje identifies reflects an overt or covert struggle for dominance among organizational actors, where the stories that they produce are often indicative of a structurally endemic struggle for power and control (Gabriel 2004). Overall then, the value of the narrative approach is that it compels us to consider the or ganization as comprising a multitude of organizational realities and communicative processes which although relatively autonomous as discourses, may overlap or permeate one another in ways which are indicative of what Taylor and Van Every (1999) describe as “lamination.” The notion of lamination confirms that organizing occurs through multiple narratives and counter-narratives deployed by various organizational actors in order to make sense of their work and each other, and to initiate social action (Brown 1990). Contrary to the narrative perspective, others in CMS hold that postmodernism's ability to challenge conventional thinking about management and organization is not achievable by bringing to the fore the multiplicity of views and understandings that organizational members embody. Nor is this aim achievable via a literal interpretation of what the ordi nary individual says and the multiple organizational realities that this generates. Instead, they argue that postmodernism should be seen as a project by which to expose conven tional organization and management theory and practice as comprising a taken for grant ed set of discourses which we (p. 222) have no inclination to challenge (Seidman 1994). This postmodern perspective of management and organization argues that reality is so cially constructed in definite places in space and time, due to being to some extent mate rially pre-fixed through infrastructures and “architextures” that guide embodied practice, and in other respects remaining open and indeterminate. Here, according to Chia (2000: 513), discourse manifests as “multitudinal and heterogeneous forms of material inscrip tions or verbal utterances occurring in space-time [and thereby] aggregatively produces a particular version of social reality to the exclusion of other possible worlds.” For its part, Chia's postmodern CMS work also holds that a discourse-analytical critique of organization and management itself risks lapsing into “representationism,” or the illu sion that our analytical description can indeed unproblematically capture aspects of orga nizational reality. The modernist objective of identifying factual relationships by empirical methods is thus called into question (Gergen 1994). Language should no longer act as a slave to observation and reason and it is no longer the case that the accuracy of language will improve simply to reflect exactitude and science. Here, the term representationism implies that language used for empirical-descriptive processes is inadequate to describe reality since it itself is locked into the discourse of a particular community and thus per petuates their particular set of interests and interpretative practices. In the antirepresen tationist view, discourse analysis and the language used to describe its “empirical” find ings thus become subject to a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” since data thus produced are “in terpreted and justified within a restricted linguistic domain” (Hassard 1993: 12). Chia's work offers an important counterbalance to the more empiricist forms of discourse analysis encountered above for whom texts unproblematically relate to the real and are taken to be representative of the real. By the same token, his approach appears disinter Page 9 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies ested in questions (on the grounds that asking them would constitute a lapse into repre sentationism) about who, in particular situations, constructs and promulgates particular kinds of meaning (and feeling) making, or why they do so. Chia's stance also rules out re searchers adopting a political stance and challenging particular discourse practices not just on analytical, but also on political grounds (Iedema 2003, 2007). The philosophical orientation of this work thereby deprives it of an ethical dimension, ruling out debates within CMS about whether and how we could or should constitute organizational (dis course) analysis as (political) research practice (see below). In short then, Chia's ap proach prevents the researcher not only from engaging with in situ organizational dynam ics and managerial practices, but also from accomplishing a self-implicating form of re search critique. In doing so, it places the analyst and theirmethods and conclusions be yond practical, theoretical and therefore beyond political risk. Undeniably, the micro-ana lytical and CDA approaches have also avoided such risk, if in different ways. In contrast, Laclau's work, to which we now turn, positions discourse theory neither as objectifying analysis nor as abstract philosophical principle. Instead, (p. 223) discourse is positioned as a means to engender political engagement and social change.
CMS and a Laclauian Approach Drawing on the thinking of Ernesto Laclau (e.g., Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 2002, 2005) an increasing number of CMS scholars (Holmer-Nadesan 1996; Contu 2002; Jones and Spicer 2005; Roberts 2005; Willmott 2005; Contu and Willmott 2005) have advanced a rather different conception of discourse. Here, discourse takes on both more abstract and more material properties. Discourse is social practice broadly put, and it manifests in what is said, done, shown, built, financed, and technologized. Laclauian theory brings to the fore the political dimensions of social life, arguing that so cial relations are contingent on historically embedded discourse practices as we draw on the past in order to construct identities and meanings in the present (see also Chapter 8 on identity, this Handbook). Critically, a Laclauian approach sees reality as discursively apprehended and produced, with the proviso that “discourse” extends well beyond the linguistic (Laclau 2005): discourse is that which achieves any kind of socio-material order ing. In that regard, Laclauian theory bridges the social and the material; indeed, it sees this as a false dichotomy. Ultimately, there is no difference between linguistic, behavioral and material aspects of social practice because they all contribute (albeit in semiotically different ways and therefore with different degrees of consequence) to shaping the sociomaterial order (Torfing 1999; Jones and Spicer 2005; Roberts 2005). While this view bears some similarity to social constructionist views of discourse “as practice,” it is nonetheless distinct in other respects—not least where it rejects the notion that reality harbors discur sive and non-discursive features (Bridgman and Willmott 2006). At the same time the idea that the material properties of discourse are evident in both linguistic and behavioral forms means that this is not a theory that can be aligned with critical realism which in sists on positing a non-discursive domain of experience (Willmott 2005).
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies Laclauian theories of discourse posit that the construction of identity and objectivity takes place through processes of hegemonic articulation. The relative stability of the so cial world is reliant upon articulation of material phenomena in such a way as to fix mean ing, whether in language, in image, or in the material construction of our spatial sur roundings (Holmer-Nadesan 1996). Sedimentation occurs such that over time identities and objects assume an “objective presence”; their history is lost along with original mean ing and any controversies attached to them due to naturalization of aspects of being (La clau and Mouffe 1985; Torfing 1999). This theorizing has significant implications for how we view management and organiza tion. Not least, it explains how managerial power is preoperative by (p. 224) embedding it self in non-linguistic phenomena that contextualize and shape actors' work. Bridgman and Willmot's (2006) study of ICT-related change in the UK public sector shows these process es in action. There, management argued that the power of new ICTs could only be real ized where they were strategically outsourced to the private sector. This new outsourcing discourse challenged the prevailing discourse which suggested that internal provision of ICT was the only viable strategy. The study shows the means (both through the material properties of the technology and through discursive devices) by which this new discourse achieved hegemonic status. Here, drawing on Laclauian theory, the politicized nature of how our social and material world is shaped and engaged with is demonstrated. As Bridg man and Willmott (2006: 123) argue, this perspective enables us to gain insight into the discursive-material impact of managers' practices as they mobilize a multi-modal array of resources to accomplish “shaping and changing practices of organizing and strategising.” Laclau's perspective on discourse as multi-modal space posits that agents engage with the social world discursively, and that discourse includes the full spectrum including speech, writing, visualization, building, and so forth, in so much as that these phenomena inevitably have both a semiotic (content) and material (form) dimension. This perspective also acknowledges that as actors we do not just speak in a vacuum, but produce spoken meaning in a socio-material context that is far from arbitrary to and disconnected from such speech. However this acknowledgement does not arguably go far enough towards explaining the complexity of the contemporary globalizing world and of the organizing trends within it.
CMS and the Challenge of Extending its Vision from Discourse as Routine to Pre-discursive Af fect Within CMS, discourse theory has subtly perpetuated the structuralist predispositions of labour process theory, albeit with greater (if varying) degrees of attention being paid to the agency and subjectivity of workers and managers. The emphasis on discursive regu larities and the ascription of power as the source of such routines betray discourse theory's affiliation to the enterprise of dividing everyday social complexity up into pre Page 11 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies dictabilities on the one hand and sources of predictability on the other. In this regard, the analyses and critiques of organization and management are complicit in that which forms the target of analysis and critique: organized work and managed power. In the globalized world, however, certainties about the regularities of processes and the sources of power are fading. While it would be wrong to say that workers no longer know where they fit into the organization and where the sources of power reside, it is clear that workplace flexibility and work process fluidity are beginning to redefine how we think about organizing and organization (Castells 2004). With this, the emphasis on discourse as ordering principle inevitably weakens and alternative explanations need to be found. It is here that considering pre-discursive phenomena, collectively referred to as affect, becomes important. (p. 225)
One instance of this emerging trend is a body of theorizing that foregrounds organiza tions' debt to affect. For example, Nigel Thrift analyzes the “new discourse of permanent emergency” (Thrift 1999: 674) as a contemporary business trend in which increasing em phasis on creativity is achieved through an affectualization of organizational relationships and practices. For him, the quality circle, the problem solving team and the project task force are instances of not just employees' intensifying the density of their own “commu nicative cage,” but also of “a new structure of attention” that contemporary workers are now enabled and expected to embody, and which enables them to not just realize creativi ty, but collectively produce it. Thrift (2004b: 876) links the changing modalities of man agement in with the rising currency of organizational change and innovation: “No neces sary progress or evolution is taking place in the field of business; rather the field is peri odically restructured into a new configuration of profitability.” This new configuration, however, is itself “nearly always unstable and can nearly always sustain only a certain amount of learning before events intervene and new patterns of learning become necessary” (Thrift 2004b: 876). On this analysis, business change is about establishing “new kinds of economic credibility” (Thrift 2004b: 876) whose essence lies in being tem porary. In this account, discourses about change and innovation are in turn bolstered by pre-dis cursive, pre-personal practices centering on what we call affect. Affect is mobilized here as a resource in and for itself, a way of identifying not just the business but also how upto-date it is, its risk-taking, and its innovative energy. Thrift goes so far as to claim that af fect is at the heart of contemporary business practices because “affect is realised to be a very time-efficient way of transmitting a large amount of information” (Thrift 2004b: 878). On this basis, the intensification of organizational communication serves to engender “ondemand” affect-based conducts: employees gather to address technical production and group facilitation problems in creative, solution-oriented and interpersonalizing ways, many of which (are expected to) include creative and indeterminate responses and inter actions. These affect-based practices involve people in concentrated and intense kinds of interpersonal exchanges whose volatility and impact reach well beyond the interactive here-and-now (Iedema, Rhodes, and Scheeres 2006).
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies To be sure, the prominence of affect in organizational and managerial processes has im plications for the methods that are applied by those who aim to study these (p. 226) processes. The critical discursive stance that advocates rendering such processes as “texts” risks missing out on the relational dynamics and complexities that contemporary organizing and managing entail, or indeed, if we accept Thrift's argument, require. New ways of understanding discourse and discursive analysis are therefore called for, not just to gain a handle on the general nature of these emerging organizational and managerial trends, but also to be able to begin engaging with them in specific situations. Since orga nizing and managing are now less about objectification, direction, and prescription, and more about subjectification, relationality, and affect, discourse researchers face two tasks. First, they need to come to terms with those dimensions of discourse that reach in to the affective basis of meaning (and feeling) making, as well as reaching beyond dis course as semiosis (meaning/feeling) into the pre-personal basis of “affect itself” (Clough et al. 2007). Second, discourse researchers have to acknowledge that their work can no longer shield itself from the organizational and managerial phenomena (processes, peo ple) it describes, by restricting itself to registers (e.g. the academic article) and sites (uni versities, conferences) that their “objects” of study are unlikely ever to engage with. It is paramount therefore that those in CMS who are interested in discourse studies re assess the way they frame discourse from being the (objectified) target of their concerns, and to think of developing a stance of engagement that is commensurate with the trend identified above. In the latter view, discourse is the productive and temporal outcome of particular processes of engagement, whose affective (non-discursive) remainder can and will undermine any such discourse's legitimacy and self-sufficiency (Massumi 2002). This shift in research approach enables researchers to examine as well as engage with and in tervene in a variety of organizational and management communities, practices, and prob lematics. The approach outlined here is not one where a discursive conclusion should pro duce instrumental, normative or prescriptive research outcomes favoring organizational growth and capital accumulation, thereby selling out the original agenda of CMS. But nei ther do critical analyses of practice devised “from a distance” suffice. Instead, the ap proach advocated puts collaboration alongside perturbation in its aim to engender innov ative researcher-researched relationships, without abandoning the social-political agenda of CMS. Specifically, this approach goes against objectifying organizational phenomena and pro ducing exclusive accounts about them that fail to reconnect with those at the centre of those accounts. This approach is anchored in the realization that the analyst works with (and against) constraints similar to those bearing on workers and managers; it does not presume to be able to make analytical pronouncements without becoming implicated in precisely those kinds of organizational politics that it critiques (or promotes), and it ac knowledges that its pronouncements therefore deserve to be scrutinized, renegotiated, and potentially altered by those who feature in those pronouncements. In sum, the ap proach embeds analysis in organizational (p. 227) dialogue, militating against unchecked objectification of organizational trends and practices. Page 13 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies Inevitably, this approach to organizational and managerial practices proceeds ethno graphically, but involving close engagement on the part of the discourse researcher with workers' sensitivities and concerns (Iedema 2007) and leading to both generalizations about, and solutions to, the impact upon them of emerging forms of work. Where Thrift links the preoccupation with change and innovation to affect at the trans-organizational level, scholarship is now emerging from close engagement with work practices that cen ter on producing “on-demand environments” (Thrift 2004a). This line of enquiry shows that contemporary workplaces are increasingly foregrounding what can be termed “affect design” as the means to display the activity of work and to legitimate and render nego tiable the outcomes of that work. Clearly, this necessitates research modalities other than distanced analysis and objectifying critique. Since, in the emerging organizational envi ronment, subjectivity is less the conduit of (complying or resisting) established forms of power, and increasingly a socially interactive theatre where complex, flexible and reflex ive identities are traded, explored and transformed, research too now demands social dy namics, theoretical–methodological flexibility, and disciplinary complexity. Here, dis course shifts from textual object to a mode of becoming, an open-ended dynamic capable of and even encouraging questioning and altering the researcher's analytical–theoretical principles and relational positionings.
Conclusion As this overview shows, CMS is comprised of many rich veins of scholarly and empirical enquiry. Using discourse as the framing principle, the discussion ranged from micro-ana lytical approaches to CDA, and from postmodern and antirepresentationist perspectives to Laclauian approaches, and on to neo-empirical strands seeking to engage with contem porary concerns with how work is colonizing affectivity and creativity. In presenting this overview, the chapter developed two arguments. First, the dichotomy between discourse analysis and social reality is problematic, because it deprives us from engaging with ma terial change. Were our meaning makings not to implicate and affect the material dimen sions of our lives, those meanings would not even deserve to manifest as hot air. Second, the chapter has argued, perhaps controversially so, that organizational theoriz ing—especially where it pertains to the role of language and discourse in social interac tion—may have privileged principled theorizing and empiricist (p. 228) analysis at the ex pense of in situ engagement with contemporary organizational, managerial, and business practices and trends. In situ engagement is crucial, we believe, to reconnect CMS to con temporary and local organizational and managerial developments. But engagement with these emerging trends now requires researchers to become attuned to the affective and creative aspects of practice and identity, necessitating a different understanding of dis course, and a different kind of researcher positioning. In conclusion, CMS has provided organization and management scholars with the space to question and critique instrumental approaches to, and understandings of, productive work. Where CMS scholars have drawn on discourse analytic approaches they have been Page 14 of 20
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies able to identify, explain and critique power relations and the inequities that they create in the workplace with considerable success. Whether discourse analytic approaches can sus tain this level of contribution to the CMS agenda or to the future of organizational man agement in the longer term is, we believe, contingent on the ability of researchers who have espoused the discursive turn moving from an agenda of objectifying discourse as a textual target to one of embodying discourse as a space where relational, creative and af fective action become possible.
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David Grant
David Grant is Professor of Organizational Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. His current research interests focus on organization al discourse theory and discourse analysis especially where these relate to organiza tional change. His work has been published in a range of management and organiza tion journals including Organization Studies, Academy of Management Review, and British Journal of Management. He is co-editor (with Cynthia Hardy, Cliff Oswick, and Linda Putnam) of the Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse (Sage, 2004).
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Discourse and Critical Management Studies Rick Iedema
Rick Iedema is Professor in Organizational Communication and Director of the Cen tre for Health Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. His research focuses on communication in hospitals among clinicians and between clinicians and patients. He and colleagues have received more than $10 million in research funding from the Australian Research Council and other agencies. He publishes his work in journals such as the Medical Journal of Australia, British Medical Journal, Organiza tion Studies, Social Science and Medicine, and Communication and Medicine. He has (co)authored over 125 research articles and book chapters, including three edited volumes, and a single-authored book. Cliff Oswick
Cliff Oswick is Professor in Organization Theory at Queen Mary University of Lon don. His research interests focus on the application of aspects of discourse, dra maturgy, tropes, narrative, and rhetoric to the study of management, organizations, organizing processes, and organizational change. He has published over 100 acade mic articles and contributions to edited volumes, including contributions to Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organiza tion, and Organization Studies. He is also European Editor of Journal of Organiza tional Change Management and Co-Director of the International Centre for Research on Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Change.
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire
Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire Joanna Brewis and Gavin Jack The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0011
Abstract and Keywords Raymond Williams' commentary on the etymological roots and semiotic complexity of cul ture as a concept is a frequent point of departure for many commentaries in the area. This article is an attempt, following Williams, to clarify the usage/s of the term as it has been applied in the study of organizations and management as a nouns and organizing and managing as verbs. Citing the late-1970s interest in corporate culture as a pivotal moment, it goes on to outline core components of well-known critical responses to ortho dox deployments of the organizational culture concept. The article also seeks to broaden the critical repertoire by discussing the potential of a cultural studies of organization as well as postcolonial approaches to culture and organization. It aims to establish the vari ous and manifold ways in which culture might be inhabited, cultivated, protected, and ho noured with worship (amongst other less-positive responses) by members of organiza tions. Keywords: Raymond Williams, organization management, organizational culture, postcolonial approaches, organi zation members, cultural studies
Introduction Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language … The fw [immediate forerunner of a word, in the same or another language] is cultura, L [Latin], from rw [ultimate traceable word, from which “root” meanings are derived] colere, L. Colere had a range of meanings: inhabit, cultivate, protect, honour with worship…. It is clear that within a discipline, conceptual usage has to be clarified. (Williams 1976: 87, 91) RAYMOND Williams's commentary on the etymological roots and semiotic complexity of culture as a concept is a frequent point of departure for many commentaries in the area. This chapter is an attempt, following Williams, to clarify the usage/s of the term as it has been applied in the Page 1 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire study of organizations and management as nouns and organizing and managing as verbs. Citing the late 1970s interest in corporate culture as a pivotal moment, we go on to outline core com ponents of well-known critical responses to orthodox deployments of the organizational (p. 233) Culture concept. We also seek to broaden the critical repertoire by discussing the potential of a cultural studies of organization as well as postcolonial approaches to culture and organization. Given the restrictions of word count and our own authorial blind spots, readers will inevitably find our discussion selective in content and partial in approach. However, we at least aim to es tablish the various and manifold ways in which culture might be inhabited, cultivated, protected, and honored with worship (amongst other less positive responses) by members of organizations.
Shared Values and the Corporate Culture Impe tus The publication of Ouchi's (1981) Theory Z, In Search of Excellence by Peters and Water man (1982), and Corporate Cultures by Deal and Kennedy (1988 [1982]) mark not only the beginning of intense corporate interest in the role of culture in business organizations in particular, but also of a “cultural turn” in management and organizational scholarship. This is not to suggest that neither corporations and managers nor academic researchers had paid any prior attention to something called culture—i.e., values and norms in the or ganizational environment. Certainly Parker (2000: 31—emphasis added) argues that the emergence of the late 1970sfocus on culture can be understood as “a synthesis of many central concerns in writing on organizations throughout the twentieth century.” He cites Lewin's analysis of organizational “climate” as well the bureaucratic dysfunctions theo rists—Merton, Gouldner et al.—as some of the precursors to full-blown “culturalism.” Nonetheless, the explicit interest in culture developed out of a combination of different challenges facing Western managers at that time, notably the success of Japanese and other Asian economies/corporations vis-à-vis the US; as well as a growing belief that the established canon of management science with its hard-nosed mathematical formulations and rational strategic planning models had not delivered in terms of the bottom line (Alvesson 2002). Since the success of Japanese corporations was seen to lie in their more “holistic” organizational approach based on the cultivation and maintenance of shared values, in comparison to the more “rational/systemic” approach of US businesses (Grey 2005), these writers on corporate culture argued for a refocusing of the analytical lens on the “human” elements of organizations, on “the intractable, irrational, intuitive, informal organization” (Peters and Waterman 1982: 11). What also distinguishes the management research of the late 1970s and early 1980s from what earlier commentators called “climate” or “informal organization” (p. 234) is the con ceptualization of culture as a detectable and distinctive organizational variable, factor, or asset, much like a product portfolio or real estate. Culture here is something that an or ganization “has” (Smircich 1983): it exists in a measurable, quantifiable way. Equally it is depicted as a force for workplace cohesion and stasis, creating homogeneity: the assump tion is that employees internalize “appropriate” values and norms and subsequently be Page 2 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire have according to this interior script at all times without the need for a watchful supervi sory eye. Shared values thus become the basis upon which corporations should develop a strong culture, and require management by senior personnel for maximum impact on worker performance. As Smircich (1983), Ray (1986), and Anthony (1994) all observe, then, culture in some ways replaced earlier foci such as rewards or social relations as the managerial panacea, the lever to persuade employees to work as hard as possible. The endgame is the evocative Deal and Kennedy (1988 [1982]: 15) claim that a strong corpo rate culture can actually add up to two hours' productivity per worker per day. Grey (2005: 68) argues that since this sort of commentary targets the worker, rather than work, corporate culturalism can be considered an aggressive extension of the Human Re lations approach. Nonetheless, an important difficulty for the management of organizational culture is its effective invisibility. Values and norms are, fairly obviously, cognitive phenomena, which Schein's influential modeling of culture from the mid-1980ssees as arising out of “basic assumptions.” These taken for granted and subconscious ways of seeing the world, he ar gues, might include the belief in the importance of all activity leading to a clearly identifi able outcome, or in humanity's superiority over nature. So the only level at which we can apprehend culture is what Schein (1992 [1985]) calls “artefacts”—including organization al traditions, rituals, heroes, stories, or architecture. The practice of culture management thus seeks to manipulate these different symbols (Gagliardi 1990)—they serve a pedagog ical function by teaching employees dominant meanings, creating a narrative to which they are encouraged to conform. Or, to echo Williams's etymology of culture, to cultivate and honor with worship. A noteworthy subtheme within this scholarship examines the influence of national culture on organizational culture. Hofstede is by far the best known exponent of such analysis, presenting in Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (1980) the four key dimensions (later extended to five in his work with Michael Bond) of national culture reflected in the workplaces of that nation. This strand of culturalism has expanded into an “onion” metaphor for understanding culture—the idea that it exists in a number of interwoven “spheres” or “layers” such that national culture informs regional cultures, which inform organizational cultures within that region, divisions within those organizations, and functions within those divisions (Schneider and Barsoux 2003). That each layer does not precisely mirror the others due to the particular circumstances exist ing at these individual cultural “levels” requires senior management to work to integrate (p. 235) the resultant sub-cultures within their organization into a more or less united whole (Brown 1998: 72). The “has” camp is therefore sensitive “to the presence of value conflicts within modern (capitalist) organizations” but also holds the corollary belief that to some extent they are “a sign of cultural weakness that can be corrected” (Willmott 1993: 525). There are of course differences between “has” theorists, and the most salient is whether one cultural “size” is assumed to “fit all.” Peters and Waterman's eightfold value frame work—as apparently extant in each of their forty-three “best-run” organizations, and in Page 3 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire cluding close attention to customer needs and facilitating employee autonomy and entre preneurship—certainly suggests there is a One Best Culture. Deal and Kennedy on the other hand are more of the cultural horses-for-organizational-horses bent, arguing that the best culture for any particular organization depends on how risky its activities are and how rapidly it can determine the success of any venture. Thus an advertising agency (risk high; feedback rapid) should have a very different culture from a public utility (risk low; feedback slow). But this division is arguably less significant than the shared empha sis in the “has” camp on culture's connection to the bottom line, on its magical stabilizing and guiding properties, and on “broadly applicable cultural dimensions or analytic categories” (Ashkanasy 2003: 301). These issues are manifest in its emphasis on assess ing the connection between culture and effectiveness and the degree to which individual employees conform to the prevailing culture (Ashkanasy 2003: 306–307). Having very briefly sketched out the orthodox cultural terrain in management studies, we will now turn to the four main themes within critical analysis of organizational culture, that: (a) “has” theory is methodologically deficient and thus its claims cannot be trusted; (b) “has” theory is ontologically mistaken about the nature of culture; (c) the manage ment of culture is an attempt to delude and oppress employees via normative control; and (d) workplace cultures at one and the same time share certain contextual traits, but are also always distinctive, as well as cut across with varying identifications, predicated on employees' profession, location, and so on.
Heterodox Commentary on Organizational Cul ture In synthesizing the considerable amount and complexity of critical work on the corporate culture approach articulated above, a relatively easy place to start is with methodology, or more specifically with the validity and reliability of the data used in the relevant stud ies. So Parker (2000: 16–17) and Thompson and McHugh (2002: 199) highlight the follow ing methodological shortcomings of In Search of Excellence: companies are included or excluded from the sample without any real justification; central sectors of the US econo my like financial services and car manufacturing are omitted; and most of the data derive from interviews with senior managers, who are hardly likely to be trenchant critics of their employers. Similarly, McSweeney (2002) systematically takes apart Hofstede's methodology by, for example, underlining the fact that the IBM data analysed for Culture's Consequences were generated by a company initiated and administered attitu dinal survey, sometimes completed by groups of employees as opposed to individually, in an environment where respondents knew that “managers were expected to develop strategies for corrective actions which the survey showed to be necessary” (Hofstede, cit ed in McSweeney 2002: 103). But the array of critical literature on organizational culture offers at least three further trajectories. First is an ontological critique which reframes the culture concept itself, ar guing that the question unlocked by cultural analysis is not that of more effective man Page 4 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire agement but of how organized activity comes about at all (Smircich 1983; Morgan 1997). To use Smircich's well-known distinction, it is to view culture as a root metaphor, some thing an organization “is,” rather than a critical variable that an organization “has” which is amenable to management. Here workplace values and norms are understood as jointly (re)produced in an ongoing, dynamic, more or less fragile, multitextured reconciliation between working life and the individual aspirations, needs, and desires of organizational members at all levels. This “culture-from-everywhere” is organic, emergent, and pluralis tic, not imposed, static, or univocal. Chan (2003) labels this the “instantiative” view of culture (culture as realizing, processual, giving meaning to organizational reality). The precursors of this instantiative conceptualization of organizational culture can, if we consult Parker (2000: 48–51) once more, be identified as sociologists like Goffman, Beck er, and Garfinkel, given their attention to “the interactional processes through which ac tors create and ‘accomplish’ their world” (Chan 2003: 315), as well as cultural anthropol ogists like Geertz. In management and organization studies, such alternative conceptual izations of culture came to the fore through a number of now well-known articles (e.g., Smircich 1983), special issues (e.g., Administrative Science Quarterly 1983—in which the Smircich piece appeared; Journal of Management 1985), monographs (e.g., Gagliardi 1990; Martin 1992), and edited collections (e.g., Frost et al. 1991). Calás and Smircich (1987) suggest three different but interconnected frameworks for un derstanding these various interests in culture and its ontological possibilities. To be spe cific, they argue that the culture literature can be organized: first by anthropological themes, including the organizational cognition, symbolism, and unconscious literatures which respectively position culture as knowledge structures, patterns of discourse, and externalizations of the mind; second by (p. 237) sociological paradigm, most especially evi dent (following Burrell and Morgan 1979) in contrastive studies of various organizational cultures based on functionalist, interpretive, or critical paradigms, and in pieces that ad dress the incommensurability or potentially creative interplay of these paradigms (see Schultz and Hatch 1996); and finally by epistemological interest, notably following Haber mas, where studies are marked by their bias towards technical, practical, or emancipato ry interests (see Stablein and Nord 1985).1 Interest in organizational symbolism (OS) in particular, as exemplified in Europe by SCOS (the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism) whose inaugural conference in 1982 institutionalized OS as a vital area of organizational inquiry as it separated from its larger academic sibling EGOS, has provided a particularly rich vein of research into cul tural aspects of organization/s. As Frost (1985: 6) suggests engaging in an organizational symbolist perspective opens the door to a host of in teresting research questions about how meaning in organizational settings is cre ated, sustained, and destroyed, and what the implications of symbolism are for dealing with problems and opportunities facing people in organizations. To whit, the late 1980s and early 1990s in particular produced some excellent qualitative, mostly ethnographic, accounts of organizational culture, offering “vivid descriptive accounts of organi Page 5 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire zational life, linking meaning to actions” (Calás and Smircich 1987: 241). These studies not only illustrate the processual qualities of organizational culture but also undermine a further key claim of the “has” camp; that shared (and managerially engineered) values and norms can pro vide a “‘natural’ force for social integration” (Meek 1988: 455) in the workplace.
One tranche within these studies focuses on less skilled occupations and how workers cope with the exigencies of dull, regimented, insecure, physically and emotionally de manding, and badly remunerated employment. These occupations we might also under stand as “dirty jobs” in the physical sense—undertaken in onerous or dangerous condi tions, or entailing confrontation with waste, bodily products, and death—or as socially tainted, requiring servility or submission to others, say (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999: 414– 415, following Hughes). Ackroyd and Crowdy's (1990) analysis of workers at an English slaughterhouse for instance reveals how these men negotiated their “dirty work.” The workers “reject the common view” (1990: 9) of their occupation by emphasizing how un usually gutsy they need to be to do their jobs, and Ackroyd and Crowdy especially stress the importance of self-disciplining cultural norms and values in this milieu. They describe how the slaughtermen engage in what presents as humor but is also a means for sending messages to colleagues about keeping up with an intense rate of productivity of which they are explicitly and volubly proud (and which protects their collective bonus). One common ritual involves working harder and faster so that animal carcasses in various states of dissection begin to accumulate at the work stations of colleagues perceived to be swinging the lead. Thus—despite what looks outwardly (p. 238) like authentic work place camaraderie—these men were so quick to jump on each others' perceived inadequa cies that management usually had no need to intervene. Collinson's (1988) shopfloor ethnography of the components division of an English lorrymaking factory similarly reveals the ambiguous nature of workplace norms, especially when refracted through humor. On the one hand, the all-male workforce used humor to construct the shopfloor as a salt of the earth working-class environment where operatives were free to “have a laff” and make the best of their highly routinized and poorly recom pensed employment. It served to distance them from the “twats and nancy boys” (“Dirty Bar”, quoted p. 186) in the offices who they regarded as effeminate, ineffective, and not engaged in “real work.” On the other hand, and echoing Ackroyd and Crowdy's slaughter house study, “as a result of these shopfloor battles for dignity, which emerge in jokes but collapse into mutual disdain, hierarchical control becomes unnecessary” (1988: 197). Other studies deal with white-collar occupations—such as Rosen's (1988) analysis of US advertising agency Shoenman and Associates. He focuses on organizational rituals as cul tural artefacts and explores the routine annual event of the agency Christmas party, see ing it as both expressive and reproductive of deeper organizational values. In this re spect, the discussion echoes Rosen's (1985) earlier analysis of the manner in which sym bols and artefacts exchanged during a business breakfast at the advertising agency Spiro's articulate and reinscribe this organization's asymmetrical social order. One impor tant symbolic outcome of the party, Rosen concludes, is to surface but simultaneously defuse the contradictions of the S&A labor process. The antagonisms and imbalances of the capitalist employment relationship are expressed in the various skits and jokes which Page 6 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire are a key tradition of this event. However, “while these conditions are recognized as diffi cult, they are at the same time glossed over insofar as they are comically portrayed and communally laughed at, and, further, are not seriously challenged” (Rosen 1988: 479). Kunda's (1992) discussion of pseudonymous High Technologies Corporation (Tech), also a white-collar organization, can be compared to Rosen's in several ways. Kunda emphasizes that Tech management intend to corner the internal market on the power to define reality, to prescribe and control the expression of the members' beliefs and emotions, to enlist members as agents of control, and, ultimately, to expand that aspect of the members' selves that is de termined and defined by corporate interests. (1992: 219–220) Nonetheless, “liminal episodes” of employees distancing themselves from this message are both common and public—such as employees describing the Tech corporate culture as “the bullshit that comes from above” (p. 158). But these liminal episodes do not substantively undermine the robust Tech ethos. Instead, again like the S&A jokes and skits, Kunda says they act as “time outs” whereby employees can voice their frustration with management's open attempts to ma nipulate the ways they think and feel but which ward off any more impactful expressions of dis satisfaction.
Relatedly, Van Maanen's (1991) study of Disneyland concentrates on how “cast members” at the “smile factory” actually negotiate management's incredibly high stan (p. 239)
dards of customer care and deliver the Disney goods to the seventy or eighty thousand daily visitors during the peak summer season. As Kunda comments with regard to Tech, Disney employees are absolutely alive to their close surveillance by management, and re alize they are most likely to keep their jobs if they practice rigorous emotional self-man agement so as to project enthusiasm at all times. But visitors sometimes behave so outra geously that an employee cannot pretend to be unruffled. Consequently, a key element of the unofficial culture at Disneyland is a series of techniques to deal with offending guests, which are virtually undetectable by the are a supervisors if practiced skilfully. The idea of culture as a mechanism for reconciliation, accommodation, or “learning the truce” (Mills and Murgatroyd 1991: 62) is very evident here. In this latter respect these studies also point to a further trajectory for critical approach es to culture related to discussions of hierarchy, domination, and organizational politics. Broadly speaking, it views culture as a form of management ideology or hegemony. When inspired by Marxist Labor Process Theory, it sees organizations as theaters of capitalist oppression. Willmott (1993) in fact goes as far as to compare the management of culture with the mechanisms of government utilized by the totalitarian regime of Oceania in Orwell's classic novel 1984. Willmott argues that employees through taking on board management's values and norms can potentially become acculturated to the extent that they forget their interior script is not actually of their own making, and thus come to be lieve that “slavery is freedom” (1993: 527). In Rosen and Kunda, similarly, the motif is one of more or less deliberate management manipulation of the organizational ties that bind. However, these studies also reveal how employees “accept, deny, react, reshape, rethink, acquiesce, rebel, conform, and define and refine the[se] demands and their Page 7 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire responses” (Kunda 1992: 21), suggesting that organizational members are not always passive receptacles for managerial intervention and that social control through value en gineering is not necessarily successful. As Grey (2005) makes clear, sometimes values will be taken up, sometimes rejected outright, and at other times enacted ambiguously (as in Martin's (1992) ragmentation perspective). Indeed when this thematic is approached through Foucault's (1977) reading of panopticism in Discipline and Punish organizations become sites in which power and resistance exhibit contiguous relations in processes of subjectivation. One final trajectory in the instantiative work on culture, particularly noticeable in Parker's (2000) discussion of an English health authority, building society, and factory, is the recalibration of the extent to which cultures are shared. Parker argues that cultures are both general and specific when compared to those in other workplaces, as well as riven with internal schisms (see also Schultz and Hatch 1996). On the issue of generality, he gives two examples. Firstly, local assumptions about the (p. 240) differing capacities of men and women in each of his empirical sites appear to reflect wider social beliefs such that there was no expectation that women would progress into managerial roles, say. Se condly, he talks of multiple sets of identifications, based on space, time, and occupation or profession, amongst his respondents. However, Parker argues that each organization, rather like S&A, Tech, or Disney, is culturally specific, however precarious its internal unity—thus emphasizing the instantiative reading that some level of “unique commonali ty” has to be reproduced on a daily basis in order for these organizations to continue at all. Overall, Parker formulates culture as approximating to “the contested local organiza tion of generalities” (2000: 188). In sum, these studies represent a distinctive alternative to the idea that culture is some thing that an organization has. They can be argued to be closer to the anthropological roots of the concept itself, because as Meek (1998: 459) observes “Most anthropologists would find the idea that leaders create culture preposterous: leaders do not create cul ture, it emerges from the collective social interaction of groups and communities.”
Widening Culture Through CMS In this final section of the chapter we focus on two more recent sets of critical interest in the culture concept; studies of popular culture/cultural studies of organization and post colonialism. Again they offer challenges to conventional treatments of culture in organiza tion studies, but also pull culturalism in new and important directions. Here then we want to encourage organizational scholars to continue to recontextualize their narratives on culture, and to explore other locations, disciplinary or otherwise, where cultural critique and historical sensitivities can be conceived or further extended in/by CMS. In this sense, our aim is to contribute to “the transformation of the organizational culture literature in to cultured organizational literature” (Calás and Smircich 1997: 49). That is to say, in tak ing up Calas and Smircich's postmodernist clarion call, our intention is to use these two sets of interests to “think culturally” rather than to “think of culture” (p. 33). Page 8 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire
Studying Popular Culture/a Cultural Studies of Organization Whilst the term “popular culture” is contested, its use within CMS has generally focused on artefacts of mass entertainment including novels, television series, newspaper cover age, films, cartoons, and so on. Here the analytical lens shifts (p. 241) away from “real world” organizations towards the ways in which popular culture depicts them, and what this might tell us in its turn about those organizations (Hassard and Holliday 1998; Rhodes and Westwood 2008). Here popular culture is understood as both poetic and rhetorical (Medhurst and Benson 1984: xv): its artefacts are not simply entertainment, journalism, literature, or art, but also act to reflect and reinforce (at times to generate) certain understandings of the wider social amongst their audience. Given that popular culture is just that—popular—it is also more accessible and evocative in its critique of management and organization than the representations we tend to find in critical scholar ship. As Rhodes (2007: 23) suggests, popular culture can therefore provide a “dramatic, intelligent and aesthetically charged” account of its social context and of work under con temporary capitalism in particular. Within CMS, scholars have turned to popular culture both as a source of data to uncover the complex ways in which power relations are main tained in organizations, and as a conduit to explore neglected areas of organized activity which do not take place in the “standard” workplace locale, or during nine-to-five office hours. With regard to the former, Czarniawska (2006) makes a methodological case for the use of detective fiction in research on gender. She contends that subtle modes of workplace gender discrimination are difficult to discern using conventional social science methods for reasons including the persistent sensitivity of such issues—which means that typically discrimination is recorded when research into something else is taking place. As she sug gests “traditional fieldwork, unless done under cover, does not reveal enough of this as pect of work practices” (2006: 248). Elsewhere Czarniawska (2008) exemplifies and ex tends what we might call her “fictive methodology” in a paper discussing representations of women in finance. She discusses how popular cultural depictions draw on enduring plots derived from Greek tragedies, and includes media coverage in her data sources to augment the earlier focus on novels. In analyzing the stories of two “fictional” women and six “real” women using Euripides' plays, Czarniawska identifies a key theme in both the ancient tragedies and the contemporary fiction and media stories as their “abandonment of the proper women's place, an entrance into a [man]'s world, and an exit from it-by death or return to their ‘proper’ place” (2008: 170). Sköld and Rehn (2007) discuss hip hop music as similarly instructive about organized ac tivity. Their thesis is that attending to hip hop allows us to surface alternative versions of what or where entrepreneurship is to those we find in the relevant management scholar ship. For Sköld and Rehn hip hop establishes the “hood” as a dislocated entrepreneurial “heart of the city”… where the spirit of enterprise is abundant…. A locality of an Other (culture), not always abiding by the norms and value systems of bourgeois capitalism, instead praises other ways Page 9 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire of going about your business and other ways (or at least areas) of learning your business'. (2007: 75–76) (p. 242) They also point to the unresolvable dialectic in the music between “makin” itʼ (commer cial success, often evident in ostentatious displays of gaudy bling) and “keeping it real” (staying loyal to the values and often harsh realities of the neighborhood from which one originates). The significant issue here is that, in order to “make it”, the artist has to construct a “real” persona in order to sell their wares-and at no point must the mask of the “real” persona slip, lest it affect their capacity to “make it.”
Further, work and organizations themselves are very common themes across a number of popular cultural forms, providing “dramatic, ironic and comedic embodiments” of the types of critique that inspire CMS (Rhodes and Parker 2009). Thus the vagaries of corpo rate power, and resistance to it, as well as everyday organizational politics and inequali ties, provide the basis of much popular cultural satire. Rhodes's (2002) discussion of an episode of US cartoon series South Park takes up the theme of corporate domination. The episode simultaneously lampoons the werewolf hunger of expansionist multinationals (here represented by “Harbucks,” the barely pseudonymous coffee chain) and the nostal gia surrounding good old-fashioned family-owned SMEs and the threat posed to them by the “evil forces of big business” (2002: 302). Rhodes's argument is that South Park and artefacts like it (see also his 2001 essay on The Simpsons) can be read as carnivalesque critiques which “do not tell us about the single right way, but rather work to parody and relativise power—to always suggest alternatives and to keep power in check.” This kind of critique “does not send a ‘message’ that stands over the narrative, but rather…. laughs at a world to which it belongs” (2002: 305), thus unpicking relations of power “from the inside.” Such a “view from within” is what defines popular culture as popular, according to Rhodes and Parker (2009), and connects it to broader counter-cultural formations. This is not without a number of tensions and problems, however. To illustrate, we turn to Parker's analysis of what he calls “the counter culture of organi zation”—the wide variety of adverts, television programs, websites, books, stickers, posters, cartoons, and so on suggesting “that work is boring and degrading, and that es caping from it can be fun” (2006: 2). Analysis of this kind of counterculture perhaps builds more directly on the instantiative analyses of organizational culture discussed ear lier in so far as they are simultaneously damning of the “repetitive violence” of the work place, and indicative of “the limits of management control and ideology” (Parker 2006: 2, 3). But Parker sees these cultural artefacts as ambiguous because they are all without ex ception parasitic on, and produced by, the very thing about which they are so condemna tory—work. Thus in traversing the gap between everyday culture and commercial life, these artefacts inevitably feed off/appropriate that which they satirize. This also ac counts, in part, for the unresolvable dialectic pointed to by Sköld and Rehn. Analyses of popular culture are just one tack in what Parker (2006) calls a “cultural stud ies of organization,” a label which seems to position his approach (p. 243) between some variant of cultural studies and a focus on “cultural economy.” The latter conceptualization is notable in a series of publications (e.g., Ray and Sayer 1999; Amin and Thrift 2004) dis Page 10 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire cussing the implications of the “cultural turn” in the social sciences for studies of work and organization. Du Gay and Pryke (2002) suggest three interconnected avenues for this debate: the study of the production of meaning at work; the growing importance of cul ture, creative, and aesthetic industries to Western economies; and the theorization of eco nomic and organizational life in ways that acknowledge the mutually constitutive rela tions of cultural and economic logic and practice. Viewing economy as culture thus en tails a focus on “the practical ways in which ‘economically relevant activity’ is performed and enacted” (Du Gay and Pryke 2002: 5), whilst the inverse relationship acknowledges, inter alia, perceptions of the increasing encroachment of commodity relations into the cultural domain. The cultural economy approach, with its preference for historical and anthropological sensitivity to the details and performances of work and organization, is identified by Park er as a way to circumvent the tendency from a cultural studies perspective to primarily understand counter culture at work through popular cultural representations; and thus to redress its consumption bias, which overlooks productive practices in the workplace. The broader cultural economy perspective instead allows us to articulate narrow conceptions of culture with broader ones; that is, to reconnect “the specific relation between lived cul ture and lived economy [which] seemed to become less and less important as cultural studies developed” (2006: 8). Parker is not completely uncritical of cultural economy ei ther. His reading identifies this literature as preoccupied with the work of cultural pro duction at the expense of an understanding of how the images of work found in popular culture are consumed in the workplace. This question of how cultural forms relate to or ganized work, and how popular culture structures organized activity, thus becomes the focus of Rhodes and Parker's (2009) guest edited issue of Organization. Above all, this special issue together with the individual studies discussed above exemplify the radical potential of interest in popular culture as a site for CMS—they draw our attention beyond the formal work organization, and its nine-to-five setup, within which previous scholars have limited or “containerized”2 their studies of organizational culture.
Postcolonial Studies of Culture and Organization We now turn to the increasing CMS interest in postcolonialism (e.g., Prasad 2003; West wood and Jack 2007). Noted by Calás and Smircich (1999) as one of four perspectives im portant for the theoretical development of organization studies in the twenty-first centu ry, postcolonial theory and analysis offers CMS a cultural politics and an ethical critique of the colonial, neocolonial, and imperialist past (p. 244) and present of management and organization scholarship and practice. It places the study of management and organiza tions into historical and contemporary contexts of asymmetrical cultural, economic, and geopolitical relations between the so-called “West” and the so-called “Rest”. West—Rest relations are conceived and dramatized as a power struggle between the advancing inter ests and universalizing pretence of Western (post-)modernity(-ies) and the contestations and complicities of local elites and subaltern populations. Postcolonialism forces us to confront and embed more explicitly in our work an appreciation that global culture is hi Page 11 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire erarchically organized and tied in complex ways to oppressive material structures of pro duction and consumption (Banerjee and Linstead 2001). We see three main paths of postcolonial writing in CMS: interest in the politics of repre sentation, knowledge systems, and knowledge transfer, by far the category that has re ceived most attention; materialist analyses of the distribution of wealth and land rights, and the intersections of gender, race, and class, the category that is least studied; and historical and historicizing work. Each offers a number of different points of political and ethical critique relating to management and organization in its varied historical and con temporary milieux. Interest in knowledge systems and in history, however, opens up our understandings of how the social processes of managing and organizing have acted as forces of cultural imperialism in themselves (Said 1993). Historicizing work, for instance, reveals how management theory and practice was borne out of the violence, racism, and misery associated with the colonial encounter, slavery, and the labor processes of the plantations. To preserve the illusion of cultural unity and purity, writing on the history of management has conventionally excluded any mention of subjugation and association with racial superiority (e.g., Cooke 2003; Frenkel and Shen hav 2006). Analyses of more contemporary management and organizational issues related to the politics of representation and knowledge systems revolve around the related con cept of neocolonialism. Formal political independence and national sovereignty did not bring to an end overnight the economic and cultural structures shaping relations between colonizer and colonized: thus “the continuing imprint of colonialism and anticolonialism is discernible in a range of contemporary practices and institutions, whether economic, po litical, or cultural” (Prasad 2003: 5). CMS scholars have exposed neocolonialism in a di versity of representational forms, ranging from the deployment of Orientalist discourse (see below) in The Economist's portrayals of the Asian Tiger economies (Priyadharshini 2003) to the continuing subjugation of Aboriginal communities in Australia via contempo rary government and organizational discourses of stakeholder and community engage ment (Banerjee 2000). The colonial discourse analytic approach found in Said's (1978) landmark publication Ori entalism is the predominant theoretical frame in such studies of culture (p. 245) and orga nization. Inspired by Foucault and Gramsci, Said's book critiques the modern discourse of Orientalism as a system of representation which brought into existence (and thus enabled knowledge to be constructed of) both the “Occident” and the “Orient.” The Eurocentric nature of Orientalism, in which the Orient (the Other) is positioned as inferior to the Occi dent (the Self) through the workings of a series of binary oppositions and cultural myths, is revealed as a continuing presence in the discourses of management and organization. Bhabha's (1994) more psychoanalytically-inflected conceptual vocabulary has also been deployed in CMS studies of knowledge transfer within organizations, notably in MNC HQ —subsidiary relations (e.g., Frenkel 2008; Mir, Banerjee, and Mir 2008). Critical scholars have, further, deployed postcolonial insights to investigate the “theory culture” (Mufti 2005) of the management academy. That is to say, there has been a con Page 12 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire cern to reveal the partiality and ethnocentrism of Western management theory, pedagogy, research, and critique as a local knowledge system (Jaya 2001; Westwood 2001) and to disrupt any pretence that it might have unfettered and unproblematic universal applica tion. As noted by Calás and Smircich (2003: 45), “The stories we have written in much or ganization theory, our concepts and representations, no matter how ‘global’ (or precisely because of this), represent the ways of thinking of certain peoples and not others.” Post colonialism thus provides a theoretical route for scholars in CMS to address the critical objectives of defamiliarization and denaturalization within the purview of a larger cultur al and political objective of “provincializing” Europe (Chakrabarty 2000) and the US. In part as a critical response and alternative to the universalizing and ethnocentric theory development of Western management and organization studies (CMS included), an “in digenous” turn is discernible in some quarters (e.g., Tsui 2004). On the one hand, we might interpret this validation of non-Western knowledge systems as a positive cultural development for the academy, evidence of a response to postcolonial concerns to return voice, agency, imagination, and the capacity for self-representation to the experiences, cultures, and languages of the Other. The well developed Māori approach to research across a number of different disciplines in Aotearoa/New Zealand is the most concerted example of a non-Western ontological, epistemological, and methodological alternative. It develops out of Māori cosmology and refuses translation into Western categories (e.g., Bishop 2005; Smith 2005). However, simply calling the cultural margins back into the center as a method for hearing the voice of the Other is extremely problematic, as Spivak (1990) discusses at length with regard to the subaltern: indeed it is often the site for neo colonialism in and of itself (Banerjee and Linstead 2004). Relatedly, we should bear in mind some of the key criticisms of postcolonialism, or to be precise the variants of postcolonial theory based on poststructuralism. As Calás and Smir cich (2003: 43) note, “poststructuralist analyses are also critiques (p. 246) of Modernity in the West by the West and, of necessity, themselves exclusionary of other voices.” In this philosophical mode, postcolonialism can be said to paradoxically deploy ethnocentric frames of reference in its critiques of the ethnocentrism of others (the lower case “o” is important here). Poststructuralist emphases on representational/cultural aspects of the colonial and postcolonial experience have been substantially criticized by Marxist and neo-Marxist postcolonial writers who view this approach as lacking an emancipatory poli tics (Ahmad 1992). The former's focus on cultural pluralism has been said to “obscure class and power differences, and prevent the possibilities for changes in structural relations” (Banerjee and Linstead 2004: 704) through a purported aestheticization (and in some instances commodification) of the margins. Future culturally focused CMS critique might wish to consider how it resonates with materialist questions of property and eco nomic production, transnational feminist questions about the position of subaltern women (and men) in the global economy, and the legacy of the anticolonial movements and its leaders/writings for contemporary understandings of organization.
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire
Conclusion Taking the late 1970s interest in corporate culture as the arbitrary point of departure for this chapter, we have sought not only to outline well-established critiques of the concept of organizational culture, but also to frame future debates through discussion of recent interest in popular culture and postcolonialism. These latter two areas of inquiry seem highly promising moves to “think culturally” rather than “thinking of culture,” indexing as they do important issues of history, cultural reception, and imagination and life beyond the work organization. Of course we have hardly exhausted the range of possible inter pretations of the organizational culture concept contained in previous scholarly publica tions. There are numerous other future possibilities, which space does not allow us to elaborate here.
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire BHABHA, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. BISHOP, R. (2005). “Freeing Ourselves From Neocolonial Domination in Research: A Kaupapa Māori Approach To Creating Knowledge,” in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research 2nd edn., Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 109–138. BROWN, A. D. (1998). Organizational Culture 2nd edn., London: Financial Times Pitman Publishing. BURRELL, G., and MORGAN, G. (1979). Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life. London: Heinemann. CALÁS, M. B., and SMIRCICH, L. (1987). “Organizational Culture: A Critical Assess ment,” in F. M. Jablin, L. L. Putnam, K. H. Roberts, and L. W. Porter (eds.), Handbook of Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. London: Sage, 228–264. CALÁS, M. B., and SMIRCICH, L. (1997). “Post-Culture: Is the Organizational Culture Literature Dominant But Dead?” Comportamento Organizacional e Gestão, 3/1: 29–56. (p. 248)
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire MCSWEENEY, B. (2002). “Hofstede's Model of National Cultural Differences and Their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith—A Failure of Analysis,” Human Relations, 55/1: 89– 118. MEDHURST, M. J., and BENSON, T. W. (1984). “Introduction: Rhetorical Studies in a Media Age,” in M. J. Medhurst and T. W. Benson (eds.), Rhetorical Dimensions in Media: A Critical Casebook. Dubuque, Ia.: Kendall Hunt, ix–xxiii. MEEK, V. L. (1988). “Organizational Culture: Origins and Weaknesses,” Organization Studies, 9/4: 453–473. MILLS, A., and MURGATROYD, S. (1991). Organizational Rules: A Framework for Un derstanding Organizational Interaction. Buckingham: Open University Press. MIR, R., BANERJEE, S. B., and MIR, A. (2008). “Hegemony and Its Discontents: A Criti cal Analysis of Organizational Knowledge Transfer,” Critical Perspectives on International Business, 4/2: 203–227. MORGAN, G. (1997). Images of Organization 2nd edn., Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. MUFTI, A. R. (2005). “Global Comparativism,” Critical Inquiry, 31/2: 472–489. OUCHI, W. G. (1981). Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Chal lenge. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley. PARKER, M. (2000). Organizational Culture and Identity: Unity and Division at Work. London: Sage. —— (2006). “The Counter Culture of Organization: Towards a Cultural Studies of Repre sentations of Work,” Consumption, Markets and Culture, 9/1: 1–15. PETERS, T. J., and WATERMAN, R. H., JR. (1982). In Search of Excellence: Lessons From America's Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper and Row. PRASAD, A. (ed.) (2003). Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical En gagement. New York: Palgrave. PRIYADHARSHINI, E. (2003). “Reading the Rhetoric of Otherness in the Discourse of Business and Economics: Towards a Postdisciplinary Practice,” in A. Prasad (ed.), Post colonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. New York: Palgrave, 171–192. RAY, C. A. (1986). “Corporate Culture: The Last Frontier of Control?” Journal of Manage ment Studies, 23/3: 287–298. —— and SAYER, A. (1999). Culture and Economy after the Cultural Turn. London: Sage. RHODES, C. (2001). “Dʼoh: The Simpsons, Popular Culture and the Organizational Carni val,” Journal of Management Inquiry, 10/4: 374–383. Page 17 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire THOMPSON, P., and MC HUGH, D. (2002). Work Organisations: A Critical Introduction 3rd edn., Basingstoke: Macmillan. TSUI, A. S. (2004). “Contributing to Global Management Knowledge: A Case for High Quality Indigenous Research,” Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21/4: 491–513. VAN MAANEN, J. (1991). “The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland,” in P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Louis, C. C. Lundberg, and J. Martin (eds.), Reframing Organizational Cul ture. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 58–76. WESTWOOD, R. I. (2001). “Appropriating the Other in the Discourses of Comparative Management,” in R. I. Westwood and S. Linstead (eds.), The Language of Organization. London: Sage, 241–262. —— and JACK, G. (2007). “Manifesto for a Postcolonial International Business Studies,” Critical Perspectives on International Business, 3/3: 246–265. WILLIAMS, R. (1976). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana Press. WILLMOTT, H. (1993). “Strength Is Ignorance, Slavery Is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations,” Journal of Management Studies, 30/2: 515–552.
Notes: (1.) Calás and Smircich's framework is one way of ordering the fundamental differences of opinion about ontological, epistemological, and methodological matters regarding the study of organizational culture. These differences form the basis of what Martin and Frost (1996) call the “organizational culture wars” which were animated in large part by the crisis of representation in the humanities and social sciences under the rubric of post modernism. (2.) Thanks to one of our anonymous reviewers for this observation.
Joanna Brewis
Joanna Brewis works at the University of Leicester School of Management, UK, where she teaches research methodology and writes about the intersections between the body, identity, consumption, culture, and processes of organizing. Jo has pub lished in journals including Human Relations, Sociology, and Organization. She also has a very extensive collection of flip flops and would dearly love to meet Josh Lyman from The West Wing in real life. Gavin Jack
Gavin Jack is Professor of Management in the Graduate School of Management at La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include international, cross-cultur al and diversity management, postcolonial organizational analysis, and cultures of Page 19 of 20
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Culture: Broadening the Critical Repertoire consumption. He is co-editor of an Academy of Management Review special topic fo rum (2008) on international management.
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change
Critical Approaches to Organizational Change Glenn Morgan and André Spicer The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0012
Abstract and Keywords This article examines critical approaches to change, beginning by briefly reviewing exist ing approaches. It then argues that a critical approach to change is distinctive because it is reflexive, performative, and registers struggles. Next the article provides an account of four key sites of change: identity, organizational processes, fields, and social dynamics. It concludes by outlining some shortcomings in critical accounts of change, and areas for future investigation. Keywords: organizational change, critical approaches, organizational processes, social dynamics, organizational identity
Introduction IN 1956, William Whyte's The Organization Man described how monolithic corporations provided stability in economic life (Whyte 1956). The visible hand of management over came the uncertainties of the “invisible hand” of the market (Chandler 1977). Since the 1970s and the first oil crisis, the collapse of Bretton Woods, the globalization of finance and the rise of globally interdependent value chains, this sense of relative stability and continuity has been replaced by a sense of uncontrollable change, crisis, and uncertainty. The result is a generalized “ideology” of change as positive, necessary, and all encom passing (Morgan and Sturdy 2000; Sturdy and Grey 2003). Even those aspects of organi zations which are usually seen as stable become “un-noticed change” (Tsoukas and Chia 2002). The result is change becomes a ubiquitous phenomenon that has no boundary. Recently, critics have begun to register what Bourdieu described as the social suffering produced by consistent change (Bourdieu 1999). They remind us that our (p. 252) fluid and flexible working lives have produced heightened anxiety, a pervasive sense of insecu rity, the destruction of common bonds, and the destruction of livelihoods and ways of life across the world. We have also become aware that change programs are not so necessary and irresistible (Ford, Ford, and DʼAmelio 2008). Finally, some have questioned the ubiq Page 1 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change uity of change by pointing to the enormous stability that characterises contemporary soci ety (De Cock and Böhm 2007). The result is a suspicion of generally accepted ideas about organizational change and a renewed willingness to fundamentally question its processes. In this chapter, we would like to examine critical approaches to change. We begin by briefly reviewing existing approaches. We then argue that a critical approach to change is distinctive because it is reflexive, performative, and registers struggles. Next we provide an account of four key sites of change: identity, organizational processes, fields, and so cial dynamics. Finally, we conclude by outlining some shortcomings in critical accounts of change and areas for future investigation.
Theorizing Change During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, theorists were increasingly confronted with organizations and industries that appeared to be in rapid flux. The central challenge therefore moved from the need to explain stability to the need to explain change. This de mand was rapidly filled with a profusion of highly prescriptive studies that celebrated change and provided managers with simplistic advice on how they might ride the waves of change and create corporate revolutions (e.g., Peters 1987; Senge 1992; Hammer and Champy 1993). Self-help literature became replete with advice on how people can devel op a positive attitude towards change in their day-to-day life (e.g., Johnson 1998). The academic literature on change has sought to question some of these assumptions. Ex isting reviews of this literature have sought to bring it together by highlighting different types of change (Van de Ven and Poole 1995), mechanisms that generate change (Green wood and Hinings 2006), and assumptions associated with the study of change (Van de Ven and Poole 2005). What each of these reviews do not touch is how our theories of change are tools that create certain performative effects (Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman 2009). Theories of change are used to do three different things: explain, predict, and con trol causal relations; understand and interpret the world; and critique the social world. In what follows, we shall argue that theories of organizational change can be divided up on the basis of these three uses. The first set of theories seeks to explain, predict, and (hopefully) control organizational change processes. Functional studies seek to explain processes of (p. 253) organizational change by looking for possible causal links between sets of independent variables and or ganizational change process. Depending on the state of these variables, management is required to use different techniques and processes of change. Common variables identi fied include internal features of the organization such as the stage of the change process (Lewin 1953), the nature of the task undertaken by the organization and the associated technology (Woodward 1965), organizational size (Pugh and Hickson 1976), the moment in the corporate life-cycle (Kimberly and Miles 1980). Common external “independent” variables include the nature of the product market and degrees of change in the external environment (Burns and Stalker 1961), the power of outside agencies over the organiza tion (Pfeffer and Salanick 1978), the density of social networks (Uzzi 1997) and the insti Page 2 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change tutional context and pressures for isomorphism (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Early critics of these sorts of contingency approach accept the basic framework but insert the crucial in tervening variable of strategic choice by entrepreneurs and managers (Child 1997). Un derlying this approach to organizational change is a particular vision of how organiza tions can and indeed should work. It is based on what Tsoukas calls an “engineering log ic” where “to manage is like being in a control room checking certain variables on a pan el of instruments and pressing buttons or pulling levers in order to bring any deviating variables within their normal range of operation” (Tsoukas 1994: 3). Despite the appeal of this engineering metaphor, it has been notoriously difficult, if not impossible to develop rigorous social scientific accounts of change which explain, predict, and control (McK elvey 1997). In order to avoid this “engineering logic,” some researchers focus on how people inter pret and experience change (Tsoukas and Chia 2002). According to this approach, there are no “objective” determinants of change that necessitate particular forms of action. There are only interpretations which explain how actors see the world and how they ap proach organizational change. Interpretative approaches to change are interested in the ongoing processes, lived experience, local narratives, and the construction of change. They focus on the ongoing political dynamics within an organization that shape how meanings emerge and evolve (Pettigrew 1985); the negotiation of the context of change (Preece, Steven, and Steven 1999); processes of sense-making and sense-giving in change processes (e.g., Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991); the way in which actors learn new meanings and skills in change processes (Lant and Meizas 1992); and how routines shape meaning (Feldman 2003). Interpretive approaches give us tools for thinking through the constant flow of organizations and the way in which processes of change become arenas in which different meanings and interpretations of actions and events play out. By focusing on how we think about and understand the flow of reality in the social world, interpretive theo ries tend to remain descriptive and hermeneutic in intent. In relation to organizational change processes, they debunk simple managerial efforts to close down differences and assume a single version of reality by demonstrating how meanings differ within organiza tions, how change processes lead to the reshaping (p. 254) of meanings, and how actors engage with processes of meaning construction in developing their own agendas. Critical approaches go beyond interpretive studies because they seek to actively question and intervene in theories of change. This involves a reflexive, denaturalizing and political ly engaged approach (Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman 2009). It is reflexive because it points out how change models are vital to the reconstruction of change processes. For in stance, models of corporate change which are developed in business schools and consul tancy firms are not separate, “disinterested” reflections on organizations but are often in strumental in reinforcing and reproducing particular models of capitalism (Thrift 2005). A reflexive approach shows how models of organizational change can only be a partial and “interested” representation of reality. A critical approach also de-naturalizes change. This involves recognizing that change only becomes a socially meaningful and politically effi cacious phenomenon when it is “fixed” and explicated through a set of ideas and theories about change. A crucial point of difference with some processual accounts of change Page 3 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change (e.g., Tsoukas and Chia 2002) is that critical theories of change recognize that our models and representations of change do not just have “ideational effects” insofar as they trans form and bolster how we think about change. They also have “performative effects” (Fleetwood 2005) insofar as they “do things” and transform aspects of social life. A critical approach to the study of organizational change would consider how models of change construct the change processes they claim to describe. They do this by guiding consultancies, management, and employees in how they might actually undertake the change processes in organizations. Finally, critical approaches seek to develop a political engagement with change. This involves recognizing that change processes involve a whole range of actors, often with conflicting conceptions of the kind of change process the organization should undertake. This results in groups engaging in ongoing and often protracted struggles around how change programs will proceed (Spicer and Fleming 2007).
Sites of Change Now that we have outlined the distinctive features of the critical study of organizational change (reflexivity, performativity, and struggle), we will look at four sites where these struggles play out. These are identities, organizational processes, interorganizational fields, and societal processes.
Identities The first site of struggles around change is working identities. Perhaps one of the most notable bodies of work on identity change explores the introduction of culture (p. 255) change programs into organizations (Kunda 1992; Fleming 2005; Alvesson and Svenings son 2007). This work examines how corporate culture programs involve attempts to intro duce identity regulation that push employees to attach their sense of self to their organi zation. One result is that employee identity becomes a site of contention and struggle. This might involve the struggle between different identities that employees have such as work and non-work identities (Casey 1995), or old and new identities (Collinson 1993). A number of other studies have explored how employees have abandoned their working identity as bureaucrats or experts in favor of being “entrepreneurs” (e.g., Doolin 2002). Recent research has increasingly found that identity change does not just issue from identity regulation by management. Rather, employees seek to change their own identi ties through narrative identity work (Thomas and Davis 2005). By doing this, employees seek not only to incorporate change programs into their identity narratives, but also to craft their own sense of self in a way that is consistent with the kinds of identities which they value. Others have highlighted how employees actively oppose managerial initiatives and the identities which come with them. Studies have identified a range of ways that em ployees seek to resist identity change programs including humor, cynicism, collective mo bilization, as well as various forms of more material misbehavior (Fleming and Spicer 2007).
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change
Organizational Processes As well as changing employee identities, studies of organizational change have also inves tigated change in organizational processes. Research at this level has typically examined the dynamics set off by the introduction of new methods of management such as business process re-engineering (Knights and Willmott 2000), team working (Sewell 1998), and to tal quality management (Delbridge 1998). Helms-Mills's (2003) longitudinal case study of an electrical company charts out the changing reactions and struggles which took place over time as managers sought to introduce wave after wave of new managerial technolo gies. Each pre-packaged change project had deep political implications insofar as it shaped how people could know and understand their work and organization. Experts like consultants provided theoretical justification and the technical skill to implement the change program. Moreover, each of these change programs is often the result of signifi cant and ongoing struggles between different groups, even within management. In anoth er study, Dawson (2003) examines the political struggles that occur during change processes in various organizations. He shows how the adoption of a new mode of organiz ing is carefully negotiated among a whole range of constituencies including employees, unions, different levels of management as well as external constituencies such as consul tants. He combines an analysis of the politics of organizational change with an under standing of the meanings and interpretations of the groups involved in the change process (see also Badham and Buchanan 1999). Moving beyond these sorts (p. 256) of ap proaches to what we term a “critical” view of change, requires an attention to political process in organizations which seek to fix what is considered to be true, real and politi cally expedient (Knights and Murray 1994). Moreover, critical approaches recognize that change processes do not just take power to achieve. They also fundamentally reshape how systems of power work within organizations. For instance, in his recent work on soft bureaucracies, David Courpasson (2006) has highlighted how the transformation of large organizations often involves a process of building networks between different elite actors. These elite networks form a power basis for both mobilizing control and changing how control is distributed within an organization. Other studies have explored shifts from simple control to technical control to bureaucrat ic control and most recently to normative control (Barker 1993). These studies point out that corporate change is increasingly driven by the attempt to gain control over ever-in creasing swathes of people's lives and their subjectivities (Kärreman and Alvesson 2004). Others have reversed this claim by arguing that changes in control strategies are often a direct response on the part of management to resistance in the workplace (Hardt and Ne gri 2000, 2004). This point is sharpened by recent theoretical work that suggests work place resistance can actually drive change rather than detract from it (Ford, Ford, and DʼAmelio 2008). Critical studies of change have also examined the adoption of new technologies. For some new technologies often extend repression, control and intensify the extraction of surplus labour (Feenberg 1999). More recent work explores how technical change is actively shaped through a dialectical interplay between agency and technical structure (Barley Page 5 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change 1986; Orlikowski 1992). This dialectic involves a variety of actors who pursue a range of different agendas including increasing rates of profit (Braverman 1974), extending work er discipline (Ball and Wilson 2000), defending existing technical standards (Munir and Phillips 2005), advancing advantageous new standards (Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy 2002), or ensuring continued male domination of the work process (Cockburn 1983). Studies of technical change have explored these dynamics in a range of settings including the adoption of a new technical system in the financial markets (Heracleous and Barrett 2001), a new computer system in a government department (Bridgman and Willmott 2006), ERP systems (Grant et al. 2006), the Lotus Notes software (Hayes and Walsham 2000), in formation technology in health-care organizations (Doolin 2003), and internet-based tech nologies (Spicer 2005) to name just a few examples. Finally, critical studies have looked at the interactions and struggles that occur around the narratives and discourses that are used to represent how organizations think of them selves and their future (e.g., OʼConnor 1995; Heracleous 2006). Typically, senior manage ment seek to generate new narratives about the organization as well as build legitimacy for existing changes (Ford and Ford 1995; Czarniawska 1997). However the reality is that multiple narratives of change are usually at play (Rhodes 2001). Some of these exude an epic certainty about the progress of the (p. 257) organization while others have a far more tragic tone (Brown and Humphries 2003). Others have noted that change processes have a paradoxical structure insofar as they involve a tension between different elements such as inclusion and exclusion (OʼConnor 1995).
Interorganizational Fields Many organizational level changes are highly conditioned by the dynamics of the field an organization operates in. A field is made up of “organizations that, in the aggregate, con stitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resources and product con sumers … and other organizations that produce similar service and products” (DiMaggio and Powell 1983: 148). This set of organizations is held together by “distinctive ‘rules of the game,’ relational networks and resource distributions that differentiate multiple lev els of actors and models for action” (Rao, Morrill, and Zald 2000: 251). One set of actors who play a role in orchestrating change are management consultancies. They provide expertise, advice, and legitimation for many organizational change process es (Sturdy 1997; Morgan and Sturdy 2001; Kipping and Engwall 2002; Sorge and van Wit teloostuijn 2004; McKenna 2006). These studies show how consultancies often provide support for change processes through developing and enacting categorization, measure ment, and technologies to support change programs. Another group who provide vital support for organizational change processes are management gurus (Huczyinski 1993; Clark and Salaman 1998; Furusten 1999; Collins 2000; Jackson 2001). Most of these stud ies are critical about the value of their ideas and their impact on managers. Nonetheless, they also point out that it is vital to understand the role that gurus play in convincing peo ple of the enormities of change. The gurus signal the limits of the acceptable perfor mance as well as promulgating a particular message. They are the extremists, the enthu Page 6 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change siasts, the proselytizers. After them come the disciples, the organizers, the missionaries, the armies distinguishing themselves by their translation of the message of the evangeliz er into a language that is precise, useful and practical. A further set of field members who play a central role in organizational change processes are institutional entrepreneurs. These figures seek to drive organizational change by building new institutions in a field (for a review see Hardy and Maguire 2008). This in volves constructing a new sense of what is normal, legitimate, and acceptable (Scott 1999). For instance studies of institutional entrepreneurship have investigated how insti tutional entrepreneurs create and propagate new organizational forms (Rao, Morrill, and Zald 2000), technical standards (Garud, Jain, and Kumaraswamy 2002), institutional log ics (Lounsbury 2007), and new modes of governance (Crouch 2005). Central to these field level dynamics is the attempt by institutional entrepreneurs to create a widespread sense of legitimacy for a particular organizational form. At the centre of many of these studies is the recognition (p. 258) that the development of new collective political institutions in volves an ongoing process of contestation and struggle. More recent work has pointed out that social movements also play a role in changing fields and organizations (Hensmans 2003; Davis et al 2005; Spicer and Böhm 2007). This strand of work highlights how collectives seek to promote particular organizational forms (Rao, Monin, and Durand 2003), practices (Creed, Scully, and Austin 2002), power rela tions (Levy and Scully 2007), governance mechanisms (Davis and Thompson 1994) and in stitutional logics (Marquis and Lounsbury 2007). What these studies show is that one of the central well-springs of organizational change might not be the whims of senior man agement, but the demands of various social movements which circulate around organiza tions.
Social Dynamics Many changes in identities, organizations, and interorganizational fields are embedded in broader societal change processes (Böhm 2005). Perhaps one of the most notable aspects which has given rise to widespread social transformation are the changing dynamics of capitalism. During the 1980s and 1990s, a range of studies pointed towards the rise of “post-Fordism” (Amin 1994), flexible-accumulation (Lash and Urry 1994), post-industrial ism (Harvey 1989), the rise of a global empire (Hardt and Negri 2000, 2004), the “new spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2006), and increasingly flexible and au tonomous forms of work (Adler and Heckscher 2006). These new ways of organizing capi talist accumulation have driven widespread organizational change such as the adoption of new patterns of employment, new organizational structures, and new technologies. They have also produced new social struggles around change in organizations. As well as opening up new emancipatory potential, the new spirit of capitalism is associ ated with profound shifts in the distribution of power within economies. Perhaps one of the most notable of these shifts is the increasing “financialization” of firms and prepon derance of “shareholder value” (Froud et al. 2006). This has resulted in a situation where Page 7 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change the control of firms has continued to move from senior management to various actors and agencies involved in the financial markets (Fligstein 1990). The result is that some as pects which were central in maintaining corporate control like total quality management have become less muscular. They have been increasingly replaced by financial technolo gies and the dense network of actors involved with the financial markets (Thrift 2005). This has resulted in increased pressure for change management programs that aim to in crease the value of the firm among the financial community through endless waves of or ganizational change processes and restructuring (Froud et al. 2006). If organizations are doomed to continuous, often irrational, change processes, then we need to ask what are the possible outcomes of this process of repetitive change. One re sult is “repetitive change syndrome” (Abrahamson 2004). (p. 259) This creates a wide spread sense of malaise within organizations as employees and managers alike feel that they are condemned to an eternal task of consistently changing their organizations for no particular reason other than to be seen to “dynamic.” This kind of change obsession has led to widespread “postalgia” (vision of a “future perfect”) in organizational life (Ybema 2005). Such obsessions with the future is part of “liquid modernity” whereby all estab lished traditions, structures, and ways of life are treated as if they were constantly open to revision (Bauman 2006). The result is a liquidation of longer-term personal relation ship, traditions of work, and the ability to create a relatively coherent narrative around one's own life (Sennett 2006). The final consequence of the constant change is wide spread “precarity” (Agamben 2005). This is a situation where all rules are “temporarily” suspended and we are placed into a permanent “state of emergency.” The result is that nearly anything becomes permissible (including things which would have been consid ered to be unthinkable under normal circumstances). For some, this “temporary” state of emergency has become permanent. The result of this permanent emergency is that the organizations we work for can ask of us almost anything they like.
Conclusion Critical approaches provide a rich account of the various struggles that take place around changing working identities, organizational dynamics, interorganizational fields, and soci etal dynamics. They open up the study of change to considering how the models of change which are propagated by business schools, consultants, and other carriers of ideas do not just describe change processes, but actually play a central role in directing these processes. For instance, we have covered studies of organizational level change which show how TQM and similar management techniques actually direct change efforts. Second, we have tried to denaturalize organizational change processes and models of managerial change. This has involved suggesting that models of change are often the product of an alliance of different interest groups in an organization. For instance, the promotion of entrepreneurial identities in the public sector workplace is bound up with the pressures from political parties, private sector interests, as well as the professions themselves. Finally, we have tried to show how models of change are politically engaged. We have sought to do this by showing how the generation of new models of organization Page 8 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change al change is often a way different groups can seek to advance their interests and reshape relations of power. For instance, studies of social movements show how alliances of groups at the interorganizational level seek to advance their interests through collective action. While existing critical approaches to change advance some very interesting and engaging ideas, we think that they leave a number of important questions (p. 260) unanswered. Firstly, it is not clear where CMS stands on the spread of precarity and fluidity. Some reg ister the pain precarity causes (e.g., Sennett 1997), while others celebrate the increased autonomy, flexibility, and space for creativity it brings (e.g., Hardt and Negri 2000). This leads us to ask whether critique should celebrate the emancipatory potential of change or whether it should highlight the social pain involved. Following the former route would in volve championing “revolutionary” change that fundamentally breaks with existing coor dinates of social life (De Cock and Böhm 2007). If we follow the latter route, we would shelter ourselves from change. One recent contribution suggests that we can achieve this through “slowing down” our frantic working life, our consumption practices, and the gen eral pace of economic life (Grey 2009). Another suggests that we might resist the consis tent and destructive drive for change through developing and conserving enduring prac tices of craft (Sennett 2008). Studies of change have noted two apparently conflicting emotional aspects of change. On the one hand change can prove to be exhilarating, liberating, entertaining, and provide people with a sense of power (Ybema 2005). On the other hand, change can be soul de stroying, depressing, and stressful (Brown and Humphries 2003). This is revealed in the fact that change programs are often underpinned by utopian fantasies of a future perfect as well as distopian fantasies of destruction and chaos (Cederström 2009). They also of ten oscillate between an enthusiastic identification with the new and uncertainty towards it (Hoedemaekers 2007). This begs the question of how it is that people move between and manage the movement between these two affective states. How should we deal with our attraction to the excitement associated with change as well as our repulsion from the pain and uncertainty that it inevitably brings? For some, CMS should act as a ceaseless and consistent critic of change processes (Fournier and Grey 2000). For others, CMS should seek to actively and performatively en gage with organizational change processes (Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman 2009). How should CMS situate itself? Should it resist the temptation to stray into popular debate and maintain a rigorous debate amongst academics, themselves an already elite and privi leged group by many standards? Should it seek to make reformist alternations to organi zational change programmes by engaging with managers (and activists) who have a bias for action? If CMS chooses to follow this road, it would have to develop a more simplified and direct language appealing to practical critics (Grey and Sinclair 2006). If CMS would avoid such reformist moves and seek to speak the truth to power, some champion a con tinued rigorous engagement and reading of theory (e.g., Jones, Chapter 4 this volume). Others argue that we need to more directly engage with political movements in order to create meaningful and desirable social change (eg. Böhm 2005). For us, a critical study of Page 9 of 17
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change change by necessity needs to do all of these if it is to meaningfully challenge organiza tional change processes.
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Critical Approaches to Organizational Change MARQUIS, C., and LOUNSBURY, M. (2007). “Vive La Resistance: Competing Logics in the Consolidation of Community Banking,” Academy of Management Journal, 50/4: 799– 820. MCKELVEY, B. (1997). “Quasi-Natural Organization Science,” Organization Science, 8/4: 352–380. MCKENNA, C. (2006). The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MEYER, J., and ROWAN, B. (1977). “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology, 83/2: 340–363. MORGAN, G., and STURDY, S. (2000). Beyond Organizational Change: Structure, Dis course and Power in UK Financial Services. London: Palgrave MacMillian. MUNIR, K., and PHILLIPS, N. (2005). “The Birth of the ‘Kodak Moment’: Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Adoption of New Technologies,” Organization Studies, 26/11: 1665–1687. OʼCONNOR, E. S. (1995). “Paradoxes of Participation: Textual Analysis and Organization al Change,” Organization Studies, 16/5: 769–803. ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. (1992). “The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Tech nology in Organizations,” Organization Science, 3/3: 398–427. PETERS, T. (1987). Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosec ond Nineties. New York: Knopf. PETTIGREW, A. (1985). The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in Imperial Chemi cal Industries. Oxford: Blackwell. PFEFFER, J., and SALANICK, G. (1978). The External Control of Organizations. New York: Harper and Row. PREECE, D., STEVEN, G., and STEVEN, V. (1999). Work, Change and Competition: Man aging for Bass. London: Routledge. PUGH, D. S., and HICKSON, D. J. (1976). Organizational Structure in its Context. Farn borough: Saxon House. RAO, H., MONIN, P., and DURAND, R. (2003). “Institutional Change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle Cuisine as an Identity Movement in French Gastronomy,” American Jour nal of Sociology, 108/4: 795–843. (p. 265)
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Glenn Morgan
Glenn Morgan is Professor of International Management at Cardiff Business School. His research interests concern the impact of globalization on institutions, multina tionals, and governance and how this relates to changes in the organization of capi talism as a global economic system. He has published in a range of international jour nals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Economy and Society, and Organization. Recent books include Paul du Gay and Glenn Morgan (eds) (2013) New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications and Dy namics, Glenn Morgan and Richard Whitley (eds) (2012) Capitalisms and Capitalism in the Twenty First Century, Glenn Morgan et al. (eds) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis. André Spicer
André Spicer is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University, London. He has published widely on power and politics in and around or ganizations. His books include Unmasking the Entrepreneur and Contesting the Cor poration. Currently he is working on a project examining stupidity in organizations.
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet)
Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibil ities (Unmet) Edward Wray-Bliss The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0013
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to give an overview of critical management studies (CMS) and authors' engagement with ethics. Parker, in the introduction to the edited collection Ethics and Or ganizations, gives a number of reasons for what he suggests is a rise in interest in the is sue of ethics in organization studies in recent years. These include the movement toward theoretical perspectives that challenge faith in epistemological or ontological founda tions, thus raising ethics and politics to a new centrality; greater attention to issues, such as equal opportunities and corporate social responsibility, which raise the profile of ethi cal issues in organizations; a cultural or humanist turn in wider theories of organization and management; and a greater politico-ethical reflexivity amongst (critical) organiza tional scholars in terms of their research practices and products. In their different ways, the critical traditions of Marxism, critical theory, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolo nialism have each sought to counter imposed ethical universalism. Keywords: management studies, ethics, organization studies, corporate social responsibility, politico-ethical re flexivity, Marxism
Introduction I aim in this chapter to give an overview of critical management studies (CMS) authors' engagement with ethics. Parker (1998), in the introduction to the edited collection Ethics and Organizations, gives a number of reasons for what he suggests is a rise in interest in the issue of ethics in organization studies in recent years. These include the movement to ward theoretical perspectives that challenge faith in epistemological or ontological foun dations, thus raising ethics and politics to a new centrality; greater attention to issues such as equal opportunities and corporate social responsibility that raise the profile of ethical issues in organizations; a cultural or humanist turn in wider theories of organiza
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) tion and management; and a greater politico-ethical reflexivity amongst (critical) organi zational scholars in terms of their research practices and products. Since the publication of this text, interest in the topic of ethics by CMS scholars has produced an interesting body of work that has taken a number of different directions. To date these writings principally include: (1) an “ideology” critique of the field of busi ness ethics; (2) consideration of the contributions contemporary European philosophy and social theory may make to our understandings of ethics in organisations; (3) a (limited) engagement with ethics as a concept for empirical investigation; and (4) consideration of the ethics of (CMS) academic practices and research relations. I review these works here. (p. 268)
Working with the understanding that all representations are simultaneously critiques, that the facts do not compel us to make a particular reading but that all representations are imbued with the (ethical) choices of the author, I feel the need to make some com ments on my choices here. Firstly, in categorizing the above four areas of ethics research in CMS I am keenly aware that there are a number of authors that have engaged with ethical matters in their work but, through my classification of the field, through restric tions on word count, and through the narrative flow I have chosen for this chapter, do not appear in this text. Notable examples that come to mind would be the collections of writ ings on “goodness” brought together by Ron Beadle and Heather Höpfl in Tamara (vol. 2, issue 3) and the work of DuGay (2000) on the ethos and ethic of bureaucratic work. There are also a sizeable number of texts outside the CMS frame, even in what CMS tends to other as “mainstream” management scholarship, that engage with ethics in imaginative and, yes, “critical” ways. But this short review cannot give these texts their due either. Further, in reviewing the field of works that do make the “cut” I am also going to sketch out some of my own critical observations of CMS's engagement with ethics. CMS demon strates a fascination with and mistrust of ethics—as perhaps is proper for the treatment of any discourse in modern times—but I argue that the form that this mistrust is taking is reproducing some unwelcome effects. On the one hand CMS demonstrates a desire to hold on to some notion of ethics as radical critique, as unquashable potentiality, as un bound responsibility—as a discourse that holds up a mirror to organized society and shows its face to be distorted, that reminds it that there are always other, one hopes bet ter, ways of being. On the other hand there is a deep mistrust not only of the universality, authority, or legislative impetus that seems to circle around ideas of ethics, but also, per haps surprisingly, a mistrust that has contributed to a neglect of individuals' relationships with ethics. It is this aspect which, I ultimately suggest, the field needs to recognize and reconsider if it is to avoid a questionable complicity in the effacement or defacement of others. I start the chapter by sketching-out, in some of the formative conceptual roots of CMS, an historical context for the field's mistrust of ethics (this section draws upon work in Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008).
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) (p. 269)
Contextualizing CMS and Ethics
In their different ways, the critical traditions of Marxism, critical theory, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism have each sought to counter imposed ethical universalism: “that feature of ethical prescriptions which compelled every human creature, just for the fact of being a human creature, to recognise it as right and thus to accept it as obligatory” (Bauman 1993: 8). Instead they highlight the sectional interests and strategic exclusions that pretensions to ethical universality mask. Thus for critical theory, conven tional universalizing moralities have sought to entrench class relations and the respect for property, and to universalize an alienating, atomized or one-dimensional subjectivity (Marcuse 1994). For feminist (Dworkin 1992; McNay 1992; Held 1997; Shildrick 1997) and postcolonial writers (Said 1978; Spivak 1990) the privileging of abstract, depersonal ized, and individualistic moral reasoning, and associated qualities such as duty and jus tice, have been means by which women and non-Western peoples have historically been written out of the category of moral subjects or assimilated within masculinist or Western notions of moral agency. One response to the false universality of conventional morality has been to attempt to formulate alternative emancipatory universal ethics (for instance, Horkheimer 1974; Habermas 1984; Ruddick 1992; Gilligan 1997). For others, however, such an aspiration to conceive of or articulate a universal ethics is itself dangerously to talising (Benhabib 1987; Shildrick 1997). More recently the poststructuralist critic Michel Foucault, drawing inspiration from Nietzsche's historicizing and politicizing of morality, has asked us to question again our ability to assume any special legitimacy for modern ethical positions and claims (Foucault 1984). In the context of such critiques of the totalizing will to power of universal or imposed so cietal ethical codes or rules, what of the individual and an individualized ethics? One con cern, embodied in different ways, by the above critical traditions has been to de-center the individual Enlightenment subject. Marcuse (1955) drew upon the work of Freud in conjunction with that of Marx to present the individual not as a sovereign, rational, selfconscious being, but, to various degrees, often acting out her economic class location and unconscious drives. Feminism, Postmodernism, and Poststructuralism have likewise de centered the modern subject, seeing the individual as, variously, gendered (not normal ized around an assumed neutral masculine subjectivity); as performative (acting out gen der roles and identities, Butler 1990); and as fragmented (constituted through their iden tification with and location in multiple discourses and webs of power, Foucault 1980). For some the implications of such decentering of the Enlightenment's sovereign individual radically question the notion of ethics itself. For Bakhtin (1990, 1993) a focus upon indi vidual ethical responsibility deflects the ethical gaze from a properly collective concern with answerability for systemic oppressions and inequalities. For (p. 270) others, individu als simply cannot be relied upon to choose the rational course of action, seduced as they are by the ethically pacifying effects of the capitalist culture industries (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979; Adorno 1991) or their own unreflexive or narcissistic identities.
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) In contrast, in the work of other Critical Theorists there is a belief in the potentiality of in dividuals choosing a more emancipatory path despite the sickness that pervades the sur rounding society (Fromm 1956). More recently, in the writings of Bauman (1993) and Fou cault (1988), the individual is also inscribed with some, albeit ambiguous, ethical agency: though even these tentative ethics have been, in turn, questioned. For instance, though broadly sympathetic to Foucault's work, McNay (1994) sees in his ethics the evocation of a heroic masculinity and dandyism, and argues that it provides little indication of direc tion or purpose except in what the reader may read into the author's own “cryptic” nor mativism (McNay 1994). From the above, necessarily brief, sketch of CMS theoretical and philosophical an tecedents ethics may be understood as a deeply ambivalent subject for critical scholars. There has been a continual fascination with the idea of ethics and its corollaries responsi bility, duty, virtue, freedom, the possibility and nature of emancipation, of living a good life. But also there is a deep mistrust. Ethics as I have indicated has been a concept vari ously understood by critical theorists as an attempt to impose false universality and en trench sectional interests, as a politically problematic will to totality, and as an ideology that reproduces a myth of sovereign agency.
CMS and Business Ethics The mistrust of ethics is reproduced in CMS writings on business ethics. These writings constitute a collection of work that carry strong echoes of critical theory's historic cri tique of capitalist society and the ideologies that support it. CMS texts tend to be deeply suspicious of (the ethics) of business ethics. At best, business ethics is seen as a wellmeaning but essentially misguided and toothless development, too easily incorporated in to the business realm which it wished to hold to account (Sorrell 1998; Parker 2002). More commonly, CMS texts view business ethics as complicit in deception, serving to con tain and deflect criticism from the institutions of capitalism, enabling business to bluff ethical, to present a caring front while carrying on exploitative and unethical practices as usual behind its back (Banerjee 2007). Business ethics is seen as insufficiently attentive to the political, both in its own symbiotic relationship with free-market economics and in its endorsement of managerialism as the basis of ethical renewal in organizations (Jones, Parker, and ten Bos 2005). Modern business ethics arose out of a so-called crisis of confidence in the ability of capital to self-regulate its behavior in context of the 1970s and 1980s rolling back of state intervention in market relations. However, rather than herald ing a thoroughgoing critique of self-regulation, business ethics serves to legitimize it fur ther, supporting an agenda of voluntaristic, organizationally codified and managed ethical policies not legislation from without (Wray-Bliss 2007). By giving managers the right and responsibility to codify and enforce ethics in the organization, business ethics has rein forced managerialism, contributing to the elevation of senior managers as the principle ethical agent in organizations and, increasingly, society at large. This has diminished the claims of other groups, be they employees, customers, or the wider community, to the sta tus of active moral subjects. Instead of being encouraged to work with their own con (p. 271)
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) science, to evaluate the demands placed on them through their organizational roles, to reflect actively upon the goodness, worth, or otherwise of orders given and tasks per formed, or to work towards some kind of democratic consensus on the organizational mis sion, ethics is reduced to a process of simply obeying predetermined ethical rules and codes (ten Bos 1997). For CMS scholars this is an impoverished and restrictive under standing of ethics (Kjonstad and Willmott 1995) one that, in effect, substitutes compli ance and obedience for ethics. Rather than ethical renewal, a business ethics that is de vised as a process of enforcement of centrally codified policy is most likely to shore-up and reinforce prevailing, discredited, relations of power in the organization.
CMS and Moral Philosophy For CMS scholars a symptom, and perhaps also catalyst, of this restrictive and narrow un derstanding of ethics has been Business Ethics' engagement with philosophy. Largely ig noring twentieth-century philosophy in favor of classical texts, Business Ethics academics are charged with selectively deploying philosophy to lend their un-provocative writings a veneer of academic sophistication to appeal to the managerial target audience (Parker 2002: 95). Jones, Parker, and ten Bos (2005), for example, are particularly, and at times it would appear personally, affronted by Business Ethicists on this score. Re-reading the ethical philosophy (of utilitarianism, duty, and virtue) typically drawn upon by writers in Business Ethics, they have argued that key authors have willfully misinterpreted and mis represented even this limited selection of philosophy in ways that have shorn it of its radi cal, uneasy and uncontainable qualities: thereby rendering it agreeable for CEOs, suit able for (p. 272) hierarchical codification and centralized discipline, and mainstream enough for publishing in the wider management academy. Against such easy incorporation and commoditization of philosophy, CMS authors have been concerned to explore the contributions to ethical philosophy whose teeth have been less blunted by time. Derridian (Jones 2003; Letiche 1998), existentialist (Ashman and Winstanley 2006), feminist (Brewis 1998; Collins and Wray-Bliss 2005), Marxist (WrayBliss and Parker 1998), and poststructuralist and postmodernist (ten Bos 1997; Parker 1998; Willmott 1998; Kelemen and Peltonen 2001) theory have each been explored. And while a detailed summary is outside the scope of this overview chapter, there are some commonalities in the way that the field has engaged with these. Scholars have stressed an anti-foundational, nonessentialist understanding of ethics (Willmott 1998); an ethics that is radically questioning of taken-for-granted notions of natural or good practices, that provokes uncertainty rather than complacent moralism, an ethics that must be inti mately connected to questions of politics and power—that is, an ethics that refuses an in dividualistic notion of the sovereign moral agent whose ethical conduct is divorced from her or his participation in wider power relations. Thus, even when feminist or Marxist ethics are used by the field, systems of thought that can lend themselves to dogmatic as sertions and essentialism barely less constraining than the conventional moralities and hi erarchies they seek to invert, CMS scholars are careful to delineate a reading that steers
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) towards a non-essentializing, non-moralistic ethics (e.g., Brewis 1998; Wray-Bliss and Parker 1998). Such anti-foundationalist, open, radical qualities are well evidenced too in the CMS writ ings that have utilized the work of Levinas (particularly Levinas, 1991). I wish to spend a little further time here engaging with these Levinasian-inspired CMS texts. I do this both because such Levinasian-inspired work has constituted much of the recent CMS writing on ethics and illustrates the radical, questioning value that CMS scholars are now taking from this concept, but also because the concepts evoked by CMS in its reading of Lev inas, when folded back into an examination of the CMS texts themselves, demonstrate, for me, what is lacking in some of the field's engagement with ethics to date. For CMS scholars Levinas radically rethinks the notion of ethics that we have inherited (Jones 2007). Fundamentally, the importance of Levinas's ethics arise from his rethinking of the relationship between the self and the Other, specifically the insistence on the “pri macy of the Other over the self” (Byers and Rhodes 2007: 239). Ethics here arises not as a question of reciprocity (of what I will get by helping you), or from my distanced reason or abstract duty (that would be about me and my values, my thoughts, the spaces I have taken to be away from Others to think, not the Other herself), nor from my attempts to know and categorize the Other (to make them an object of my knowledge—to reduce them to a construction that is mine). Rather than signifying ethics, such constructions are “narcissistic preoccupations” with the self (Roberts 2001). Ethics arises, rather, from the exposure to the Other. It (p. 273) is a call from the Other that affects me despite myself. The proximity, the “face” of the singular, concrete person in front of me demands from me a response (Jones 2007). The Other fills my senses. Ethics is sensorial, corporeal (Roberts 2003), carnal, and somatic (Bevan and Corvellec 2007). I feel this responsibility, I am vul nerable to it before I rationalize it. And I am vulnerable not just to the call from the singu lar other, in front of me now, but from all the singular Others, themultitude of unique met and unmet others each of which have the same call upon me (Byers and Rhodes 2007). None of which deserves to be, apriori, defaced or deselected from my ethical concern. This sensorial responsibility, beginning with but not reducible to the proximate face of an Other, is the uncertain and “frail but vital condition of ethics” (Roberts 2003: 259). “Frail” because of the multiple ways that the Other may be defaced, erased, or distanced from. Such distancing may be physical, emotional, or intellectual. For instance, I may limit my sense of responsibility to the boundaries of my organizational role or some category into which they are positioned. Or I may distance from the Other in front of me by retreating into my own abstractions and rationalizations—I may thus stop feeling this ethical call by inserting impersonal reason or generalized intellectual constructions such as duty, re sponsibility and the like in its place. “Uncertain” because how am I to meet my felt re sponsibility not only to this person in front of me, but to the next, to all others, to “the multiple demands of infinite responsibility” (Byers and Rhodes 2007: 239). From the above we can perhaps start to see how CMS scholars' use of this ethics has en abled a critique of several of the central assumptions of the Business Ethics field. The work of Roberts (2001 and 2003) exemplifies this. Roberts presents four different repre Page 6 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) sentations of Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Three may be regarded as intertwining critiques of the possibility of CSR as it is currently conceived. The first seeks to demonstrate the ways that processes of accountability and individual ization in modern organizations function to foreclose our ethical sensibilities. We are in vited to, indeed it is insisted that we, work on the project that is our self, our career, our narrow realm of practice and responsibility for which we are formally accountable. Our infinite responsibility for proximate Others is thus replaced with our concern to shore up our vulnerable, individualised, accountable selves. Roberts extends this critique of the concern with the self over the Other into the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR, for Roberts, is concerned with corporate “imago”—with being seen to be good. This “can be taken as an expression of corporate egoism: a demand to be seen to be not only powerful but also good” (2003: 256). Rather than an ethics located in vulnerability to the needs of the Other, such an “ethics of narcissus” attempts to make the corporation less vulnerable to external criticism as this “can now be countered by references to corporate codes and reports” (ibid.: 257) that continually present the goodness and responsibility of the organization. Roberts's third critique of CSR acknowledges the possibility of genuine ethical sensibility on the part of those at the top of organizations—and in doing this he ac cords these individuals more moral dignity (p. 274) in his text than do many others in this field—but presents a powerful critique of organizational processes by which this might be extended beyond the CEO's local influence. Attempts to control the ethical conduct of oth er organizational members from a distance, through for example corporate ethics codes, “depends upon the restriction of local moral sensibility, displacing it with incentives to conform with distant interests, even if these now claim to be ethical interests” (ibid.: 259). For such reasons, Roberts concludes that “this new regime of ethical business is no ethics at all” (2001: 110). In the face of these critiques of the ethics not just of CSR but of the organizational form itself, the possibility for ethical practice is, as Roberts, suggests frail. It is reliant upon individual dialogues “across the corporate boundary with those most vulnerable to the effects of corporate conduct” (ibid.: 263). Only in such proximity “might we see the effects of what we do or [have] others point these effects out to us” (ibid.: 262). Only in such personal encounters with real, concrete others may their facelessness be undone, such that they “flood our sensibilities” and compel us to recog nise and respond to their unique humanity. Roberts, along with those other CMS authors who have drawn upon Levinas, has intro duced an undeniably powerful philosophical language to critique Business Ethics. And yet, for me, taken as a whole these texts have still to carry through the full potential and implications of Levinas's arguments into a reworking of business ethics. In particular some implications of Levinas's insistence on proximity to the Other as the root of ethics seem rather lost to the field so far. For example, there is a singular lack of attempts to en counter real “faces” in this body of work. Empirical research, with actual individuals, the singular, concrete Others of Levinas's ethics, is almost entirely absent (Introna 2007: 272 provides a very short exception). Where empirical events are dealt with, they are some steps removed from a proximate, face-to-face encounter of the researcher with the re searched (see Kaulingfreks and ten Bos 2007; Soares 2007). Instead of such proximity Page 7 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) and engagement—a proximity that we are repeatedly told is necessary so that we may be rendered vulnerable to the Other, so that the primacy of the self over the Other may be reversed—this body of work tends towards theoretical critiques of Business Ethics dis course, of codes of ethics, and generalizing categorizations of subjects. Management, for instance, is evoked in much of this work (and it has been suggested in CMS work more widely; Clegg et al. 2006; and Reedy 2008) as a generalized problematic category—and as such it seems to warrant little ethical responsiveness from us. There is little to no attempt in this literature to see the faces of real individuals who work as man agers (or indeed any other organizational subjects)—to accord them, borrowing a term from Kant, “moral dignity.” There is little risk, little “vulnerability” to the face of the Oth er here for CMS scholars whose surety in their instrumental “othering” of management (Reedy 2008: 57) is unlikely to be called into question given their lack of proximity to these Others. It would seem, then, that there is little need for empathic explorations, for instance, of the ways that other individuals, themselves acting as vulnerable sentient be ings, (p. 275) attempt to live a life that they can morally come to terms with. Instead we seem to presume to know them in advance, presume that they operate merely as bearers of their role identity or ciphers for the individualizing disciplinary effects of modern orga nization. It might seem that an ethical commitment to proximity, to represent for instance the frail but vital humanity, the moral dignity, of real individuals is wholly subordinated to an implicitly evoked responsibility to a faceless mass that are harmed by organization. While such texts are undoubtedly well intentioned and effective critiques of aspects of or ganisation and Business Ethics we might ask if this defacing/effacing approach is encour aging an “ethical” CMS? For myself, I would suggest that CMS needs to find ways to not deny or marginalize the humanity of one group of individuals while focusing upon the in terests of another. The Other, whether manager or not, should not have to abide by my values or my sense of right and wrong for me to be responsible to her (Jones, Parker, and tenBos 2005: 75), for me to not deny her uniqueness and humanity. My responsibility to her comes from her very existence. If Business Ethics is, from CMS's reading of a Lev inasian perspective, seriously flawed because of its displacement of the necessarily per sonal, proximate, sensorial ethical encounter by the abstraction of formal ethical codes and theories then we are most unlikely to reverse this by only providing further abstrac tions, generalizations, and distanced critiques. Some engagement with actual organiza tional members' situated and local ethical practice would seem necessary (Kelemen and Peltonen 2001).
Ethics as Organisational Practices I turn now to consider some of the small selection of CMS texts that have sought to pro vide, or promote, an empirical engagement with the neglected area of ethics as actually practiced within organization. I consider here recent work by Clegg, Rhodes, Kornberger, and colleagues (Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006; Clegg et al. 2007a and 2007b; Kornberger and Brown 2007) and, firstly, the texts by Watson (1998, 2003). Page 8 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) Watson's ethnographically based writing on managerial work has long been concerned to explore the work practices, conversations, and identities of managers in action rather than presuming that a singular, generalized managerial subject position can be simply as cribed as a function of their place in the organizational hierarchy. Ethics, in the sense of the lived and embodied rationalities that individual managers use to make sense of their working lives and organize their activities in relation to their sense of the good, has been an implicit aspect of much of this work. However it is the explicit focus on managerial ethics in Watson (2003) that I (p. 276) consider here. Like his earlier ethnographic work this piece provides a useful corrective to a distanced and generalising categorization of management. The focus here is upon previous, influential, texts that have contributed to an apparent emerging consensus amongst critical writers that managers are morally mute in the face of organizational pressures and demands (Bird and Waters 1989) or so concerned to shore up a fragile identity as a safe and reliable organizational member that morality becomes subordinated to expediency and the expectations of peers and powerful others (Jackall 1988). Through an empirical focus upon one manager, Watson highlights the latitude available, and carved-out, for what he terms “ethically assertive” individuals to bring to bear their personal ethical considerations upon their professional roles. Draw ing upon Weber's concept of the “ethical irrationality of the world” Watson argues that there is no pure ethical position available for individuals operating in complex organiza tional roles. Instead it is necessary to appreciate how individual managers, and I would also strongly argue non-managerial subjects, draw upon numerous situated, competing moral and ethical discourses and demands to strive and struggle to organize their profes sional activities in ways that are morally acceptable for themselves. The case for the importance of a focus on the practice of ethics in organization has re cently received significantly conceptual strengthening in work by Clegg, Rhodes, Korn berger, and colleagues. While not denying the value of theoretical critiques of Business Ethics, and particular the reduction of the concept of ethics to that of defining and en forcing ethical codes (Clegg et al. 2007a: 109), these authors argue that we now need to move beyond a conceptual critique of the “static nature” (ibid. 113) of these codes to con sider how these and other moral discourses are used in practice by organizational mem bers (Kornberger and Brown 2007). As Ibarra-Colado et al. (2006: 52) express it: Ethics are not something controlled by organizations through rules, codes of con ducts and governmental practices, because that control will always be mediated through at least a modicum of freedom to be reflexive as one constitutes ones self as a governed subject. Conversely, relying solely on a notion of absolute or tran scendental ethical freedom is no way to view ethics because individuality can only ever be achieved in relation to others and to the possible disciplinary and govern mental regimes socially enacted. The exhortation to consider ethics as practice is not, as this quote alludes, to be conceived as a celebration of the sovereign ethical managerial subject—as the uncritical endorsement of heroic ethical leadership or such. Nor as a reductive, and in its own way equally essentializing, notion of the manager as devoid of ethics, merely a product of their hierarchical or ideological location Page 9 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) (Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006: 46; Clegg et al. 2007a: 109). Rather, drawing upon Foucault, research in business ethics needs to apprehend how managerial subjects “constitute themselves as moral subjects of their own actions within those ‘regimes of truth’ in which they find (p. 277) themselves” (Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006: 48). And, in so doing, seek to comprehend how man agers come to terms with the “excruciating difficulty of being moral” (Bauman 1993: 248, in Clegg et al. 2007a: 108) in their local, situated, organizational contexts: contexts that are invari ably saturated with uncertainty, ethical pluralism and the multiply constituting and conflicting webs of power.
To my mind this body of work moves CMS's engagement with the ethics of business for ward in two important regards. Firstly, it reminds us of the necessary, and neglected, em pirical base from which credible understandings of social reality stem. If as a field CMS has concerns with the way that codes of ethics may effect moral autonomy in organiza tions then we need to explore how they do this, if they do this, in practice. Similarly if we have concerns about the power of modern organization to adiaphorize action, to render what we may regard as problematic organizational behavior apparently unproblematic, then we need to see how and whether this occurs—again in practice. And, crucially, fol lowing the above work, we need to appreciate the ways that individual organizational subjects continue to make ethical judgments and enact these in their organizational roles. The above work also, for me, shifts CMS writings on business ethics in what I'm going to call a more “ethical” direction. Such work promotes a closer, “proximate” encounter with those singular, concrete, individuals who occupy the organizational position of manager. There is, in the very interest in these individuals as individuals, the possibility for the recognition of their humanity, the potential to look at their “face,” to seek to embody our responsibility to not deny their “excruciating” strivings for morality dignity. To see and af firm individual managers as an “Other” and not just to other them. I also think, however, that there is a challenge not yet wholly convincingly met in this re search agenda: specifically in the characterization of the role of the researcher/writer in relation to the managerial subjects of our analysis. The research program that Clegg, Rhodes, Kornberger, and colleagues have advocated abandons analyses of whether management and managers are ethical or unethi cal, per se, and … eschews a theory that uses ethics as a mechanism of power that passes judgement on the ethics of others (Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006: 52) Instead, evoking Foucault, they envisage the research project as
an historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying (Foucault in Clegg et al. 2007a: 114) Such a project seems to envisage CMS researching the ethics of others as almost exclusively an “analytical” task. But can the analytical and the normative be so easily separated? There is some recognition that such a poststructuralist, analytical ethics has, what Willmott (1998: 80) has called, a “normative thrust” in its belief (p. 278) in the ethical value of showing how others have come to constitute themselves (Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006: 46). This speaks of a commitment to Page 10 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) an ideal that such constitution of one's ethical self may be a “conscious practice of freedom” that “seeks to open possibilities for new relations to self and events in the world” (Bernauer and Ma hon in Ibarra-Colado et al. 2006: 47) rather than the unconscious and unreflexive subordination to whatever dominant discourse abounds. However there seems to be a kind of “cryptonormative” (McNay 1994) positioning of the researcher here in relation to their subjects which to my mind is not entirely satisfactory. The “face” of the research subject is to be exposed, their views and values are made an object of knowledge and analysis. But this exposure is largely oneway. The researcher's own normative ethical commitments, apart from a general poststructural ist commitment to, to use an old fashioned term “self-determination,” are absented from the text. As a CMS scholar, however, I may want to not only analyze how this manager has come to understand the practice of ethics, but also critique this. I may feel a responsibility not only to the “singular other” of the manager, but also to the multiple others whom I may regard this manager's involvement in organizational practices as harming. Proximity, the root of ethical en gagement for Levinas, necessitates responsibility in both face-to-face encounters but also a re sponsibility for those “other” Others. If I am not merely to either subordinate my felt ethical re sponsibility to critique what I see as harmful (to in effect remove my face from my research) or subordinate the “face” of the manager by simply imposing my normative views as an act of au thority (evoking Orwell's “boot stamping on the human face—for ever” (1989: 280, first pub lished 1949)) then I need to come to some other way of conceptualizing and embodying ethical commitments in my academic practices.
Jack (2004) opens up one possible way of approaching this task through an exploration of Foucault's posthumously published work on parrhesia: understood as frank and fearless truth telling in the face of power. Toward the end of this often insightful article, Jack sug gests such frank and fearless speech as a potential way of understanding and articulating what CMS academics might be doing or, more accurately in terms of Jack's arguments, should seek to do if they are to produce critiques of powerful managerial others with a greater moral standing. The ethical substance of parrhesia or fearless speech derives, in large part, from the speaker's ongoing attempts to harmonize their logos (their beliefs or doctrines) and bios (their life). Jack (ibid.: 131–133) touches upon a number of arenas from the published text, to the classroom, to interpersonal relationships with colleagues and others within which CMS scholars might seek to harmonize their espoused “critical” academic commitments and their embodied practices. This relationship between es poused commitments and embodied practices is a concern carried over into what I present next as the final substantive area of CMS's engagement with ethics: namely writ ings that have explored the ethics of CMS's own research practices.
(p. 279)
Research Ethics
In their content analysis of the ethics of management research Bell and Bryman (2007) have argued that there has been an historic neglect of matters of research ethics across the management academy including, perhaps more surprisingly given avowed commit ments to identify relations of power, amongst CMS scholars. And while Fournier and Grey can claim with some justification that CMS is characterized by a “philosophical and methodological reflexivity” uncommon to the majority of the wider management academy (Fournier and Grey 2000: 19), a number of critiques have been made regarding the field's Page 11 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) understanding, and discharging, of ethical responsibilities to those that it researches (e.g., Clegg et al. 2006; Bell and Bryman 2007; Reedy 2008). CMS and other fields of criti cal research on organization have been criticized for deploying the same self-authorizing devices of conventional management scholarship to elevate the status of their own knowl edge claims and identity projects over and above those whom they research (Wray-Bliss 2002). Such practices, it is argued, have contributed to the subordination of the voices and lives of researched populations in CMS texts to the presumed (judgmental) superiori ty of the scholar. This may be seen to reproduce a relationship of power that mirrors the hierarchical power-relationships in work organizations and other problematic contexts that CMS putatively seeks to challenge. Research constructed under such conditions of hierarchical power-relationships, of normalized self-authorizing practices, and with little or no explicit attentiveness to the ethics of research practices, has been argued to con tribute to the production and authorizing of knowledge about research populations—in cluding those that CMS would wish to align itself politically—that may be both erroneous and potentially harmful (Wray-Bliss 2003). As a response to the neglect of ethics as an explicit concern in the research practices of both management scholars in general and CMS in particular, there has been some consid eration of the ways that ethical responsibilities and relations may be conceptualized and embodied by critical scholars. Echoing the critique by CMS of formal ethical codes in business, strong scepticism has been leveled at the formalization of professional codes of research ethics (Bell and Bryman 2007; Bell and Wray-Bliss 2008; Brewis and Wray-Bliss 2008). Such ethical formalism is seen as reductive (reducing the complex issue of re searchers' responsibilities to other human subjects to a process of ticking boxes on an ethical approval form) and restrictive (where the formal ethics codes, derived in a context dominated by positive approaches to science, may serve to prohibit and curtail more open-ended, qualitative, or avowedly political research practices). Instead of an unreflex ive adherence to predefined ethical codes, the above cited works have proposed a num ber of ways that CMS may reconnect with and rearticulate ethical responsibilities to re searched populations. These have included: broadening existing precepts (such (p. 280) as the avoidance of harm) to include reflection upon the unacknowledged silencing effects of a critical text; exploring a number of additional criteria drawn from the experience of crit ical research outside the management academy to reflect upon our practices—including reciprocity, positionality, responsibility, and attention to voice; re-conceptualizing ethics from being a “hurdle” to overcome or avoid at the start of the research process to seeing the explicit articulation of an ethical relationship with the researched as the central war rant for critical work; and proposed institutional changes to the criteria and quality con trol processes of reviewing and journal submission guidelines to reflect a greater atten tiveness to research ethics. Embodiment by the wider field of CMS of these, or indeed any other explicitly articulated, ethical responsibilities is limited at present. However, at tentiveness to the ways that an avowedly critical and political field such as CMS may seek to reduce the silencing and subordinating effects of its research and promote a more ex plicitly, and self-defined, “ethical” relationship with research subjects would seem, con ceptually at least, relatively uncontroversial. For example, confronted with a researched Page 12 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) population of non-managerial employees, systematically excluded from having formal say into how the organization on which they depend for their livelihood and valued work iden tities is run, a fair number of CMS scholars would, I have to assume, wish to not com pound the lack of voice in this organizational realm with a research text that did likewise. We might, therefore, hope that the neglect to date by CMS scholars of explicit attention to ethical relationships and responsibilities to such research subjects may begin to wane “naturally” as the field comes to a greater self-awareness of the distinctiveness of its com mitments as compared with “mainstream” management scholarship. Against, however, this hoped-for picture of “natural” increase in attentiveness to the ethi cal responsibilities to researched populations perhaps the greatest conceptual (and cor poreal) challenge for the idea of an ethical critical management studies lies in the ques tion of how to understand and enact our ethical responsibilities towards those whose be haviour, whose morality, we feel compelled to critique and challenge in our work? How can we progressively embody a radical commitment to critique and an ethical commit ment, no less radical, to non-violence in respect of our and others' humanity? How, in oth er words, can we refuse to be positioned, to try to refuse to take on the position, of having to turn away from, fail to recognize, or stamp on some faces while responding to others? This, to my mind, is not an issue resolvable by a straightforward denial. I have previously argued that it is not sufficient to conceive of ethical responsibility as that which one only needs to discharge in relation to those that one agrees with, or likes, or even morally ap proves of (Collins and Wray-Bliss 2005). Levinas's conceptualization of ethics as the “infi nite” responsibility to the “face” of the Other doesn't necessitate that one likes that face. Ethical responsibility is not a beauty parade nor does it stem from an expectation of reci procity: “I will only be ethical to you if you are to me or to (p. 281) someone else that I val ue.” Isn't it simply the humanity qua humanity of the other that necessitates that I am re sponsible?
Conclusion I have suggested in this chapter that CMS writings on ethics constitute four main areas: (1) an “ideology” critique of the field of business ethics; (2) consideration of the contribu tions contemporary European philosophy and social theory may make to our understand ings of ethics in organizations; (3) a (limited) engagement with ethics as a concept for empirical investigation; and (4) consideration of the ethics of (CMS) academic practices and research relations. In each of these areas I have attempted to give the reader an overview of the field's contributions. And significant contributions to knowledge, I would argue, have been made by CMS scholars in each of these areas—notwithstanding the charge that CMS may at times be rather self-referential and fail to adequately engage with “critical” contributions by others in the management academy (Clegg et al. 2006). While applauding the work done to date I have also suggested that in my own personal view the potential significance of the contribution that CMS could make to the study of ethics is not yet being realized. Specifically, the historical ambivalence of critical scholars Page 13 of 19
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) to the notion of ethics seems to be replicated in CMS's reluctance to explore ethics at the level of individual subjects. A reluctance which, I argue, is at risk of becoming itself an ethically problematic neglect, even effacement, of “real” others. While it is quite under standable for critical scholars to be concerned that critiques of the ethico-political effects of organization should not be sacrificed to depoliticized description of individual morali ties, I would suggest that this does not need to be the case. Indeed, I have argued that it is possible to see closer, compassionate, engagement with individual “faces”—both those implicated in and effected by problematic organisational practices—as the basis of more, not less, powerful and effective critique. And I would cite works such as Hannah Arendt's (1958) landmark text, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil as evi dence of, and inspiration for, this. Arising from her deployment as reporter at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Arendt's book explores the personal morality of this, surely damned, in dividual, and situates this within the full force of a political critique of the atrocities of the Nazi regime and careful legal reporting of the intricacies and inconsistencies of the trial. To produce a text which, looking at the face of one so centrally implicated in atrocity, still conveys in its account a person: corrupted, irredeemably guilty, weak but still, and still, human is testament to the possibility (p. 282) and power of critique that refuses to refuse another's humanity. For me, this text can serve as inspiration for the project of bringing together the different areas of CMS's work on ethics—critique, theory, empirics, and re search ethics—into compelling critical representations of, and interventions in, ethics in contemporary business organisations. Such a project, I feel, needs to explore ways to bring together the violence of critique—the naming, problematizing, pathologizing desire of the critic to critique (illustrated well in CMS's engagement with business ethics), which itself may be seen as an attempt to meet one's responsibilities to wider others—with the ethical responsibility to represent and respect the singular humanity of, for instance, this manager and these organizational subjects who may be implicated in or affected by morally questionable practice. I am hopeful that scholars in the field of CMS may move in these directions as they continue to develop the meanings and practice of critical re search on ethics, and ethical critique, in management studies.
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) SHILDRICK, M. (1997). Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics. London: Routledge. SOARES, C. (2007). “The HIV/AIDS Crisis and Corporate Moral Responsibility in the Light of the Levinasian Notions of Proximity and the Third,” Business Ethics: A European Review, 16/3: 278–285. SORRELL, T. (1998). “Beyond the Fringe? The Strange State of Business Ethics,” in M. Parker ed., Ethics and Organizations. London: Sage, 15–29. SPIVAK, G. (1990). The Postcolonial Critic. London: Routledge. TEN BOS, R. (1997). “Essai: Business Ethics and Bauman Ethics,” Organization Studies, 18/6: 997–1014. WATSON, T. (2003). “Ethical Choice in Managerial Work: The Scope for Moral Choices in an Ethically Irrational World,” Human Relations, 56: 167–185. —— (1998). “Ethical Codes and Moral Communities: The Gunlaw Temptation, the Simon Solution and the David Dilemma,” in M. Parker ed., Ethics and Organizations. London: Sage, 253–268. WILLMOTT, H. (1998). “Towards a New Ethics? The Contributions of Poststructuralism and Posthumanism,” in M. Parker ed., Ethics and Organizations. London: Sage, 76–121. WRAY-BLISS, E. (2002). “Abstract Ethics, Embodied Ethics: The Strange Mar riage of Foucault and Positivism in LPT,” Organization, 9/1: 5–39. (p. 285)
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Edward Wray-Bliss
Edward Wray-Bliss (PhD UMIST, Manchester) works as a senior lecturer in manage ment at the School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney. His research interests are in the ethics and politics of business and academic practices. He has published on these issues in a number of edited collections and journals including Or ganization (2002, 2003), Organizational Research Methods (2002), Human Relations (2005, co-authored with Helen Collins), and Organization Studies (2008, co-authored with Joanna Brewis). Other recent work in this area includes a contribution on the
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Ethics: Critique, Ambivalence, and Infinite Responsibilities (Unmet) ethics of research for the Sage Handbook of Organisational Research Methods (2009, co-authored with Emma Bell).
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Critical Management and Organizational History
Critical Management and Organizational History Michael Rowlinson, Roy Stager Jacques, and Charles Booth The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, History Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0014
Abstract and Keywords A critical orientation towards management and organizational history has at least three aspects: first, a historical critique of mainstream management and organizational re search and teaching; second, a critical view of mainstream business history and manage ment history; and finally, an assessment and critique of the treatment of history in critical management studies (CMS). This article argues that a critical and historical approach to management and organizations would entail a reorientation, or an ‘historic turn’. It dis cusses the three aspects of a critical historical orientation to management and organiza tions, outlines what a historic turn would entail, and assesses the extent to which it can be said to be underway. Keywords: CMS, organizational history, mainstream management, organizational research, business history
Introduction A CRITICAL orientation towards management and organizational history must first distin guish itself from the predominant a-historical orientation. It must, further, distinguish it self from uncritical, mainstream orientations. While historically informed theorizing is not inherently critical, it has been more integral to critical studies of organization than to the mainstream project of creating the management disciplines. Since the days of scientific management, mainstream organizational knowledge has been founded on the assumption that objective knowledge of effectiveness could transcend partisan interest, provide equi ty to all and pacify the turmoil created by the ascendance of the large-scale, corporate, capitalist organization. On the other hand, since Marx, critical studies have charged that the (p. 287) dominant, capitalist order was the product of neither natural evolution nor ra tional progress, but of vested interests. As in Capital, critical studies have relied on a his torical perspective to explain how the present order has been constructed and how it might be changed.
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Critical Management and Organizational History A critical orientation towards management and organizational history has at least three aspects: first, a historical critique of mainstream management and organizational re search and teaching; second, a critical view of mainstream business history and manage ment history; and finally, an assessment and critique of the treatment of history in critical management studies (CMS). In our view, a critical and historical approach to manage ment and organizations would entail a reorientation (Üsdiken and Kieser 2004), or an “historic turn” (Clark and Rowlinson 2004). In this chapter we discuss the three aspects of a critical historical orientation to management and organizations, outline what a his toric turn would entail, and assess the extent to which it can be said to be underway.
History in Mainstream Management and Orga nization Studies The study of management and organizations is notoriously a-historical; there have been repeated calls from leading theorists in the field for more history, or for a different ap proach to history (e.g., Zald 1993; Kieser 1994; Jacques 1996; Burrell 1997). Jacques con cludes that an historical perspective will be “invaluable,” indeed unavoidable, if organiza tion studies are “expected to provide a critically reflective vision of the good society, or inform debate between alternative visions of that society” (Jacques 1996: 190). Burrell objects to the separation of business disciplines from the social sciences and humanities, especially sociology and history, which has “allowed business teachers to escape without any real sensitivity to the issues raised by the humanities.” He denounces as “Heathrow Organization Theory” the version of organization studies that is currently taught in most English-speaking business schools, arguing that it is, constrained by “The 4 Rs of rele vance, recency, results and redemption” (1997: 27, 185, 190). In a series of articles Zald has argued for a reconceptualization of organization studies as a humanistic enterprise in which history can make a major contribution. Zald complains that the social sciences which underpin teaching in business schools “have been so cut off from humanistic thinking” that the way of approaching problems is likely to be universalist and presentist. It rein forces the presentist and universalist tendencies of abstracted general theory and of the scientific (p. 288) model that the social sciences took over from the exemplar sciences. Social science cut itself off from history … in the search for general and abstracted laws, it cut itself off from context and configuration. (Zald 2002: 381) Universalism is the view that contemporary organization theory applies to organizational phe nomena in all societies at all times. Presentism results in research being reported as if it oc curred in a decontextualized extended present. Presentism contradicts universalism to the ex tent that the present is often assumed to be a period of unprecedented change, heralding the dawning of a new age. This contradiction is held in check through the narrative of progress— while the problems of society remain the same, we get progressively better at addressing them.
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Critical Management and Organizational History Universalism and presentism can be likened to the Flintstones and the Simpsons approaches to history (Booth and Rowlinson 2006). The Flintstones cartoon was “set in a town called Bedrock, in the Stone Age era, but with a society identical to that of the Unit ed States in the mid-20th century” (Museum of Broadcast Communications 2008). The “Flintstones method” suggests that any society, from the prehistoric to the present, faces the same organizational problems as our own (Steel 1999). As Jacques (1996: 14) ob serves, universalism means that “management is presented as a continuous thread run ning through civilization”; even the Bible is cited by universalist organization theorists as addressing issues of organization. Univeralism “emphasizes continuity over change” (Down 2001: 402), creating the impres sion that, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Moore and Lewis 1999: 2, 269, quoted by Down 2001: 402). When the ancient Greeks are credited with creating the first multina tional enterprises (e.g., Moore and Lewis 1999), this application of a contemporary “lan guage of corporate capitalism” to the ancient world implies, whether intentionally or not, “that most, if not all, economic organizations are forms of capitalism” (Down 2001: 402). The claim that multinational enterprises existed in antiquity in a form amenable to analy sis using concepts from Michael Porter (1990) can only be made by ignoring broader in tellectual history and historiography of the ancient world and assuming that market ratio nality has always existed (Down 2001: 403–404). The Simpsons is presentist in that the show exists in a non-dated, extended present. Bart Simpson never grows up; Mr Burns was a young man in the 1890s, in World War I and in World War II. Springfield, where the family lives, is fictionalized in the same way that or ganizations are often fictionalized in organization studies; it “may not exist, and yet everything that is said about it may be true,” in the sense that “it may be credible in the light of other texts” (Czarniawska 1999: 38). In an effort to preserve anonymity for infor mants, and as a result of the stylization which suggests that findings can be generalized, the reports of organizational research (p. 289) tend towards presentist “fictionalization” (Czarniawska 1999: 38) that would be anathema to historians. Universalism, presentism and the assumption of progress obviate the need for history; if the same problems have existed always and everywhere, if knowledge is steadily improv ing, all one need know is the best contemporary theory and research. If, however, both problems and answers change locally and through time, application of contemporary the ory requires understanding of the history of such problems and the interests represented in the answers formulated to address them. A greater engagement with history does not necessarily imply a more critical orientation. Üsdiken and Kieser (2004) set out three possible types of engagement with history: sup plementarist, integrationist, and reorientationist. The supplementarist position adheres to the view of organization theory as social scientistic, and merely adds history as another contextual variable, alongside other variables such as national cultures. This tends to re duce history to a repository of facts that can be used to test competing theories (e.g. Wren 2005). The integrationist position, which Kieser (1994) endorses, seeks to enrich or Page 3 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History ganization theory by developing links with the humanities, without completely abandon ing a social scientistic orientation. The reorientationist agenda, which we see as being aligned with CMS, involves a thoroughgoing critique of mainstream theories of manage ment and organization from a historical perspective, which would constitute an historic turn (Clark and Rowlinson 2004). An historic turn would represent a transformation of organization studies in at least three senses. Firstly, it would represent a turn against the view that organization studies should constitute a science analogous to the physical sciences. This would parallel the “linguistic turn” in history, where “the question ‘how is history like and unlike fiction?’ has replaced ‘how is history like and unlike science?’ as the guiding question of meta-historical reflec tion.” The linguistic turn in history is an instance of the general displacement of “the Sci entific Attitude” by “the Rhetorical Attitude” (Fay 1998: 2). Such critique does not mean that study cannot be pursued in a scientific spirit, but that the organizational problematic —people and society—cannot be reduced to a deterministic, laboratory science analogous to biology. Secondly, as in other fields, an historic turn would involve “a contentious and by no means well-defined turn towards history—as past, process, context, and so on” (McDonald 1996: 1–2), but not necessarily towards the most adjacent branch of histo ry, namely business history, which has tended to be strongly integrationist. Finally, an his toric turn would entail a turn to debates regarding historiography—the methods and his torical theories of interpretation through which historical meaning is created. The word “history” itself has at least two meanings and refers to both “the totality of past human actions, and … the narrative or account we construct of them” (Walsh 1967: 16, quoted in Callinicos 1995: 4).
Critique of Mainstream Business and Man agement History (p. 290)
Philosophers of history have long recognized the ambiguity of history, and as Hegel ob served: In our language [this applies to English, French, and German (Callinicos, 1995: 4)] the term History unites the objective with the subjective side … it comprehends not less what has happened, than the narration of what has happened. (quoted in White 1987: 11–12) As a result of this inherent ambiguity, history has always had to tackle epistemological questions such as: “How can we know about the past? What does it mean to explain historical events? Is objective knowledge possible?” (Fay 1998: 2). Despite the acknowledgement of ambiguity in his tory from philosophers, practicing historians often evade epistemological and methodological questions by a “sleight of hand” which hides the fact, not least from the historians themselves, that they are not studying actual past events that have disappeared from perception, but rather,
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Critical Management and Organizational History the “traces” of those events distilled into documents and monuments on one side, and the praxis of present social formations on the other. These “traces” are the raw materials of the historian's discourse, rather than the events themselves. (White 1987: 102) In Nietzschean terms, in their research and writing historians tend to proceed “as if” the past is directly knowable, rather than “as if, it is not” (Munslow 2003: 38).
Deconstructionist historian Alun Munslow (2003: 5–6) distinguishes between three episte mological positions or genres in historical writing. Firstly, there is the “crude reconstruc tionist or unreflexive ‘modernist’ approach.” The reconstructionist historian claims to of fer a fair-minded, truthful interpretation of historical documents, written up in “an essen tially unproblematic representational way.” This “realist-representationalist” position cor responds to the “common sense” view of what constitutes history. Secondly, there is the constructionist or “late-modernist” approach, inspired by positivism, which “opts for a self-consciously social-scientific and theory-laden style.” Constructionists use a variety of well-thought-out political, economic, social, or cultural concepts, such as race, gender, imperialism, and class. Finally, deconstructionist historians, drawing on the work of the American historian and philosopher, Hayden White (1973), maintain that “the content of history, like that of liter ature, derives its meaning as much by the representation of that content, as by research into the sources” (Munslow 2003: 6). The main disagreement of deconstructionists with reconstructionists and constructionists, is that the former reject the truth revealing ca pacity of empiricism, whereas latter adhere to a view that “the causes and effects of events” as well as the hidden “structure(s) of historical change” are discoverable (Mun slow 2003: 6). Arguably the (p. 291) deconstructionist approach in history corresponds to the reorientationist agenda, or historic turn, in management and organization studies, be cause it highlights the way that any reference to the past necessarily involves choices of representation. For the most part mainstream business and management history can be characterized as reconstructionist, or occasionally, as in the major works by Alfred Chandler (1962, 1977), constructionist. Business history proceeds as if the past is knowable, and it very much fits White's description of history as: a rather a craftlike discipline, which means that it tends to be governed by con vention and custom rather than by methodology and theory and to utilize ordinary or natural languages for the description of its objects of study and representation of the historian's thought about those objects. (1995: 243) Business history has been defined as “the systematic study of individual firms on the basis of their business records” (Coleman 1987: 142; Tosh 1991: 95). Business historians often treat their interpretation of company documents as common sense and, therefore, not requiring explana tion (Rowlinson, 2001: 15). Whereas critical and interpretive researchers in organization studies are expected to justify their methodology, business historians do not have to contend with a high expectation that they can or will account for their methodological approach. Business history re Page 5 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History mains resolutely empiricist and atheoretical in the sense that its conceptualizations and claims are relatively unexamined and, unlike organization studies, it lacks an explicitly theoretical lan guage.
Within mainstream business and management history there is “a lack of understanding and a lack of debate related to theory, method and methodology-historiography” (Stager Jacques 2006: 45), which makes it difficult to engage with management and organization theory in general, or with critical management studies in particular. This methodological difference between business history and organization studies is partly explained by their different writing strategies. Business historians emphasize the singularity of events that can be organized in a more or less chronological narrative, whereas organizational stud ies has focused on regularities of everyday life that cannot easily be set out in a chrono logical order. By revealing the unique periodization of an organization through a narra tive derived from company documentation, critical business historians can avoid the fic tionalized typicality found in presentist organization studies (Rowlinson 2004). It is generally taken for granted by business historians that the organizations they write about have actually existed in history, and that their interpretations refer to the documen tary traces of past events that can be verified through extensive footnotes citing sources. Verification becomes increasingly important if the interpretation of an organization's past emphasizes its singularity rather than typicality. Footnotes are part of the rhetoric of his tory (Hexter 1998). In contrast to organization studies, historians frequently relegate ac tual debate with other historians to the footnotes. It is in the footnotes that the nature and interpretation (p. 292) of the evidence is laid out. The discourse of history can be de scribed as debate by footnote. Each historian marshals evidence to support an argument, hoping to bury opponents under a barrage of footnotes citing superior sources. A critical perspective in business and management history would require a more reflexive ap proach, whereby historians would hold a more self conscious position on history, and be in control of their own discourse(Jenkins 1991: 1).
History in Critical Management Studies The “historic turn” shifts the emphasis from a preoccupation with what actually hap pened to a concern with how, if at all, the past can be represented. However, the engage ment between critical management studies and the “critical philosophy of history” in rela tion to “the problematic of the representation of the past” (Ricoeur 2004: xvi, 522) is at an early stage compared to other branches of philosophy and the linguistic turn consid ered in this volume. CMS itself is by no means immune to the criticism that is has failed to engage with histo ry and historiography, but to the extent that there has been an engagement with history, there has also been a parallel to the historic turn in the shift from labor process theory (LPT) to CMS. Leading organization theorists acknowledge that LPT “was the most visible and respected forum for critical management and organization studies” until about the mid-1990s (Tsoukas 2007: 1309). LPT developed out of the debates over deskilling initiat Page 6 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History ed by Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974). These reached a highpoint around 1990 (e.g., Knights and Willmott 1990). By that time major contributors to labor process theory had responded to the critiques of Braverman, and in particular the alleged neglect of subjectivity and the shortcomings of Braverman's humanistic Marxism, by turn ing to the work of Foucault, and other Continental philosophers such as Habermas (e.g., Burrell 1990; Knights and Willmott 1990). This constituted a decisive shift away from the Marxian orientation of LPT, as Labor Process Theorists aligned themselves with the broader field of CMS that was then emerging (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott 1992). Both Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), and Marglin's classic article on the labour process, “What Do Bosses Do?” (1976), were influential in history, and it is largely due to their influence that economic and social historians, can “no longer write of indus try and labour without consideration of the labour process” (Berg 1984: 165). While LPT is treated in depth elsewhere in this volume, we wish to briefly consider some of the his toriographical issues it raises. By examining the (p. 293) origins of capitalist hierarchy and the emergence of the “factory system” during the Industrial Revolution in Britain be tween 1760 and 1830, Braverman (1974) shifts attention away from Britain and the rise of the factory system to the bureaucratic transformation of US industry. The mainstream explanation of the “new factory system” in the USA between 1880 and 1920 has suggested it to be a quasi-natural “evolution” driven by efficiency and rational ization of resources. According to Braverman, behind the commonplaces associated with scientific management, the “stopwatch, speed-up, etc … there lies a theory which is noth ing less than the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production” (1974: 86). As such, deskilling and the degradation of labor through the twentieth century were part of an interest within capitalism for the conception of work to be separated from its execu tion. Marglin (1976: 36) argued that “the discipline and supervision afforded by the factory had nothing to do with efficiency, at least as this term is used by economists. Disciplining the workforce meant a larger output in return for a greater input of labour, not more out put for the same input.” While controversial, Marglin's claim shifts the object of historical analysis from, “history led by technology” (Berg 1991: 174, 183) to a history of compet ing, vested interests. Marglin has referred to his work as both “history” (1991: 245) and “theorizing” (1984: 146, 149). It might be more accurate to say that his argument consists of a conceptual model with selective historical illustrations (Rowlinson 1997: 150). Kieser (1994: 614) al leges that Marglin “relies more on reasoning than on ‘collecting historical evidence’ to prove his hypotheses.” For Landes (1986: 621), Marglin's “history is not what it should be.” Like his mainstream detractors, Marglin presents the rise of the factory system as a “unilinear development,” overlooking the complementarity of putting-out and a diverse factory sector, even in the same industry (Berg 1994: 196), and underestimating the di versity of organizational forms that have always coexisted (Burrell 1990).
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Critical Management and Organizational History Braverman and Marglin were followed by several major historical accounts of work through the twentieth century (e.g., Edwards 1979; Burawoy 1985), some of which in volved the kind of detailed archival research that is well regarded by mainstream busi ness historians (e.g., Littler 1982). A general criticism of both Marx and Braverman is that their empirical research is inadequate because they take at face value the pro nouncements of capitalist ideologues such as Andrew Ure, Charles Babbage, and Freder ick Taylor (Lazonick 1979 1983). Clawson tried to counter the argument that “Taylorism was primarily an ideology with little practical significance,” by listing the extent to which Taylorism was implemented. Furthermore, Clawson asserts, “It matters not only what happened, but why it happened” (1980: 27, 224). Labor process theory, at least at its outset, was resolutely historical, but it can be charac terized as constructionist history. As should be clear by now, Labor Process (p. 294) Theo rists have much in common with other constructionist historians who take their cue from social theorists such as Marx and Weber and are informed by a desire to discover the underlying structures of history, the structures that underpin events and which, when they are known, will go some way to explain them. It is this effort to understand the connection of event and structure that is at the centre of mainstream or constructionist history. (Munslow 2003: 16)
Towards an Historic Turn in Critical Manage ment Studies For the most part the shift from labor process theory to critical management studies has entailed a move away from history. To some extent this can be explained by a general skepticism within CMS towards the constructionist metanarratives of capitalism repre sented by LPT. However, there is a growing body of work that does at least integrate his tory into management and organization studies, and there have been occasional attempts at a historical reorientation, or historic turn. It is now possible to speak of “organizational history” as an emerging distinctive field that draws upon concepts from organization the ory and the wider social sciences and humanities (Carroll 2002). For example, Carroll's collection of papers on “the strategic use of the past and future in organizations,” in cludes ethnographic examinations of the meaning of an organization's past to its mem bers in the present (Parker 2002), studies of the organizational processes behind official corporate histories (Taylor and Freer 2002), and the reasons for such histories being un dertaken in the first place (Ooi 2002). Boje's (1995) innovative dramaturgical analogy for analyzing Disney's corporate culture is an indicative example of a distinctive approach to organizational history. By historicizing organization itself, Kieser's (1989; 1998) accounts of the origins of formal organizations, and the evolution of rational organizational design
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Critical Management and Organizational History in eighteenth-century German associations has opened a field of debate over “the histori cal context in which organizing has developed” (Newton 2004: 1380). Organizational history also encompasses the historicization of subjectivity. Newton's his toricization of stress counters the popular “idea of Stone Age man suffering in the mod ern-day office,” in which stress is attributed to the failure of our natural animal instincts to keep up with technological and social developments (Newton 1995: 22, 136–40). More broadly, Jacques (1996) has traced the hidden history of management knowledge, while Shenhav (1995, 1999) provides a cultural and political account of the evolution of ratio nality in management thought, identifying the role of engineers in particular. Townley (2002) historicizes the all-pervasive (p. 295) advocacy of abstract management concepts as the solution to all contemporary problems, locating its foundations in modernity itself. In addition to Shenhav (1995, 1999), Abrahamson (1997), Barley and Kunda (1992), and Guillen (1994), have conducted bibliometric research that provides periodizations for managerial and organizational discourse. These methodologically rigorous studies extend the earlier influential historiographical surveys by authors such as Bendix (1956), Clegg and Dunkerley (1980), and Perrow (1986). The interest in Foucault has inspired archival historical research from management and organization theorists (e.g., Jacques 1996; Hassard and Rowlinson 2002), as well as ac counting researchers (Hoskin and Macve 1988) and sociologists (Savage 1998). McKinlay (2002), who is an accomplished historian as well as a management researcher, was grant ed access to the archives of the Bank of Scotland in order to prepare an after dinner speech for bank employees. A conventional business historian would see no alternative but to produce yet another celebratory narrative of the bank's progress. But, inspired by Foucault, McKinlay took a completely different approach and focused on the cartoons drawn by a bank clerk in the margins of bank ledgers to get an insight into employees' perceptions of the concept of a career before the 1914. Archivists tell us that cartoons are common in the margins of bank ledgers, but as far as we know only McKinlay has had the imagination to analyze them. Rowlinson and Carter (2002) charge that an over reliance on Foucault (e.g., 1972, 1977) in critical management studies, is problematic in terms of an historic turn (Rowlinson and Carter 2002), because it is misleading to equate Foucault with an historical perspective and because many historians feel that Foucault was “anti-historical” (Munslow 1997: 120). In addition to Foucault, there has been increasing attention to social theorists with an historical dimension. For example, Kieser (1998) and Newton (2001) have championed the work of Norbert Elias (1994), du Gay has also reclaimed Max Weber as a historical theorist, countering the a-historical, universalist image of Weber that is found in organi zational behavior textbooks, where he is presented as “the purveyor of a view of human history as a process of unrelenting rationalization” (du Gay 2000: 73). Boje (2001) in par ticular makes extensive reference to philosophers of history such as Deirdre McCloskey, Paul Ricoeur, and Hayden White, in his discussion of narrative.
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Critical Management and Organizational History
Alternative Approaches to Critical Manage ment History In the remainder of this chapter we focus on two alternatives to the constructionist histo ry of labor process theory within CMS. Firstly, there is a constructionist (p. 296) alterna tive which uses organization and modernity as the major theoretical concepts for con structing a historical metanarrative, as opposed to class and capitalism. This is best rep resented by Perrow in Organizing America (2002), who mounts a critique of both main stream Chandlerian business history, as well as Marxism. Secondly, deconstructive histo ry not only challenges LPT over what happened and why, it also casts doubt on the status of any historical account that purports to give definitive answers to such questions de rived from empirical research. This is represented by Jacques's Foucauldian history of the employee (1996), and Burrell's more generally “post-modernist” retro-organization theory (1997). In the closing pages of his classic, Complex Organizations (1986), Perrow invited readers to join him in the “task of rewriting the history of bureaucracy.” In Organizing America (2002) he presents a synthesis of subsequent research in a masterful alternative account of how a “society of organizations” arose in the USA in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Perrow is profoundly troubled by the size and power of large organizations. He has long maintained that a “society of organizations” has subsumed communities and that bureaucratic organizations, both private and public, have subordinated society to their in terests. He turns to the historical question of how, and when, the USA developed “an eco nomic system based upon large corporations, privately held, with minimal regulation by the state?” (2002: 216). He emphasizes the importance of concrete historical actors, es pecially wealthy elites acting in their own interests, as well as the accidents of history. This necessitates a narrative with counterfactuals of how history could just as well have turned out very differently. Perrow's “organizational interpretation” of history is derived from his critique of the func tionalist technological accounts of organizations in sociology and the efficiency argu ments that increasingly hold sway from organizational economics. He is also critical of the influential variant of technological determinism advocated by the business historian Alfred Chandler, whose work Perrow mines “for its scholarship and insights,” but criti cizes for its contradictions and lacunae. He also differentiates his interpretation from Marxist class and labour process arguments. Against the Marxist view he emphasizes that he is describing “a society of capitalist organizations (wherein the organizational form that capitalists came to use was determinant),” as opposed to “a society of capitalist organizations” (2002: 6). This means that unlike most Marxists, he is interested in the his torical possibilities of alternative variants of capitalism. According to Perrow's account, “there is no ruling class, but there are class interests among the organizational and finan cial elites” (2002: 197). But Perrow takes issue with the neoinstitutionalist account, whereby the corporate form is said to have spread by becoming taken-for-granted (Roy 1997), because this overlooks the challenges to corporations in the early twentieth centu Page 10 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History ry, especially the bloody strikes by resurgent labor, which were only suppressed by a com bination of state and private violence. In Manufacturing the Employee Jacques (1996) highlights the inadequate treat ment of history in mainstream organization studies textbooks, which he characterizes as “linear, progressive, teleological and truth-centered,” but he maintains that Critical or Marxist histories are “no less linear, progressive, teleological and truth-centered” (1996: 14–15). Jacques follows “the archaeological/genealogical approach of Foucault” (1996: 19) by going back in time until he locates a difference. One suggestion of such difference is found in Freeman Hunt's book Work and Wealth: Maxims for Merchants and Men of Business (1857), which lacks anything resembling what we would now recognize as “man agement knowledge,” yet was a good reflection of business “common sense” at the time (1996: 26). (p. 297)
Jacques maintains that: Somewhere between the 1857 publication of Maxims for Merchants and the 1913 publication of Andrew Carnegie's The Empire of Business, a new reality emerged, a new industrial common sense replaced Hunt's reality, erased any popular aware ness that it had ever existed and placed its logic in the realm of the nonsensible. (1996: 20–27) Jacques characterizes the “world of Freeman Hunt” as “Federalist” (1996: 39). Albeit with provi sos about periodization, Jacques maintains that Federalist society lasted from 1790 to 1870 (1996: 22). In Federalist society, Jacques argues, it was disreputable to be a “hireling for life.” But Federalist society was undermined in the US in the late nineteenth century as employee sta tus became more prevalent in the population, and workers had less chance of becoming indepen dent (1996: 48). Federalist society was displaced by Disciplinary society, a society of organiza tions, in which the respectability of being a loyal employee needed to be established.
From a Foucauldian standpoint Jacques is careful to hedge his historical claims. He makes the reasonable assertion that his “contextualizing of truth is not relativism,” since, “One can establish to most people's satisfaction that Freeman Hunt did or did not say thus-and-so on page 221 of Work and Wealth” (1996: 20). He shields his “contextualizing” from criticism by insisting that he is not presenting his own “story as superior or these others as ‘incorrect’” (1996: 15). He maintains that “Unlike both managerialist and criti cal histories, which attempt to tell the truth about organizations,” his own story “docu ments the development, not of organizations, but of knowledge about organiza tions” (1996: 19). This reverses the criticism of Braverman, and Marx, that they take the pronouncements of capitalist ideologues at face value. In other words Jacques analyzes the pronouncements of ideologues with the intention of glimpsing the worldview that in forms them. Unlike most history books, which cultivate an aura of realism and objective truth, Burrell's Pandemonium (1997) presents the reader with an odd and enticing assembly of topics and insights, ranging from witchcraft to the Holocaust, from a perspective that he calls retro-organization theory. Burrell privileges aesthetic over factual criteria in his Page 11 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History writing. Reading retro-organization theory is an experience which might lead us to ques tion what misadventures bureaucratic organizations (p. 298) might lead us into. In no sense could it be said that Burrell is subservient to historical “facts”. Indeed, following Nietzsche (and, according to some, Foucault), Burrell declares that “History is about lies not truth. It is a struggle for domination acted out in a play of wills” (1997: 21–2). He claims that in his quest to invigorate organization studies “as a branch of social theory” it may be necessary to “make history bend and groan” (1997: 5). Burrell takes considerable liberties with history, highlighting moral concerns about mod ern management. By far the most contentious of these is his discussion of the Holocaust. Burrell naively accepts Bauman's (1989) argument that the Final Solution was a bureau cratic solution (1997: 141–2), maintaining that it was relatively easy for bureaucratic ra tionality “to produce a system of physical extermination carried out in a dull, routinized way,” and that most of the perpetrators of genocide were more or less “normal” in psy chological terms (1997: 141–2). This view, combined with his misgivings about manage ment education, leads Burrell the conclusion that, “Few of our graduates today, had they been born in Germany fifty years ago, would not have taken part in the Holocaust in one way or another” (1997: 143). While Burrell's controversial historiography may have implications for organization stud ies, his interpretation of the Holocaust raises historiographical questions (Rowlinson and Carter 2002). Burrell relies almost exclusively on Bauman's highly partial and contested interpretation of the secondary literature on the Holocaust (Bauer 2002). As Hayden White (1992) argues, the Holocaust can only be examined through its representation in “competing narratives.” Bauman's monocausal explanation of the Holocaust in terms of an abstract concept, modernity, is a highly modernist constructionist account whose un critical acceptance in critical management studies is symptomatic of a wider failure to en gage with historiography even when a seemingly deconstructionist approach to history is taken.
Conclusion We have made the case that if the prevailing universalism and presentism is to be coun tered, history cannot simply be seen as a supplement, or integrated into mainstream man agement and organization studies. Instead an historical reorientation, or historic turn, is required. From a critical management perspective this implies a deconstructive, as op posed to a reconstructionist or constructionist approach to history. For the most part mainstream business and management history is locked into an empiricist reconstruction ist or constructionist approach and therefore from a critical management perspective could be said to require an historical reorientation. The move from labor process theory to critical management studies is reflected in alternative approaches to history that corre spond to an historic (p. 299) turn insofar as they represent a shift from constructionist to deconstructionist history. Like Perrow (2002), much historical writing in critical manage ment remains constructionist, simply substituting the concept of organization for the Page 12 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History Marxist concepts of capitalism and class. In contrast, Jacques (1996) and Burrell (1997) represent more deconstructive historical reorientations within critical management stud ies. If there is to be methodological reflection and experimentation in historical writing, then this will involve further engagement with the philosophy of history and historical theo rists such as Hayden White (1973, 1987), Paul Ricoeur (2004), David Carr (1986), and Deirdre McCloskey (1990). Carr's defence of narrative as the essence of human existence and consciousness in time stands at odds with the widely held view that narrative is an imposition on the part of the historian as narrator. This impositionalist view of narrative in history is generally accepted within management and organization studies, and seems to be equated, as it is more broadly amongst historians, with a critical perspective, so much so that Carr (1998) describes it as the received wisdom. But it is the received wis dom for a late-modernist constructionist approach which adheres to a notion that an em pirical truth can be revealed free from narrative. Deconstructionist approaches derived from White (1973) provide a license for an ironic return to narrative. Newton (2004) maintains that if we accept the point that history “is a story we tell,” and that “continuity and discontinuity are narrative devices, to be chosen for their storytelling virtues” (McCloskey 1990: 22), we are not compelled to choose between polarized posi tions that emphasize continuity or discontinuity.
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Critical Management and Organizational History MUNSLOW, A. (1997). Deconstructing History. London: Routledge. —— (2003). The New History. London: Pearson. Museum of Broadcast Communications (2008). http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/ htmlF/flintstones/flintstones.htm NEWTON, T. (1995). “Managing” Stress: Emotion and Power at Work. London: Sage. —— (2001). “Elias and Organization: Preface,” Organization, 8: 459–465. —— (2004). “From Freemasons to the Employee: Organization, History and Subjectivity,” Organizations Studies, 25: 1363–1387. OOI, C. S. (2002). “Persuasive Histories: Decentering, Recentering and the Emotional Crafting of the Past,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15: 606–621. PARKER, M. (2002). “Contesting Histories: Unity and Division in a Building Society,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15/3: 15589–15605. PERROW, C. (1986). Complex Organizations, 3rd edn. New York: Random House. —— (2002). Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. PORTER, M. (1990). The Competitive Advantage of Nations and Their Firms. New York: The Free Press. RICOEUR, PAUL (2004). Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ROWLINSON, M. (1997). Organisations and Institutions: Perspectives in Economics and Sociology. Basingstoke: Macmillan. —— (2001). “Business History and Organization Theory,” Journal of Industrial History, 4: 1–23. —— (2004). “Historical Analysis of Company Documentation,” in C. Cassell and G. Symon (eds.), Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research. London: Sage, 301–311. —— and C. CARTER (2002). “Foucault and History in Organization Studies,” Organiza tion, 9: 527–547. ROY, W. G. (1997). Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. SAVAGE, M. (1998). “Discipline, Surveillance and the ‘Career’: Employment on the Great Western Railway 1833–1914,” in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds.), Foucault, Manage ment and Organization Theory. London: Sage, 65–92. Page 17 of 19
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Critical Management and Organizational History SHENHAV, Y. (1995). “From Chaos to Systems: The Engineering Foundation of Organiza tion Theory, 1879–1932,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 40: 557–585. —— (1999). Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. STAGER JACQUES, R. (2006). “History, Historiography and Organization Studies: The Challenge and the Potential,” Management and Organizational History, 1/1: 31–50. STEEL, M. (1999). “History to make a future,” Socialist Worker 13 November, Issue 1672. TAYLOR, B. C., and FREER, B. (2002). “Containing the Nuclear Past: The Politics of His tory and Heritage at the Hanford Plutonium Works,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15/6: 563–588. TOSH, J. (1991). The Pursuit of History. 2nd edn. London: Longman. TOWNLEY, B. (2002). “Managing with Modernity,” Organization, 9: 549–573. (p. 303)
TSOUKAS, H. (2007). “Introduction to the Forum on ‘The Future of Critical Man
agement Studies: A Paleo-Marxist View,’” Organization Studies 28/9: 1309–1311. ÜSDIKEN, B. and KIESER, A. (2004). “Introduction: History in Organisation Studies,” Business History, 46/3: 321–330. WALSH, W. G. (1967). An Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 3rd edn. London: Hutchinson. WHITE, H. (1973). Metahistory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (1987). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (1992). “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,” in S. Firedlander (ed.), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. —— (1995). “Response to Arthur Marwick,” Journal of Contemporary History, 30: 233– 246. WREN, D. A. (2005). The History of Management Thought. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ZALD, M. (1993). “Organization Studies as a Scientific and Humanistic Enterprise: To wards a Reconceptualization of the Foundations of the Field,” Organization Science, 4: 513–528. —— (2002). “Spinning Disciplines: Critical Management Studies in the Context of the Transformation of Management Education,” Organization, 9: 365–385.
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Critical Management and Organizational History
Michael Rowlinson
Michael Rowlinson is Professor of Organization Studies at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London. He has published a series of arti cles on the tensions between history and organization theory in journals such as Busi ness History, Organization Studies, and Organization. He has analyzed the genre of corporate history in an article for the Journal of Organizational Change Management, and examined how organizations come to terms with the dark side of their history in an article for Critical Perspective on Accounting. He is the Editor of Management & Organizational History. Roy Stager Jacques
Roy Stager Jacques (Massey University, New Zealand) has a primary interest in the management of knowledge intensive work. One strand of that interest led to his re searching the origins and foundational conditions of management knowledge which were published in Manufacturing the Employee (London, Sage, 1996). He presently co-edits the Sage journal, Management & Organizational History. Charles Booth
Charles Booth is Reader in Strategy and Organization at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England. He was a founding editor of the journal Manage ment & Organizational History. His present research interests concern issues at the intersections of history, heritage, and memory, in and of technologies, organizations, and societies.
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference”
Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Differ ence” Karen Lee Ashcraft The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Human Resource Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0015
Abstract and Keywords Recent theoretical developments challenge the ‘gender and diversity’ label. Emerging critical scholarship on ‘intersectionality’ underscores inevitable interplay among aspects of difference and suggests the profound consequences of treating single identity cate gories, such as gender, in isolation. This article seeks to extend these developments in the context of critical management studies by considering how relevant scholarship has thus far ‘made a difference’ (i.e., how it matters and how it constructs difference) and how else it might do so. It begins by asking what has been learnt from three decades of critical ex ploration in gender and organizing. The article then weaves current gender claims into conversation with other aspects of difference in an effort to stimulate research focused on the complex intersections at which people actually live and work. Keywords: CMS, gender, diversity, intersectionality, single identity, critical scholarship
Introduction: The Politics of a Name “GENDER and diversity”—the label is commonly used by management scholars to cap ture issues pertaining to relations of power: gender, race-ethnicity, nation, sexuality, phys ical ability, and a short list of other factors deemed relevant. It is an interesting moniker for a community schooled in social construction theories and sensitive to the politics of discourse. For instance, the label accentuates gender as a primary difference deserving separate attention, detaches gender from diversity (with “and”), then lumps all other forms of difference into a single code (“diversity”), all the while implying that shared in terests, parallel patterns, or some sort of likeness must bind gender issues with diversity matters … or why else would they appear in the same category?
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” In relation to critical management studies (CMS), the “gender and diversity” moniker be comes especially telling. The Academy of Management, for example, divides these units, now hosting CMS and “Gender and Diversity in Organizations” (GDO) as separate divi sions. To a casual observer, this configuration implies little (p. 305) if any connection be tween the two communities; indeed, it situates “gender and diversity” as a kind of topical island. To some extent, there is a kind of candor in that. Even now, anthologies represent ing state-of-the-art work in organization and management theory tend to relegate matters of difference to single or at least separate chapters. However reasonable the supporting logic, the usual effect is that “gender and diversity” issues remain safely contained, there by easing collective anxiety about neglecting difference while insulating other areas from confronting such neglect. For the CMS community, the “gender and diversity” label serves two other noteworthy functions. First, the label implies considerable work examining differences other than gender, when in fact gender has drawn the overwhelming majority of “diversity” interest in CMS. The literature reflects little sustained attention to other forms of difference, in their own right or as they intersect with gender. Critical studies of race, for example, re main sporadic in CMS research more than fifteen years after Nkomo's (1992) provocative essay. In this sense, “… and diversity” can be read more like a catch-all category that cap tures a handful of critical studies addressed to miscellaneous differences. Second, gender and feminist research is often cast both as vital to the CMS agenda and as a narrow sub set of broader CMS concerns (Ashcraft and Mumby 2004). But who does not have some kind of stake in the “special interests” of gender? Recent theoretical developments challenge the “gender and diversity” label along these lines. Emerging critical scholarship on “intersectionality” underscores inevitable inter play among aspects of difference and suggests the profound consequences of treating sin gle identity categories like gender in isolation (Allen 2003). I seek to extend these devel opments in the context of CMS by considering how relevant scholarship has thus far “made a difference” (i.e., how it matters and how it constructs difference) and how else it might do so. The chapter begins by asking what we have learned from three decades of critical exploration in gender and organizing. I then weave current gender claims into conversation with other aspects of difference in an effort to stimulate research focused on the complex intersections at which people actually live and work.
Ten Ways Gender Matters to Organization, Management, and Work Several reviews of critical studies in gender and organization have appeared in recent years, reflecting the predominance of gender in the CMS “diversity” literature (e.g., Calás and Smircich 1996; Mumby 1996; Ely and Meyerson 2000; (p. 306) Ashcraft and Mumby 2004). By comparison, reviews of race-conscious research are rare and typically mourn the paucity of available work or the limited ways in which race has been treated (Cox and Nkomo 1990; Allen 1995), whereas reviews of scholarship on other “diversity” facets are Page 2 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” all but absent from CMS. This section takes up with the prevalence of gender to ask: Af ter thirty years of investigation, what is said with confidence about how gender matters to organizational life? I identify ten common claims about how gender “makes a differ ence.” The discussion considers not only supporting research, but also research and prag matic considerations challenging each claim. In response to these complications, I period ically revise and redirect the claims. Departing from available literature reviews, the dis cussion is organized not in terms of theories, methods, or specific lines of inquiry, but in terms of customary “organizational” activities: interacting, feeling and desiring, organiz ing and institutionalizing, dividing and doing labor, and depicting work. By now, the gender literature in management, work, and organization studies is far too vast for any essay to do it justice. I offer instead a broad-reaching overview that high lights “gender and diversity” scholarship closely aligned with CMS agendas. Although lit erature boundaries are inevitably fluid, the discussion includes work outside of what some might consider CMS “proper.” Gender and feminist organization scholars have not always engaged CMS audiences, yet their work is deeply relevant to considering future directions for critical research on “gender and diversity.”
Interacting: Authoritative Communication and Other Contested Ten dencies Claim One Gender differences in communication orientation, habit, and skill produce a “culture clash” and related interpersonal misunderstandings; and since many organiza tions privilege masculine norms of managerial and professional communication, women and feminized men tend to face systemic disadvantage. Among the most prolific literatures on gender in organizations is research on communica tion styles. The core idea is that women and men perceive the purpose of communication differently; thus, they approach interaction from divergent stances (e.g., men focused on efficient outcomes, women on relational process), and from these follow a host of differ ences in communication habits, as well as gaps in aptitude and skill acquisition (e.g., women may struggle with assertiveness, men with self-disclosure). Organizations are seen as a particularly consequential site of gender difference, as evident in the evolution of Deborah Tannen's popular work—from You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990) to Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work (1994). Most perti nent to management, the relation between language use and authority has drawn the most (p. 307) attention; commonly studied communication practices include leadership, conflict, compliance-gaining, teamwork, and self-promotion. The rise of so-called feminine leadership in the last fifteen years illustrates key trends in this literature. Initial enthusiasm over “women's ways” of leading or “the female advan tage” waned in light of lukewarm support for gender differences. In a recent example, Cliff, Langton, and Aldrich (2005) demonstrate how men and women entrepreneurs re flect “the talk but not the walk” of gendered managerial styles. Recognizing such empiri cal variation, scholars began to speak in less essentialist terms like the “feminization of Page 3 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” management.” Even so, slippage from claims of gender symbolism to those of actual be havior remained common, and feminist critics began to reveal contradictions in the gen der difference frame (e.g., Calás and Smircich 1993; Fondas 1997; Billing and Alvesson 2000). For instance, feminization arguably facilitates a more inviting climate for women leaders in management practice and theory; but “the feminine” as characterized in the lit erature leans heavily on stereotypical images of white, middle-class, heterosexual women's emotional and relational sensitivities, serving up reasons to exclude women from “tougher” management roles. Fervor for feminine leadership also induces for men a “double-bind” dilemma long faced by women managers: conflicted expectations for the si multaneous performance of “good” leadership and “appropriate” gender. A binary model of gendered leadership thus neglects the historical and political evolution of difference: Cultural notions of men's and women's styles vary widely across time and space and in re lation to other aspects of identity; and gendered styles are rarely valued equally. Such cri tiques question the wisdom of embracing gendered styles as we know them, exposing ironic effects not easily deemed “progress.” Although most of the literature on gendered managerial communication cannot be called “critical”, it generated at least two palpable effects relevant to CMS. First, it fueled popu lar interest in gender differences at work, such that “Mars and Venus” of the organization continue to pervade popular consciousness. Second, it laid grounds for the feminist claim that institutionalized norms privilege a kind of masculinity, engendering not only interper sonal conflict at work, but also systemic barriers for many women and marginalized men (Murphy and Zorn 1996). Indeed, to achieve visibility and legitimacy in management stud ies, early feminist arguments summoned a largely conventional gender difference frame (e.g., Marshall 1993; Buzzanell 1994). Although CMS scholars today are rightfully held accountable to critiques of that frame, it deserves ample credit for paving the way toward another approach to gender difference, considered next. Claim Two Expectations for gender difference are institutionalized in workplaces and ac tivities, regardless of whether gender appears relevant to the task at hand. Specific ex pectations and the range of available responses will vary by situation, but members are always held accountable to negotiate “reasonable” gender performances. Concurring that organizations are a critical site in which to examine gender, this literature takes a skeptical stance on difference. Rather than take the phenomenon of gendered communication styles at face value, it asks how binary styles appear self-evi dent, or how we “do” gender to make it seem like we “have” gender. Not an internal prop erty expressed socially, gender is conceived as an ongoing, interactive accomplishment that “proves” the truth (and sometimes, the fallacy) of difference (West and Zimmerman 1987). The “reality” of the gender binary is re-framed as a precarious cultural fact with resilient grip: Although it sustains constant challenge, the binary is preserved through identity work tailored to situational demands. From this view, gender differences like “feminine” and “masculine” leadership become denaturalized and un-frozen, exposed as habitual performances amid contexts rife with demand and possibility. In other words, in stitutions of work (i.e., constitutive rules guiding conduct in organizations and occupa (p. 308)
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” tions) intermingle with the institutions of gender (i.e., constitutive rules guiding the con duct of sexed bodies) to create situated behavioral scripts; and people collaborate to im provise these plots in more and less expected ways (Gherardi 1994). Relevant to CMS, or ganizations hold managers accountable to lead not as generic people but as women and men. Gherardi (1995), for example, explains how hedging criticism from a woman manag er is better understood not as evidence of her feminine style, but as a response to clash ing expectations for both aggressive and deferential communication; likewise, colleagues reading her response as regrettably “soft” yet “typical for women” illustrates collabora tion in doing gender. The doing gender approach thus brings a sharpened critical consciousness to gendered management studies, as well as ties to contemporary theories of discourse and social con struction with traction in CMS. Although historical studies of doing gender at work re main rare (for sample exceptions, see Ashcraft and Mumby 2004; Mills 2006), the ap proach theorizes difference as a historically and contextually variable formation that en twines gender, race, and class (West and Fenstermaker 1995). Refusing the usual view of difference as an individual, cognitive phenomenon, it calls out the micro-politics of insti tutions whereby difference becomes an obvious “fact.” This is more than a theoretical quibble; it signals the dangers of strategically managing gender differences and promotes creative identity work that fractures the “truth” of binary difference in ordinary interac tion. Despite such transformative potential, recent critics note that studies of “undoing gender” remain rare and invite more attention to resistance—asking, for example, when and how gender is effectively ruptured or made less relevant, or whether difference in evitably entails inequality (Deutsch 2007). Despite disagreements, and in light of recent critiques and reformulations, the two per spectives on interacting reviewed here—communication styles and doing gender—can be merged toward guiding insights for future CMS research: Proposed Revision People exhibit gendered communication tendencies, but rather than resulting from over-determined impulses, these are the pliable products of maneuvering interaction in situations laced with institutionalized expectations. Specific managerial contexts can be gendered in diverse ways and always entail other factors as well. Hence, a gender frame for analysis is insufficient alone, and decontextualized gen der claims merit extreme caution. (p. 309)
Feeling and Desiring: Spectres of the “Private” in “Public” Organiza tion Claim Three Conventional organizational forms and theories—especially those linked to bureaucracy—are gendered as they privilege a model of rationality defined against emo tionality. Simultaneously, many organizations rely on emotional work to achieve order, and this labor remains disproportionately associated with women/femininities and often devalued.
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” Feminist critiques have played a major role in bringing emotionality forward in CMS, par ticularly by challenging the bureaucratic ideal of impersonal member relations. Still the most influential organizational form, bureaucracy aims to depersonalize power through “legal-rational authority,” which shuns emotional, personal considerations in the applica tion of rules. In this way, bureaucracy excludes capricious influences on management. This “objective” model of rationality is predicated on the repression of feeling, casting emotions as fearsome, chaotic forces that compromise public justice (e.g., Bologh 1990). Because emotionality is historically aligned with the “private” sphere of femininity, such a model is profoundly gendered, breeding institutional distrust of women and things femi nine. That said, management theory and practice routinely fail to realize the ideal of bureau cratic impersonality. Not only can feeling never be eradicated from organization life, it is often regarded as beneficial to organizational functioning. Popular management theories —human relations, human resource, and organizational culture, for instance—have long urged cohesive bonds, self-disclosure, emotional support, and harnessing passion to build morale and strengthen performance (Barley and Kunda 1992). Additionally, managers of ten rely on the commodification of feeling to meet organizational goals—a point illustrat ed by empirical studies of “emotion labor,” the managed expression and suppression of feeling at work (Putnam and Mumby 1993). These studies indicate that the emotion labor of customer appeasement has been largely relegated to women (e.g., Hochschild 1983), and feminist critiques observe the frequent devaluation of such work. Acker (1990), for example, explains how job hierarchies ascribe rationality and difficulty to managerial tasks while denying the complexity of work deemed emotional, like customer service or secretarial labor. (p. 310)
The gender and emotion literature resists framing women as emotional communi
cators who should repress their sentiments or, conversely, channel their unique emotional talents toward organizational gain. Instead, the literature shows how both prescriptions erroneously target individuals, naturalize binary difference, and overlook the influence of systemic pressures. The literature thus enriches the doing gender approach outlined above by specifying conflicted institutional expectations: As bureaucratic organizing ren ders feeling dubious and necessary, it sparks a host of dilemmas for women and men. Through this lens, gender equality requires revising organizational forms like bureaucrat ic rationality, not retraining deficient individuals. Although feminist scholars have theo rized alternative ways to organize emotion (e.g., Mumby and Putnam 1992), empirical studies of implementing feminist forms suggest new challenges that also yield some dis empowering effects (e.g., Morgen 1994; Martin, Knopoff, and Beckman 1998; Ashcraft 2000). Further complicating feminist critiques, there is reason to question whether con temporary organizing is incompatible with valuing emotion. Consider the shift toward “pro-feminine” management discourse noted above: If nothing else, the feminization of leadership through servant, coaching, and other “post-heroic” models holds managers ac countable to emotional competence; it has become unfashionable to describe one's lead ership as impervious to relational concerns. Page 6 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” Claim Four Sexuality is marked as a “private” matter with no place in “public” organiza tions, yet many organizations strive to manage sexuality for organizational gain. Often seen as more sexual, women's bodies tend to appear both disruptive yet valuable to orga nizational goals. As with emotionality, bureaucratic rationality relegates sexuality to “private” life, yet or ganizations routinely manifest and depend on the presence of sexuality and related ten sions (Williams, Giuffre, and Dellinger 1999). Members experience desire and sexualized banter, which managers may even promote to energize camaraderie (Gherardi 1995). Management relies on sexuality in many other ways—as a companion to emotion labor, for example, illustrated by wifely secretaries or the seduction endemic to much service work (Pringle 1989; Wendt 1995). Again, the bulk of this indispensable yet often devalued labor is performed by women, and even those in elite managerial and professional jobs are susceptible to appearing more sexualized. Hence, women across the hierarchy often adopt and are subjected to bodily discipline, ranging from the management of “profes sional” self-display (Trethewey 1999) to pregnancy and maternity issues (Martin 1990; Ashcraft 1999) to violent control practices like sexual harassment. Attention to abusive forms of sexuality—chiefly, sexual harassment—continues to pervade the literature. Not surprisingly, feminist organization scholars are more ambivalent about sexuality than emotionality. Few recommend the harmonious integration of the former as they do the latter; many echo bureaucratic rationality by urging managerial suppression of sexuality at work, framed as dangerous for (p. 311) women (e.g., Gutek 1989). While such scholarship has made important strides in theorizing the management of sexual vio lence (e.g., Clair 1993a, 1993b), the reigning coercive frame downplays the possibility of empowering desire at work as well as the taboo relation of power and pleasure. Some CMS work puts these vital topics on the table (e.g., Burrell 1992; Brewis and Grey 1994; Gherardi 1995), yet even when stretching the coercive frame, most critical accounts nor malize heterosexuality. Recent work on “queering” management shows how heteronorma tivity traps managers and critical scholars alike in binary gender discourse (e.g., “femi nine” and “masculine” leadership), obscuring alternative ways to configure difference (e.g., Roper 1996; Parker 2002; Rich 2006). Like emotionality, the sexuality literature reveals institutional expectations that create dilemmas for interaction: women maneuvering managerial and professional identities amid hyper-visible bodies, for instance. Again, the resulting prescription for change en tails systemic revision alongside innovative interaction, and the discussion here provokes some useful future directions for claims three and four: Proposed Revision The split of masculinized “public” from feminized “private” is a cru cial site of gender oppression. Bureaucratic rationality is a primary perpetrator of this split, which can cultivate the exclusion, disparagement, and exploitation of feminized bod ies and activities at work. However, the management of emotionality and sexuality is rife with contradiction and situational variation. Two crucial steps away from oversimplified
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” accounts are engaging desire and pleasure at work while “queering” management analy sis.
Organizing and Institutionalizing: Systems as Gendered Agents Claim Five Gender relations are embedded in organizational forms like bureaucracy, which serve as institutional carriers of inequality. Such forms are especially powerful be cause they appear to supply gender-neutral “maps” for effective human organizing. As illustrated by the feminist critiques of bureaucracy supporting claims three and four, a few main ideas drive claim five: Firstly, organizational forms function as agents, as they configure members and activities, norms and values, systems of incentive and discipline, notions of fair and just relations, and so on. Secondly, forms are gendered actors, since the arrangements they promote reflect subtle gender assumptions. Thirdly, forms are po tent carriers of gender relations precisely because they appear as neutral templates; that is, they lead members to act and interpret in gendered ways but to see this as simply “the way things work.” Interest in gendered organizational forms was mobilized by Acker's (1990) influential es say on “a theory of gendered organizations” and related projects (p. 312) (e.g., Kanter 1977; Ferguson 1984). Scholars began to shift from studying gender in organizations to exploring the gender of organization, or how abstract systems are imbued with gender in ways that precipitate inequality (for a review of this literature, see Britton 2000). Abun dant CMS research cropped up around this shift, adapting more rigid structural analyses in discourse-friendly ways that depict organizational forms as scripts for interaction—as, for instance, “meta-communication” about gender (Mills and Chiaramonte 1991) or “gen dered discourse communities” (Mumby 1996). In this sense, the literature on gendered forms can be read as another close companion to the doing gender approach. The former emphasizes the meso-level of enduring institutional features; the latter highlights the mi cro-level at which they are maintained; but both generally embrace this dialectical in sight: Gendered institutions influence daily interaction and are constantly remade—usual ly reproduced, but possibly transformed—in the process. The literature on gendered organizational forms drives home what the three preceding claims imply: Meaningful change requires more than creative individuals and interac tions; it also necessitates new institutional forms to support such innovation. Due to its enduring legacy, bureaucracy takes by far the hardest hit in this literature, as evident in the critiques reviewed earlier (Savage and Witz 1992). Feminist scholars typically turn to counter-bureaucratic alternatives (Ianello 1992); but empirical studies indicate the diffi culty of sustaining such systems in practice (Kleinman 1996). In response, several femi nist authors acknowledge the utility of bureaucratic management systems for accomplish ing collective goals amid current cultural and market forces (Billing 1994; Britton 2000; Ashcraft 2006b). Exploring productive hybrids of form (e.g., Maguire and Mohtar 1994; Ashcraft 2001, 2006b), such work cautions against categorical rejection of bureaucracy,
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” technocracy, or other prevailing forms, since they may take countless shapes in practice (Billing 1994; Britton 1997). Claim Six “Professional” designation rests on a historical formation of elite masculinity that simultaneously denies and depends on labor associated with women. Professionaliza tion remains a gendered campaign for occupational mobility, as the sexed bodies attempt ing to professionalize and the gender coding of the work influence the form and outcome of professionalization projects. While the label “professional” has many variants and meanings, claim six highlights the designation of “professions” as a privileged class of knowledge-based work institutional ized in educational, legal, and organizational arenas and etched in public consciousness (Abbott 1988). Typically, studies of gender and professions examine the experiences of “token” women infiltrating higher-level, male-dominated work, such as engineering, avia tion, and computer science (e.g., Davey and Davidson 2000; Jorgenson 2002). Certainly, the voluminous women-in-management literature may be read in this regard (e.g., Burke and McKeen 1992; Fagenson 1993). Much of this work adopts a liberal feminist lens: Ac cess and (p. 313) advancement barriers are the primary object of critique, and full integra tion of women the main goal, while “profession” itself falls off the critical radar. More radical critical perspectives challenge professional status, including that often as cribed to managers, as a secure, inherent property of work. Davies (1996) and Hearn (1982), for example, show how preoccupation with women's exclusion from the profes sions obscures how women have long been included, “enabling” professions in a dual sense: by performing the labor that supports professional—client exchanges while serv ing up the lowly foil against which professionals are defined. Through this lens, profes sional privilege is not an inherent right of certain lines of work; it is a political formation premised in part on association with gendered bodies, physical and symbolic (Witz 1992; Kirkham and Loft 1993). Far from determined, the complex relation between body and profession is “up for grabs” in particular historical moments and work contexts—a fertile site for empirical study (Ashcraft 2008). Such research shifts the motivating question from “How can we enhance women's presence in professional and managerial work?” to “(How) does gender factor into the presumed nature and value of work in the first place?” Just as organizational forms like bureaucracy appear to advocate gender-neutral manage ment, so professional designation seems an impartial assessment of intrinsic occupational character and worth. Politicizing these taken-for-granted institutions is a pressing critical task, but this review suggests key qualifiers for future CMS research: Proposed Revision Gender inequality is not simply imported by biased individuals into neutral organizations and occupations; neither is it historical residue soon to fade. Rather, gender remains a common organizing principle of contemporary work institu tions. Because this can materialize in manifold ways that always reflect factors beyond gender, claims about the gendered destinies of abstract forms—like bureaucracy or pro fession—are best tempered by situational consideration. Page 9 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” The remaining claims elaborate this insight and develop the scope of critique beyond the boundaries of the workplace, as initiated in the discussion of professions.
Dividing and Doing Labor: Gender Difference Organizes “Work” Claim Seven Work and family are socially constructed and materially divided such that the paid labor of production is valued over the unpaid labor of reproduction traditionally linked to women/femininity. Women's association with “labors of love” remains integral to the logic of minimizing their managerial contributions. Struggles to balance and integrate public and private life worlds affect most people, and these struggles tend to play out in gendered ways. Claims three and four regarding emotionality and sexuality converge to highlight the public—private split as a consequential gender formation. Claim seven shifts from ex clusive attention to the “public” sphere of work and examines its relation to the “private” life world. The separation of these arenas provides a central frame through which we de marcate and experience life activities. Dominant discourse historically defines the public arena as the legitimate site of production and politics and the turf of masculinity, whereas emotion, intimacy, sexuality, reproduction, family, and domestic issues are assigned to the private realm, the terrain of women (Mills and Chiaramonte 1991). In this discourse, work connotes paid employment in the public sphere; contrasting “work,” tasks conducted for one's domestic life are usually deemed voluntary acts of care. “Work” can thus be read as an ideological construct that serves to erase and strip of economic value privatized, femi nized, reproductive labor. (p. 314)
The construction of private labor as non-work engenders tangible consequences. In the public realm, it casts skills associated with the private as simple and intuitive (rather than complex and demanding) and fuels the presumption that women's “labors of love” natu rally diminish their managerial contributions (e.g., Acker 1990; Martin 1990). Conse quences abound in the private realm too, and a wealth of work/family “conflict” and “bal ance” research documents the resulting strained relations between public and private spheres. Although much of this literature stems from a psychological orientation, it also contains ample critical analyses of gender dynamics at the cusp of the public-private rela tion, such as differential domestic duties and career paths (Hochschild 1989; Kirby et al. 2003). Increasingly, this work acknowledges that public-private tensions beset men as well, and that—while such pressures remain especially vexing for women—important as pects of gendered domestic relations are changing, albeit unevenly (Alvesson and Billing in press). As observed of sexuality above, the striking heteronormativity of this scholar ship constrains our capacity to transcend binary analyses of “men and women” in “public and private.” Claim Eight Tasks, jobs, and occupations are organized by gender. Feminized work tends to mirror women's roles in the “private” sphere, whereas masculinized work ranges from the physicality of manual labor to the disembodied “knowledge work” of mental labor. Aided by colleagues and gendered institutions, certain men and masculinities tend to oc Page 10 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” cupy the most valued work and rise to the top of managerial hierarchies, even in occupa tions that appear gender-integrated. An enormous interdisciplinary literature is devoted to the gender segregation of work (in the paid, public sense). Arguably, the topic was more popular among CMS scholars prior to rising interest in gendered organizational forms (e.g., Collinson and Knights 1986; Morgan and Knights 1991), when the tide turned toward firm-level analyses. However, studies of the gender division and hierarchy of work are finding new momentum in CMS (for a fuller account, see Ashcraft 2006a). (p. 315) Abundant research examines so-called women's and men's work. The former highlights recurring challenges in feminized labor, such as expectations for deference, emotional and sexualized service, and many women's ambivalence about such roles (Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman 2001). Although newer, studies of “men's work” have quickly grown to consider a range of occupations, including working-class labor, managerial and professional work, and other male-dominated jobs that blur manual and mental labor (Jackson 1999). Although much of this work preserves the gender binary by studying feminized and masculinized work separately, its findings of remarkable diversity within gender groups shatters any neat dualism. Nonetheless, the binary persists as well in research on crossing the gendered labor di vide. Studies of men entering female-dominated work and women entering male-dominat ed work have been conducted in relative isolation, obscuring some vital comparisons (e.g., Spencer and Podmore 1987; Williams 1995). Read together, these studies demon strate different effects depending on who is crossing over; a streamlined way to capture the gist might be: “glass ceilings” for women in men's work, “glass escalators” for men in women's work (Williams 1992). To be sure, actual cases are far more complicated and contingent, hinging on local pressures and the interactive identity work through which people respond. Indeed, critical analyses of the tactics through which people manage these pressures are strong allies of the doing gender approach, for they poignantly show contextual accountability to gender norms, as well as the energy devoted to normalizing “deviant” gender performances (e.g., Lupton 2000). From this work, we learn that cross ing the gender binary can prove far from transformative, yielding re-segregation and more of the same. These streams of research funnel toward one of the most resounding conclusions in the gender literature: In different ways, to different degrees, and in response to different cul tural, political, and material realities, work is divided along gender lines around the globe, within and across occupations and organizations. Repeatedly, the better and most valued jobs appear to be reserved for certain clusters of men/masculinities (which also means that many men perform undesirable work in the middle and bottom ranks); and this occurs with the help of men and women colleagues, managers, and gendered institu tions. Few statistical analyses offer hope for gender integration and equity on the near horizon (Jacobs 1999; Charles and Grusky 2004). Precise findings change in accord with national and regional setting, and scholars vary in the optimism and gloom with which they regard the gendered state of so-called new economies (McCall 2005). Overall, when
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” it comes to who performs what jobs at what worth, the modest reshuffling continues, while relatively little seems to change. Feminist organization scholars have also examined gender in relation to other work for mations, such as career, entrepreneurship, and other contemporary shifts in social con tracts and employment relations (e.g., Buzzanell 2000; Gill and Ganesh 2007). Altogether, scholarship on dividing and doing work suggests the need for a daunting yet crucial ad justment: Proposed Revision The gendered division of labor—between public work and private labors of love, across and within occupations and organizations, and over the life course—is a pivotal site for the reproduction and transformation of oppressive gender re lations. At the same time, buried under claims of the omnipresence of gender segregation is a wealth of empirical variation indicating that binary constructs—like “men” and “women,” “masculine” and “feminine”—are inadequate for understanding the organiza tion of work in and beyond organizations. (p. 316)
Depicting Labor: Cultural Representations of Gender at Work Claim Nine The gender—work relation is also organized in public discourse and popular culture, where representations of work intermingle to offer guides for identity and rela tional formation and to naturalize certain institutions and organizational forms. Further engaging the organization of work beyond physical sites of labor, several critical scholars have begun to examine how cultural representations of work and organization— for example, in film, television, advertising, museums, and the popular business press— employ gender to shape the broader social imagination about what more and less valued work looks like, who “naturally” belongs in what jobs, what constitutes a manager or pro fession/al, and so forth. Still in relative infancy, this critical enterprise explores discursive formations as they take shape in textual fragments, such as media portrayals of executive women (Shuler 2000), movies depicting a crisis of professional masculinity (Ashcraft and Flores 2003), or literature and film imag(in)ing the relation between women and technol ogy (Czarniawska and Gustavsson 2008). Several critics have also undertaken studies of the historical evolution of gendered work formations, such as transformations in domi nant discourses of manliness amid shifting political economies and labor arrangements (e.g., Rotundo 1993; Bederman 1995). This critical enterprise assumes not only that societal narratives about gender and work thread through varied cultural sites and texts, but also that these narratives matter in everyday life—that they furnish substance and direction for identity formation; impress on us the “immovable” realities of management, bureaucracy, and professions; and offer templates for making sense of “new” work developments. In short, the legitimacy of this critical work rests on the presumption that ordinary people take up cultural representa tions as they go about living, although how people do so remains largely implicit, with some exceptions (e.g., Holmer Nadesan and Trethewey 2000; Ashcraft 2007). The emerg ing literature has thus drawn some criticism for its relative detachment from real people Page 12 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” and the institutional, political, economic, and embodied circumstances they inhabit (Cloud 2001). Nonetheless, by demonstrating the organizing functions of “extra-organiza tional” texts, this work calls attention to the importance of intertextuality across cultural sites, exposing the gendered construction of management in arenas once outside the scope of CMS analysis. Claim Ten Critical reflexivity is essential because (critical) organization studies and scholars participate in the cultural organization of gender and work as they repre sent knowledge through scientific discourse. (p. 317)
Another representational arena attracting critical attention is scholarship itself. Scholars interrogate how the production of knowledge about management, organization, and work reproduces gendered assumptions, since the “concepts, explanations, modes of thought, and relevant questions used by organizational researchers are congruent with the every day ways of thinking of managers” (Acker 1992: 249). Generally speaking, “mainstream” management scholarship perpetuates the impression that organizations are gender-neu tral systems, that organizational research is conducted through an impartial scientific eye, that feminized bodies and issues naturally entail special needs to be managed, and so on. By producing knowledge that supports the status quo, “researchers and theorists are part of the relations of ruling” (Acker 1992: 249). In response, critics have decon structed gendered subtexts in several aspects of organization studies, such as particular areas of theory like career (Marshall 1989) or management, leadership, and executive succession (Calás and Smircich 1991; Fondas 1997; Ashcraft 1999); scholarly writing and representational strategies (Calás 1992); and research methodology (Bell 1999). Through this lens, organizational scholarship falls from its observational perch above or outside social life and becomes another branch of cultural discourse that organizes work through gendered assumptions and practices. Researchers and academic knowledge, crit ical and otherwise, cease to be an innocent mirror and become instead culpable agents. As Calás and Smircich (1992: 222–223) put it, “Who is watching the watchers? … Shouldn't we also focus our attention on the social consequences of our own practices— organizational research and theorizing?” Reflexive critique is especially important be cause scholarship cloaks the politics of knowledge in a vocabulary of scientific impartiali ty with such social traction, it is difficult to crack. Similar to bureaucracy and profession in this way, gendered scholarly representations draw strength from their gender-neutral appearance. Stripping away that facade is therefore a vital critical task. Overall, research on the cultural depiction of work turns our attention from discourse in or of organizations to discourse about them, or how people struggle over the meaning of gender, management, and work beyond organizational boundaries. Because this scholar ship directly implicates the role of CMS in constructing “gender and diversity” at work, a reflexive pause might prove useful: Proposed Revision The gender—work relation is organized well beyond the workplace, particularly in public discourse, popular culture, and scholarly research. Mindful that we inhabit a work community that participates in this political process, it may be time to look Page 13 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” “in here” instead of mostly “out there”—to take stock of “gender and diversity” relations in the immediate context of CMS.
Beyond Gender and Diversity: How Else Might We “Make a Difference?” (p. 318)
In the spirit of the final revision, this chapter began by exploring our own politics of rep resentation, specifically the terms used to depict areas of study and relations among them. Returning to that reflexive mood, I re-read the ten gender claims through a more intersectional lens that asks: What happens to extant gender knowledge when we take se riously other pivotal ways of marking difference, such as race, sexuality, and class?
Ten Ways Gender Matters: Intersectional Subtexts The gender knowledge produced in and around CMS tends to universalize the experi ences, perspectives, and interests of mostly white, heterosexual, professional, Western men and women—a profile that also coincides with the dominant composition of the CMS community. Critics of gender research on communication differences (claim one) levy this charge directly, but it also applies to work that holds doing gender (claim two) as our principal accountability to social difference. The gender research on feeling and desiring at work (claims three and four) largely omits how emotionality is also coded, and bodies also sexualized, in terms of class, race, and heterosexuality. Twenty years after the advent of gendered organizational analysis, critiques of organizational form (claim five) continue to sidestep Acker's (1990: 154) query as to whether organizations are as raced as they are gendered. Likewise, gendered analyses of the professions (claim six) routinely over look how race, class, and nation are invoked alongside gender to craft “civilized” profes sion/als (Ashcraft and Flores 2003; Cheney and Ashcraft 2007). Inquiry into the division of paid public “work” from unpaid private “labors of love” (claim seven) neglects how women of color and/or limited economic means have long performed paid domestic labor for white, financially privileged families. These race and class relations, entrenched in the contemporary “outsourcing” of domestic duties, are all but erased by a gender-only frame on the public-private split (Glenn 1994; Rollins 1997). Research on the gendered division and hierarchy of labor in the “public” sphere (claim eight) provides an especially provocative example of the consequences of treating gender in isolation from other dimensions of difference. By and large, the gender and race segre gation of labor have been measured independently, and scholars continue to maintain that gender segregation is more pervasive than racial segregation (Charles and Grusky 2004). To what extent might this claim and the impressive statistics marshaled to prove it rest on the fact that gender is still operationalized around a binary variable—a move not tenable with racial (p. 319) identities? Anymore, is this a defensible move with gender, es pecially in light of the profusion of studies documenting immense variation within socalled women's and men's work? This fluctuation-for instance, between the women who “grace” a reception desk and clean the office after hours, or between the men who fly Page 14 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” commercial planes and serve the passengers in the cabin—clearly revolves around inter sections with other key axes of difference, especially race, sexuality, class, age, ability, and nation. If we took such variation seriously—if we theorized from the lived reality in which there is no gender in the abstract—what would be the sense, meaning, or utility of claims about the binary gender division of labor? Arguably, research on the gender segre gation of work is doing gender in a way that bolsters, through scientific discourse, the fragile yet seductive “truth” of two and only two sexes. In so doing, the literature flattens a wealth of evidence indicating otherwise and fails to recognize its immersion in the very cultural patterns it seeks to challenge. Just as the doing gender approach reminds us that we are expected to work as men and women rather than as generic people, so we are also always compelled to work as partic ular kinds of women and men—as a white, middle-class, youthful, able-bodied, and attrac tive-on-heterosexual-terms secretary in a North American law firm, for instance. In other words, because gender is one among many overlapping mechanisms that produce rela tions of power, it is increasingly unacceptable to theorize it as a discrete phenomenon. This point is demonstrated by a growing body of research on “doing difference” at work, which examines situated performances at the intersection of social identities (e.g., Hen son and Rogers 2001; Adib and Guerrier 2003). And yet, despite countless critiques, dual istic visions of gender difference in isolation live on in the literature. That such comfort able relics persist in the face of ample evidence of their error suggests a dire need to di rect claim ten closer to home. Put bluntly, combating our own binary discourse of gender difference is an urgent front for gender justice. Currently, the most visible alternatives near the CMS literature entail variants of (1) the doing difference approach; (2) feminist standpoint theory; and (3) analysis of masculini ties and femininities in the plural. Studies of doing difference resist marking gender as a primary accountability and, instead, examine the emergence of intertwined social identi ties in particular contexts (West and Fenstermaker 1995). This work has drawn criticism for idyllic accounts of fluid interaction that underestimate the muscle of enduring struc tures; for “tacked-on” accounts of race and class, skewed by the gendered origins of the model; and for reducing gender, race, and class to kindred mechanisms for producing dif ference (Collins et al. 1995). Certainly, theorizing aspects of identity and difference in their own right need not preclude theorizing them in light of one another; both activities are vital. A second range of options for intersectional analysis stems from feminist standpoint theo ries (FST), which refuse gender as an isolated theoretical construct or (p. 320) empirical phenomenon by “locating” gender identities in the relational, political, material, tempo ral, and spatial contexts from which they emerge, with particular attention to dynamics of race and class. For example, several works consider how the embodied experience of di verse forms of gendered work fosters distinctive ways of knowing and being in the world (e.g., Aptheker 1989; Harding 1991). Although this orientation has been touted for its heightened political and material consciousness—in comparison to the doing difference approach, for instance (Collins et al. 1995)—it has also been criticized for yielding stable, Page 15 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” somewhat deterministic images of difference that struggle to account for empirical nu ances. Perhaps most common in the CMS literature is a third alternative, which sometimes shares assumptions and tactics with the others: analyzing masculinities and femininities in the plural. This approach studies gender identities as they emerge through articulation with other facets, most notably race, class, and sexuality. Investigations of multiple mas culinities at work illustrate the basic idea (e.g., Collinson and Hearn 1996; Mills 1998). Like FST, however, this approach continues to imply gender as a primary difference a pri ori. Furthermore, it implies an underlying gender binary by placing plurality within a du alistic frame, risking the impression that the masculine—feminine divide is better under stood as a continuum or range of possibilities. Such limitations will be difficult to avoid until our notions of masculine and feminine are far more radically ruptured.
Challenges for “gender and Diversity” Research in CMS Emerging from this re-reading are two related challenges for CMS scholars of “gender and diversity”: how to stop isolating gender from (1) other aspects of difference and (2) other areas of (critical) management scholarship. The first entails theorizing the politics of difference in ways that capture both the distinctiveness and intersection of particular difference formations. The trick here will be confronting richly tangled factors like gen der, race and ethnicity, nation, sexuality, ability, age, and so forth without elongating bina ries into continua or reducing all constructions of difference into equivalent mechanisms. The second challenge involves theorizing the politics of difference in their own right and confronting them more fully across organizational scholarship—in other words, honoring “gender and diversity” research as a specific critical enterprise with significant bearing on many projects. By reviewing, revising, and re-reading current gender claims, this chapter has generated guiding principles and recommendations for confronting these tensions: • Sweeping claims about gender and power relations rarely hold. Forms that seem gender-biased on paper (e.g., bureaucracy) can materialize in countless ways, and trends that appear incontestable (e.g., the global sex segregation of (p. 321) work) swarm with variation. This is not to deny patterns of inequality; rather, it is to acknowl edge that gender oppression, while predictable, also happens unexpectedly and can never be presumed. Thus, abstract theoretical tendencies matter and are best held in tension with concrete contexts. • Gender does not operate alone; other pressing forces are always at play. Gender-only frames for management analysis are insufficient, analytically and politically. The clean er picture they permit comes at a heavy cost, which includes denial of other significant influences on managerial work; lack of responsiveness to practical feasibility; and the normalization of mostly white, middle-class, professional, heterosexual, Western gen der norms. We need approaches that illuminate how gender mingles with other as pects of difference amid the convoluted demands of organizing. Page 16 of 25
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” • The persistence of binary gender discourse hinders the growth of such approaches; we must develop new gender vocabularies. Relentless interrogation—along the lines which women, which men?—is a promising start, as are the questions: How, when, and why is the use of terms like “women,” “men,” “masculine,” and “feminine” counter/pro ductive, and what alternatives might be more useful? Because heteronormativity sus tains the gender binary, “queering” management theory is essential. • To develop reflexive intersectional approaches, we might compare and contrast how management scholars have studied various dimensions of difference. Apparent similar ities between the evolution of research on gender (as characterized, for example, in Natalle 1996) and race (as portrayed, for example, in Cox and Nkomo 1990; Nkomo 1992) provide an anecdotal example. Both literatures reflect a pattern of curiosity about “Others,” such as: “How are minority members perceived by majority members? Do they possess or exhibit predictable differences? Can these be harnessed as a strate gic resource?” By looking for pattern as well as divergence across studies of differ ence, careful meta-analyses could help us theorize intersectional relations without re ducing all differences to equivalent mechanisms, beginning in our own backyard of knowledge production. • To enhance visibility across (critical) organization studies, we might foreground how the politics of difference matter to widely shared management problematics. Arguably, the so-called ghettoization of “gender and diversity” research reflects both the reti cence of “mainstream” scholars to ask, “How is this problem also about difference?” and the hesitancy of difference scholars to ask, “What else is this problem about?” Framing difference in terms of common problematics (e.g., HR practices, organization al forms, professionalization, control and resistance, the public-private relation, bodies at work) can also provide a useful filter or prism through which to see how multiple el ements of difference assume situational (ir)relevance. I do not mean to suggest that these possibilities replace developments already under way toward less binary, more intersectional understandings. The literature needs careful elabo ration of available approaches as much as it needs novel alternatives. What I do mean to say is that—from the “gender and diversity” label to the content of the scholarship it designates—it is high time for collective reflection on the ways we “make a difference.” Maybe next time, she winks, we will manage a cameo in multiple chapters … or at least find ourselves a better name. (p. 322)
References ABBOTT, A. (1988). The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ACKER, J. (1990). “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” Gen der and Society, 4: 139–158. —— (1992). “Gendering Organizational Theory,” in A. J. Mills and P. Tancred (eds.), Gen dering Organizational Analysis. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 248–260.
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” ADIB, A., AND GUERRIER, Y. (2003). “The Interlocking of Gender with Nationality, Race, Ethnicity and Class: The Narratives of Women in Hotel Work.” Gender, Work and Organization, 10/4: 413–432. ALLEN, B. J. (1995). “‘Diversity’ in Organizations,” Journal of Applied Communication Re search, 23: 143–155. —— (2003). Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity in Organizations. Prospects Heights, Ill.: Waveland. ALVESSON, M., and BILLING, Y. D. (in press). Understanding Gender and Organizations, 2nd edn. London: Sage. APTHEKER, B. (1989). Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press. ASHCRAFT, K. L. (1999). “Managing Maternity Leave: A Qualitative Analysis of Tempo rary Executive Succession,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 240–280. —— (2000). “Empowering “Professional” Relationships: Organizational Communication meets Feminist Practice,” Management Communication Quarterly, 13: 347–392. —— (2001). “Organized Dissonance: Feminist Bureaucracy as Hybrid Form,” Academy of Management Journal, 44: 1301–1322. —— (2006a). “Back to Work: Sights/Sites of Difference in Gender and Organizational Communication Studies,” in B. Dow and J. T. Wood (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Communication. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 97–122. —— (2006b). “Feminist-bureaucratic Control and other Adversarial Allies: How Hybrid Organization Subverts Anti-bureaucratic Discourse,” Communication Monographs, 73: 55–86. —— (2007). “Appreciating the “Work” of Discourse: Occupational Identity and Difference as Organizing Mechanisms in the Case of Commercial Airline Pilots,” Discourse & Com munication, 1: 9–36. —— (2008). “Bringing the Body Back to Work, Whatever and Wherever That Is: Occupational Evolution, Segregation, and Identity,” Paper presented at the National Com munication Association. (p. 323)
—— and FLORES, L. A. (2003). “‘Slaves with White Collars’: Decoding a Contemporary Crisis of Masculinity,” Text and Performance Quarterly, 23: 1–29. —— and MUMBY, D. K. (2004). Reworking Gender: A Feminist Communicology of Orga nization. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage.
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” BARLEY, S. R., and KUNDA, G. (1992). “Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Managerial Discourse,” Administrative Science Quar terly, 37: 363–399. BEDERMAN, G. (1995). Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BELL, E. (1999). “The Negotiation of a Working Role in Organizational Ethnography,” In ternational Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2: 17–37. BILLING, Y. D. (1994). “Gender and Bureaucracies—A Critique of Ferguson's ‘The Femi nist Case Against Bureaucracy,’” Gender, Work and Organization, 1: 179–193. —— and ALVESSON, M. (2000). “Questioning the Notion of Feminine Leadership: A Criti cal Perspective on the Gender Labelling of Leadership,” Gender, Work and Organization, 7/3: 144–157. BOLOGH, R. W. (1990). Love or Greatness: Max Weber and Masculine Thinking—A Femi nist Inquiry. Boston: Unwin Hyman. BREWIS, J., and GREY, C. (1994). “Re-eroticizing the Organization: An Exegesis and Cri tique,” Gender, Work and Organization, 1: 67–82. BRITTON, D. M. (1997). “Gendered Organizational Logic: Policy and Practice in Men's and Women's Prisons,” Gender and Society, 11/6: 796–818. —— (2000). “The Epistemology of the Gendered Organization,” Gender and Society, 14: 418–434. BURKE, R. J., and MCKEEN, C. A. (1992). “Women in Management, in C. L. Cooper and I. T. Robertson (eds.), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology vol. 7,” New York: John Wiley & Sons, 245–283. BURRELL, G. (1992). “The Organization of Pleasure, in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds.), Critical Management Studies,” Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 66–89. BUZZANELL, P. M. (1994). “Gaining a Voice: Feminist Organizational Communication Theorizing”. Management Communication Quarterly, 7: 339–383. —— (2000). “The Promise and Practice of the New Career and Social Contract: Illusions Exposed and Suggestions for Reform,” in P. M. Buzzanell (ed.), Rethinking Organizational and Managerial Communication from Feminist Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 209–235. CALÁS, M. B. (1992). “An/other Silent Voice? Representing Hispanic Woman in Organiza tional Texts”, in A. J. Mills and P. Tancred (eds.), Gendering Organizational Analysis. New bury Park, Calif.: Sage, 201–221.
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Gender and Diversity: Other Ways to “Make a Difference” COTTER, D. A., HERMSEN, J. M., and VANNEMAN, R. (2001). “Women's Work and Working Women: The Demand for Female Labor,” Gender & Society, 15: 429–452. Cox, T., and NKOMO, S. M. (1990). “Invisible Men and Women: A Status Report on Race as a Variable in Organization Behavior Research,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11: 419–431. CZARNIAWSKA, B., and GUSTAVSSON, E. (2008). “The (D)evolution of the Cyber woman?” Organization, 15/5: 665–683. DAVEY, C. L., and DAVIDSON, M. J. (2000). “The Right of Passage? The Experiences of Female Pilots in Commercial Aviation,” “Feminism & Psychology,” 10/2: 195–225. DAVIES, C. (1996). “The Sociology of the Professions and the Profession of Gender, Soci ology,” 30/4: 661–678. DEUTSCH, F. M. (2007). “Undoing Gender,” Gender & Society, 21/1: 106–127. ELY, R. J., and MEYERSON, D. E. (2000). “Theories of Gender in Organizations: A New Approach to Organizational Analysis and Change,” Research in Organizational Behaviour, 22: 103–151. FAGENSON, E. A. (ED.). (1993). “Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Chal lenges in Managerial Diversity.” Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. FERGUSON, K. (1984). “The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy,” Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (p. 325)
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Karen Lee Ashcraft
Karen Lee Ashcraft is Professor of Organizational Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research examines organizational forms and occupational identities, with a guiding interest in relations of power and difference, specifically gender, race, sexuality, and class. Her work appears in numerous management and communication journals, such as the Academy of Management Journal, Administra tive Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Communication Theory, and Management Communication Quarterly, as well as in the book Reworking Gender (Sage, 2004). Her most recent project investigates the historical and contemporary evolution of professional identities in the context of commercial aviation.
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation
Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation Peter Fleming and Matteo Mandarini The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Social Issues, History Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0016
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to discuss the central importance of work in the critical management studies (CMS) movement. It proposes that work is perhaps the key category in CMS be cause the discipline represents a theoretical blending of management and the sociology of work. The first section discusses why work is a central concern for CMS. The article then discusses how work has been studied, the theoretical traditions and the empirical ‘objects’ that characterize CMS research. The third section discusses the ‘bringing work back in’ debate since it highlights some keen differences about what work means in criti cal research today. The article then adds a specific contribution by suggesting some alter native avenues of analysis. It draws upon the idea of the social factory and the different types of work (conventional, identity, and social) that it inaugurates. The article con cludes by discussing the implications of our analysis by returning to a founding value of the CMS movement, emancipation. Keywords: CMS, workers' society, emancipation, sociology of work, social factory, management studies
Introduction WORK is a central facet of capitalism and modern life that is now global in scope. In West ern societies, work is a signifier of immense influence over our everyday lives. Everybody knows about it, is categorized by it and concerned with it, invariably under the colloquial term, “a job.” Do I have too much of it, not enough of it, am I happy with it, and can I get a better type of it? Moreover, it is a phenomenon that is universally socialized in contem porary societies—when I enter the non-work zone of manufactured freedoms often la beled “leisure,” I necessarily enter into the work of others as consumer, tourist, etc. In this sense, we are truly members (p. 329) of the “workers society” and are structured by it in both spatial and temporal terms with an almost totalitarian force. Two points are there fore important from the outset. Firstly, we must use the word “it” to describe our experi ence of work since “a job” is usually something alien to us, objectified and external—a Page 1 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation place we would rather avoid like the plague if given the chance (even so-called “fun” or ganizations are recognized by many workers as semi-pathological spaces). Ironically, such avoidance often involves the traumatic labor of others and is underscored by a paradoxi cal fear about the very loss of work (redundancy, unemployment, etc.). Secondly, and as Italian workerist (operaismo) thinkers such as Hardt and Negri (1994, 1999) remind us, our juncture is marked by the “social factory” in which the logic of production and con sumption is a social universal. It is this boundless prominence that renders work with in evitable naturalness in contemporary consciousness. When the outside disappears or is deferred indefinitely, the inside becomes “the world” as it always was and will be (see Žižek and Schelling (2003) on the relationship between ideology and the infinite). Thus we are all workers in the social factory, and even the unborn have a place set aside for them as armies of governmental planners work to keep the universal factory whirring along. As we will explain later, this universal dimension of work/capital is contradictory since the accumulation process can never reproduce itself alone. It requires an outside point of cooperation—a commons—to sustain itself. This commons is sometimes called an “elemental communism,” a constellation of communication, shelter, creativity, and a priori mutual aid. While capitalism would stall without this autonomous other, it is also a dan gerous force of transformative menace. It is misleading to state, as some often do, that work has always been a human reality re gardless of time and culture. It is labor that is part of the human condition and not work. For sure, we need to reproduce ourselves and can only do this by entering into relations of production with others. But it is only with the advent of capitalism that labor truly be comes work with all its connotations of power, exploitation, and transformation. When la bor assumes the status of work within the reflective prisms of modernity (involving disci pline, division, class, and control) it becomes both politicized and recognized as such. This double reflective moment forms the “politics of work” proper since like anything else to day, it becomes ripe for change, contestation, and reconfiguration. This politics is also fundamental to its critical analysis. Such knowledge can only emerge through a degree of scholarly distance. But as Marx repeatedly said, contra mainstream economics, such dis tance is not the result of simple scientific objectification, but the concrete struggles shap ing the structure of work now. These struggles predefine and mark out the object of analysis in an ongoing dialectical manner. With these preliminary thoughts, our chapter proceeds with circumspection apropos the isolation of “work” in scholarly analysis since this itself reflects a political achievement. Should work be abstracted from life in toto (like the other categories in this handbook) since this could lend itself to the worse kind of (p. 330) de-politicization, that of compart mentalization? Or does the very politicization of work require this abstraction in order to demonstrate its reified nature? With these tensions in mind, the chapter aims to discuss the central importance of work in the critical management studies (CMS) movement. It will propose that work is perhaps the key category in CMS because the discipline repre sents a theoretical blending of management and the sociology of work. The first section discusses why work is a central concern for CMS. Then we discuss how work has been studied, the theoretical traditions and the empirical “objects” that characterize CMS re Page 2 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation search. The third section discusses the “bringing work back in” debate since it highlights some keen differences about what work means in critical research today, We then add our own contribution by suggesting some alternative avenues of analysis, We draw upon the idea of the social factory and the different types of work (conventional, identity, and so cial) that it inaugurates. Finally, we conclude by discussing the implications of our analy sis by returning to a founding value of the CMS movement, that of emancipation.
Why Work? Why has work been such an important concern for CMS researchers? At the broadest lev el such a concern derives from a commitment to politicize everyday affairs. That is, make peculiar that which is often considered natural, unchangeable, and inevitable. The Marxi an tradition is important here since it was Marx who took on the task of denaturalizing the historically strange social form of capitalism. Rather than viewing capitalism (and the “work” it entailed) as a sort of eighteenth-century “end of history” in which man had fi nally found himself, Marx toppled the doctrines of Locke, Bentham, Mill, and other bour geois political economists by theorizing it in all its historical and political specificity. With the aid of Hegel's historical eye, he was the first to question why capitalism was suspi ciously “the only game in town.” The almost mystical immutability of the category of work required explanation and criticism given its political effects within the social body. Why is work distributed the way it is? How do large corporations organize it? Why does it simul taneously produce such wealth and impoverishment? How does the ideology of work hegemonize our political consciousness and sometimes assume the fulcrum of such politi cal instability? How does work become implicated in transnational geo-politics? Within this general scholarly horizon, another important reason why work is important in the CMS tradition results from the unique historical amalgamation of management and the sociology of work. Following the Thatcherite purge of British sociology departments in the 1980s, a number of influential radical sociologists (p. 331) moved into management departments and business schools (Grey and Willmott 2005). Thatcher's class offensive had the humorous and unintentional consequence of putting Karl Marx on the business education curriculum, usually under the innocuous guise of “organization behavior.” The concrete confluence of radical sociological thought and management knowledge presents some more definitive ontological, epistemological, and political reasons for why CMS is concerned with “work.” First is the ontological question, which again derives predominantly from a Marxist preoc cupation that positions labor at the heart of social reality. The centrality of labor is both anthropological and historical. On the one hand, the early Marx posited the act of social labor as something basic to humanity, a kind of zero-point. But Marx's argument also has a strong historical flavor. The ontological centrality of labor is derived from an Aris totelian perspective rather than a Kantian one. Labor is not some abstract essence “with in us” that can be used for evaluative purposes. Marx's ontology results from empirical observation—all societies appear to involve labor as a defining feature of social life. It Page 3 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation might certainly look different in different periods and places, but it is still there in form. What distinguishes capitalism, however, is the way in which form bleeds into content since it reflectively makes work its central ethic, an ends in itself like no other previous society. This “doubled-ontology” is noteworthy because not only is work an ontological fundament of every society, it is only with capitalism that this ontology is pursued as a singular goal (i.e., a life of work). At the epistemological level, CMS is marked by a keen skepticism regarding the way mainstream management has expunged “work” from contemporary analysis. The powerladen connotations of “work” (given the ontological assumptions mentioned above) are absorbed into the natural backdrop of a functionalist picture of social reality, something CMS research attempts to both avoid and combat. Mainstream management's adherence to functionalism is curious even from a positivist standpoint, since it does not make much sense when describing how organizations actually operate. Therefore, it is better to think of functionalism as more an ideological projection—organizations as harmonious wholes in which every part of the system contributes to its ecological maintenance—rather than a description of how things actually are. This ideal remains powerful, and like any ideologi cal commitment, it structures observation so thoroughly that researchers come to actual ly believe that they are observing harmonious systems. More worryingly, functionalism does not recognize “workers” as such. It speaks more of staff members, human resources (HR), and recently “talent.” Even the term “employee” trades in a functionalist ideal since it posits an equal and fair contractual exchange in which both parties benefit. CMS schol ars avoid the epistemological traps of functionalism by using research protocols that an ticipate conflict, division, power, and resistance. Perhaps the most important reason why CMS privileges work as a central category is politicization. This is a corollary of the radical epistemology and ontology (p. 332) underly ing CMS and aims to demonstrate how work is a political achievement. For sure, CMS it self enters the political fray by revealing how capitalism, managerialism, and organiza tions more generally could be different, just, and fair. This political thrust is therefore both radical and liberal; radical in the sense that organizations might be conceived in a totally different manner (e.g., non-capitalist) and liberal because issues of equality, fair ness, justice and so forth are important. Galvanizing this ontology, epistemology, and poli tics is the master trope of emancipation. The concept of emancipation is extremely con troversial in CMS scholarship and gets to the crux of many problems that have recently concerned it. It is true, for example, that for some time, CMS was reluctant to posit alter natives to the capitalist form, relegating emancipation to the status of an “empty signifi er.” This is evident in Alvesson and Willmott's (1992) notion of “micro-emancipation,” posited within the Foucauldian tradition of recommending modest and locally focused in terventions. They eschew grandiose statements like the “great refusal” as a vestige of an outdated and vulgar Marxism. This sentiment dovetails with a certain cynicism about the desirableness of utopian thought in critical research. In its most extreme form, the Fou cauldian-inspired brand of CMS even suggests that emancipation is simply impossible, as
Page 4 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation Warwick Organizational Behaviour Staff (or WOBS) advise in their introduction to exem plary critical research: Since power is everywhere, the myth of human liberty is just that. The manumis sion of slaves in the USA gave them new won freedom—the freedom to starve. Emancipation from something may almost certainly involve enslavement to its op posite. Emancipation almost always means enslavement for something or some one. There are few grounds for liberationary optimism as chronological time kicks us into the 21st Century (WOBS 2001: xxxiv). One is reminded here of Lukács's (1962) memorable phrase, “the Grand Hotel Abyss” when de scribing the high-pessimism of Adorno and Horkheimer. More recent research has been willing to register and develop radical alternatives to the capitalist organizational form (see, e.g., Park er, Fournier, and Reedy 2007). In the last part of the chapter we will suggest that the dichotomy between modest micro-resistance and the grand re-envisioning of organizational life misses an important point regarding the way in which radical emancipatory politics manifests.
Studying Work in CMS We have now established why work has been such a concern for CMS. The next task is to ascertain how work is studied in the CMS community. What are the key theoretical tradi tions and methodologies when work becomes the main concern? CMS's preoccupation with work has a double focus. First is an attempt to critique mainstream management scholarship since it de-politicizes work and the worker, and (p. 333)
privileges capitalism as inevitable, unproblematic, and beneficial to all. That functional ism can be disputed even on positivist grounds is only ironic if we think of ideology as an obfuscation of reality. As Žižek (2008) argues on this point, we must reverse the positivist axiom, “you must see it to believe it” so that it reads, “you must believe it to see it.” Posi tivism, of course has no place in CMS research since the scientific foray into the social world cannot be separated from the military-industrial complex, the surveillance of bod ies, colonialism and class conflict more generally. But there has been a strong commit ment to some form of empiricism—that is to say, the collecting of empirical data to illus trate, corroborate and “reveal” how work life is often very different to how it is portrayed by managerialism. This empiricism is almost always qualitatively based, with semiethnography and the interview being staple methods. What is most interesting here is the often unfussy nature of this empiricism. We see this as a strength rather than weakness. The crippling preoccupation with rigor (mortis) found in sociology has largely been aban doned in CMS for a more journalistic approach. Snippets of information and off-the-cuff remarks are preferred to get an “insider's view” of what might be actually happening in the corporation. Like the investigative journalist who worms their way into places they ought not to be, the CMS researcher is looking for the grit! The methodological protocols painstakingly set out by the founding “fathers” of traditional sociological inquiry are often Page 5 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation ignored. Apart from the political connotations of CMS research, this methodological ille gitimacy has made it difficult to publish findings in the so-called “top” academic journals. Indeed, CMS research is more aligned to what Deleuze (1968) celebrates as a “bastard empiricism.” As mentioned in the previous section, the second focus has perhaps been less successful. Not only to describe an alternative reality to that portrayed in mainstream managerial ism, but also to give an indication of how things might be mapped along a different sociopolitical axis. The commitment to emancipation has always been an important aspect of critique since otherwise we run into the problem of being charged with “being negative” without providing an alternative. This political dimension of CMS is marginal. One reason for this can be found in broader political currents in which the “new right” has outflanked “the left,” colonizing the space for audacious political programs and the legislation of new organizational forms. As Latour (2004) argues, the left has turned away from the world in this respect and needs to reanimate its audacity without the neurotic guilt that seems to have crept in. We suggest that the depiction of alternatives is not a matter of intellectuals designing the perfect society and passing their wisdom to the masses. It is more about ex tending its “bastard empiricism” to observe the existing alternatives that all sorts of workers are now forging, from cooperatives and new social movements to abstaining from work. We will return to this point in the last part of the chapter. We now move from epistemology (and methodology) to theory. In presenting an overview of theoretical traditions and empirical analysis of work in CMS, one cannot help (p. 334)
notice the almost inevitable divisions between Marx, Weber, and Foucault. Each involves different concerns and emphasises regarding the nature of organized work. Let's briefly explore how this is so. As mentioned above, the use of the Marxist analytic was a found ing moment in CMS via labor process theory (LPT) in the 1980s. Chapters on the labor process and the factory in Capital (Marx 1867/1976) were of great importance to early CMS scholars. In order to understand work and its organization one must not focus on managerial discourse or even societal structures, but the concrete “point of production” where value is created and expropriated. Alongside Edwards (1979) and Burawoy (1979), Harry Braverman's (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital is one of the most influential ap plications of labor process theory, positing the idea that this “point of production” utilizes deskilling and mechanization, be it in the factory or the office. Notwithstanding the prob lems around the deskilling thesis (as well as questions about how we ought to understand management and class), labor process theory produced a number of important works that consolidated the CMS perspective (see Friedman 1977; Salaman 1981). Here, work is a matter of managerial control, ideological mystification, exploitation and class conflict. It is more difficult to gauge the impact of Max Weber in the CMS community since there was never really a Weberian school of organization theory akin to the labor process move ment. It was not until the tortuous collaboration of Gerth and Mills resulted in an alterna tive translation to Parson's defanged rendition that the full extent of Weber's criticality was recognized. This version of Weber's research was sometimes integrated into main stream organization theory in order to highlight the importance of domination at work Page 6 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation (see Perrow 1986). From this angle, the limitations, dysfunctions, and mythological status of bureaucratic rationality also became objects of critique (see Blau 1955; Meyer and Rowan 1977). At the more radical end of the organization theory spectrum, Weber's in sights were often blended with a Marxian concern with control, ideology, and exploitation (see Gouldner 1955; and Bendix 1956; Mills 1956). Alvesson's (1987) analysis of techno cratic consciousness, for example, was inspired by the Frankfurt School's preoccupation with the way in which rationalization operates as an ideological master trope governed by means orientated efficiency. Clegg and Dunkerley's (1980) fascinating discussion of class and ideology in the modern corporation uses Weber's analysis of “the work ethic” and ra tionalization to understand how employees are both physically and mentally harnessed to the rhythms of production. Foucault's thought has had a massive impact on studies of work in the CMS tradition. Some have even suggested that the primacy of Foucault truly inaugurates CMS proper. This is also the case in organizational terms, given that there are now divided LPT and CMS conferences. In the 1990s the “labor process debate” (see Paul Thompson and Dami an OʼDoherty's respective contributions (p. 335) in Chapter 5 of this volume) unfolded in which a number of critical scholars openly repudiated the Marxian framework in light of Foucault's problematization of economic determinism, ideology, and class. Both Clegg (1990, 1994) and Knights and Willmott (1989), for example, argue that LPT is no longer a credible framework for understanding the distributed power relations of the modern firm, nor the constitutive effects of discourse and the concomitant identity politics. Workers do not have “true interests” outside the wider discourses that craft them as subjects of labor. Nor do they suffer from a false consciousness if they fail to resist managerial control. From a Foucauldian perspective, then, work becomes a place where identities are regi mented through disciplinary processes, micro-integration and self-surveillance (Deetz 1992; Sewell and Wilkinson 1992). The role of discourse is constitutive since language constructs the realities that are enacted in the workplace. Power thus involves both a subtle disciplinary training of the body/mind via discontinuous forces and a more raucous identity politics in which discourses compete for expression, legitimacy and institutional ization. It is not only the concrete “point of production” that matters, but the plethora of discursive practices in and around organizations that constitute what work means (see Jacques 1996). In this sense, the phenomenon of work cannot be disentangled from broader questions of identity, gender politics and dominant discourses that frame the self and his/her life project.
Has Work “Disappeared” in CMS? Given the various twists and turns noted above, the ontological, epistemological and polit ical status of work in the CMS community remains ambiguous. We have the Marx and LPT as founding approaches in the area and which still continue to influence the debate, a smidgen of Weber and then the growing popularity of Foucault which has reconfigured the parameters of the debate. One of the more interesting ways in which the aforemen tioned tension between LPT and Foucauldian can be understood is in terms of the argu Page 7 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation ment made by Barley and Kunda (2001). They suggest that much organization studies re search has lost its focus on work (the actual processes of labor in organizations) and thus gives a distorted view of what contemporary employment actually entails. We think this line of analysis might also capture an interesting tension in analyses of work organizations in CMS and shed light on the divide between LPT and poststructuralist analysis. The tension can be unpacked along the ontological, epistemological, and politi cal lines discussed in the first section. In terms of ontology, the predominance of a post structuralist perspective has been chastised by LPT scholars for down playing the signifi cance of “labor” and turning to discourse and (p. 336) somewhat “peripheral” activities in stead. While LPT give primacy to the so-called empirical act of working, poststructuralist analysis might be more concerned with the “discourse of organizations” that framework. These discourses might even break away from the realm of a single organization, with re searchers emphasizing the role of popular culture and leisure. Take for example the con cern with management and everyday life. In order to understand the way in which em ployees come to understand themselves as “enterprising subjects” (du Gay 2007) or “selfmanaging” subjects, we might look to how the concern with success and self-help in pop ular cultures feeds into employment practices. The same might be said for gender and sexuality. Theoretically we are able to do this because employment is only one site of in terconnected power relations. This grates with the Marxian perspective that deems work to be a key determining factor of most (if not all) social relations. At the epistemological level, a tension emerges around how we ought to study work and organizations. The Marxian tradition suggests that the ontological status of work at the point of production is so predominant that a careful and meticulous observation ought to show us how power, domination, and exploitation are mobilized (and possibly resisted). The work of Thompson (1989) and Thompson and McHugh (2002) is important here given its excellent analysis of the realities of work in contemporary organizations. This concern also dovetails with critical realism and its attempt to surface structures that enable and constrain social production (see Reed 2004). More poststructuralist inspired analyses are more interested in discourse and its constitutive effects—if a native actor does not talk of exploitation, for example, then the researcher must take this into account when present ing what work means in this context. As Kondo (1990) argued in relation to studying con trol and resistance in a Japanese confectionary factory, it is difficult to pigeonhole activi ties into predetermined categories given the multiple and ambiguous meanings that infor mants ascribe to their own practices (also see Collinson 1994). This is an epistemological tension between realism and constructivism concerning work. And finally, as OʼDoherty also points out in this volume, the politics of work looks very dif ferent depending on the perspective one takes. Some LPT scholars argue that poststruc turalist analyses have abandoned alternatives to capitalism (usually positing their own al ternatives as the missing suspects—e.g., socialism, anarchism, etc.). Work itself disap pears at the same moment the horizon demarcating it from an “other” vanishes. Post structuralist analysis, on the other hand, highlights the schoolboy simplicity of such vaguely outlined “alternatives,” and then gets on with the pragmatic analysis of the work Page 8 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation that most employees face on a day-to-day basis (and revolution does not feature much here). The purpose of this overview is not to adjudicate a “winner” but evaluate the various claims made of work in contemporary CMS research. Both perspectives have their advan tages and disadvantages. Perhaps some kind of “constructive realism” is needed (in much the same way we might be concerned with both a “cultural economy” and an “economy of culture”) to explore work. But it is the ontology (p. 337) of work that most fascinates us. We suggest this debate is interesting because it essentially asks, what exactly is work and where does it take place? In this respect, privileging traditional LPT's of the “point of pro duction” and the poststructuralist emphasis on what goes on around the labor process are both right. In order to make this argument, however, we will need to introduce anoth er perspective that blends Marx and Foucault. The Italian autonomists' notion of the so cial factory (see Tronti 1971; Hardt and Negri 1994, 1999) is very useful here.
The Social Factory and Three Types of Work In this section we want to use both the insights of LPT (Marx) and poststructuralist analy sis (Foucault) to gain an innovative understanding of what work means today. We do so by introducing the notion of the social factory first theorized by the Italian autonomist or workerist movement (Tronti 1971). Workerism (Operaismo) draws upon the early nine teenth-century recognition of the centrality of labor for the development of capital and, more importantly, on Marx's account of how the expansion of capital is predicated upon the possibility of reducing the value of labor-power through technological innovation. In other words, that capitalism is forced to perpetually reorganize the labor process and it does so in reaction to working-class struggle against the attempt to reduce its value (Hardt and Negri 1999). But Workerism does more than simply draw upon the classical Marxian tradition, for it re configures the categories of work, capitalism, and labor through the complete reversal of the “common sense” view of the ontological hierarchy of capitalist production. Whereas most considerations of the role of labor and of the types of work it performs begin with the firm, with the capitalist enterprise itself and its organization, Workerism contends that one should instead begin with the antagonistic dynamic of labor. The claim is not one of a chronological priority—for the dynamic only begins when workers are brought into the space of the factory (although we shall see that even this priority is itself only rela tive)—but a logical and ontological one. Concentrating on a pivotal excerpt from Marx's Grundrisse and the chapter on coopera tion in Capital, the notion of “immaterial labor” (and more recently cognitive capitalism) comes to the fore as a major concern. The term immaterial labor is certainly not a syn onym for the rather tenuous notions of the “service worker” or the “symbolic analyst”. In stead it points to a dimension of labor that has probably been always present under capi talist conditions, even in its primitive formal sense. Immaterial labor points to the parasit ical nature of capital and the (p. 338) importance of a kind of paradoxical autonomy. Since Page 9 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation capital cannot reproduce itself, even as it aspires to be universal, it requires an outside point in order maintain the process, change, and expand. The outside that is often appro priated is the so-called private identities that have been considered outside of work or an tithetical to it in liberalist ideology (especially in relation to dissent), According to work erist Marxism, this is where the autonomy of the working class is pivotal for the produc tion and reproduction of capital and the corporate form, otherwise labor becomes a mere reflection of capital, and the whole process fails. We can approach the idea of immaterial labor and autonomy in two ways. First is that as pect of capital accumulation that is pertinent today—the needs for innovative, creative, and flexible work, in firms that range from IT start-ups and consultant firms, to the justin-time factory and call-center. The immaterial labor here revolves around identity. This feature of capital accumulation is most evident in the liberation management gurus such as Tom Peters (2003), and especially their counter-intuitive celebration of resistance, an ti-managerial and anti-corporate deviance in the face of an otherwise bland industrial landscape. The message reads like this: “turn management on its head,” make organiza tions fun and subversive, and employees will be more motivated and engaged in their jobs. Peters is not alone here. Semler (1993, 2004) calls for rethinking the workspace in a way that invites the private lives of employees into the sphere of production, including sexuality, lifestyle, and other aspects that were traditionally banned. Bains (2007) sug gests that employees ought to simply “be themselves,” express their lifestyle difference, however à rebours they might be. Some argue that the firm ought to become a zone of fun and partying (Deal and Key 1998; Kane 2004). Elsewhere, the “tempered radical” (Meyerson 2003) is celebrated as an agent of progressive change. More serious academic scholarship has similarly noted a shift in the employment practices of corpora tions. Ross (2004) observed, for example, the “industrialisation of bohemia” in Silicon Al ley dot.com companies, in which anti-capitalist values and an underground countercul ture was forged. The key evaluative categories for team leaders are not obedience or complete uniformity, but authenticity, dissent, anti-hierarchy, and difference. This is the “Google” way of running the firm (also see Hanlon (forthcoming) and Boltanski and Chia pello (2004) regarding the managerial cooptation of dissent). The second aspect of immaterial labor and autonomy is that of cooperation. Another out side point which capital both produces and parasitically relies upon is the everyday coop eration of subjects within the very social body of a universal capitalist order. These are the everyday spontaneous and non-commodified acts of collective labor that must be posited in order to account for wealth in society (even if such wealth is unfairly appropri ated). An analogy can be drawn with the classic studies of bureaucracy and its rule-laden milieu (see Blau 1955). The best way to resist bureaucratic domination is to do exactly what it tells you, observe every rule to the letter and quickly the system will short-circuit. The lesson being that (p. 339) discretion, gift giving, patrimony, and cooperation despite the rules are required for bureaucracy to operate efficiently. In relation to capital and class conflict, this is what Hardt and Negri (2000) call “elemental communism,” the im plicit cooperation and communication required for the corporation to maintain itself. This autonomy is not really a space but an immanent plane inside capital itself which Hardt Page 10 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation and Negri (1999) call the commons. The commons is both a requirement and danger to formal capital accumulation. Developing the insight above in relation to Blau (1955), Han lon (forthcoming) indicates how the HRM concern within harnessing innovation revolves around endeavors to appropriate the commons of producers in the IT, advertising, and similar industries. Similar work is “happening” among all sorts of people including social activists, professionals, software developers, indigenous peoples, farmers, and street traders. These elements of immaterial labor bring us back to work and the social factory since we need to redefine what work “is” and “where” it is happening in contemporary capitalism. Given the observations above, work today displaces the imagined boundaries between spaces of consumption, personal and family life, and the workplace. With this displace ment or even dissolution between life and labor, the realm of non-work becomes margin alized (as it becomes functional) since more and more of the social landscape is constitut ed as a space of labor. This occurs at both the individual level and the collective level: In dividual in so far as more of the person is integrated into the discourse of labor (however it is redefined) and collective in that every non-space of production for one person is in variably the space of production for another. Production becomes abstracted from a fixed and isolatable area to cover the entire social body. Indeed, Hardt and Negri (1994) cap ture this dynamic succinctly in their application of Deleuze's (1992) notion of societies of control in which it is argued that one is never done with anything when it comes to the contemporary logic of production: laboring processes have moved outside the factory walls to invest the entire soci ety. In other words, the apparent decline of the factory as site of production does not mean a decline of the regime and discipline of factory production, but means that it is no longer limited to a particular site in society. It has insinuated itself throughout all social forms of production, spreading like a virus. (Hardt and Negri 1994: 9–10) This is the era of the social factory in which work is universal, but a deferred universal since worker autonomy is a necessary prerequisite. This dependence on autonomy is risky for capital, since it is where contradiction and crisis lie.
Given these observations regarding immaterial labor and the social factory, we identify three types of work that render the LPT and poststructuralist debate somewhat redun dant. First is what we might call conventional work, those acts of labor that occur at what LPT scholars call “the point of production.” The call-center employee answering the phone, the consultant giving a power point presentation, etc. The second type of work is what Alvesson and Willmott (2002) nicely phrase identity (p. 340) work. This is connected to the management of personhood in many corporations today, especially associated with culture management and customer service where workers must express a certain type of “self-hood” in order to be recruited, rewarded, and promoted. The idea of identity work extends the logic of production from producing products and services, to that of self-pro duction in those circumstances where employees are encouraged to labor on themselves (i.e., become certain types of selves). Echoing Hardt and Negri's (1994) argument, the Page 11 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation third type of work might be called social work or social labor. The labor of “elemental communism” that capitalism parasitically expropriates is the work of the commons re ferred to above. It encompasses or frames the first two types of work by creating the uni versal, linking the conventional organizational space of labor to the social body as whole. Without this type of labor, people do not even arrive to work since “the factory” cannot constitute itself as a realm of employment if the “outside” remains completely foreign or alien. This type of labor is that of cooperation, communication, affect, and mutual aid. It is also a point of instability since its complete appropriation would render capital an un tenable reflection of itself, but its complete autonomy would provide the grounds for the demise of capital (Hanlon 2007).
Emancipation, Critique, and Conclusions To conclude, we return to the question of emancipation since it is a founding value of the CMS movement and its approach to work. Given the controversies mentioned earlier re garding emancipation, how might we think of freedom apropos work today, especially in a space dominated by the social factory? We suggest that three lines of analysis might be of use: freedom in work, freedom through work, and freedom from work. Each instance of freedom carries specific political connotations. Moreover, each represents an increasingly more radical option regarding what emancipation might look like today. Firstly, freedom in work. Critical research has frequently recognized how workers forge various forms of freedom within the confines of the contemporary organization. This represents an inter est in pragmatic piecemeal improvement, and is geared to the expectations of social ac tors themselves. Burawoy's (1979) making-out games is a good example. The second con cerns freedom through work. This position draws upon the Marxian dialectical argument that work (and its forms of oppression) is the basis of freedoms that may result through radicalization of current forms. Workers taking a keen interest in managerialism, for ex ample, to run the workplace themselves—thus inscribing it within an entirely different po litical economy—that of the commons. Finally is freedom from work. (p. 341) Emancipa tion here blends the notion of work as both a discursive and economic reality, usurping its ideological predominance and crafting alternatives to the current configuration of “a job.” Advocates of non-work or less work are pertinent here (Gorz 1989). This sentiment is also echoed in the “down-shift” and “slow-down” movements in which the high-stress and fastpaced lifestyle of, say, the management consultant, is unsustainable. In this respect, Hardt and Negri (2004) have argued that a mass exodus is occurring, as many people choose non-work as a political statement. In each case of emancipation the tension raised earlier between its micro (Alvesson and Willmott 1992) and utopian (Parker, Fournier, and Reedy 2007) forms returns to haunt our analysis. But perhaps this dichotomy is no longer necessary. Indeed, Žižek (2008) argues that most forms of contemporary radical emancipatory politics involve an admixture of both, World-changing resistance and the injustices that inspire it are very often mundane ly irrelevant, He gives the literary example of Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas in which an im poverished traveller has two horses stolen as “payment” for passage by a rich lord. When Page 12 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation he protests over this injustice, the ideological mechanisms of compromise are ready to in tervene. The startled lord offers to buy him ten healthy replacements as recompense. Martin Luther himself points to the insignificance of a few overworked nags. Michael Kohlhaas refuses these injunctions and burns down half of Wittenberg: “it is not the sin gle horse that matters, but what they ultimately represent, the systematic absence of my freedom.” He takes a single and rather minor act of injustice “to the end.” And did not an insignificant bus seat spark the civil rights movement in the US? Radical politics is exces sive and borne out of ostensible insignificance. In the context of work organizations in which we witness so many seemingly insignificant acts of humiliation and pointless op pression, our conceptual opposition between micro-resistance and the much-fabled “grand refusal” is somewhat artificial, especially when subjects take the quotidian flows of injustice “to the end.” And what of the CMS project itself in this environment of “social labor” where even resis tance and dissent are now potential allies of exploitation? Given the discursive and practi cal shifts in managerial discourse, in which “designer resistance” is celebrated in the name of innovation and freedom, we must ask the question: how are we to make sense of “critique” when even Tom Peters is celebrating anti-managerialism, 1968-inspired subver sion (around cynicism, irony, sexuality, parody) and expressions of resistant lifestyle chic? Rather than get into the old debate about what is real and false resistance perhaps we should ask about boundaries instead. What type of resistance could not be accommodat ed, commodified, and co-opted by these recent trends in management discourse? What are the limits of the corporation and how are they being tested by political acts that are impossible to enlist? The conclusion is clear: in conceptually mapping these boundaries, we definitely have our work cut out for us.
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation BRAVERMAN, H. (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. BOLTANSKI, L., and CHIAPELLO, E. (2005). The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. G. El liott. London: Verso. BURAWOY, M. (1979). Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Mo nopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CLEGG, S. (1990). Modern Organizations: Organization Studies in the Postmodern World. London: Sage. —— (1994). “Weber and Foucault: Social Theory for the Study of Organizations,” Organi zation, 1: 149–178. —— and DUNKERLEY, D. (1980). Organization, Class and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. COLLINSON, D. (1994). “Strategies of Resistance,” in J. Jermier, D. Knights, and W. Nord (eds.), Resistance and Power in Organizations. London: Routledge. DEAL, T., and KEY, M. (1998). Celebration at Work: Play, Purpose and Profit at Work. New York: Berrett-Koehler. DEETZ, S. (1992). Democracy in the Age of Corporate Colonisation: Developments in the Communication and the Politics of everyday Life. Albany: State University of New York Press. DELEUZE, G. (1968). Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. —— (1992). “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” October, Winter, 59: 3–7. DU GAY, P. (2007). Organizing Identity. London: Sage. EDWARDS, R. (1979). Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books. FOUCAULT, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheri dan. Penguin Books. —— (1979). History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction. London: Allen Lane. FRIEDMAN, A. (1977). Industry and Labor: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capi talism. London: Macmillian. GORZ, A. (1989). Critique of Economic Reason. London: Verso. GREY, C., and WILLMOTT, H. (2005). “Introduction,” in C. Grey and H. Willmott (eds.), Critical Management Studies: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p. 343)
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation HANLON, G. (2007). “HRM is Redundant? Professions, Immaterial Labor and the Future of Work,” in S. C. Bolton and M. Houlihan (eds.), Searching for the Human in Human Re source Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 263–280. —— (forthcoming, 2008). “Antagonism, Knowledge, and Innovation: Organizations and Corporate Social Responsibility,” in H. Scarbrough (ed.), The Evolution of Business Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. HARDT, M., and NEGRI, A. (1994), Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State Form, Min neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— —— (1999). Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. —— —— (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin. JACQUES, R. (1996). Manufacturing the Employee: Management Knowledge from the 19th to 21st Centuries. London: Sage. KANE, P. (2004). The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. London: Macmillan. KNIGHTS, D., and WILLMOTT, H. (1989). “Power and Subjectivity at Work: From Degradation to Subjugation in Social Relations,” Sociology, 23: 534–558. KONDO, D. (1990). Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japan ese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. LUKÁCS, G. (1962). The Theory of the Novel. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. LATOUR, B. (2004). “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Mat ters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry, 30 (Winter): 225–248. MARX, K. (1867/1976). Capital: vol. 1, trans. B. Fowkes. Harmondsworth: Pelican Marx Library. MEYER, J. W., and ROWAN, B. (1977). “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology, 83/2: 340–363. MEYERSON, D. (2003). Tempered Radicals: How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work. Boston: Harvard University Press. MILLS, C. W. (1956). The Power Elite. Free Press: New York. PARKER, M., FOURNIER, V., and REEDY, P. (2007). The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization. London: Zed Books. PERROW, C. (1986). Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay. New York: McGraw Hill. PETERS, T. (2003). Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age. London: Dor ling Kindersley. Page 15 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation ROSS, A. (2004). No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. SALAMAN, G. (1981). Class and the Corporation. Glasgow: Fontana. SEMLER, R. (1993). Maverick! The Success Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace, London: Arrow. —— (2004). The Seven-Day Weekend. New York: Penguin. SEWELL, G. and WILKINSON. (1992). “Someone to Watch Over Me: Surveillance, Disci pline and the Just-in-Time Labor Process,” Sociology, 26/2: 270–289. THOMPSON, P. (1989). The Nature of Work: An Introduction to Debates on the Labour Process. London: Macmillan. —— and MCHUGH, D. (2002) Work Organisations, 3rd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave. TRONTI, M. (1971). “Il Piano del Capitale,” Operai e Capitale. Turin: Einaudi Editore. (p. 344)
WARWICK ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR STAFF (eds.) (2001). Organiza
tional Studies: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management. London and New York: Routledge. ŽIŽEK, S. (1989). Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. —— (2008). “The Theology of Politics,” Public Lecture, Birkbeck College: University of London. 20 February 2008. —— and SCHELLING, F. W. J. (2003). The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism). Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Peter Fleming
Peter Fleming, PhD, is Professor of Business and Society at the Cass Business School, City University, London. Matteo Mandarini
Matteo Mandarini is a lecturer at the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London. He holds a PhD in philosophy and an MA in continental philosophy from the University of Warwick, as well as a BA in philosophy from Uni versity College London. His research has focused on the relation of conflict to the transformations of capitalism. He has written on Italian postwar communist thought as well as on French poststructuralism. He is currently engaged in research on the “autonomy of the political,” on ways to think the organization of conflict, and on forms of political subjectivation. He has translated numerous books and essays by Antonio Negri, most recently, The Labor Job, and is currently engaged in a transla tion of Giorgio Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy Page 16 of 17
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Towards a Workers' Society? New Perspectives on Work and Emancipation of the Economy and of Government with Lorenzo Chiesa. He is part of the editorial collective of the journal Historical Materialism.
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Critical Management Methodology
Critical Management Methodology Joanne Duberley and Phil Johnson The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0017
Abstract and Keywords This article outlines the methodology of a long-standing and highly influential perspective closely associated with CMS: critical theory. In doing so, it uses critical theory as a heuristic foil against which comparisons with other key methodological stances within the CMS umbrella will be made, notably: feminism; critical realism; and various forms of postmodernism. An attempt is made to map and explain some of the methodological conti nuities and divergences that arise. In pursuing these objectives the article begins by out lining the philosophical commitments embraced by critical theory. This is because, while one cannot avoid making philosophical commitments in undertaking any research, any philosophical commitment can be simultaneously contested. Keywords: CMS, critical theory, feminism, critical realism, postmodernism, philosophical commitment
Introduction As has been illustrated by previous chapters in this book, “critical management studies” (CMS) is an umbrella term that encapsulates a diverse range of “critical” ap proaches which tend to be united by their rejection of any claim that management theory and practice are morally founded upon a technical imperative, to improve efficiency, justi fied and enabled by analyses of how things really are (see Fournier and Grey 2000; Grey and Willmott 2002; Zald 2002). Indeed, in various ways, CMS tends to be united by pro found skepticism regarding the possibility of an objective and disinterested foundation for any knowledge. This skepticism is shared by various currents within CMS such as critical realism, postmodernism, feminist traditions and, of course, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. So here the possibility of a methodologically engineered separation of the knower from what is known, which is pivotal to the Positivist stance of mainstream management studies (see Johnson and Duberley 2000, 2003), is replaced by the view that all knowledge is socially constructed. In this manner any commitment to truth and knowl edge as objective authoritative outputs of a singular scientific rationality are rejected (p. 346) in favor of epistemological relativity and plurality. Of course the pursuit of such a Page 1 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology critique of mainstream management studies leaves CMS with a methodological conun drum: how can it be possible for any branch of CMS to express anything more than un substantiated opinion having undermined the epistemological credibility of its own dis course? In this chapter we intend to initially explore one possible solution to this conundrum by outlining the methodology of a long-standing and highly influential perspective closely as sociated with CMS: critical theory. In doing so, we will use critical theory as a heuristic foil against which comparisons with other key methodological stances within the CMS umbrella will be made, notably: feminism; critical realism; and various forms of postmod ernism. Here we shall attempt to map and explain some of the methodological continu ities and divergences that arise. In pursuing these objectives we will begin by outlining the philosophical commitments embraced by critical theory. This is because, while we cannot avoid making philosophical commitments in undertaking any research, any philosophical commitment can be simulta neously contested. Such philosophical commitments are expressed as knowledge consti tuting assumptions about the nature of truth, human behavior, representation, and the ac cessibility of social reality. In other words tacit answers to questions about ontology (what are we studying?) and epistemology (how can we have warranted knowledge about our chosen domains?) frame the kinds of research question asked by researchers and impact upon any methodological engagement through which they attempt to investigate their chosen domains. The often unnoticed answers we adopt in dealing with those philosophi cal questions simultaneously impinge upon a further crucial area called criteriology (see Bochner 2000): how should we judge, or evaluate, the findings and quality of research? There is a persistent danger that particular evaluation criteria, such as construct, exter nal and internal validities and reliability, all of which derive from a positivist philosophical scheme alien to critical theory, are inadvertently appropriated in the assessment of its re search outputs (see Johnson et al. 2006, 2007). Thus we will conclude the chapter by con sidering the vexed issue of how the outcomes of research done by critical theorists might be most appropriately evaluated as a particular example of the “new sensibility” (Willmott 1998) in the conduct of management research.
The Philosophical Commitments of Critical Theory Following Alvesson and Deetz (1996, 2000), we use the term “critical theory” to refer to studies which draw concepts, principally though not exclusively, from the (p. 347) Frank furt School. Here we will focus initially upon the work of Jurgen Habermas who has been influential upon the epistemological development of CMS. For instance, he presents (1972, 1974a, 1974b) a powerful critique of Positivist epistemology by arguing that its fol lowers presuppose the methodological possibility of operationalizing a theory neutral ob servational language that unproblematically accesses an independent reality for examina tion. This presupposition allows Positivists to try and methodologically eliminate the ef Page 2 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology fects of their research processes upon what becomes known and thereby insulates them from any form of epistemological reflexivity (Johnson and Duberley 2003). For Habermas (1974b: 199) such positivist pretensions are quixotic: all knowledge is contaminated at source by the influence of socio-cultural factors upon sensory experience. In doing so, Habermas puts forward a phenomenalist position that emphasizes how all human cogni tion always shapes what is taken to be external reality through its imposition of apriori socially derived modes of engagement that influence what is “seen.” Thus he eschews positivism's “objectivist illusions” (ibid.), which conceal the processes by which knowl edge is socially constituted, by substituting what he regards as its naive empiricism with an epistemology that has the object-constituting intersubjective activity of human beings at its core (1974a: 8–9). Therefore, like Kant (1781/1964), Habermas combines epistemological subjectivism, which emphasizes intersubjective processes in the social construction of our understand ings, with ontological realism and accepts the existence of a reality independent of hu man subjectivity which imposes limitations upon human endeavors through “the contin gency of its ultimate constants” (1972: 33). But as Kolakowski (1969) puts it, this external “reality-as-it-is” remains ultimately unknowable due to the action of the socially constitut ed apriori and hence human sensemaking always remains embedded in socially construct ed “realities-for-us.” Habermas's philosophical stance immediately poses a significant is sue for critical theorists: if all knowledge is a socially contingent construction, why should, and how do, the cultural capitals of particular socio-economic groups accumulate epistemic privilege, social prestige, power, and financial reward at the expense of alterna tive ways of knowing and acting? Moreover, how can those disempowered alternatives be articulated and legitimized to challenge the status quo and thereby change lives of people for the better? However, before dealing with the above questions, and because of his dismissal of the possibility of scientific objectivity, Habermas has to deal with the specter of relativism that haunts his critique of positivism: if all knowledge, management, or otherwise, is so cially constructed there can be no good reasons for preferring one representation over another (including Habermas's own), indeed any choice may be at best merely aesthetic or at worst arbitrary (McCarthy 1978: 293–5; see also Siegel 1987). Here Habermas tried to rescue the status of his own critique by trying to find an epistemological refuge from which that very critique might be pursued and defended without fear of self-contradic tion. In these respects Habermas makes (p. 348) a valuable contribution to CMS since oth er currents within CMS also articulate combinations of ontological realism and epistemo logical subjectivism (e.g. critical realism) but may or may not necessarily share Habermas's solution to the resultant methodological conundrum. For instance, Alvesson and Deetz (1996, 2000) argue that the close relationship between resistant postmod ernism and critical theory is only too evident since, through critique and reflexivity, the former seeks to denaturalize and challenge ongoing repressive discursive practices. In deed it seems to be this form of postmodernism that Habermas (1987) refers to when he
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Critical Management Methodology argues that postmodernism can only become resistant by being subsumed within, and in vigorated, by critical theory's epistemological solution to the problem of relativism. According to Habermas (1970a, 1970b, 1971) any communication rests upon the assump tion that speakers can justify their tacit validity claims through recourse to argument. However, in what he calls “systematically distorted communication,” validity claims are maintained through the exercise of power which prevents justification through discursive ly engaging in such dialogue and produces a mere pretence of consensus. The problem for Habermas is to differentiate between systematically distorted communication, with its forced consensus, and discursively produced “rational” consensus. Habermas's solution is to propose an alternative epistemic standard: the “ideal-speech situation” where discur sively produced consensus derives from argument and analysis without the resort to coer cion, distortion or duplicity. Such an ideal aims to liberate people from asymmetrical pow er relations, dependencies and constraints (see McCarthy 1978: 308). For Habermas (1984, 1987) such communicative rationality, together with epistemologically and ethical ly legitimate organizational practices, will only occur where democratic social relations have been already established (Forrester 1993: 57). Thus the extent to which actual communication deviates from this ideal (and hence from the truth in a consensual sense) depends upon the degree of repression in society. In this sense, critical theory seeks to investigate how a particular social structure may produce and reinforce distorted communicative actions that practically and subtly shape its mem bers' lives. As Jermier observes (1998: 242), the resultant research agenda for critical theory therefore entails a controversial commitment to attempting to access actors' cul turally derived world views while revealing the socio-economic conditions which create and maintain asymmetrical power relations by “the blending of informants' words, im pressions, and activities with an analysis of the historical and structural forces that shape the social world under investigation” (ibid.). Of course the necessary presumption here is that because those culturally derived views have most likely not been established under dialogical conditions, the subjective situation of informants is ideologically forced and dis torted. So, far from construing mainstream management theory and practice as merely a set of neutral technical activities, a primary concern of critical theory is to unmask (p. 349) their lack of objectivity by exposing the creative role played by underlying social values, partial interests, and power relations in producing them (see, e.g., Willmott 1993). In doing so, critical theory attempts to reveal previously hidden structures of oppression and counter act the discursive closure brought about by acceptance of any knowledge, managerial or otherwise, as epistemologically privileged and therefore unchallengeable. By such an analysis of the processes by which our intersubjective lifeworlds have been colonized through imposition, rather than dialogue, critical theory opens up the possibility of alter native modes of organizational praxis produced in and through democratic discourse which simultaneously subvert and displace the orthodox top—down technocratic image of management. Therefore, with regard to this agenda, Dryzek (1995) emphasizes a further important element. This involves showing how the “forces that have caused that situation Page 4 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology … can be overcome through awareness of them on the part of the oppressed individual or group in question” (1995: 99). Through the development of such a critical consciousness, alternative ways of organizing become conceivable by, and hence possible for, the formal ly disempowered (see for example Friere 1972a, 1972b; Alvesson and Willmott 1996). Therefore a key practical aim of critical theory is the empowerment and emancipation of the disadvantaged and disenfranchized in organizations through critique of the ideologies articulated by ongoing management practices. The question we must now turn to is how do critical theorists methodologically pursue this research agenda through their engage ments with management and organizations?
The Methodology of Critical Theory As we have illustrated, one of the most significant outcomes of Habermas's philosophical stance, is a demand for the discursive democratization of social practices (see also Beck 1992; Deetz 1992; Forrester 1993; Alvesson and Willmott 1996). This commitment, to gether with the research agenda stimulated by this philosophy directly impacts upon the manner in which research is undertaken. As we have initially noted above, there are two key aspects to research inspired by critical theory. The first is to accomplish structural phenomenologies through a modified form of verstehen. In management research this has usually involves the undertaking of critical ethnographies (see Forrester 1992; Thomas 1993; Putnam et al. 1993; Morrow and Brown 1994) in order to investigate the nature of hegemonic regimes of truth and how they impact upon the subjectivities and behaviour of the disempowered in contemporary organizational contexts. However, as we have also seen, a direct consequence of Habermas's philosophical stance is a concern with organi zational (p. 350) change. Whilst the distinctive analysis and critique of current manage ment theory and practice provided by critical ethnography is important here, this concern expresses a moral imperative to engender democratic social relations and thereby shift the balance of power in organizations to currently marginalized groups. The primary methodological vehicle for the pursuit of this concern is a distinctive form of highly par ticipative action research that aims to be emancipatory (see Park 1999; Kemmis and Mc Taggart 2000; Levin and Greenwood 2001; Kemmis 2006; Gustavsen 2006). Below we shall review the nature of these two key approaches to undertaking critical theory re search.
Critical Ethnography It has been argued that critical theory is “not primarily an empirically oriented approach” and that it “has little time to spare for the bookkeeper mentality which is so typical of method-minded scholars who like to see everything pin pointed and logged” (Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000: 131). One possible reason for the lack of emphasis on empirical re search is that the subject matter of critical theory, the deep structures which constrain human behavior are impossible to observe easily or to extract from an interview. As Alves son and Skoldberg (2000: 131) comment, “we can hardly go around asking people about their psychic prisons or false consciousness or communicative distortions and so on.” Page 5 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology Nonetheless there has been a growing interest in empirical studies of management and organization informed by the critical tradition, many of which have been labeled critical ethnography. What marks this work out as critical is, according to Thomas (1993: 2), the attempt to “describe, analyze and open to scrutiny otherwise hidden agendas, power centres and as sumptions that inhibit, repress and constrain.” Thomas explains further that injustice is the focus of such research, and that studies from this perspective focus upon the repres sive and constraining aspects of culture. Hence, for example, organizations are examined in terms of the various types of control exercised over members. Contemporary manage ment rhetoric and initiatives such as team based or virtual organizations that may at first glance appear to be concerned with job enrichment and empowerment are examined in depth to highlight how these practices mask a deeper reality of work intensification and control (Sewell 1998; Ezzamel and Willmott 1998). In other words, attention is focused on how what passes for “ordinary work” in organizational settings “is a thickly layered tex ture of political struggles concerning power and authority, cultural negotiations over identity and social constructions of the problem at hand” (Forrester 1992: 47). In seeking to uncover these political struggles critical research has been described as a kind of triple hermeneutics which requires the critical interpretation of unconscious processes, ideologies, power relations, and other expressions of dominance (p. 351) that entail the privileging of certain interests over others, within forms of understanding which appear to be spontaneously generated (Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000). Clearly an important as pect of the process is to challenge what is taken for granted as the natural order of things and to see things that are assumed to be rational and ordinary as exotic (Alvesson and Deetz 2000)—a process known as negation. The critical ethnographer thus differs from the conventional ethnographer in that as well as portraying their informants' world view, they must challenge this and attempt to reveal the deep structures that produce and maintain asymmetrical structures of power and con trol. As Jermier discusses (1998), this is controversial because the people that critical the orists study may be unable to articulate the structural conditions responsible for their sit uation for a variety of reasons: they may not apprehend the larger structure; they may ap prehend the structure but have no words for it; or they may have been socialized to ac cept their situation as part of the natural order. Thus, the critical theorist has to “go be yond informants' reports to articulate the socio-economic context that envelops their in formants' world without relying exclusively on either pre-existing theory or mere speculation” (Jermier 1998: 241). Critical ethnography is oriented towards exposing oppressive practices in organizations and critical ethnographers are overt about their emancipatory values. Not all critical ethnographies are the same however. Alvesson and Skoldberg suggest three alternative modes of critical ethnography. In type 1 they envisage a form of critical ethnography where the result is largely the same as a conventional ethnography as regards the shap ing of the text in that the focus lies on providing empirical descriptions of the lifeworlds of the subjects of research. Whilst researchers adopting this type of approach would give Page 6 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology consideration to critical theory where appropriate in their analysis and interpretation of the data, the analysis remains largely rooted in the empirics and does not go far beyond what can be represented empirically. A type 2 approach to critical ethnography, on the other hand is more focused and accord ing to Alvesson and Skoldberg, a possible research strategy would be to concentrate up on a particular issue which is amenable to critical interpretation in other words an issue which can be examined with regard to construction of reality, asymmetrical power rela tions, ideology, autonomy, and communicative distortions to provide a “close reading.” A good example of this kind of research which is often referred to comes from Forrester in his study of communicative action in a public sector planning meeting. Forrester adopts a Habermasian approach to examine the interactions between individuals in the meeting. He examines a very short interaction and argues that by looking closely and listening carefully, it is possible “to appreciate even the most apparently simple ‘bureaucratic’ in teractions as entry points, as windows through which we might look to see the extraordi nary political complexity of professional and organizational work” (Forrester 2003: 49). More specifically, Forrester argues that by observing and probing a wide range of interactions it is possible to assess how communicative actors make practical claims that: (p. 352)
1. Refer to states of affairs and so shape their listeners beliefs; 2. Invoke legitimate norms and so appeal to their listeners consent; 3. Express the speaker's disposition, and so appeal to their listener's trust; 4. Adopt a conventional way of representing issues, and so frame their listeners at tention selectively. (Forrester 2003: 56) He highlights how doing fieldwork in a Habermasian way encourages researchers to look closely at appeals to truth and consider the ways in which these appeals serve varied ends (Forrester 1992). Thus, by examining their transcript in depth and focusing on the actors not only as speak ers but as listeners too, the critical researcher can examine communicative interactions to illu minate the ways in which they serve to maintain or alter social structures, recognize or discredit identities, establish or evade normative sanctions (e.g., regulations) and form or refute beliefs and world views (Forrester 2003: 63).
Finally, according to Alvesson and Skoldberg, in a type 3 critical ethnography the re searchers own empirical research plays a far less central role. Instead the critical theorist focuses at theoretical level and interprets and reinterprets material from existing studies. They may add some small-scale empirical work of their own to this, perhaps short ethno graphies or interviews but these are not subject to the intense scrutiny seen in a type 2 approach. The example that Alvesson and Skoldberg give of this is Richard Sennet's (1980: 141) study of how people experience authority and how it could be experienced differently. They see this as a “mini-variant of empirical research which can help to re duce the gap between critical theory and the field.” This book draws from a wide variety of sources including existing studies, philosophical pieces, and a small number of inter views with a diverse range of people to develop Sennet's ideas concerning the bond be tween authority and rebellion.
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Critical Management Methodology A central element of critical ethnography is a focus on reflexivity. Reflexivity should im pact on all aspects of the research process. For example, from the outset of any research project researchers should ask themselves why funders may be supporting a particular piece of research; who stands to gain and who might lose. They should question any pos sible taken for granted assumptions. As Simon and Dippo (1986) explain, they must ad dress the limits of their own claims by giving consideration to how their research, as a form of social practice, is constituted and regulated through historical relations of power and existing material conditions. It has been noted by writers such as Feuchtwang (1973), Said (1985, 1993), and Kabbani (1986), that anthropology and ethnography retain a theoretical perspective and conceptu al framework that were shaped by colonial conquest and imperialism. Critical ethnogra phers must therefore reflect on their relationship to those they are (p. 353) studying and they must try to maintain awareness of the ideological imperatives and epistemological presuppositions that inform their sensemaking (Kincheloe and Mclaren 1998). The com mitment to action however means that self-reflection is not enough. Indeed: to create a really useful and critical ethnographic praxis, it is not enough to en courage self reflection and deeper understanding on the part of the persons being researched so as to attain “full reciprocity in research” (Lather 1991, 60). Rather we must aim to learn and impart skills which will allow our subjects to continue in vestigating the world in which they will go on living … in short making the every day world problematic for ourselves is not enough; making it problematic for those we leave behind in the field should be the point. (Jordan and Yeomans 1995: 402) A common criticism of critical ethnography is that it fails to have sufficient impact on those be ing studied. Jordan and Yeomans (1995: 399) bemoan the lack of impact of much critical ethno graphic work beyond the seminar room. Whilst for some (see, e.g., Jermier 1998) this is not a problem as these studies may be being put to the service of oppressed groups in indirect ways for example through teaching, others call for research that has a more direct emancipatory po tential through interventions into organizational life. The section below examines some of these approaches.
Critical-Emancipatory Action Research In Habermasian terms, much action research articulates a functional rationality ex pressed as an instrumental orientation towards research in the sense that its practition ers fail to question the goals of the powerful clients their organizational interventions aim to pursue through inducing “necessary” organizational change. Here a scientific—techni cal view of problem solving is taken where these detached expert-practitioners are tacitly presented as exercising legitimate authority as architects of change in order to promote more efficient and effective organizational practices (see Grundy 1987; McKernan 1991). Guided by schemes such as Lewin's force-field analysis we are told that these expertpractitioners must deploy the power resources available to them to contingently cope Page 8 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology with the irrational resistance to their change maneuvers that derives from other organiza tional members who are presented as fearing the unknown, as lacking trust, as incorrigi bly pursing self-interest and so on (see Kotter and Schlesinger 1979; Scase and Goffee 1989; Greenwood and Hinnings 1996; Kotter 1996; Agocs 1997). From the point of view of critical theory such an approach to action research disenfran chises most organizational members, who have as much claim to epistemic authority as any other putative change-agent, by reducing them to the status of objects to be manipu lated. This epistemological demand to mobilize reflexive (p. 354) stakeholders usually si lenced or duped by the status quo, is clearly articulated by commitments to what is vari ously labelled “critical-emancipatory action research” (Grundy 1987; McKernan 1991), “cooperative inquiry” (e.g., Heron 1996; Reason 1999) or participatory action research (e.g., Park 1999). For instance Reason (1999) suggests that those who advocate coopera tive inquiry aim to “articulate and offer democratic and emancipatory approaches to inquiry” (p. 207). Thus critical theory's approach to organizational change, through the promulgation of a distinctive forms of highly participatory action research, has significant implications for the role of the change-agent/action researcher in relation to a normally disenfranchized membership. Thus critical theorists fundamentally reconstruct the role of the action researcher. Follow ing Friere's ground-breaking educational work with oppressed agricultural workers (1972a, 1972b) it becomes an educative role of facilitating democratic agreement with and amongst those members whose perspectives are normally silenced by the discursive hegemony of the powerful. This is accomplished through an authentic dialogue with the educator/action researcher where both are “equally knowing subjects” (Friere 1972b: 31). Here, according to Grundy (1987: 363) power resides wholly within the group “not with the facilitator and not with the individuals within the group.” Pivotal in this process of “symmetrical communication” (ibid.), so as to avoid “introjection by the dominated of the cultural myths of the dominator” (Friere 1972a: 59), action researchers must facili tate the development of a “critical consciousness” (ibid.: 46) that undermines the current hegemony by stimulating recognition amongst members of their present oppression. Here, according to Kemmis (2006), participatory action research is both emancipatory and critical in the sense that it aims to understand the ways in which people in particular social contexts are “shaped and reshaped discursively, culturally, socially and historical ly” (ibid.: 96). In this, it is important to explore the interconnections and tensions be tween “system and life world aspects of a setting as they are lived out in practice” (ibid.: 101). Thus through the development and use of theory to inform action the aim is to en gender, through reflexivity, new subjective self-understandings so that: members begin to understand and critique ongoing organizational practices as partisan social construc tions; become aware of their own role in production and reproduction of those practices; construe those practices not as normal, or inevitable, but as mutable through their own intervention; identify how they might intervene and challenge the hegemony of the pow erful in the evolution of their organizations.
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Critical Management Methodology This suggests that in line with critical theory, those traditionally silenced in the academic research process gain a voice in all aspects of the research endeavor, ranging from de signing the research questions, to planning and implementing eventual action strategies (see Kemmis 2006). Thus there is an overt commitment to democratizing action research cycles through the empowerment of often disenfranchized groups in organizations with the aim of “emancipating themselves (p. 355) from the institutional and personal con straints that limit their power” (Kemmis and MacTaggart 1988: 23). For instance in presenting what he calls the methodology of cooperative inquiry, which in volves a systematic approach to developing understanding and action, Reason (1999) gives an outline of the iterative cycles of action and reflection each made up of four phas es: Phase one A group of people with a common interest get together. Their first task is to agree what issues they wish to explore. They then agree to undertake some form of action which will contribute to this exploration. Phase two The group apply their agreed actions in their everyday life and work they initiate the actions and observe and record the outcomes of their own and each oth ers behavior. Phase three The co-researchers become fully immersed in their experience. They may become more open to what is going on and they may begin to see their experi ence in new ways. Phase four After an agreed period engaged in phase two and three the co-re searchers reassemble to consider their original question in the light of their experi ence—as a result they may change their questions in some way or reject them and pose new questions. They then agree on the second cycle of action and reflection. The research process of action and then reflection can involve numerous cycles until members are satisfied. It is clear that those who might normally be considered to be the passive objects of traditional forms of action research instead play an active role in un dertaking research and reflecting upon their situations. Thus the two objectives of criti cal-emancipatory action research are met: to create knowledge and action directly useful to a group and to empower people through raising their consciousness (Reason 1999). This approach has been used in a wide range of organizational and management settings. For example, Reason (2006) highlights a number of recent projects which have included areas such as: the quality of working life (Fricke 2001); leadership in community develop ment (Ospina et al. 2003); how black women can thrive in UK organizations (Douglas 2002); leadership in the police (Mead 2002); and integrating universities, corporations, and government institutions in knowledge generating systems (Levin 2004). However it has been argued that some applications of ostensibly participatory action re search are not as emancipatory as others. Cooke (2006), for example, argues that man agerial applications of participatory action research can be seen as cooptational. He sug gests that for many action research programs their participatory focus on means rather than the objectives of change, on micro- intra-organizational issues and their tacit but Page 10 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology questionable claim to rigor are said to (p. 356) conceal and reinforce existing power rela tions, rather than deliver the meaningful empowerment promised (Cooke 2006: 665). Maguire (2002) similarly questions whether participatory action research is being co-opt ed into a depoliticized tool for “improving practice” with little or no critical understand ing of power relations and structures. In particular she focuses on the need for action re search to give attention to feminist thought and practices: an issue which has been raised by a number of scholars (see, e.g., Fonow and Cook 1991; Gephart 1993). The potential cooptation of participatory action research is a concern to many scholars. It has been ar gued that to prevent this it desperately needs the insights of critical ethnography. As Hemment (2007) argues, critical ethnography requires researchers to gain an under standing of the local whilst always maintaining concern with broader relations of power within which people and practices are situated. Thus she argues it provides a valuable ad dition to participatory action research projects and she reinforces the importance of the theoretical issues outlined by Kemmis (2006) and alluded to above. However, for many scholars, of equal importance in avoiding cooptation and forced con sensus is the development of conditions of dialogue during action research projects. For instance, Gustavsen (2006: 19) draws upon his experience of undertaking highly partici pative forms of action research in Scandinavia to present a set of criteria for distinguish ing what he calls “democratic dialogue.” The aim of this dialogue is to “promote a critical consciousness which exhibits itself in political as well as practical action to promote change” (Grundy 1987: 154). By encouraging members' reflexive interrogation of ongoing life world processes in their mundane organizational contexts with specific reference to the processes of identity formation, social integration, and cultural reproduction, what constrains equity and supports hegemony is collectively uncovered. In sum, the intent of critical-emancipatory forms of action research is to challenge hierar chy in organizations and traditional management prerogatives whilst enabling the negoti ation of alternative renditions of reality which, freed from “dominating constraints” (Grundy 1987: 361) create novel questions, inaugurate new problems and make new forms of organizational practice, based upon mutual understanding and con sensus, sensible and therefore possible (see also Gaventa and Cornwall 2006; Park 2006). The educational processes at the heart of these forms of critical-emancipatory action re search seem to articulate what Habermas has called an “emancipatory interest” that seeks to free people from domination—the systematic distortion of interaction and com munication—and liberate their socio-rational capabilities. For Habermas the form of knowledge for this project is self-knowledge and understanding generated through selfreflection. When accomplished this self-reflection leads to insight due to the fact that what was previously unconscious is made con scious in a manner rich in consequences: analytic insights intervene in life. (1974a: 23) Hence the possible challenge to the status quo of many organizations, where intra-orga nizational relations are embedded in hierarchy, goes well beyond a conventional concern to prac tically aid the resolution of particular problems for the betterment of organizations as it puts in (p. 357)
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Critical Management Methodology to the spotlight questions such as: Whose problems take priority? How can we understand these problems? Who should participate? Better for whom in the organization? What do we mean by better? Inevitably trying to implement such dialogue will confront issues around the unequal dis tribution of material and symbolic power in organizations—issues which may prevent genuine di alogue between participants taking place (see Hardy and Leiba-OʼSullivan 1998; Gaventa and Cornwall 2006). The danger is that notional democratic communication may be a facade in which the more powerful deploy a rhetoric of democracy to impose their own preferences upon, and silence or marginalize, the less powerful. Nevertheless, the focus of the critical theorist in these forms of critical-emancipatory action research is upon facilitating the processes of democ ratic agreement rather than upon the content of the ensuing consensus. This is in line with Habermasian philosophical commitments since the focus is upon the development of a critical consciousness amongst participants based upon their recognition of oppression and through au thentic dialogue the articulation of new theory-laden self-understandings.
CMS and Methodological Alternatives to Habermasian Critical Theory: Continuities and Divergences Sharing critical theory's repudiation of neutral observation we can identify the point of departure of three further interrelated key approaches operating under the CMS umbrel la: feminism, critical realism, and postmodernism. Some of the differences here arise over ontological implications of our lack of a neutral observational language through which we can conduct our research. Because we inevitably use various socially derived inferences and assumptions in our sensemaking, our resultant social constructions can either: medi ate and shape what we observe like a set of filters which lead us to interpret the external social world in particular ways. This is a stance typical of critical theory, much feminist methodology, and critical realism. Alternatively we create the social reality that we see, in and through the very act of perception itself. This is a stance typical of certain forms of postmodernism—often labelled “hard,” “skeptical,” or “reactionary” postmodernism (Rosenau 1992; Tsoukas 1992; Kilduff and Mehra 1997; Alvesson and Deetz 2000). As we will discuss, these disputes lead to different forms of research approach. As with critical theory, in some forms of feminist research and critical realism, the outcomes of research are influenced by the subjectivity of the social scientist, and his/her mode of engagement, which leads to the production of different versions of an indepen dently existing reality which we can never fully know. Indeed critical theory's aim to be both participative and emancipatory is also evident in feminist methodology. For example, in her highly influential critique of quantitative research, Mies (1993) argues, that it sup presses the voices of women and hence is incompatible with feminism. She argues that claims to value-freedom and neutrality towards research objects has to be “replaced by conscious partiality which is achieved through partial identification with research ob jects” (1993: 68). Moreover such research must aim to bring about the emancipation of women and its validity should be judged in terms of its contribution to this project. She il lustrates these methodological developments by the suitably reconfigured use of life his (p. 358)
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Critical Management Methodology tories in feminist research where the emphasis is upon emancipation through democratic participation and reflexivity to produce new social practices that challenge the status quo. There has been a resurgence of interest in the life history method in recent years (Chamberlayne, Bornat, and Wengraf 2000; Miller 2000) where interviewees are invited to reflect back in detail across their entire life course as a means of giving voice to indi viduals who are often marginalized in research either because of their lack of power or because they are typically seen as unexceptional (Bryman and Bell 2003). Of course this genre of feminist work has been challenged as not being significantly different from criti cal theory itself (see Hammersley 1992) in that “the ideas on which feminist methodolo gists draw are also to be found in the non-feminist literature” (1992: 202). However, this claim that feminist methodology lacks any distinctiveness is challenged by Williams (1993) who simultaneously argues that such research is much more diverse than Ham mersley gives credit. A combination of ontological realism and epistemological subjectivism is also evident in Bhaskar's philosophy of critical realism (e.g., 1978, 1986) where he differentiates be tween the “intransitive objects of scientific inquiry” that exist and act independently of their identification in human knowledge and the “transitive,” socially constructed, dimen sion that allows us to make sense of our world(s). According to Bhaskar, the products of science are always transitive, but they are about an intransitive object because “if chang ing experience of an object is to be possible, objects must have a distinct being in space and time from the experience of which they are the objects” (1978:31). Like critical theo rists, critical realists are concerned to provide both descriptions of human subjective ex perience and explanations of the varying forms that those interpretations might take which are applicable beyond the confines of the research settings in which such ethno graphic work has been conducted. Bhaskar (1989: 36–37) proposes the existence of a di alectical relationship between human agents and social structures where the latter exists independently of our conceptions of it. This is in terms of how social structures exert causal forces upon individual agents, yet those social structures are themselves (p. 359) si multaneously created, transformed, and reproduced by those agents everyday activities. This has significant implications for how both quantitative and qualitative methods are deployed and how the results of research are used and understood (see Mingers 2000). Although there are few examples of critical realism in studies of organizations, qualitative forms of research are usually favored because of the importance placed upon language and dialogue (Bhaskar 1989: 45–6) and the need to explore how agents' interpretations impact upon social structures and visa versa, whilst not taking either as fully causing or determining the other. For example, these aims are illustrated by Porter's (1993) ethnoga phy where he investigates the ways in which structures of racism and professionalism in teract and are expressed in, and through, relations between white nurses and black and Asian doctors in an Irish hospital setting. One methodological problem that confronts critical realists is to legitimate their accounts of the causal impact exerted by social structures upon agents' interpretations given their emphasis that all knowledge, including their own, is transitive. as Halfpenny (1994: 65) observes, “what restrictions are there upon the mechanisms which can be invoked as Page 13 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology causal explanation … why not demons or witches' spells?” Here Sayer (1992) provides a potential epistemological solution by indirectly drawing upon American pragmatist philos ophy. Although Sayer writes primarily from a critical realist stance, he forges a link with Dewey's antiauthoritarian pragmatism which defined truth as “processes of change so di rected that they achieve their intended consummation” (1929: iii) where knowledge was socially constructed to aid the “settling of problematic situations” (ibid.). Indeed Sayer embeds in his critical realist methodology the notion that although our conceptualization and explanation of causal regularities must always be open to question, our ability to un dertake practical actions that are successful and our ability to reflect upon and correct actions that seem unsuccessful, implies that we have feedback from an independent “re ality” which constrains and enables practices that would otherwise be inconceivable. In other words, praxis demands and enables processes of adjudication through the feedback that derives from the tolerance of that mind-independent spatio-temporal reality (see also Arbib and Hesse 1986). By admitting to the significance of social construction, and how this also entails transactions between subject and object, pragmatists develop extra dis cursive criteria of truth that complement and supplement the critical theorists' demand for democratic agreement. These extra-discursive criteria are for Sayer (1992: 69) in the form of the “actual realization of expectations” through interventions which enable con tact with Collier's (1979) “tolerance of reality.” Indeed the world can only be understood in terms of available conceptual resources, but the latter do not determine the structure of the world itself. And despite our entrapment within our conceptual schemes, it is still possible to differentiate between more and less practically adequate beliefs. (Sayer 1992: 83, our emphasis) This heritage has led some critical-emancipatory action researchers to argue that action research itself becomes a vehicle for judging ideas in terms of their efficacy in actual application (see Gustavsen 2006; Park 2006) while retaining democratic consensus as pivotal to generating the ideas in the first place (Levin and Greenwood 2001). (p. 360)
In contrast to critical realism and critical theory, “hard,” “skeptical,” or “reactionary” postmodernist research assumes that what we take to be reality is itself created and de termined by our acts of cognition. Here the social world isn't there waiting for us to dis cover it, rather that the act of knowing creates what we find. Whilst this philosophical stance also argues against the possibility of an objective empirical science of manage ment, it is also a relativistic stance. For the postmodernist, positivist efforts to develop theories that reveal causal relationships through accumulating objective empirical data are a forlorn hope. This is not just because knowledge is contaminated by the discourse of the social scientist, rather their theoretical stance, their norms, beliefs, values, etc., en coded into their academic disciplines act to constitute, or create, what we take to be so cial reality. This philosophical attachment to a subjectivist ontology creates a clear demarcation with critical theory (see Alvesson and Deetz 1996: 210) which is less evident in other ap proaches within the CMS umbrella that we have covered in this chapter. For instance, skeptical postmodernists sometimes accuse critical theorists of presenting discourses as Page 14 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology being constituted by non-discursive conditions (for example Quantz 1992). They suggest that such essentialism lies in critical theory's guiding presupposition that structurally based oppression and exploitation lie hidden beneath appearances: an essentialism which is further articulated in its concern with enabling emancipation through democratization. Such presuppositions are dismissed by skeptical postmodernists as unsustainable “grand” or “meta” narratives which arbitrarily “assume the validity of their own truth claims” (see Rosenau 1992: xi). Here the concept of discourse is pivotal. Discourses are subjective, linguistically formed, ways of experiencing and acting and constituting phenomena which we take to be “out there.” As such they are expressed in all that can be thought, written, or said about a par ticular phenomenon which, through creating the phenomenon, influence our behavior. Therefore a discourse operates by stabilizing our subjectivity into a particular gaze by which we come to construe ourselves, others, and what we take to be social reality. A dominant discourse, which is taken for granted by people and hence is not challenged, thereby limits our knowledge and practices by dictating what is legitimate. Inevitably a dominant discourse excludes alternative ways of knowing and behaving—alternative dis courses and their associated practices are always possible, they are just being sup pressed. So here, social reality, or hyperreality, becomes a self-referential and arbitrary output of the researcher's, and other actors', discursive practices. For Baudrillard (1983, 1993) such hyper-realities have no independent ontological status as they are divorced from any non-linguistic reference points. For the postmod (p. 361)
ernist, reality as an externally existing reference point is effectively destroyed since it is assumed there is nothing to see “out there” save simulations which appear to us to be re al. The result is “you can never really go back to the source, you can never interrogate an event, a character, a discourse about its degree of original reality” (1993: 146). Hence the epistemological fulcrum provided by a commitment to reality as an independently exist ing real reference point is erased. The task of the postmodernist is to describe these discursive forms, explore how they have developed and impact upon people, identify how they might change, and then ulti mately to destabilize them so that alternative discourses, which are always possible, might then develop without specifying what these alternative discursive forms might be. Postmodernists methodologically pursue these tasks: firstly, through the use of decon struction (for example Calás and Smircich 1991; Kilduff 1993; Linstead 1993) where lin guistic constructions are analyzed to reveal their inherent contradictions, assumptions and different layers of meaning. Cooper (1989) shows how undertaking this kind of de construction involves two processes: overturning, where terms are shown to suppress their binary opposites; and metaphorization which involves recognition that positively and negatively valued terms are defined in relation to each other and interpenetrate each oth er (Johnson and Duberley 2000). Secondly, postmodernists use genealogy to uncover the social processes in the making of totalizing narratives or essentialist discourses. A good example of this is Knights and Morgan's (1991) genealogy of the development of corpo rate strategy. Additional approaches include the examination of how discourses adapt and Page 15 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology change by deploying narrative theory (e.g., Barry and Elmes 1997); distinctive forms of discourse analysis (for example Ball and Wilson 2000) and finally the use of a postmod ernist form of action research where, for example, Treleavan (2001: 266) tried to destabi lize the hegemonic patriarchal discourse of gender and to “highlight unsettling actions and points of contradiction as strategic opportunities for change in the workplace.”
Conclusions We started this chapter by outlining some of the underpinning assumptions of CMS and the impact of these upon the methods employed. Initially we explored the methodology of a long-standing and highly influential perspective closely associated with CMS: critical theory. Here we have shown how, under the aegis of a realist ontology and a subjectivist epistemology, critical theorists undertake distinctive (p. 362) forms of ethnographic re search and action research. We have then moved on to consider an array of stances that also shelter under the CMS umbrella and their associated methodological discontinuities and continuities. Throughout we have emphasized how critical theorists necessarily have a commitment to reflexivity—both with regard to engendering it in others as an emancipatory device and with regard to interrogation of their own research praxis. Indeed although what is meant by reflexivity varies between the different approaches to CMS we have covered in this chapter, it is useful to finally consider how this issue can be transposed to how we might evaluate the outcomes of CMS research inspired by critical theory, in order to avoid the dangers posed by inappropriate use of evaluation criteria. Here we again use critical the ory as a heuristic device to illustrate the need to extend Willmott's (1998) new sensibility to criteriological issues in order to further protect CMS from the epistemological hegemo ny evident in the repeated presentation of Positivist evaluation criteria (for example Mitchell 1985; Scandura and Williams 2000) as the only way to assess the outputs of man agement research—as if these criteria were “culture free” (see Bochner 2000: 266). According to Putnam et al. (1993: 227) the quality of research from a critical standpoint is not based on the ability to tell a good story but “on the ability to participate in a human struggle—a struggle that is not always vicious or visible but a struggle that is always present.” Thus it could be argued that in the final analysis critical management studies will be judged according to the extent to which they enable freedom from oppression within organisations. There is some debate as to whether this also includes the oppres sion which some managers may themselves experience (see Alvesson and Willmott 1992). Peter Reason (2006: 190) argued that quality in action research will ultimately rest inter nally on the researcher's ability to see the choices they are making and understand their consequences; and externally on whether they articulate their standpoint and the choices they have made transparently to a wider audience. Clearly part of that articulation needs to be about how critical management research may be assessed and how this is quite dif
Page 16 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology ferent, for clear philosophical reasons, to the criteriological processes that are relevant to the evaluation of Positivist research. Evaluation criteria can be derived from critical theory's philosophy and centre on five in terrelated issues. Firstly, because any knowledge is a product of particular values and in terests researchers must reflexively interrogate “the epistemological and political bag gage they bring with them” (Kincheloe and McLaren 1998: 265). So, critical researchers must actively reflect upon their own interpretive processes. Secondly, through “critical interpretation” (Denzin 1998: 332) and what amounts to a structural phenomenology (Forrester 1983) or “critical ethnography” (Thomas 1993; Morrow and Brown 1994), re searchers attempt to sensitize themselves and participants to how hegemonic regimes of truth impact upon the subjectivities of the disadvantaged (Marcus and Fischer 1986; Put nam et al. 1993). Thus critical (p. 363) researchers must also reflect on the extent to which they can move beyond the experiences of their participants and access these “deep structures.” Thirdly, positivist conceptions of validity are overtly rejected and replaced by democratic research designs to generate conditions that approximate to Habermas's ide al speech situation (e.g., Broadbent and Laughlin 1997) and are dialogical (Schwandt 1996: 66–67). Pivotal is the credibility of the constructed realities to those who have par ticipated in their development (Kincheloe and McLaren 1998) However, a problem may arise here as the subjects of research may not see the effects of oppression that re searchers identify and further even if they do reflect upon their position, Fay (1987) queries the extent to which critical reflection will necessarily result in emancipation. Fourthly, positivist concerns with generalizability are rejected in favor of what Kincheloe and McLaren (1998) call “accommodation” where researchers use their knowledge of a range of comparable contexts to assess similarities and differences. Fifthly there is what Kincheloe and McLaren (1998) call “catalytic validity.” This is the extent to which re search changes those it studies so that they understand the world in new ways and use this knowledge to change it (see also Schwant 1996: 67). As discussed earlier, many writ ers see this as the crucial aspect of assessing critical theory, although others (see, e.g., Guess 1982) question whether there are any clear public criteria for success and failure of emancipation: emancipation can miscarry: the agents may steadfastly refuse to accept the views about freedom embodied in critical theory or they may recognise that they ac quired certain beliefs or traits under conditions of coercion but maintain they would have acquired them anyway, even if they had been in circumstances of com plete freedom the critical theory proposes they may discover that it imposes unex pected and intolerable burdens on them and must be abandoned. (Guess 1982: 89) In sum, critical theory's Kantian philosophy directs critical management research into a proces sual project that emphasizes researchers' and participants' reflexive and dialogical interrogation of their own understandings and the hegemonic discourses of the powerful. The overall aim is to engender new democratically grounded self-understandings to challenge that which was previ ously taken to be authoritative and immutable thereby reclaiming alternative accounts of organi zational phenomena and the possibility of transformative organizational change (see Unger 1987; Beck 1992; Alvesson 1996; Gaventa and Cornwall 2006; Park 2006). These evaluation cri Page 17 of 25
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Critical Management Methodology teria do not fit all approaches under the CMS umbrella perfectly. Postmodernist approaches in particular stand out as being different, focusing more on the need to unsettle and deconstruct with an acceptance of multivocality. However, these criteriological issues are pivotal for much CMS research since their reflexive consideration can act as a defense against the epistemologi cal imperialism of the positivist mainstream when it comes to research evaluation in the man agement domain. An awareness of these issues may indeed further enhance our “new sensibility” (Willmott 1998).
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Joanne Duberley
Joanne Duberley is a senior lecturer in organizational studies at Birmingham Busi ness School, the University of Birmingham. Her main research interests include the impact of commercialization upon the development of science, the study of scientific careers, and the management of the interface between work and home life in female entrepreneurs. Recent publications have appeared in journals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. Phil Johnson
Phil Johnson is Professor of Organization Studies at Sheffield University Manage ment School and Head of the OB/HRM division. His primary research interest is in the development democratic modes of organization and new working practices. In the past he published in a range of refereed journals and co-authored and edited sev eral books on organization behaviour, organization theory, and research methodology.
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Marketing
Marketing Michael Saren and Peter Svensson The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Marketing, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0018
Abstract and Keywords This article is structured as follows. After a brief note on the history of critique both with in and outside marketing studies, five core marketing concepts or main objects of cri tique, based on critical marketing publications and conferences (including the marketing streams of the conference series in critical management studies since 1999) are re viewed. These are: consumer sovereignty and freedom of choice; relationship marketing; consumer identity and branding; marketing practice and work; and finally, consumer re sistance and activism. In the final part of the article some of the future challenges facing critical marketing studies and its development are discussed. Keywords: marketing studies, CMS, freedom of choice, consumer resistance, consumer activism, relationship mar keting
ARGUABLY, the dominant conceptualization of what is considered a “marketing phenome non” in the normative marketing management literature is centered on the notion of ex change (Bagozzi 1978). Any marketing idea or action involves the exchange of products, services, knowledge, and money. To the critical marketer the market exchange is seen as a constitutive and reproductive (rather than reactive and responsive) interaction charac terized by politics, ideology, and discursive closure. The chapter is structured as follows. After a brief note on the history of critique both within and outside marketing studies, five core marketing concepts or five main objects of critique, based on critical marketing publications and conferences (including the market ing streams of the conference series in critical management studies since 1999) are re viewed. These are: consumer sovereignty and freedom of choice; relationship marketing; consumer identity and branding; marketing practice and work; and finally, consumer re sistance and activism. In the final part of the chapter some of the future challenges facing critical marketing studies and its development are discussed.
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Marketing
A Brief History of Critique within and Outside Marketing Many of the earliest examples of critique in academic marketing have been highly selfreferential, mostly concerned with the methodologies and theoretical (p. 372) underpin nings of academic marketing research itself. Under the heading of “marketing as science versus art,” the debate filled the marketing journals up to the mid-1960s (Bartels 1951). Although important in many respects, these debates about research and theory in market ing did not even question the dominant assumption of a managerial orientation in market ing. Nevertheless, there have been some marketing theorists who have adopted an avowedly critical approach to the subject. In Philosophical and Radical Thought in Marketing, Firat, Dholakia, and Bagozzi (1987) attempted to break with the dominant ideology and practice of academic marketing research and the discipline's managerial orientation, its emphasis on empirical research at the expense of theory and its overwhelming “quantitative bias.” Other critical work followed, predominantly (but not exclusively) from those engaged in consumer research, who by definition approach the subject of marketing from a different perspective from that of the manager. For example, Murray and Ozanne (1991) discussed the relevance and application of the work of the Frankfurt School for marketing and Het rick and Lozada (1994) critiqued and further developed their pioneering contribution. Other writers on critical marketing draw their inspiration from wider philosophical and theoretical sources, including feminist theory (Bristor and Fischer 1993), postmodernism (Firat and Venkatesh 1995), literary criticism (Stern 1990), semiotics (Mick 1986), decon struction (Stern 1996), and radical ecology (Kilbourne 2004). These writers have been mainly US-based, where it is argued that, despite growing intellectual interest, there is little institutional encouragement for marketing academics to engage in critical studies (Scott 2007). In the UK and Europe there have been attempts to take a more critical approach to the subject in the 1990s such as a conference and book on Rethinking Marketing: Towards Critical Marketing Accountings (Brownlie et al. 1999). However, the philosophies and methodologies comprising the portmanteau label “critical” in marketing do not necessari ly always sit very comfortably together. What these do have in common with the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School is that they embrace, in some way or another, distinctly emancipatory aspirations in their analysis and critique of marketing theory and practice. Such critical attempts are still today very much the minority position within the dominant logic of scientific marketing (Arndt 1985). As Morgan (1992, 2003) points out, this state of affairs reflects marketing's dominant technical-rational view of knowledge, from which it follows “naturally” that consumers are knowable entities with characteristics that can be captured like natural phenomena. Thus, marketing has generated “technologies of governance,” historically predominantly through market research and now through IT and customer relationship management. Page 2 of 22
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Marketing The discourse of marketing ensures the never-ending need for marketing because of its dual “dialectical” role in its attempts to know the customer and its attempts to sell to the customer. “This incessant dialectic (p. 373) is a black hole into which marketing expertise is poured with variable effects” (Morgan 1992: 140). Outside the academic marketing discipline, marketing critique has a longer history. It was Veblen (1899) who first detailed the modern “conspicuous consumption” behavior of the noveaux riches, and the manner in which they employed certain types of goods and ser vices as registers of their new social position. Other US critics were broadly non-Marxist including Packard's critical analysis of the methods and effects of the advertising industry in The Hidden Persuaders (1957) and Galbraith's economic analysis of the Affluent Society (1958). There has also been a strong critical element in some of the anthropological stud ies of consumer-driven society such as Douglas and Isherwood's World of Goods (1978). Within Marxist and neo-Marxist literature Baran and Sweezy's analysis of Monopoly Capi tal (1964) relegates all marketing activity to the surplus appropriation from labour and even more extensive critical analyses of marketing-driven society have been offered by the Frankfurt School's critical theory. Marcuse (1964) discusses the loss of individuality and the rise of conformity as endogenous to advanced industrial society in which the mar keting apparatus plays an important role. In Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of En lightenment (1997), market research and positioning are likened to the techniques of pro paganda (1997: 123). The critique of the commodification of culture is further developed by Adorno (1991), Böhme (2003), and Fromm (1978). Furthermore, postmodernist writ ers have provided studies of and comments on marketing phenomena and consumer soci ety. Acknowledging the symbolic value of commodities, rather than their use value, Bau drillard (1988, 1994), broke ground for a plethora of themes within critically oriented marketing and consumer research, e.g., consumption and identity, possessions and the self, advertisements and subjectivication. Critical studies of marketing related phenomena can also be found in close-up studies of marketing practices which often combine a detailed and ethnographically informed ap proach with a thorough problematization of everyday marketing work. Examples include Lien's ethnography of the day-to-day work at a marketing department (Lien 1995, 1997) which illustrates the uncertainties, ambiguities, and dilemmas related to marketing man agement decision-making, and Hochschild's (1983) The Managed Heart, which explores the management of emotional reactions of flight attendants in their day-to-day service work. Leidner (1993) has conducted an ethnographic study of the management and stan dardisation of service encounters at McDonald's and Combined Insurance, in which she studied (among other things) the attempts to control and standardize the interaction be tween front personnel and customers. Leidner's study is both an insightful narrative of workplaces in contemporary capitalist society and a critical study of marketing work and standardization. More recently, although Klein's No Logo (2001) is not a research text in a conventional sense, it offers an influential critique of global consumer capitalism and (p. 374) branding,
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Marketing containing a thorough, highly provocative, and critical analysis of contemporary global capitalism that can inspire critical marketing researchers.
The Royal Subject: Critique of Consumer Sov ereignty and Freedom of Choice In managerially oriented marketing literature, the key value underpinning the concept of marketing is an avowed belief in the consumer's sovereign choice. The evergreen mantra in marketing management texts as well as in marketing practice used to construct the customer as the chooser, the one in control of the exchange, is “customer is king.” This royal metaphor is historically rooted in ideas of exchange, customer service, and free market choice. A case in point is Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, where Antonio is de scribed as a “royal merchant.” Smith (1961) famously described the consumer as “sover eign” in the marketplace. This notion of consumer freedom and sovereignty has been subjected to various critical readings. Hirschman (1993) has studied the language employed in marketing textbooks, which, she argues, are littered with metaphors of war, combat, and captivity. Market seg ments are “targeted” for “penetration.” Market share must be “fought for” and “won.” Customers must be “locked-in” lest they “defect” to the opposition. Thus, consumers are worked upon until they are “captive,” although unaware of this captivity (Du Gay 2001). If consumers' freedom—“inner and empirical” in Horkheimer's (1967) words—is lost and they exercise their choices in the marketplace only as captives, then the customer is not king, not an autonomous agent, but an interpellated royal subject, subject in two mean ings of the term: being subjected to power and being a subject with a will. Several authors have tackled this apparent contradiction between the espoused free mar ket values of the soi-disant marketing concept, and the overwhelming control apparatus and technologies of marketing management. Desmond (1998) traces marketing's ethics from the early twentieth century when the first marketing scholars were educated in the tradition of German historicism and the social dynamics of the free market and shows that this view of marketing is anything but value-free. Korczynski (2005) argues that mar keting texts are based upon “instrumental empathy,” i.e. the combination of the concep tion of the producer as a friend of the customer, on the one hand, and, on the other, the premise that the customers are valuable only in terms of being a source of income. This contradiction, one of consumer capitalism's concealed paradoxes (2005: 71), is perhaps most evident in the relation between buyer and seller. The myth of consumer sovereignty becomes (p. 375) here one strategy to avoid the disclosure of this instrumental empathy. At the selling point, says Korczynski, the customer is constructed as the king and the sell er or marketer as his or her servant, but the king is to be subtly led and manipulated by the servant.
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Marketing Another strand of critique takes issue with the very idea of a sovereign and free con sumer. Varman (2005) explored the role of the media in promoting and developing a new aspirational consumer culture in India, one that ensnares and seduces the urban working class and other subaltern groups. In a similar vein, Flipo (1999) argues that the main task of marketing in companies is in effect to gain power over other markets actors and insti tutions, including competitors, customers, and other stakeholders like the State, distribu tion channels, and opinion formers. In other words, marketing becomes meaningful to talk about only in terms of power. This power-based perspective on marketing generates new ways to understand the effects of marketing practices such as (i) creating “needs” among customers; (ii) the manipulation of perceptions or images (e.g., brands) rather than modification of reality; and (iii) creating dependence, subordination, or other ties with the customer which function as exit barriers that make it harder for the customer to replace one exchange relation with another. The consumer—the royal subject—becomes here, as it were, imprisoned in the “free” market exchange. One means of imprisoning—or indeed governing—the consumer is through the discursive production of willing subjects with internal(ized) needs, aspirations and dreams to be ful filled by means of consumption. Morgan holds that such a critical approach: helps us to consider how marketing has become embedded in the construction of social subjects and thus in the transformation of capitalist societies as a whole. Marketing discourse seeks to constitute the subjectivities of consumers and man agers within organizations. (Morgan 1992: 153) In order for marketing to provide consumer choice, it must deliver lots of supplies and products onto the market and therefore the assumption is that more choice is always “better.” Thus, mar keting values do not merely lead to more choice; but also to excess and the necessary provision of more than consumers' need or want. Bataille (1988) agues that all human systems lead to ex cess and waste. Thus, consumption is merely reflecting a basic form of the human condition, which always creates more than is needed and consumers can never consume it all, neither ma terially nor symbolically.
Svensson (2003) applies the ideas of George Bataille in a critical examination of the func tionalist and utilitarian metaphysics of marketing management discourse, which con structs consumption itself as either being useful in the fulfillment of the consumers' needs, or functional by serving social and existential functions such as the construction of identities, selves, distinctions, and group affiliation. (p. 376) Consequently, the notion of consumption as the wasteful expenditure of surplus production is effectively excluded from the ways that consumption can be talked, written, and thought about. Consumers are thereby turned into prisoners behind the bars of functionalism and utilitarianism (Svensson 2003). Market research has been shown by critical researchers to be a powerful conditioning in fluence on consumer choice (e.g., Contardo 2003; Tadajewski 2006). Moreover, the mar keting process has alienated consumers from production resulting in people being es Page 5 of 22
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Marketing tranged from one another as well as from the creation of goods. Marketers compound this, according to Carù and Cova (2003), by offering consumers extraordinary experi ences, which enable them to engage physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritu ally only in the consumption of the product or service. They also unveil the North Ameri can roots of this romantic vision supporting such an idea of extraordinary experiences, and critically evaluate the impact of this vision on the disappearance of consumers' “con templative time.”
Exploiting Relations: Critique of Relationship Marketing The roots of the relationship marketing approach go back to European academics in the 1970s, studying the conditions and behavior in industrial and service markets. Long-term relationships between buyers and seller are seen as important to each party and are viewed as sets of interconnected relationships within the “markets as networks” approach (Håkansson and Snehota 1995). One key aspect of relationship marketing is the assump tion of a “win—win” ideal, where both parties in a marketing relationship must gain sig nificantly from the relationship and the market transactions that occur within it (Gummesson 1997). The Fair Trade movement attempts to enact this win—win ideal by challenging the exist ing exploitative market relationships at the global level between raw material suppliers largely from the poor “South” and the advanced consuming counties of the rich “North.” A number of authors have criticized Fair Trade however, highlighting the contrast with the actuality and the “ideals” of relationship marketing. Beji-Becheur and OzcaglarToulouse (2007) show how fair trade has been transformed from initially limited acts and experiments to an alternative model for international economic relations, which aims to correct the current economic system's deficiencies on a social and ecological level. Faria (2007) also deals with less developed markets and unequal exchange relationships. He notes (p. 377) that the critical marketing literature in the UK has increased in the last ten years but very little has been published on how those critical ideas in marketing can be applied in less developed markets. Faria argues that more asymmetrical intercultural re search and access to the critical marketing knowledge in less developed markets may help increase the relevance of critical marketing to understanding the totality of market relationships from an ethnocentric, if not a postcolonial perspective. Astonishingly, the balance of power in market relationships has hardly been addressed by the relationship marketing literature, which naively holds to the “win-win” ideal without questioning the issues of resources, access, and information that frequently result in im balance of power and thus relationships. As these international examples demonstrate power is central to all market relationships and there is still much work to done here from a critical perspective in order to build better relational theory which takes account of power in marketing.
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Marketing Most critical attention has been on business to consumer marketing (B2C), with little on the relationships between enterprises which constitute the so-called “supply chain,” de spite the fact that these have powerful effects on delivery, control and, for poor produc ers, potential enslavement. This highlights the delineating effects of accepting the con ventional reductionist categories of the marketing field. Ellis and Ybema (2007) are ex ceptional in casting a critical perspective on business-to business (B2B) relationships. Us ing discourse analysis to investigate the “boundary talk” of managers in inter-organiza tional relationships, they find that the expansion of “the organization” across its own boundaries represents a process that, for all its inclusiveness, also entails a differentiat ing and excluding momentum, privileging old and familiar identifications of organization and profession. More generally in the relationship marketing discourse, the consumer is silenced by tak ing a managerial view of “relationships,” which focuses on control, manipulation, instru mentality, rationality, and agency, and which has effectively reduced the importance of the consumer to that of the silenced, subordinated “Other”, an object with which a rela tion should be built. This covert managerialism in marketing literature is typically pre sented as objective and value free, but in relationship marketing however this is not so covert or concealed. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems employ IT-en abled techniques not only to stimulate desires and needs, but also explicitly aim to devel op psychological loyalty, lock-in and dependence on the brand. Critical marketers need to devote more attention to the antecedents and consequences of the shift in marketing practice and literature to notions of customer retention, loyalty programs, customer rela tionship management, and consumer lifetime value; i.e. the monetary calculation of cus tomers' long-run value to the firm, contrary to the early ideal of the more equal distribu tion of benefits to customers (Saren and Tzokas 1998).
Logo is Life: Critique of Consumer Identity and Branding (p. 378)
Consumer researchers have acknowledged how consumers use products, brands and con sumption practices as resources for the construction of identity(ies) (Belk 1988; Walen dorf and Arnould 1988; Elliott 1997; Elliott and Wattanasuwan 1998; Elliott and Davies 2005). As Sirgy (1982) notes, the concept of the self in consumer behavior has generally been construed from a multidimensional perspective. He provides some examples of these various points of view. Psychoanalytic theory views the self concept as a self-system inflicted with con flict. Behavioral theory construes the self as a bundle of conditioned responses. Other views such as organismic theory treat the self in functional and develop mental terms; phenomenology treats the self in a wholistic [sic] form and cogni tive theory represents the self as a conceptual system processing information
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Marketing about the self. Symbolic interactionism, on the other hand, views the self as a function of personal interactions. (Sirgy 1982: 287) Others outside the consumer research field have proposed different ways in which consumption is related to self/identity, from various critical standpoints (e.g., Fromm 1978; Douglas and Isher wood 1978; Gergen 1991). This stream of research assumes that ads make identities available to consumers as raw materials for identity construction. Or in Elliot's words:
the consumption of symbolic meaning, particularly through the use of advertising as a cultural commodity, provides the individual with the opportunity to construct, maintain, and communicate identity and social meanings. (Elliot 1997: 285) Belk (1988) employs the term “extended self” to encompass the role of possessions in the consti tution of the consumer's identity. He argues that knowingly or unknowingly we regard our pos sessions as part of ourselves. We are, in other words, what we have. Belk presents three key ar guments for this:
1. The nature of self-perception encompasses possessions. The subjective existence of an extended identity is highlighted by phenomena such as the investment of psy chic or physical energy in the products we make or own, the diminished sense of self when certain possessions are lost and the ritual function of objects which anthropo logical studies have found in all societies. The ritual role of possessions and the per son can be observed most clearly when the objects are associated with birth, matri mony and death; i.e. points of the transformation of “self.” 2. The relationships between having, doing, and being. Objects in our possession al so enable us to do things we otherwise could not, e.g. an axe to chop wood, a horse to travel. However, beyond a strictly functional role of extending one's capacity for doing, possessions are also used symbolically to demonstrate or (p. 379) reinforce who we are. This is most obviously the case with a uniform or a badge, but many oth er apparently functional products are nowadays used symbolically to extend the own ers identity or being in some way, e.g. clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, houses, fur nishing, etc. 3. Processes of self-extension incorporating objects. Building on the relationship be tween having and being, Belk describes the various ways through which we learn to regard an object as part of self. First, by owning, controlling, or mastering objects, such as a car, a computer, or even by climbing a mountain, one “masters” them and they “add” to our sense of self. The second way is by creating an object. Whether it is a physical object or an abstract idea, the creator retains an identity with the object as long as it is associated with that person. The third way is by knowing. To “know” about something or someone contains elements of both desire and power on the part of the knower over the object. Belk (1988) argues that consumers are doing more than displaying their status or identity through products, à la Veblen. They are creat ing an “extended self” by appropriating and incorporating the objects and symbols of their consumption, such that they become what they consume. Belk's argument touches upon a crucial area of critique for critical marketing researchers: i.e. how human existence and identity are rooted in a possessive mode of living, a life where having Page 8 of 22
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Marketing has taken precedence over being (c.f. Fromm 1978). This observation opens up for a variety of critical encounters with consumer society and marketing practice. What is the role of marketing practice in this creation of the possessive mode of living? What are the psychological conse quences of a conception of the self intimately tied to possessions? What are the socio-political ef fects, e.g., in terms of class and social stratification?
Underlying some recent discussion of identity in marketing is a potential confusion be tween consumer identity and the so-called brand personality (see Holt 2002). The concept of the personality or identity of the brand is not the same thing as the consumer's identity however and another problem is that the term “branding” has evolved to such an extent that the word itself has become ubiquitous. Recently consumer behavior theories have shifted away from individualistic and psychologizing views on identity as more or less sta ble mental states, towards relational and social conceptions of identity and identity con struction. Such perspectives suggest that people and objects are rendered meaningful in terms of their social functions and roles within a wider web of social practices, functions, concepts, and interrelations. Many of the critical writings on consumer identity stress identity as being partially constituted and always in process. This is partly because the individual's identity as a consumer does not exhaust the “total” subject. We are obviously not only consumers; we are also citizens, parents, professionals, sisters, brothers, neigh bors, or authors of a chapter on critical marketing studies. The consumer self is (p. 380) sometimes compared to a bricolage, i.e. constructed by mixing “bits and pieces” from commodities and products available in the marketplace. This perceived partiality or bricolage of consumers' identity can be criticized by recogniz ing that it is the unfulfilled desire, the essential incompleteness, that is the consumer's identity; i.e. that absence or lack which in modern society's restricted economy the hu man being tries to fill through consumption (Saren 2007). This accounts for the hegemon ic role of marketing in stimulating desires and the need for fantasy and fetishism in the commodity form. Further, if it is unfulfilled desire that lies at the heart of the so-called consumer identity, this also accounts for the necessary eventual dissatisfaction on the part of the consumer, because of the logic of the market which always must create yet more demand, thus never fully satisfying it (contrary to its espoused “satisfaction of needs” rhetoric). This inherent incompleteness of consumer identity may be manifested in the behavior of consumers as subjects of marketing ideology.
Production of Consumption: Critique of Mar keting Practice and Work One critical study of the practice of marketing production by Fougère and Skålén (2007) is a study of the ethics of marketing management based on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory approach. Fougère and Skålén note that the ethics of marketing management is embedded in and has partly legitimised the marketing management discourse. Marketing management claims to satisfy the authentic needs and wants of the customer through adapting organizations and their offerings to customer demands. This ethical argument is framed in opposition to earlier marketing discourse, in which the manipulation of needs Page 9 of 22
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Marketing was brought to the fore as a pivotal marketing work task. However, the advocates of mar keting management and the assumed new marketing ethics in effect reinvented the ethics found in earlier marketing thought. Schroeder and Borgerson (2005) show that most ap proaches to marketing work ethics adopt an information-based model of marketing com munication, which fails to acknowledge the ways in which marketing also acts as a repre sentational system that produces meaning outside the realm of the promoted product or service. Other studies of marketing work have taken issue with the premise of the pre-constituted consumer—i.e. the autonomous subject that sets the scene for the marketing enterprise (c.f. critique of consumer sovereignty above)—and have brought (p. 381) to the fore the consumer as symbolically and discursively produced through various marketing prac tices. Suokannas and Moisander (2007) show how the production of advertisements pro duces different subject positions of the ageing consumer. Thus, marketing work becomes here the production of the temporally constituted consumer. Similarly, in Kärreman and Alvesson's (2001) observation of a news bill meeting at an evening newspaper, the meet ing is seen as a social arena where the reader is produced so as to provide both meaning and legitimacy for the work at the newspaper. Schwarzkop (2007) presents an analysis of surveys undertaken by the advertising industry in UK 1920–1970, a period when the ad vertising industry became increasingly concerned about the resentment that people showed against being re-created by advertising as consumers and potential target mar kets. In the 1920s, as a response, the advertising industry began to measure people's atti tude towards advertising and thereby invented what Lacan and Levinas described as “the third,” i.e., an observer situated beyond the dyad of advertisement and consumer. The category of “the third” was defined by the advertising industry as “the general public” or “the people,” whose opinions about commercial advertising became important for market ing practice. This can be seen as a way for marketing to deal with consumer resistance and resentment in this case through he construction of a general but significant other. In depicting marketing work as one of the main architects of consumer culture, critical research emphasizes marketers' reproduction of power relations and discursive closures. Furthermore, critical marketing studies do so without subscribing to the more general discussion of consumer society and advertising, such as Packard (1957). In particular, the adoption of the linguistic turn in management and organization studies has provided criti cal marketing scholars with a useful frame for the analysis of the social dynamics of mar keting practice and how it contributes to the symbolic and discursive production of con sumer and society (e.g., Hackley 2001). Thus, critical studies of marketing work carry the potential to open up a rather general notion of “marketing” for more detailed critique.
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Marketing
Regaining and Escaping the Market: Studies of Consumer Resistance and Activism This object of critical study differs somewhat from the topics discussed above in that it emphasizes consumers' own attempts to create spaces of autonomy and control in, against and in relation to the market through various practices of resistance (p. 382) and anti-market activism (Peñaloza and Price 1993; Fournier 1998). There has been a bur geoning interest in consumer activism and resistance, for instance in form of group ac tion and consumer movements (Herrmann 1992; Kozinets and Handelman 2004), e.g. an ti-marketing campaigns such as Adbusters (Rumbo 2002), or more mundane everyday, tactical resistance to the market (Catterall and Maclaran 2001) and consumer complaints and boycotts (Fournier 1998; Friedman 1999). The central question of consumer resistance and activism is whether, and to what extent, the consumers can escape the market. Kozinets (2002) and Arnould (2007) have both asked this question and their answers differ. Whereas Kozinets sees the possibilities for consumers to reappropriate and reclaim consumption spaces outside the market, Arnould reaffirms the potential of the market for certain producer/consumers to create their own independent means of income. Or put in Marxist terms: they can reappropriate part of the surplus. Consumers' engagement in asceticism and anti-materialism has been ana lyzed by Zavestoski (2002)in terms of a commitment to “voluntary simplicity.” Another possible site of resistance is examined by Goulding (2003), in which the consumer's use of their body as a practice of resistance is studied. The relationship between the body, iden tity, and the development of a sense of selfhood is well documented in the literature (Thompson and Hirschman 1995). Goulding (2003) studies the symbolic meaning of tat toos not simply as “body-branding” but as conscious acts of exclusion and as a source of alternative empowerment for self-excluded participants by means of a deliberate marking of inclusion into an alternative subculture of bikers, road builders, sailors, goths, and football fans, thus positioning the act of tattooing within a framework of social resistance. This links with the widening context and forms of consumer resistance (Fournier 1998). In this context, the notion of micro-emancipation has been proposed as a reconceptualiza tion of a more traditional and grandiose (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996: 172) idea of eman cipation. The idea of a more modest and open form of critical readings of marketing phe nomena has found adherents also within the field of critical marketing (e.g., Brownlie 2006).
Exit: Filling the Gap between the Adolescence and Obsolescence of Critical Marketing Studies Critical marketing studies is a relatively newborn baby in marketing as well as in critical management studies, which offers an array of demanding and exciting (p. 383) challenges. Below, we discuss four of these: the geographical distribution of research; engaging mar Page 11 of 22
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Marketing keting practitioners; the transformation of marketing education; and, finally, the charac ter of the critical marketing project.
The Global Distribution of Critical Marketing Studies European and Anglo-Saxon dominance prevails within critical marketing studies, both with respect to researchers and the topics of research. A field that takes as its point of departure the study of power, suppression, and closure of different forms should not re main blind to its own reproduction of Euro- and US-centrism. The discourse(s) of global ization, for instance, comprise marketing-related themes such as the homogenization of taste, the politics of outsourcing, expansion and internationalization, global branding, all meriting critical scrutiny. Critical studies of the ways in which marketing discourse and ideology are exported to the third world, often as a part of the so called “democratiza tion” are of utmost relevance in international critical marketing studies. An example outside the field of critical marketing is Okoye's (2004) study of how the no tion of “the nomadic,” with a particular focus on the nomadic Fulami in West Africa, has been appropriated and commodified in the form of tourism as well as consumer goods such as water and handbags. Another example is Kelly-Holmes's (1998) study of the ways in which media and advertising discourse has contributed to the dissemination of market ing and consumption ideology in Central and Eastern Europe.
Transforming Marketing Practice I: The Reading Marketing Practi tioner Reaching out to those groups in society engaged in practical marketing work is a crucial part of the transformational and emancipatory aspirations of the critical project (e.g., Alvesson and Willmott 1996: 39). Among other things, this enterprise entails the transfor mation of the marketing practitioner, from a doer to a reader. Being able to “read” refers here to two capacities. First, the reading marketing practitioner is one who can and wants to read critical mar keting literature, who engages with academic discourse, reads journals and books, visits conferences, and takes part in seminars. They might even write about their self-reflection and introspective critique. A major barrier to this is the publication system based on re stricted journals with small readerships, which offers little for the practitioner. Critical management and marketing studies is seldom directed inwards, towards the business of critique, the industry of CMS, and the market for critical texts. If a transformation of mar keting practice is to (p. 384) be realised, the social and political practice of publication must be emancipated too. We need to reformulate what it means to “go public”, beyond prestige, career and top journals; e.g., writing broader (yet not simplified) texts and en gaging with marketing practitioners. Questions that go to the very heart of the critical marketing project are: why are we writing, to whom are we writing, and for what pur pose?
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Marketing Secondly, the marketing practitioner's capacity to read involves the competence to inter pret his/her work and role in society, i.e., to read critically. Acknowledging the produc tive, rather than reactive, role of the marketer is a part of this (self)critical gaze. To “read” in this sense resembles the ability to undertake what Geertz (1973) refers to as “thick descriptions,” i.e., not minute details of empirical material, but a certain reading style, an “intellectual effort” (Geertz 1973: 6) that tries to unravel different layers of meaning and recognise contradictions and dilemmas, enabling the reading marketing practitioner to face these without hiding behind marketing decision models. Is there perhaps something to be learnt from Naomi Klein's way of addressing both com plex and sensitive questions? Why are Klein's writings on corporate capitalism more mar ketable and publicly appealing than those stemming from the academic community of CMS? One answer may reside in the lack of interest within the academic community to approach a broader audience. Writing for the public is not rewarded within Academia and academics' use of exclusive language tends to delimit its broad impact.
Transforming Marketing Practice II: Marketing Education Marketing education is one of the main factories of the marketing practitioners of the fu ture (cf. Alvesson and Willmott 1996: 205). So how can we integrate critical marketing studies more thoroughly in the marketing course curriculum? One way is to broaden the reading lists to cover classic critical authors that might have something to say about mar keting, consumption, and politics (e.g., Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Baudrillard, and Bourdieu), but one obstacle often quoted is that this literature has little relevance for the students' future tasks as marketing practitioners. Some students pose the pertinent question: “Who would employ me as a marketer if I were critical towards what the com pany does?” The somewhat depressing but honest answer is most likely: “Very few.” An other illustration is the question asked by a group of international MBA students when the instructor was discussing the buying behavior of poor consumers (see Hill 2002). “Why do we need to know about marketing to the poor?” asked these future leaders of multinational business; “they don't have any money.” Is the task of critical marketing education to give the students the means to fit into em ployers' organizations, or to enable them to develop self-esteem, courage (p. 385) and in tellectual strength, and a sense of agency? This question neatly encapsulates the situa tion in business schools and universities in Europe and US which has undergone a thor ough marketization during the last ten to fifteen years (Lowrie and Willmott 2005). Stu dents have been redefined as customers who demand certain knowledge from teachers, who have become service providers. Student evaluations are employed to follow up on the quality of the courses and teachers, with quality measured in terms of customer satis faction. Teaching skills and intellectual capacity are then often confused with student popularity. What would be a better example of an object of critique in critical marketing education than marketing education itself? What would be a better mode of engaging in
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Marketing critique than interrogating the customer orientation and marketization imposed upon uni versity education?
The Character of the Critical Marketing Project A final area of development concerns what kind of project critical marketing studies ought to be? It is important to recognize that the topics constituting critical marketing studies do not fit very neatly into the themes and categorisations based on conventional subfields of marketing such as services, B2B, social marketing, consumer behavior, notfor-profit, and so forth. Talking and writing about marketing in terms of conventional cat egories for the organization of the study of marketing phenomena limits the possibilities and range of critique. To paraphrase Foucault, categories create outcomes. Thus, the con ventional managerial functionalist sub-groupings are inappropriate as a basic structure of critique; instead they should be a part of what is subjected to critical scrutiny. Therefore our own practices of categorizing and the systems of categories should themselves be treated by critical marketers with caution and, to some extent, suspicion. Furthermore, the reductionism inherent in the conventional marketing subgroups tends to give way to analyses that obscure important overriding and holistic marketing phenom ena, which are relevant to, but not wholly revealed within, partial sub-areas that are im portant to the critical author. These phenomena include the underlying mechanisms, structures and relations as well as more general concepts such as identity, culture and knowledge. Many conventional studies of the marketing of food, for example, are split in to traditional market categories of food consumption, agricultural supply, processing and manufacture, food products, distribution systems and food advertising, and each is re searched and analyzed separately. For a critical marketing analysis this type of structure is completely unsuitable, not least because it renders the marketing system itself—and of course broad socio-cultural and economic conditions—to a secondary level, which can be only partially revealed and studied in each sub-area (see Gabriel and Lang 2006). Brownlie (2006) notes that critical marketing is partly about making “available for inspec tion, not only the myth of objectivity itself, but related assumptions (p. 386) regarding the neutrality of marketing knowledge making practice” (2006: 506). Turning the critical gaze inwards, towards the production of critical marketing knowledge might be one of the most crucial steps towards the development—or perhaps maintenance is a better term here—of the critical marketing field. What can be required from research referring to itself as “critical” and how should critical studies of marketing be distinguished from un/a/non-critical ones? Should the criteria of criticality be narrow and exclusive or should they, conversely, be broad and forgiving? A strong case was made by Arndt (1985) that the marketing discipline has been dominat ed by logical empiricism. Arndt argued for pluralism in orientations and paradigms for the development of marketing theory. Possibly, this is one route to opt for within the project of critical marketing studies, one that aims at fulfilling not only the liberating par adigm, but also, taking up Arndt's call for pluralism, the sociopolitical and subjective par Page 14 of 22
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Marketing adigms as well (Saren et al. 2007). There is some potential for critique through critical so cial marketing, introspective analyses and interpretive research, all of which fall within Arndt's latter two paradigms. In concrete terms, this means a critical marketing agenda that takes an explicit interest in (i) the conflictual and political character of market ex changes, marketing and consumption; (ii) the existential and phenomenological aspects of marketing actors (marketers, consumers, distributors, etc.) and their actions; and (iii) the disciplining and constraining effects of marketing practices, ideology, and discourse (see Marion 2004). In order to accomplish this, critical marketing scholars need to problematize their rela tion to the more managerially oriented marketing research stream and not subscribe too easily to the dominant genre of marketing writing as it appears marketing journals. Writ ing radically and challenging—if that is what needs to be done by the critical marketing writer—is best done off the mainstream, not within it. And arguably, the most remote offmainstream position is situated off the academic track, in the outskirts of the convention al arenas of scholarly publication and safe academic career trajectories. One way to de velop the critical marketing project might be to engage with active interventions into more delimited problems of consumer and marketing character, as well as a stronger commitment in the broader public debate and political life. A broader distribution of criti cal marketing ideas would include consumers, politicians, activist groups, journalists, and citizens in general. It seems to us that researchers submitting to the label critical market ing studies very seldom appear in the public debate and political life. Yet, taking an active part in the public political discourse has traditionally been a characteristic of the commit ted, public intellectual. It is of course debatable whether or not a marketing scholar can or even should be a pub lic intellectual. We would argue for an affirmative answer to this question. The role of business schools and management scholars has changed substantially with the increasing marketization and neo-liberalization of both politics and education. (p. 387) The growth and burgeoning popularity of the critical management studies field is a good indicator of this development. The academic meriting system is of little help here though, perhaps even counterproductive. “Publish or perish” dictates much of academic work, including that subscribing to the label of “critical.” The development of critical marketing studies in terms of a broader distribution and impact outside the academic community warrants an internal critique of the systems of incentives and rewards within academia. A self-critical gaze is an important aspect of the critical attitude, and the mode of production of critique deserves scrutiny and critical discussion as well as—at times—acts of resistance.
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Marketing ALVESSON, M., and WILLMOTT, H. (1996). Making Sense of Management: A Critical In troduction. London: Sage. ARNOULD, E. J. (2007). “Can Consumers Escape the Market?” in M. Saren, P. Maclaran, C. Goulding, R. Elliot, M. Shanker, and M. Catterall (eds.), Critical Marketing: Defining the Field. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 139–155. ARNDT, J. (1985). “On Making Marketing Science More Scientific: Role of Orientations, Paradigms, Metaphors, and Puzzle Solving,” Journal of Marketing, 49: 18–23. BAGOZZI, R. P. (1978). “Marketing as Exchange: A Theory of Transactions in the Market place,” American Behavioural Scientist, 21: 535–556. BARAN, P., and SWEEZY, P. (1964). Monopoly Capital. London, Penguin. BARTELS, R. (1951). “Can Marketing be a Science?” The Journal of Marketing, 51/1: 319–328. BATAILLE, G. (1988). The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books. BAUDRILLARD, J. (1988). Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University Press. —— (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. BEJI-BECHEUR, A., and OZCAGLAR-TOULOUSE, N. (2007). “Fair Trade And Its Chal lenges Facing To Be Inside Or Outside Of The Market,” 5th International Critical Manage ment Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July. BELK, R. W. (1988). “Possessions and the Extended Sense of Self,” Journal of Consumer Research, 15: 139–168. BÖHME, G. (2003). “Contribution to the Critique of the Aesthetic Economy,” Thesis Eleven, 73: 71–82. BRISTOR, J. M., and FISCHER, E. (1993). “Feminist Thought: Implications for Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 19/4: 518–536. BROWNLIE D. (2006). “Emancipation, Epiphany and Resistance: On the Underimagined and Overdetermined in Critical Marketing,” Journal of Marketing Management, 22/5–6: 505–528. CARÙ, A., and COVA, B. (2003). “A Critical Approach to Experiential Consumption: Fight ing Against the Disappearance of the Contemplative Time,” 3rd International Critical Management Studies Conference, Lancaster University, July. CATTERALL, M., and MACLARAN, P. (2001). “Tactical Resistance to the Strate gies of the Market.” 2nd International Critical Management Studies Conference, Man chester School of Management, UMIST, July. (p. 388)
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Marketing CONTARDO, I. (2003). “Old and New Marketing Techniques: Using Images to Penetrate the Mind of the Global Consumer.” 3rd International Critical Management Studies Con ference, Lancaster University, July. DESMOND, J. (1998). “Marketing and Moral Indifference,” in M. Parker (ed.), Ethics and Organisation. London: Sage, 173–196. DOUGLAS, M., and ISHERWOOD, B. (1978). The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropol ogy of Consumption. London: Allen Lane. DU GAY, P. (2001). “Epilogue: Servicing as Cultural Economy,” in A. Sturdy, I. Grugulis, and H. Willmott (eds.), Customer Service: Empowerment and Entrapment. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 200–204. ELLIOT, R. (1997). “Existential Consumption and Irrational Desire,” European Journal of Marketing, 31/3–4: 285–296. —— and WATTANASUWAN, K. (1998). “Brands as Resources for the Symbolic Construc tion of Identity,” International Journal of Advertising, 17/2: 131–145. —— and DAVIES, A. (2005). “Symbolic Brands and Authenticity of Identity Performance,” in J. Schroeder and M. Salzer-Morling (eds.), Brand Culture. London: Routledge, 155–170. ELLIS, N., and YBEMA, S. (2007). “Constructing Individual and Organisational Bound aries in Inter-firm Relationships,” 5th International Critical Management Studies Confer ence, University of Manchester, July. FARIA, A. (2007). “Asymmetrical Exchanges in Critical B2B Marketing.” 5th International Critical Management Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July. FIRAT, F., DHOLAKIA, N., and BAGOZZI, R. (1987). Philosophical and Radical Thought in Marketing. Massachusetts: Lexington Books. —— and Venkatesh, A. (1995). “Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 22: 239–267. FLIPO, J.-P. (1999). “Power and Marketing.” 1st International Critical Management Stud ies Conference, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, July. FOUGÈRE, M., and SKÅLÉN, P. (2007). “Constructing and Deconstructing the Ethics of Marketing Management: A Discourse Theory Approach.” 5th International Critical Man agement Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July. FOURNIER, S. (1998). “Consumer Resistance: Societal Motivations, Consumer Manifes tations, and Implications in the Marketing Domain,” Advances in Consumer Research, 25: 78–90. FRIEDMAN, N. (1999). Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and the Media. New York: Routledge. Page 17 of 22
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Marketing FROMM, E. (1978). To Have or To Be? London: Abacus. GABRIEL, Y., and LANG, T. (2006). The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary Con sumption and its Fragmentations. London: Sage Publications. GALBRAITH, J. K. (1958). The Affluent Society. London: Hamish Hamilton. GEERTZ, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fontana Press. GERGEN, K. (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books. GOULDING, C. (2003). “Branding the Body: Tattoos, Consumer Resistance and Voluntary Exclusion.” 3rd International Critical Management Studies Conference, Lan caster University, July. (p. 389)
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Marketing KELLY-HOLMES, H. (1998). “The Discourse of Western Marketing Professionals in Cen tral and Eastern Europe: Their Role in the Creation of a Context for Marketing and Adver tising Messages,” Discourse & Society, 9/3: 339–363. KILBOURNE, W. E. (2004). “Sustainable Communication and the Dominant Social Para digm: Can They Be Integrated?” Marketing Theory, 4/3: 187–208. KLEIN, N. (2001). No Logo. London: Flamingo. KORCZYNSKI, M. (2005). “The Point of Selling: Capitalism, Consumption and Contradic tions,” Organization, 12/1: 69–88. KOZINETS, R. V. (2002). “Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illumina tions from Burning Man,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29/1: 20–38. —— and HANDELMAN, J. (2004). “Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and Ideology,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31/3: 691–704. LEIDNER, R. (1993). Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Every day Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. LIEN, M. E. (1995). Food Products in the Making: An Ethnography of Marketing Practice. Oslo: Oslo University. —— (1997). Marketing and Modernity. Oxford: Berg. LOWRIE, A., and WILLMOTT, H. (2005). “Marketing Higher Education: The Promotion of Relevance and the Relevance of Promotion.” 4th International Critical Management Studies Conference, Cambridge University, July. MARCUSE, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Indus trial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. MARION, G. (2004). L ʼIdéologie Marketing. Paris: Eyrolles. MICK, D. G. (1986). “Consumer Research and Semiotics: Exploring the Morpholo gy of Signs, Symbols, and Significance.” Journal of Consumer Research, 13: 196–213. (p. 390)
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Michael Saren
Michael Saren is Professor of Marketing at Leicester University School of Manage ment. He has previously held Chairs in Marketing at the Universities of Stirling and Strathclyde. He was a convener of the Marketing Stream at five Critical Manage ment Studies International Conferences, 1999–2007; also a founding editor in 2001 of the journal, Marketing Theory (Sage Publications), one of the co-editors of Rethink ing Marketing (Brownlie et al., Sage, 1999) and Critical Marketing: Defining the Field (Saren et al., Elsevier, 2007). His introductory text is Marketing Graffiti: The View from the Street (Butterworth Heinemann, 2006). Peter Svensson
Peter Svensson (PhD Lund University) is Associate Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, in Sweden. His research interests include marketing work, knowledge production in business life, political theology, law/capi talism, qualitative method, discourse theory, critical social theory and its relevance for marketing and management studies. Some of his work has appeared in Research
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Marketing in the Sociology of Organizations, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Macromarketing. He is a member of the ephemera collective.
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Information Systems
Information Systems Debra Howcroft The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Technology and Knowledge Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0019
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to provide an overview of key themes and emergent issues in critical in formation systems (IS) research. This includes a diversity of research endeavours that are committed to challenging the current orthodoxy within IS theory and research. Common threads can be found that link critical IS researchers with CMS researchers: this could be expressed as denaturalization, anti-performativity and reflexivity or the role of insight, critique, and transformative redefinition within our research. However, the article differs slightly from the broader constitution of CMS with regard to the author's concern with technology. Critical IS research is opposed to technological determinism and instrumen tal rationality underlying systems development and seeks to challenge rather than justify technological imperatives as natural and/or unavoidable. Keywords: critical information systems, IS theory, CMS researchers, denaturalization, anti-performativity, techno logical determinism
Introduction THE aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of key themes and emergent issues in critical information systems (IS) research. This includes a diversity of research endeavors which are committed to challenging the current orthodoxy within IS theory and research. Common threads can be found which link critical IS researchers with CMS researchers: this could be expressed as denaturalization, anti-performativity and reflexivity (Fournier and Grey 2000) or the role of insight, critique, and transformative redefinition (Alvesson and Deetz 2000) within our research. However, we differ slightly from the broader consti tution of CMS with regard to our concern with technology. Critical IS research is opposed to technological determinism and instrumental rationality underlying systems develop ment and seeks to challenge rather than justify technological imperatives as natural and/ or unavoidable. Critique of the technological determinist tradition highlights both its ex planatory inadequacy and its ideological function of furthering the vested interests in Page 1 of 23
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Information Systems technical change (Russell and Williams 2002). It questions and deconstructs the takenfor-granted assumptions inherent in the status quo, and interprets the development and adoption of information systems by recourse to a wider social, political, historical, eco nomic, and ideological context (Doolin 1998). In this respect it takes issue with how infor mation systems can be used to enhance forms of control and domination. It is intended that this process of analysis may help uncover (p. 393) systems of institutional repression and human resistance in order to initiate social change and reform. In this chapter it is not my intention to specify what should be classed as critical research (see Part I of this volume), but rather adopt an inclusive approach that incorporates a di versity of theoretical foundations and concerns, which have a common aim of pursuing an explicitly critical agenda. The chapter begins by providing a brief review of some of the major issues and debates in order to describe the broader context for the emergence and development of critical IS research. The following section provides an examination of crit ical IS research, beginning with a discussion of some of the reactions against the simplici ty of technological determinism, which has plagued the field and done little to help the credibility of IS research. The section continues with a summary of studies that offer in sights into research trends commentating on the increasing number of publications, con ference streams, special issues, and academic electronic networks concerned with dis cussing critical IS. It ends with a discussion of whether a specifically critical research method is needed. The next section provides an overview of work from three critical re searchers that have made a substantive contribution to the field as illustrations of the breadth of theory and method employed within critical IS. Finally, some future avenues of research are suggested before conclusions are drawn.
A Brief Overview of the IS Field The foundation of IS as an academic discipline, linked closely to the use of computer tech nology in organizations, is broadly agreed to have emerged around the early-mid-1960s. The foundations of the field are eclectic but part of its identity is seen as a reaction to the “technicism” (Lyytinen 1992) associated with computing and engineering disciplines which focus on the development and use of information systems in narrow technical/ratio nal terms, often disregarding their organizational environment (Boland and Pondy 1983). Given the broader context of managerialist ideology, along with issues of legitimacy sur rounding an emerging academic field, much of mainstream IS has been preoccupied with its relevance to practice from a predominantly managerialist perspective. It has been de scribed as an area that “studies phenomena associated with the utilisation of information and communication technologies, primarily in the context of business organizations” (Avgerou et al. 1999: 136). This notion of the utilization of ICTs is key and maybe explains why much mainstream research is bent towards the delivery of technical solutions with the provision of instrumentalist prescriptions, such as “best practice” guidelines, how to leverage IT for competitive advantage, and compilations of critical suc cess factors.
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Information Systems Considering the place of IS within higher education, the reduction of student re cruitment on IS programs, connected to the economic downturn associated with the dot.com fallout, has meant that questions concerning the issue of disciplinary identity and validity are intensified as many IS academics are placed in a minority position within their respective institutions. There are shifting alignments across a range of diverse disci plines, such as computer science, management science, and organizational science. Us ing the UK as an example, many of the more substantial IS groupings (such as those based at Bath, Brunel, LSE, Manchester, Salford, and Warwick) have moved into Business Schools and Management departments, institutions whose primary concern is with the provision of knowledge for management rather than knowledge of management (Grey and Wilmott 2002; Cecez-Kecmanovic, Klein, and Brooke 2008). Yet this is no safe haven as the institutional paradox for IS is that “the domain has become of interest to many fac ulty groups yet the sole purview of none” (DeSanctis 2003: 368) and is often viewed as a niche area of study that can only be explored if resources are permitting. The increasing ubiquity of ICTs often leads to an assumption that, beyond populist accounts, technology is not worthy of study in its own right. This perception serves to perpetuate the concern of many that the way to bolster IS research is to cater for the interests of management (p. 394)
and corporate effectiveness. Given the broader trends of the commodification of education and the expectation that academics can swiftly respond to market forces, IS faculty are placed under increasing pressure to “re-package” their offerings according to market demand. Coupled with the desire to establish this area as a clearly identifiable academic field, much discussion and energy has been channelled into “paradigm wars”, issues of rigor versus relevance, and the “crisis” of identity centered upon the need for agreement about the core purpose of IS research (Benbasat and Zmud 2003; DeSanctis 2003; Galliers 2003; Robey 2003). It has even been suggested (Benbasat and Zmud 2003) that researchers and journal editors must clearly define the boundaries of the field, thereby focusing more intently on the core concern of the IT artefact rather than peripheral matters such as structure, context, or other phenomena. Responses to Benbasat and Zmud's paper advise that given the multi disciplinary nature of IS perhaps a more fruitful strategy would be to welcome change as part of the natural development of the subject matter and strengthen links with other dis ciplines, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of IS research by extending its range over re lated subject matter. I would contend that it is no coincidence that the various proponents that argue for the need to focus on a core object of study form part of the same constitu tion as those in favour of positivist research and business relevance, a gathering of inter ests that is not well-disposed to incursion by critical research and alternative agendas. Perhaps it is because of a survival strategy that we find research topics are based upon harnessing ICTs to deliver business benefits. Within the literature we see a predominance of research that is underpinned by managerialism and technological (p. 395) determinism, concerned with migration to new technology platforms and gaining competitive advan tage. The technology is viewed as a tool for realizing business objectives, improving per formance and maximizing success. A cursory glance at some topics which have had an en during presence within the last decade or so reveals managerialist and determinist ten Page 3 of 23
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Information Systems dencies. Beginning with the example of the IT/IS alignment literature, we see a predomi nant focus on deploying technology to realize company objectives and provide increases in performance (e.g., Peak, Guynes, and Kroon 2005). Elsewhere, frameworks have been proposed which are intended to help managers successfully plan and implement enter prise resource planning systems to support their business strategy and vision (Holland and Light 1999). The technology acceptance model, based on the behavior and psycholo gy literature, assumes that the whole process of technology adoption and usage is cen tered on individual psychology, thereby obviating the need to consider the social struc tures and power inequities within which individuals operate (Venkatesh and Morris 2000). Pivotal to the outsourcing and offshoring literature is how to capitalize on such arrange ments by negating risks and maximizing profitability (Cullen, Seddon and Willcocks 2005); this stream of research is essentially based on US/UK experiences and the implications for the home economy with little consideration about its impact on the host country (Abugattas 2007). It has been argued that these somewhat naive IS solutions are often over-generalized as fetishes, with fads and fashions dominating IS discourse (Robinson and Richardson 1999; Westrup 2005). Clear trends are evident in the literature that suggest a particular tech nology platform or approach to technology adoption and implementation will boost busi ness value. Yet the limitations of this perspective have been acknowledged in practice, as persistent IS failures are reported at the same time as prescriptions from the academic field seem to be no nearer to delivering the expected benefits from ICTs. Maybe the time has come to allow the field to move in new directions?
A Review of Critical IS Research In this section I will provide an overview of key themes within critical IS research, begin ning with a discussion of some of the reactions against the simplicity of technological de terminism, continuing with a summary of contemporary studies and research trends, and ending with a discussion as to whether a specifically critical research method is needed. Despite many areas of commonality between CMS and critical IS research there appears to be limited intersection between these two fields. While there is increasing emphasis on interdisciplinarity, in reality disciplinary areas are strangely autonomous, each having their own conferences, journals, language, and history of (p. 396) debate. The ways in which the critical tradition emerged in the field of management and the field of IS is quite different given disciplinary evolution, levels of maturity and sense of identity. For IS re searchers, the desire to relate to business practice and the limited social science back ground of many IS specialists, may have provided space for varieties of interpretivism but less tolerance of more critical studies. In terms of origins, early critical IS papers in Europe developed from the human-centered computing/quality of life movement (Richardson and Robinson 2007), while those in the US principally adopted a Habermasian perspective that was based on analyzing distor tions in communication. The main focus was on critically analyzing the systems develop Page 4 of 23
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Information Systems ment process and reacting against the narrow “technicism” that had plagued the field. There was limited attention paid to broader workplace relations or themes from the soci ology of work. This contrasts with CMS which, aside from the early CMS reader with a Habermasian orientation (Alvesson and Wilmott 1992), has been described as an area that emerged largely from the intellectual “home” of labor process and with a strong UKorientation (Grey 2005) but with limited regard for technology at work. In terms of time line, the earlier critical IS publications pre-date the CMS conferences (beginning in 1999) which provided a significant forum for like-minded researchers. More recently, links be tween CMS and IS have improved, largely as a result of the CMS conference and its host ing of an IS stream, which has generated mutual awareness. Given the ubiquitous nature of technology, it is difficult to argue that IS is an isolated area of study that focuses on artefacts and systems with limited connection to manage ment research and education. These artefacts and systems are used as the basis for ratio nalizing and reorganizing the organization, based on the assumption that they are coded and inscribed with values and interests that represent “best business practices.” Informa tion systems are seen as one of the most important “tools” for cost-cutting, increasing ef ficiency and profitability, and enabling firms to operate on a global scale (Cecez-Kec manovic, Klein, and Brooke 2008). This justification, based on instrumental rationality that legitimates managerial ideology, is rarely questioned in mainstream IS research. By focusing on the development and implementation of systems in terms of business process es and functions, the wider implications, which could include fragmentation, routiniza tion, lack of employee discretion, monitoring and surveillance, and increased control by employers, are frequently overlooked. Critical IS research, by contrast, sets out to ques tion and undermine what lies behind instrumental and technological rationality, exposing the consequences on social relations and employment.
Against Technological Determinism In contrast with the predominance of technologically determinist accounts of change, critical IS researchers are opposed to the ideas that are aligned with (p. 397) the assump tion that technological development can be equated with progress and that can be achieved via “objective” science and technological advancement. The critique of techno logical determinism challenges the discourse surrounding socio-economic change—be it post-industrial society, information society, or globalization—which assumes that techno logical development is autonomous and that societal development is determined by the technology (Bijker 1995; Williams and Edge 1996). There is an expanding body of work within the IS field which adopts what can broadly be described as a “social shaping of technology” (SST) approach (see Howcroft, Mitev, and Wilson 2004 for an overview). This examines both the content of technology and offers an exploration of the particular processes and context which frame the technological innovation. It achieves this with a conceptualization of technology design, development, and use within the context of broader social, political, historical, cultural, and economic changes, which goes beyond mainstream “technicist” approaches. Page 5 of 23
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Information Systems Although the SST approach has now become almost an orthodoxy in the treatment of technology in general, its incursion in the IS field is limited, despite offering a deep ap preciation of the process of IT development and use. This perspective has not been with out its critics and a number of critiques have been powerfully articulated, particularly against ANT (actor—network theory) and SCOT (social construction of technology), for their lack of consideration of wider social structures that operate at the macro-level (Rus sell and Williams 2002; Winner 1993). Nevertheless SST has much to offer critical IS re search, which considers how the process of information systems development is often controlled by certain interests which implies that only a limited number of trajectories are accepted as progress. Social choices regarding technological outcomes are produced in a specific context and are structurally biased to be in favour of some while working against others.
The Only Way is Up… Given the ongoing quest for legitimacy and validation, much effort has been put into at tempts to understand broader research trends within the field as a means of accounting for and describing its evolution. One such seminal and widely cited paper is the historical analysis provided by Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991), which outlines the philosophical as sumptions and approaches that underpin the conduct of research; this is based upon the three epistemological perspectives of positivist, interpretivist, and critical research. The thrust of their argument is to challenge the unitary view of IS research, which at the time was predominantly positivistic—certainly in the USA—and suggest that much could be gained from the adoption of a plurality of perspectives. Their argument that a singular perspective prevails within the field is supported by the provision of statistical evidence from a survey of IS research journals, which revealed that while just over 3 per cent of the articles (p. 398) were classified as interpretivist, there were no publications in their empirical analysis that were critical in orientation (almost 97 per cent were positivist). It is worth pointing out that while the study highlights the absence of critical papers, this does not deny the existence of critical IS publications elsewhere. A small number of pa pers (Lyttinen and Klein 1985; Lyytinen and Hirschheim 1988, 1989; Boland and Day 1989) had emerged in the 1980s that were published in outlets that were more receptive to alternative ways of viewing IS research. In terms of opening up mainstream IS to alternative perspectives, the study by Orlikowski and Baroudi is significant as it provided the foundation on which to argue the need to ex tend the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of IS research. Accordingly, the 1990s saw the emergence of an increasing number of interpretivist studies, which de scribed the theoretical foundation of this approach and illustrated the practicality of its application to case study research. Interpretivist researchers aim to study the process of systems development and adoption in its particular context with a view to understanding and describing multiple meanings ascribed to information systems. This approach to re search is a welcome advance to the positivist orthodoxy, but for critical IS researchers it does not go far enough. It has been criticized for being too relativist and passive; and for accepting the status quo rather than challenging social reality, thereby endorsing existing Page 6 of 23
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Information Systems power structures and managerial control (see Cecez-Kecmanovic (2005) for a detailed comparison of positivist, interpretivist, and critical research; also see Howcroft and Trauth (2008) for a study of gender and IS which demonstrates the ways in which the conduct of the research and its findings change when the epistemology shifts from posi tivist to interpretive to critical). During the 1990s, while positivist research prevailed, small inroads were being made to challenge its domination. With this in mind, Chen and Hirschheim (2004) updated the study provided by Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991) with the provision of a methodological and paradigmatic overview of the following ten years (1991–2001). Based on their survey of 1893 journal articles, they argue that positivism still predominates, accounting for 81 per cent of the published research, with particular dominance in US journals (as com pared to European), which tend to be more positivist, quantitative, cross-sectional, and survey-based. The premise of their argument is that despite the advance of years and the quantity of papers dedicated to debating paradigmatic pluralism “not much has changed” (2004: 222). What is interesting in this paper is their decision to shift away from the three original categories provided by Orlikowski and Baroudi (positivism, inter pretivism and critical) and abandon the critical perspective. This decision was rational ized in the following way: Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991) and Goles and Hirschheim (2000) indicate that pos itivism still dominates IS research while other paradigms remain relatively small in number. In fact, the only real alternative paradigm observable in any numbers in IS research is interpretivism (p. 399) (Walsham 1995a, 1995b; Nandhakumar and Jones 1997; Trauth and Jessop 2000). Thus, the paradigmatic comparison in our analysis will simply focus on positivism vs. interpretivism. (Chen and Hirscheim: 201) The airbrushing out of the critical paradigm in this study seems somewhat ironic given that a coauthor (Hirschheim) of the paper was one of the few researchers to publish what was one of the first “critical” studies in the premier publication outlet, MIS Quarterly (Hirschheim and Klein 1994). The “mysterious case of the missing paradigm” was noted by two critical IS researchers (Richardson and Robinson 2007) who responded with a more thorough overview of the field in order to fill the gap left by the absence of the critical paradigm. They conducted a comparative enquiry of critical papers during the same period in order to challenge the assumption that criti cal research is not a viable option for IS researchers. Their findings show that although there is limited change since Orlikowski and Baroudi's (1991) study, there is a consistent presence of critical research, with a growing number of publications in mainstream outlets.
The increasing presence of critical information systems research during the 1990s was initially guided by the Frankfurt School generally, and more particularly, the insights that could be gained from the work of Jurgen Habermas, largely in relation to distortions of communication (Lyytinen and Klein 1985; Lyytinen and Hirschheim 1988, 1989; Ng wenyama 1991; Lyytinen 1992; Klein and Hirshheim 1993; Cecez-Kecmanovic et al. 1999; Cecez-Kecmanovic 2001). Many of these early publications are clustered within specialist forums such as the IFIP Working Group 8.2 conference, an area that is committed to the Page 7 of 23
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Information Systems social and organizational aspects of IS research. This group and its associated conference have tended to attract critical research (Sawyer and Crowston 2004) and are noted for their links with broader social theory (Jones 2000). However, there are a couple of no table exceptions that have been published in top-tier journals (Hirschheim and Klein 1994; Ngwenyama and Lee 1997). This focus on Habermas makes for an interesting contrast with the diversity of critical social theorists that are referenced within the social sciences. Some authors have argued that this Habermasian focus is unnecessarily limiting (Doolin and Lowe 2002) and have called for enrolling other critical social theorists whose work could be of relevance to IS (Adam 2002; Brooke 2002). More contemporary research is being provided by scholars who write from a broader ba sis of experience with the theory and practice of critical research, reflecting a more di verse range of criticality, thereby enriching our understanding of critical information sys tems research and demonstrating how the nature of being critical has shifted over time. There are a number of strands that coexist alongside the Critical Theory and Haber masian scholars. For example, there is a Foucauldian stream that draws on the concept of power and knowledge (Introna 1997; Zuboff 1998); Doolin 2004; Introna and Whittaker 2004; a stream that uses structuration theorists (Orlikowski 1992; Walsham 1993; Jones, Orlikowski, and Munir 2004) and (p. 400) the theoretical tools of Bourdieu (Schutltze and Boland 2000; Kvasny 2005, 2006; Richardson 2006a; Richardson and Howcroft 2006); as well as a stream looking at gender that applies feminist theories (Adam Howcroft and Richardson 2004; Trauth and Howcroft 2006; Gillard and Mitev 2006). The increasing numbers of diverse critical publications is coupled with the growth of re search forums that explicitly focus on critical research. This includes journal special is sues, such as Data Base (double issue: 2001/2002) which had a focus on a critical analysis of ERP systems, a commodity IS product whose popularity has been interpreted as a wave of management fashion (Westrup 2005). Further journal special issues arose from a num ber of international workshops dedicated to reflecting on critical IS research (CRIS1 2001; CRIS2 2004; CRIS3 2008)and included the Information Systems Journal (double is sue: 2008) and Information Technology & People (2006). These special issues were in tended to provide a platform for critical IS research and illustrate the diversity of con cerns and theoretical foundations (with papers on topics such as ethics, gender and the IT workforce, virtual work and panopticism, work relationships and enterprise systems, egovernment initiatives) while also debating some of the barriers and difficulties which re main within the field. With regard to conferences, there have been regular critical IS streams within two major international conferences: the Critical Management Studies Conference (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007) and the Americas Conference on IS (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007). There is also a handbook that contains a number of con tributions illustrating how critical IS is broadening its engagement with various social theories and providing empirical examples (Howcroft and Trauth 2005). While critical IS research has an increasing presence, this is still limited. It has been ar gued that one of the reasons for this is because of its precarious status (Avgerou 2005) within academic institutions as the pressure for tenure evaluation means that researchers Page 8 of 23
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Information Systems may prefer to opt for the “easier approach” (Chen and Hirschheim 2004) of quantitative and cross-sectional studies which are more likely to be published in a timely manner. It is seen as safer to stick with what is described as rigorous, scientific, reliable and generalis able studies rather than long-term, in-depth research that is prepared to question the cur rent orthodoxy (Walsham 1995a). Career pressures are coupled with challenging the per ceived “regimes of truth” (Introna and Whittaker 2004) that pervade the majority of jour nal editorial boards, often populated with editors that have been described as “conserva tive and parochial” (Galliers and Meadow 2003) and who are less receptive to alternative approaches.
Critical Research Methods? Given mainstream IS often strives for recognition of its practical relevance, there has been a remarkable number of publications which center on paradigm wars (p. 401) and epistemological concerns, with a whole subset of the field devoted to the details of IS re search methods. Therefore, it is not surprising that the issues and practicalities of carry ing out critical research have also been raised. Kathy McGrath mooted this initially at the CRIS2 workshop (2004), before publishing the fuller paper in 20051 which champions the “cause of method.” In her paper she notes that critical researchers are notably silent/ short on detail in their descriptions of how they carried out their research to the extent that she argued “virtually no effort [has been made] reflecting upon the conduct of criti cal research” (2005: 86). McGrath contends that while much effort has been put into defining the nature of being critical, opportunities for learning how this can be achieved seem to have been bypassed, thus retarding our future development. Consequently, criti cal researchers should be encouraged to share their experiences with a view to informing research practices and hopefully encouraging less experienced researchers to pursue critical projects. To finesse the argument, she drew attention to two IS texts (Avgerou 2002 and Walsham 2001) whereby both of the authors subscribe to a critical agenda, in order to explore what can be learnt from their experience for research practice. These texts were both found wanting in terms of the provision of detail and their reflection on the field studies undertaken, barely distinguishable from either inter-pretivist or positivist research accounts. Both Avgerou and Walsham responded to an invitation to reply to McGrath, which helped to progress the debate further since neither were convinced that the way forward for crit icality was the provision of guidelines. Walsham used the analogy of systems design meth ods, since the pursuit of better development methods has perplexed much of the IS com munity, yet research shows that improved techniques do not necessarily make people any better at systems design. Avgerou argued that increasing acceptance of critical research within the academy should be based on substantive contribution as opposed to conform ing to established norms of legitimacy with the provision of detailed documentation out lining the research process.
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Information Systems It has been argued elsewhere (Cecez-Kecmanovic, Klein, and Brooke 2008) that the range of critical IS research means that it is more likely to be characterized by diversity and in ternal tensions as opposed to commonality of method. Coupled with the historical central ity of debates about method within IS, it is not surprising that this topic has emerged in the context of critical IS research. While there have been methodological debates within CMS around issues such as poststructuralism and critical realism, by comparison these debates have been less inclined to occupy center stage. This brings to mind an excellent example of critical analysis provided by Michael Rosen in his paper “Breakfast at Spiro's” (1985). The paper contains one sentence which outlines his research approach: “For 10 months I did participant observation research in this agency, which at the time employed an average of 104 people.” In this paper Rosen describes an annual company breakfast, giving detailed descriptions and interpretations of the context and what is said by leading (p. 402) actors, using the illustration to show how seemingly innocent social ac tivities can be understood in terms of dominance and how this type of dominance is sym bolically created. This description is coupled with detailed financial analysis of the com pany as a means of bringing into question the validity of the financial position being pre sented to employees, thus exposing hidden social structures. In Rosen's paper, the empirical material does not speak for itself, but instead the carefully crafted argument is given prominence. In this regard, it provides a useful example of how detailing the method would add little value, since the paper is constructed according to the political position of the researcher who offers no neutrality or objectivity when dis cussing social phenomena. Cause or position cannot be learnt or documented, it can only be developed, as researchers choose who to speak with, how to interpret the data, and consider the political and moral responsibility associated with doing research and the po tential consequences (Kvasny 2004). As noted elsewhere: “Method is thus not primarily a matter of ‘data management’ or the mechanics and logistics of data production/process ing, but is a reflexive activity where empirical material calls for careful interpretation—a process in which the theoretical, political and ethical issues are central” (Alvesson and Deetz 2000: 5).
Some Illustrations of Existing Critical IS Work Perhaps because of the unitary philosophical foundation in early critical IS publications, alongside the broader focus within mainstream IS on relevance to business organisations, a recurring criticism leveled at critical research is the tendency to focus on abstract, the oretical issues at the expense of empirical work. Yet the study by Richardson and Robin son (2007) reveals that this widely held assessment has been over-stated and that there are a number of empirical studies, which provide illustrations of the critical theoretical framework. In this section, rather than provide a superficial overview of a variety of papers2 and di versity of voices, I have opted instead to provide three illustrations of exemplary work that is informed by a critical agenda: the research of Lynette Kvasny, Helen Richardson, Page 10 of 23
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Information Systems and Leiser Silva. While there are numerous researchers whose work has made a signifi cant contribution to critical IS research and who could have been included here, the pur pose of centering on these three in particular is to profile their trajectory of work over time. All three researchers provide insights into the interplay of theory and empirics which contrasts with abstract modeling or atheoretical descriptivism which predominates mainstream IS research. Additionally, one of the great strengths of their work is that they offer an interesting perspective on “in the name of who and what” (Adler 2002) we under take research and produce (p. 403) knowledge, with the intention of giving “some voice to those things that were hidden or not immediately visible” (Deetz 1992). There are two key elements to their contribution. Firstly, their research publications use radical social theo ries that have previously been unacknowledged in IS research. These are applied in con texts that go beyond mainstream IS concerns, which are predominantly managerialist, or ganization-based, and have a Western capitalist focus. Instead their research considers broader social issues such as race, gender, class, and power and examines these in con texts like the home environment, poor urban communities, and developing economies. Se condly, their broader contribution concerns their role in the academy as journal special is sue editors, conference/workshop chairs, co-chairs, and organizers. In this regard they have persisted in arguing for the visibility of critical research, thereby enhancing its legit imacy and encouraging researchers to consider alternative ways of doing research. Lynette Kvasny (http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/lkvasny/) carries out research which ex plores the intersection of race, gender, and class in structuring the appropriation of ICT and in reproducing power relations. Her work on race and class is the first of its kind in the IS field. Kvasny describes herself as “accountable to praxis” and in this respect has embarked upon a number of action-oriented projects which are intended to contribute to wards social change, such as her work with poor, underserved urban communities in the USA. Informed by critical social theory, feminist theory, and social stratification perspec tives, her work has examined the cultural and social reproduction of digital inequality in community technology initiatives (Kvasny 2002, 2005, 2006; Kvasny and Keil 2006), black women's discourses about ICTs and the digital divide (Kvasny and Payton forthcoming), the social construction of race and gender in online HIV/AIDS texts (Chong and Kvasny 2006), the use of ICTs by sub-Sahara African immigrants to maintain personal social net works (Kvasny and Chong forthcoming), and eCommerce in inner city projects (Kvasny and Yapa 2005). In addition, she has played an influential part in encouraging the devel opment and publication of critical research with her role as guest editor for journal spe cial issues on critical research (Kvasny and Richardson 2006; Richardson, Tapia, and Kvasny 2006), as keynote speaker at the CRIS2 workshop (Kvasny 2004) and as co-chair of the conference theme track of IT for underserved communities at the premier interna tional ICIS conference. Helen Richardson (http://www.business.salford.ac.uk/staff/helenrichardson) uses in her research the theoretical tools of Pierre Bourdieu to explore gender and technology (Adam, Howeroft, and Richardson 2006; Griffiths, Moore, and Richardson 2007), the do mestication of ICTs in the household (Richardson 2006a, 2006b), cultures of consumption, ICTs and call centers (Richardson and Howcroft 2006), and IT-enabled service work in the Page 11 of 23
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Information Systems global cultural economy (Gillard et al. forthcoming; Howcroft and Richardson 2008). Compared with mainstream social science, gender is both under-theorized and under-rep resented in IS research (Adam et al. 2004), (p. 404) despite there being a wealth of litera ture in gender and technology studies that could be drawn upon. Richardson has been central in arguing that this neglected topic requires due consideration and as a conse quence there are increasing publications in a research area that was formerly seen as “off-stage.” Her work includes a number of funded projects which investigate the underrepresentation of women in the ICT labor market (The Disappearing Women Project and DEPICT: Directing Equal Pay in ICT) and a project looking at gendered age discrimination in the ICT sector (GATE: Gender, Age, Technology, Employability). Richardson has also contributed meta-critical analysis of research in IS (Robinson and Richardson 1999; Richardson and Robinson 2007) as well as playing a key role in the CRIS1 and CRIS2 workshops and as guest editor of journal special issues devoted to critical research (Kvas ny and Richardson 2006; Richardson and Howcroft Kvasny 2006). Leiser Silva (http://www.bauer.uh.edu/DISC/discprofile.asp?search=Leiser%20Silva) has carried out research and taught in Universities in Canada, Europe and Latin America. His primary research interest examines issues of power and politics in the adoption and im plementation of information systems (Lin and Silva 2005; Silva 2005, 2007a; Silva and Backhouse 2003; Silva and Hirschheim 2007), particularly in the context of public organi zations. Silva argues that phenomena such as adoption and institutionalization of ICTs cannot be understood without integrating a political perspective. He is also concerned with the contextual and institutional aspects of information systems, for example, with his study of the contradictory meanings assigned to a particular technology (spatial data in frastructures) by users, designers and international consultants in Guatemala (Silva 2007b). In such a study Silva claims that the design and implementation of interorganiza tional systems requires an understanding not only of the institutions involved but also awareness of the historical and political contexts. Silva has injectedamorecritically-orient edperspectivetosomeofthekeydebatesinthe field, such as his response to the suggestion (Benbasat and Zmud 2003) that the focus of IS research should return to studying the IT artefact (Ives et al. 2004) and his critical appraisal of the widely cited technology accep tance model (TAM) (Silva 2007a). In the latter study Silva discusses TAM's problems with falsifiability, given its ambition to explain all types of technology adoption, and questions the progressive nature of such a research program.
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Information Systems
Suggestions for Further Work In an academic field that remains predominantly positivist in orientation and governed by technical rationality, real inroads have been made as increasing numbers (p. 405) of publi cations and forums have contributed to the development of critical IS research. Here are some suggestions for further work that critical IS researchers may be interested in ex ploring: 1. As discussed, advances have been made in trying to understand the complexity of the IT artifact that goes beyond pure technological deterministic accounts. However, there is much scope for linking the understanding from science and technology stud ies (STS) research with labour and workplace studies (Wajcman 2006), particularly given the nature of the debates about epochal change associated with the role of ICTs in transforming society and the economy. A more productive exchange between STS and the sociology of work could enable greater insights about the relations of work and the processes of technology innovation, adoption, and use, allowing re searchers to focus on technology design as well as work and consumption. This could help foster stronger links between critical IS research and CMS. 2. A visible research agenda is needed that challenges the predominant preoccupa tion with the needs of managers. Researchers have the option of changing allegiance and wholeheartedly adopting a partisan approach, making their expertise available to the potential opponents of management. For example, researchers could offer to undertake workplace studies on behalf of employees or with forums committed to collective organising to challenge the purported neutrality of technological interven tions. 3. As mentioned in the discussion about the nature and core of the discipline, much can be gained from making links with ICTs in wider society that go beyond tradition al organizational settings. For example, an increasing body of management literature is focussing on the work-life balance in recognition that the boundaries between “work” and “non-work” are becoming increasingly eroded (Fleetwood 2007; Warhurst, Eikoff, and Haunschild 2008). The role of technology in this context could add a further dimension to the debate. Critical studies of ICTs in everyday life would offer a welcome addition to the techno-euphoria surrounding technology and change and could provide commentary on contemporary debates such as cyber-terrorism or biometric identity cards. 4. There appears to be limited intersection between the reference disciplines of soci ology and CMS and critical IS research, despite many areas of commonality. For ex ample, with regard to the discussion surrounding the need for critical IS research methods, perhaps much of the debate could have been enhanced had this issue been considered in the context of CMS debates (Alvesson and Deetz 2000; Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000); one of the texts was briefly referenced in McGrath (2005) and both were absent from the commentary provided by Avgerou (2005) and Walsham (2005). On a related point, sociology has never steadfastly nurtured an interest in technology (Button 1992) and I would extend this observation to include CMS more generally Page 13 of 23
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Information Systems and the lack of fruitful engagement with technology studies and IS. A two-way dia logue could be mutually beneficial. 5. Globalizing discourses, which describe the information society, network society, or knowledge economy, often contain dramatic accounts of change based on technologi cal innovation and the ability of ICTs to remove barriers of space, place, and time. Yet paradoxically, much IS research is marked by a distinct parochialism along na tional or at least regional lines (Galliers and Meadow 2003). This “partial, culturally biased research” (2003: 108) is significant for a discipline that aims to be interna tional as greater understanding is needed of global societal issues and technology. Globally, ICT penetration is highly uneven (Norris 2001; Sassen 2002) and issues of spatiality become crucial as entire countries, regions, cities, and neighborhoods are seen as excluded. The field has much to learn about such issues and forums such as the IFIP Working Group 9.4 (ICTs in Developing Countries, see http://is2.lse.ac.uk/ ifipwg94/) have much to offer in terms of their understanding of globalization issues and ICTs, with a strong focus on action-oriented projects and case studies.
Concluding Remarks In compiling this chapter, I have attempted to situate critical IS research within the broader context of the IS field, since its development is nested within this environment. Wider issues of concern cannot be divorced from social and economic currents, such as a reduction of market demand for IS programs and the ensuing insecurity associated with this, as well as the increasing ubiquity of ICTs which often leads to assumptions that tech nology is not worthy of study in its own right. Increasing trends to place IS within Busi ness Schools serve to largely reinforce the preoccupation with managerial relevance and the ways in which ICTs can be leveraged for competitive advantage. A key concern is that such a perspective could strengthen in the future and thereby further reduce the intellec tual space for the airing of critical studies and perspectives. As the critical IS research constituency expands, albeit on a small scale, the silencing of alternative voices could po tentially see the demise of this area of research. More optimistically, while Business Schools may not be the most ideal home for critical IS academics, there are pockets of growth and development that continue to challenge the orthodoxy. Strength in numbers could be achieved by encouraging greater alignments between critical IS and CMS re searchers within this environment. The expansion of critical IS has lead to increasing numbers of publications, jour nal special issues, conference tracks and workshops where faculty can support each oth er in the provision of an alternative agenda. Putting together this chapter has highlighted the difficulties of selecting material for inclusion, which is itself indicative of the growth of this area. I hope it will spur the reader to pursue other texts and authors and help grow both the established and emergent interest in critical IS research. (p. 407)
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Information Systems
Reference ABUGATTUS MAILUF, L. (2007). “Offshore Outsourcing of Services: Trends and Chal lenges for Developing Countries,” in E. Paus (ed.), Global Capitalism Unbound: Winners and Losers from Offshore Outsourcing. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 147–162. ADAM, A. (2002). “Exploring the Gender Question in Critical Information Systems,” Jour nal of Information Technology, 17/2: 59–67. —— HOWCROFT, D., and RICHARDSON, H. (2004). “A Decade of Neglect: Reflecting on the Gender and IS Field,” New Technology, Work and Employment, 19/3: 222–240. —— RICHARDSON, H., GRIFFITHS, M., KEOGH, C., MOORE, K., and Tattersall, A. (2006). “Being an ‘It’ in IT: Gendered Identities in the IT Workplace,” European Journal of Information Systems, 15/4: 368–378. ADLER, P. (2002). “Critical in the Name of Whom and What?” Organization, 9/3: 387–395. ALVESSON, M., and DEETZ, S. (2000). Doing Critical Management Research. London : Sage. —— and SKOLDBERG, K. (2000). Reflexive Methodology. London: Sage. —— and WILMOTT, H. (1992). (eds.). Critical Management Studies. London: Sage. AVGEROU, C., SIEMER, J., and BJØRN-ANDERSEN, N. (1999). “The Academic Field of Information Systems in Europe,” European Journal of Information Systems, 8/2: 136–153. AVGEROU, C. (2002). Information Systems and Global Diversity. Oxford: Oxford Univer sity Press. —— (2005). “Doing Critical Research in Information Systems: Some Further Thoughts,” Information Systems Journal, 15: 103–109. BENBASAT, I., and ZMUD, R. W. (2003). “The Identity Crisis Within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline's Core Properties,” MIS Quarterly, 27/2: 183– 194. BIJKER, W. E. (1995). “Sociohistorical Technology Studies,” in T. Pinch (ed.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 229–256. BOLAND, R. J., and DAY, W. F. (1989). “The Experience of Systems Design: A Hermeneutic of Organizational Action,” Scandinavian Journal of Management, 5/2: 87– 104. (p. 408)
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Information Systems BROOKE, C. (2002). “Critical Perspectives on Information Systems: An Impression of the Landscape,” Journal of Information Technology, 17: 271–283. BUTTON, G. (1992). “The Curious Case of the Vanishing Technology,” in G. Button (ed.), Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction and Technology. London: Routledge. CECEZ-KECMANOVIC, D. (2001). “Organisational Discourse via CMC: What Enables and What Prevents Knowledge Sharing,” Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 5/1: 115–133. —— (2005). “Basic Assumptions of the Critical Research Perspectives in Information Sys tems,” in D. Howcroft and E. M. Trauth (eds.), Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Application. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. —— KLEIN, H. K., and BROOKE, C. (2008). “Exploring the Critical Agenda in IS Re search,” Information Systems Journal, 18/2: 123–135. —— MOODIE, D., BUSUTTIL, A., and PLESMAN, F. (1999). “Organisational Change Me diated by E-mail and Intranet An Ethnographic Study,” Information Technology and Peo ple, 12/1: 9–26. CHEN, W., and HIRSCHHEIM, R., (2004). “A Paradigmatic and Methodological Examina tion of Information Systems Research from 1991 to 2001,” Information Systems Journal, 14: 197–235. CHONG, J., and KVASNY, L. (2006). “Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality in On line HIV/Aids Information,” in E. Trauth (ed.), Encyclopaedia of IT and Gender. Hershey: Idea Group Publishing, 1112–1116. CULLEN, S., SEDDON, P., and WILLCOCKS, L. (2005). “IT Outsourcing Configuration: Research into Defining and Designing Outsourcing Arrangements,” The Journal of Strate gic Information Systems, 14/4: 357–387. DESANCTIS, G. (2003). “The Social Life of Information Systems Research: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud's Call to Returning to the IT Artefact,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 4/7: 360–376. DEETZ, S. A. (1992). Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. DOOLIN, B. (1998). “Information Technology as Disciplinary Technology: Being Critical in Interpretive Research on Information Systems,” Journal of Information Technology, 13: 301–311. —— (2004), “Power and Resistance in the Implementation of a Medical Management In formation System,” Information Systems Journal, 14/4: 343–362. Page 16 of 23
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Information Systems —— and LOWE, A. (2002). “To Reveal is to Critique: Actor-Network Theory and Critical Information Systems Research,” Journal of Information Technology, 17: 69–78. FLEETWOOD, S. (2007). “Why Work—Life Balance Now?” International Journal of Hu man Resource Management, 18/3: 387–400. FOURNIER, V., and GREY, C. (2000). “At the Critical Moment: Conditions and Prospects for Critical Management Studies,” Human Relations, 53/1: 7–32. GALLIERS, R. D. (2003). “Change as crisis or growth? Toward a Trans-discipli nary View of Information Systems as a Field of Study: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud's Call to Returning to the IT Artefact,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 4/7: 337–351. (p. 409)
—— and MEADOW, M. (2003). “A Discipline Divided: Globalization and Parochialism in Information Systems Research,” Communications of the Association for Information Sys tems, 11: 108–117. GILLARD, H., and MITEV, N. (2006). “Women and ICT Training: Inclusion or Segrega tion in the New Economy?” In E. Trauth, D. Howcroft, T. Butler, B. Fitzgerald, and J. De Gross (eds.), Social Inclusion: Societal and Organizational Implications of Information Systems. New York: Springer, 185–202. —— HOWCROFT, D., MITEV, N., and RICHARDSON, H. (2008). “‘Missing Women’: Gender, ICTs and the Shaping of the Global Economy,” Information Technology for Devel opment, 14/4: 262–279. GOLES, T., and HIRSCHHEIM, R. (2000). “The Paradigm IS Dead, the Paradigm is Dead … Long Live the Paradigm: The Legacy of Burrell and Morgan,” Omega, 28: 249–268. GREY, C. (2005). “Critical Management Studies: Towards a More Mature Politics,” in D. Howcroft and E. M. Trauth (eds.), Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Application. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. —— and WILMOTT, H. (2002). “Contexts of Critical Management Studies,” Organization, 9: 411–418. GRIFFITHS, M., MOORE, K., and RiCHARDSON, H. (2007). “Celebrating Heterogene ity? A Survey of Female ICT Professionals in England,” Information, Communication and Society, 10/3: 338–357. HIRSCHHEIM, R., and cKLEIN, H. K. (1994). “Realizing emancipatory principles in In formation Systems Development: The Case for ETHICS,” MIS Quarterly, 18/1: 83–109. HOLLAND, C., and LIGHT, B. (1999). “A Critical Success Factors Model for ERP Imple mentation,” IEEE Software, 16/3: 30–36.
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Information Systems HOWCROFT, D., and RICHARDSON, H. (2008). “Gender Matters in the Global Out sourcing of Service Work,” New Technology, Work and Employment, 23: 1–2. —— and TRAUTH E. (2005). Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Application. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. —— —— (2008). “The Implications of a Critical Agenda in Gender and IS Research,” Infor mation Systems Journal, 18/2: 185–202. —— MITEV, N., and WILSON, M. (2004). “What We May Learn from the Social Shaping of Technology Approach,” in J. Mingers and L. Willcocks (eds.), Social Theory and Philoso phy of IS. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 329–371. INTRONA, L. D. (1997). Management, Information and Power. Basingstoke: MacMillan Press. —— and WHITTAKER, L. (2004). “Truth, Journals and Politics: The Case of MIS Quarter ly” in B. Kaplan, D. Truex, D. Wastell, and T. Wood-Harper (eds.), Relevant Theory and In formed Practice—Looking Forward from a 20 Year Perspective on IS Research. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 365–388. IVES, B., PARKS, M. S., PORRA, J., and SILVA, L. (2004). “Phylogeny and Power in the IS Domain: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud's Call for Returning to the IT Artefact,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 5/3: 108–124. (p. 410)
JONES, M. (2000). “The Moving Finger: The Use of Social Theory in IFIP WG8.2
Conference Papers 1975–1999,” in R. Baskerville, J. Stage J. and De Gross (eds.), The So cial and Organizational Perspectives on Research and Practice in Information Technology. Boston: Kluwer, 15–32. JONES, M., ORLIKOWSKI, W., and MuNIR, K. (2004). “Structuration Theory and Infor mation,” in J. Mingers and L. Willcocks (eds.), Social Theory and Philosophy for Informa tion Systems. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 297–328. KLEIN, H. K., and HiRSCHHEIM, R. (1993). “The Application of Neohumanist Principles in Information Systems Development,” in D. E. Avison, J. E. Kendall, and J. DeGross (eds.). Human, Organizational and Social Dimensions of Information Systems Development. North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers, 263–279. KVASNY, L. (2002). “Problematising the Digital Divide: Cultural and Social Reproduction in a Community Technology Initiative.” Unpublished dissertation, Department of Comput er Information Systems, Georgia State University, Atlanta. —— (2004). “On the Existential Problem of Evil and IT in the Hotel Civilization.” Keynote address presented at the Critical Research in Information Systems Workshop, Manches ter, July.
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Information Systems —— (2005). “The Role of Habitus in Shaping Discourses about the Digital Divide,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10:2, available at: http/jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/ issue2/kvasny.html —— (2006). “The Cultural (Re)production of Digital Inequality,” Information, Communica tion and Society, 9/2: 160–181. —— and CHONG, J. (forthcoming). “A Feminist Analysis of the ABC Approach to HIV/Aids Prevention in the Sub-Saharan Africa,” in N. Wickramasinghe and E. Geisler (eds.), Ency clopaedia of Healthcare Systems. Hershey: Idea Group Publishing. —— and KEIL, M. (2006). “The Challenges of Redressing the Digital Divide: A Tale of Two US Cities,” Information Systems Journal, 16/1: 23–53. —— and PAYTON, F. C. (forthcoming). “African Americans and Information Technology,” in Encyclopaedia of Information Science and Technology. Hershey: Idea Group Publish ing. —— and RICHARDSON, H. (2006). “Critical Research in Information Systems: Looking Forward, Looking Back,” Information Technology & People, 19/3: 196–202. —— and YAPA, L. (2005). “Rethinking Urban Poverty: The Forms of Capital and Enter prise Development,” in D. Howcroft and E. Trauth (eds.), Handbook of Critical Informa tion Systems Research: Theory and Application. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 350–364. LIN, A., and SiLVA, L. (2005). “The Social and Political Construction of Technological Frames,” European Journal of Information Systems, 14/1: 49–59. LYYTINEN, K. (1992). “Information Systems and Critical Theory,” in M. Alvesson and H. Wilmott (eds.), Critical Management Studies. London: Sage Publications. —— and HIRSCHHEIM, R. (1988). “Information Systems as Rational Discourse: An Ap plication of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action,” Scandinavian Journal of Infor mation Systems, 4/1: 19–30. —— —— (1989). “Information Systems and Emancipation: Promise or Threat?” in H. K. Klein and K. Kumar (eds.), Systems Development for Human Progress. North Holland: El sevier Science, 115–139. —— and KLEIN, H. K. (1985). “The Critical Theory of Jurgen Harbermas as a Basis for a Theory of Information Systems,” in E. Mumford et al. (eds.), Research Methods in Infor mation Systems. North Holland: Elsevier Science, 219–236. MCGRATH, K. (2005). “Doing Critical Research in Information Systems: A Case of Theory and Practice Not Informing Each Other,” Information Systems Journal, 15: 85– 101. (p. 411)
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Information Systems NANDHAKUMAR, J., and JoNES, M. (1997). “Too Close for Comfort? Distance and En gagement in Interpretive Information Systems Research,” Information Systems Journal, 7: 109–131. NGWENYAMA, O. K. (1991). “The Critical Social Theory Approach to Information Sys tems: Problems and Challenges,” in H. E. Nissen, H. K. Klein, and R. Hirschheim (eds.), Information Systems Research: Contemporary Approaches and Emergent Traditions. North Holland: Elsevier Science, 267–280. —— and LEE, A. S. (1997). “Communication Richness in Electronic Mail: Critical Social Theory and the Contextuality of Meaning,” MIS Quarterly, 21/2: 145–167. NORRIS, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Inter net Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. (1992). “The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Tech nology in Organizations,” Organization Science, 3/3: 398–427. —— and BAROUDI, J. J. (1991). “Studying IT in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions,” Information Systems Research 2/1: 1–28. PEAK, D., GUYNES, S., and KrOON, V. (2005). “Information Technology Alignment Plan ning—A Case Study,” Information & Management, 42/5: 635–649. RAMMERT, W. (1997). “New Rules of Sociological Method: Rethinking Technology Stud ies,” British Journal of Sociology, 48/2: 171–191. RICHARDSON, H. (2006a). “Space Invaders: Time Raiders: Gendered Technologies in Gendered UK Households,” in E. Trauth, D. Howcroft, T. Butler, B. Fitzgerald, and J. De Gross (eds.), Social Inclusion: Societal and Organizational Implications of Information Systems. New York: Springer. —— (2006b). “Making the Links: Domestication of ICTs in the Global Knowledge Econo my.” in D. Avison, D. Galletta, and J. de Gross (eds.), 26th International Conference on In formation Systems. (11–14 December 2005. Las Vegas Nevada) Berlin: Springer. —— and HOWCROFT, D. (2006). “The Contradictions of CRM: A Critical Lens on Call Centres,” Information and Organization, 16/1: 56–81. —— and ROBINSON, B. (2007). “The Mysterious Case of the Missing Paradigm: A Re view of Critical Information Systems Research 1991–2001,” Information Systems Journal, 17: 251–270. —— TAPIA, A., and KvASNY, L. (2006). “Applying Critical Theory to the Study of ICT,” Social Science Computer Review, 24/3: 1–8.
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Information Systems ROBINSON, B., and RICHARDSON, H. (1999). “The Crisis of the Information Systems Discipline: A Vygotskyan Analysis,” The Proceedings of the Critical Management Studies Conference. University of Manchester, 14–17 July 1999. ROBEY, D. (2003). “Identity, Legitimacy and the Dominant Research Paradigm: An Alter native Prescription for the IS Discipline,” Journal of the Association for Information Sys tems, 4/7: 352–359. ROSEN, M. (1985). “Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and Dominance,” Journal of Man agement, 11/2: 31–48. RUSSELL, S., and WiLLIAMS, R. (2002). “Social Shaping of Technology: Frameworks, Findings and Implications for Policy with Glossary of Social Shaping Concepts,” in R. Williams (ed.), Shaping Technology, Guiding Policy: Concepts, Spaces and Tools. Chel tenham: Edward Elgar, 37–132. SASSEN, S. (2002). Global Networks, Linked Cities. London: Routledge. SAWYER, S., and CROWSTON, K. (2004). “Information Systems in Organizations and Society: Speculating on the Next 25 Years of Research,” in B. Kaplan, D. Truex, D. (p. 412)
Wastell, T. Wood-Harper, and J. DeGross (eds.), Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice. Boston: Kluwer, 35–52. SCHULTZE, U., and BOLAND, R. J. (2000). “Knowledge Management Technology and the Reproduction of Knowledge Work Practices,” The Journal of Strategic Information Sys tems, 9/2–3: 193–212. SILVA, L. (2005). “Theoretical Approaches for Researching Power and Information Sys tems: A Machiavellian View,” in D. Howcroft and E. Trauth (eds.), Handbook of Critical In formation Systems Research: Theory and Application, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publish ing, 47–69. —— (2007a). “Post-positivist Review of Technology Acceptance Model,” Journal of the As sociation for Information Systems. —— (2007b). “Institutionalization Does Not Occur by Decree: Institutional Obstacles in Implementing a Land Administration System in a Developing Country,” Information Tech nology for Development, 13/1: 27–48. —— and BACKHOUSE, J. (2003). “The Circuits-of-Power Framework for Studying Power in Institutionalization of Information Systems,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 4/6: 294–336. —— and HIRSCHHEIM, R. (2007). “Fighting Against Windmills: Strategic Information Systems and Organizational Deep Structures,” MIS Quarterly, 31/2: 327–354.
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Information Systems SORENSEN, K. (2002). “Social Shaping on the Move? On the Policy Relevance of the So cial Shaping of Technology Perspective,” in R. Williams (ed.), Shaping Technology, Guid ing Policy: Concepts, Spaces and Tools. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 19–35. TrAUTH, E., and HoWCROFT, D. (2006). “Critical Empirical Research in IS: An Example of Gender and the IT Workforce,” Information Technology & People, 19/3: 272–292. —— and JESSOP, L. (2000). “Understanding Computer-Mediated Discussions: Positivist and Interpretive Analyses of Group Support System Use,” MIS Quarterly, 24: 43–79. VENKATESH, V., and MORRIS, M. (2000). “Why Don't Men Ever Stop to Ask for Direc tions? Gender, Social Influence, and Their Role in Technology Acceptance and Usage Be havior,” MIS Quarterly, 24/1: 115–139. WAJCMAN, J. (2006). “New Connections: Social Studies of Science and Technology and Studies of Work,” Work, Employment and Society, 20/4: 773–786. WALSHAM, G. (1993). Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. —— (1995a). “The Emergence of Interpretivism in IS Research,” Information Systems Re search, 6: 376–394. —— (1995b). “Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method,” European Journal of Information Systems, 4: 74–81. —— (2001). Making a World of Difference: IT in a Global Context. Chichester: Wiley. —— (2005). “Learning About Being Critical,” Information Systems Journal, 15: 111–117. WARHURST, C., EIKHOF, D. R., and HAUNSCHILD. A. (eds.) (2008). Work Less, Live More? Critical Analysis of the Work-Life Boundary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. WESTRUP, C. (2005). “Management Fashions and Information Systems,” in D. Howcroft and E. Trauth (eds.), Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Ap plication, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 132–151. WILLIAMS, R., and EDGE, D. (1996). “The Social Shaping of Technology,” Re search Policy, 25: 865–899. (p. 413)
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Notes: (1.) In contrast to the position that critical research is irrelevant, this paper constituted one of the top five downloadable papers from the Information Systems Journal in 2005, clearly demonstrating the level of interest in research of this nature. (2.) For a listing of critical papers that have been published since 1991, see Richardson and Robinson (2007).
Debra Howcroft
Debra Howcroft is Professor of Technology and Organizations at Manchester Busi ness School and a member of the ESRC-funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultur al Change (CRESC). Broadly, her research interests are concerned with the drivers and consequences of socio-economic restructuring in a global context. Books include the Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory and Application (Edward Elgar, 2005), Social Inclusion: Societal & Organizational Implications for In formation Systems (Springer-Verlag, 2006), and Foundations, Philosophy and Re search Methods (Sage, 2008).
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Strategy
Strategy Nelson Phillips and Sadhvi Dar The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Business Policy and Strategy, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0020
Abstract and Keywords This article focuses on the growing body of research in critical management studies that considers the relation between strategic management as an academic discipline and an organizational practice, and its potential contribution to challenging the hegemony of the dominant paradigm in strategic management. It begins by discussing the development of strategy and outlines the main lines of thought that make up the field, as well as some of the more critical counterpoints which exist within the strategy literature more generally. The article then discusses the existing literature in CMS that explicitly focuses on strate gy. It goes on to argue that the importance of strategy makes it imperative that further work is done in this area, and that the existing discussions provide exciting additional op portunities for CMS scholars to contribute. The article concludes with some general ob servations on CMS and strategic management. Keywords: strategic management, management studies, organizational practice, CMS scholars, academic disci pline, strategy development
Introduction FROM modest roots as a capstone course in a few American business schools in the 1960s, strategic management has gone on to become not just an essential component of business education, but also an established area of management research. Since these early beginnings, thousands of conference papers, journal articles, and books have been written exploring the role of strategy in corporate performance and suggesting models and tools for more effective strategic thinking and analysis. In addition, specialized doc toral programs, journals, conferences, handbooks, and an international society have all come into existence to support the development of strategic management as an academic discipline. Strategy has even made inroads into other disciplines with the development of
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Strategy related streams of research such as strategic marketing, technology strategy, and innova tion strategy. In parallel with these developments in the academic world, strategy as a management practice has come to play a dominant role in the day-to-day lives of managers in corpora tions, and increasingly of managers in governmental and not-for-profit organizations. Managers are expected to “think strategically” and to frame their plans and activities us ing the concepts and language that have flowed out of strategy research and teaching. This trend has been accelerated and shaped by consulting firms as they have developed strategy consulting into a major line of business. The end result of these developments is a world where it is widely agreed that “the top management of any profit seeking organi zation is delinquent or grossly negligent if (p. 415) they do not engage in formal, integrat ed, long-range planning” (Karger and Malik 1975: 64). The prestige and importance of strategy can also be seen in the growing tendency in or ganizations to label more and more activities as strategic in order to emphasize the im portance of the activity (e.g., “strategic HRM” is obviously more important than just “HRM”) and the person carrying it out (e.g., strategy is the work of leaders and, there fore, organizational members who develop strategies must be leaders). The identity work that occurs around strategy has been explored by Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003: 983) who argue that “[w]hat is considered visionary and strategic leadership might very well be interpreted as esteem-enhancing identity work for those vulnerable to—or attracted by —the modern leadership discourse.” This tendency for things to be labeled strategy with little apparent change in the thing itself can also be seen in the academic world. Areas of research that would once simply have been referred to as studies of some aspect of man agement are now labelled as studies of strategy in an effort to connect to the influential and high status field of strategy. The strategy as practice literature, for one, has been criticized for this tendency. But not everyone agrees with the linear, hyper-rational, and profit-obsessed view of strat egy, and the rather heroic view of management, that has come to dominate strategy teaching, research, and practice. Within the strategy discipline itself, there is a stream of research that is highly critical of the economic roots of mainstream strategy and the as sumptions about managerial rationality and foresight that have been brought along. Work by Mintzberg (1987), Rumelt (1996), Whittington (2006), and others point to the distance between the stylized version of strategy presented in the dominant view and the reality of strategy processes in organizations. There are also a wide range of critiques from various authors writing from what might be called corporate social responsibility (e.g., McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright 2006), or even more extreme “anti-corporate” (e.g., Klein 2000), perspectives regarding the assumptions underlying strategic thinking, and particularly the narrow profit orientation of modern management. This work more or less explicitly attacks the philosophical foundations of strategy that, it is argued, all too often lead to negative impacts on general well-being,
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Strategy the environment, and the like. Much of this work is written for a mass-market audience and attacks the fundamental assumptions that underlie strategy as a management field. The development and increasing importance of strategy as a discipline and practice has not gone unnoticed in critical management studies (CMS). CMS scholars have paid more and more attention to strategy as a literature and a practice, and highlighted its effects on organizations and the people who inhabit them (e.g., Knights and Morgan 1991; Sam ra-Fredericks 2005). This work approaches strategy from various perspectives driven by a common interest in revealing the dynamics of power around strategy research, pedagogy and practice. The work in CMS parallels the other critiques mentioned above but brings highly developed frameworks (p. 416) from a range of theoretical perspectives to bolster the arguments of these other writers. In this chapter, we will focus on the growing body of research in CMS that considers the relation between strategic management as an academic discipline and an organizational practice, and its potential contribution to challenging the hegemony of the dominant par adigm in strategic management. We begin by discussing the development of strategy and outline the main lines of thought that make up the field, as well as some of the more criti cal counterpoints that exist within the strategy literature more generally. We then discuss the existing literature in CMS that explicitly focuses on strategy. We go on to argue that the importance of strategy makes it imperative that further work is done in this area, and that the existing discussions provide exciting additional opportunities for CMS scholars to contribute. We conclude with some general observations on CMS and strategic manage ment.
An Overview of Strategic Management Re search The concept of “strategy,” in the sense of military strategy, has a very long history. How ever, the application of the term to the business world has been a much more recent de velopment with the first contributions to the literature appearing only in the 1950s and 1960s. Hoskisson et al. (1999) use the metaphor of a pendulum to characterize the devel opment of this literature focusing initially inside the firm using largely qualitative meth ods in the 1950s and 1960s (early strategic management), then using econometric meth ods to move outside the firm and focus on industry phenomena in the 1970s and 1980s (the industrial economics phase), and finally moving back inside the firm using more mixed methods with the adoption of the resource-based view in the 1990s (the transac tion cost economics (TCE), agency, and the resource-based view phase). While this con siderably simplifies a complicated stream of research, it does provide a helpful organizing approach that is useful in considering a large and complex field. We will consider each of these phases in turn.
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Strategy
Phase 1: Early Strategy Research The roots of strategy research lie in a number of key texts written in the late 1950s and early 1960s in what was at the time known as “business policy.” Of particular importance are Chandler's (1962) Strategy and Structure, Ansoff's (1965) Corporate Strategy, and Learned et al.'s (1965) Business Policy: Text and Cases. These (p. 417) works developed a view of strategic management focused on how firms develop goals and direction. Chan dler (1962: 13–14), for example, defined strategy as “the determination of the basic longterm goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out the goals.” Ansoff (1965: viii), similari ly, argues that its main focus is on strategic decisions, which he defines as “decisions on what kind of business the firm should seek to be in.” Strategy for Ansoff is the “common thread” running through a firm's activities. This early work set the tone and direction of strategic management in several important ways. Firstly, it clearly connected strategy and performance. Firms with the right strate gy would have high levels of performance; firms whose managers were less adept would have less effective strategies and lower performance. Secondly, they focused attention on the activities of top managers—and particularly strategic decision-making—as being cru cial to effective strategy formulation and organizational success defined as economic per formance. They also differentiated between strategy formulation and implementation, with a particular focus on the formulation of strategy as a matter for academic research. Finally, they argued that structure should follow strategy, making organization theory a secondary concern to strategy in the hierarchy of management research and practice.
Phase 2: Industrial Economics Some scholars saw this early work as lacking rigor and being overly descriptive. The de sire to remedy these weaknesses led to a major shift in theoretical perspective and methodology as strategy researchers began to look towards economics for theoretical and methodological inspiration. Industrial organizational economics had a particularly strong influence, leading strategy researchers outside the firm and focusing their attention on industries instead. It also led them to become much more “scientific” in their approach to the study of strategy. This period of development was very different in its focus, assumptions, and methods than the earlier period. Gone was the intense focus inside the firm, with researchers turn ing their attention instead to the industry as the independent variable that determines firm performance. Rather than focusing on strategy or the strategic decision as the deter minant of performance, strategy researchers in this tradition focused squarely on the en vironment as the causal factor. Interest in the actions of top managers was also reduced as interest moved away from strategic decision making under the assumption that con duct was determined by the environment. There was also a fundamental shift in method towards econometrics and other statistical tools useful in dealing with large amounts of quantitative data. The field became dominated by positivistic, deductive, quantitative re Page 4 of 20
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Strategy search and the goal became prediction and explanation rather than description and pre scription. (p. 418)
Phase 3: TCE, Agency, and the Resource-Based View
The move to an industry focus produced a large body of sophisticated research on the im pact of industry on firm performance. But even a cursory glance across most industries reveals significant differences in firm performance. This led researchers to begin to look to other areas of economics for inspiration. Some work began drawing on transaction cost economics (Williamson 1975) and agency theory (Fama 1980). TCE posits that organizations exist as an alternative to the market when market mechanisms fail. Agency theory, on the other hand, focuses on the separa tion of ownership and control in the modern firm and the important ramifications of this separation of interests for strategy. The two perspectives brought a strong firm level per spective back into strategy research. However, while these theoretical frameworks provided the means to begin to look back inside the firm, the reasons for the differences in firm performance across industries re mained largely unresolved. This changed with the publication of Wernerfelt's (1984) pa per outlining a resource-based view of the firm. Wernerfelt's work provided a new ap proach to research in strategic management which would go on to have a huge impact on strategy research. The resource-based view of the firm focuses on the resources that dif ferent firms possess and how these resources lead to differences in performance. This idea was not, of course, particularly new and the basic idea lies at the heart of the earliest work in strategy and even earlier in some streams of organizational research. For example, Selznick's (1957) idea of an organization's “distinctive competence” is clearly a forerunner of the resource-based view. So too is Penrose's theory of the growth of the firm where she defines a firm as a “collection of productive resources the disposal of which between different uses and over time is determined by administrative deci sion” (1959: 67). However, despite its apparent obviousness and its long history as a part of management studies, this conception fundamentally changed strategy research. Much of the research that followed dealt with the question of how firm resources affect profitability. A growing body of work also developed looking at the kinds of resources that exist and at the nature of these special resources. The knowledge-based view of the firm is a good example of this type of research (Grant 1996).
The Counterpoint While this overview provides a broad picture of the development of the dominant stream within the strategy literature, there is much more to the story. First, while many academ ic researchers were developing complex theoretical models and using advanced statisti cal methods through the 1970s and 1980s, a number of other scholars continued writing Page 5 of 20
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Strategy about strategy for practitioners and students in a way (p. 419) very much like the early strategy researchers. This form of strategy research based on in-depth case studies has remained a staple of the strategy literature. One need only look at Collins's (2001) recent business bestseller Good to Great to see exactly the same sort of studies that researchers were carrying out at the very beginnings of strategy research and that have formed an important part of the literature ever since. It is also important to note that there have been a number of alternative voices within the discipline of strategy itself resisting the dominant view of strategy. Mintzberg (1987, 1994) and Rumelt (1996) are notable examples of work that has remained academically rigorous while arguing that the assumptions and methods of much strategic management make little sense in understanding something that is more emergent and nonlinear than it is often made out to be. Mintzberg uses the metaphor of a craft to highlight these aspects of strategy: Craft evokes traditional skill, dedication, perfection through the mastery of detail. What springs to mind is not somuch thinking and reason as involvement, a feeling of intimacy and harmony with the materials at hand, developed through long expe rience and commitment. Formulation and implementation merge into a fluid process of learning through which creative strategies evolve. (Mintzberg 1987: 66) Strategic planning is therefore not the highly rational activity of frameworks and tools portrayed in much of the strategy literature, but something much more processual and organic.
More recently this concern for what managers actually do has been taken up by the strat egy as practice stream within strategy (e.g., Jarzabkowski 2005; Whittington 2006). This view of strategy draws on various forms of practice theory to develop a view of strategy that is not so rooted in economics and the hyper rational ideas of strategic analysis. As two of the chief proponents of this view contend: Strategy as practice attempts a fundamental inversion of dominant conceptions of strategy. Whereas strategy has traditionally been seen as something an organiza tion has—for example, a diversification strategy or an internationalization strategy —for strategy as practice researchers, strategy is something that people do…. This reconception of strategy immediately opens up aspects of strategy that the acade mic discipline—both content and process wings—has so far been reluctant to ad dress. (Jarzabkowski and Whittington 2008: 101) But while these sorts of internal critiques are seen as consequential inside the strategy field, for other writers they do not go nearly far enough. As we mentioned above, the rapidly growing lit erature on corporate social responsibility is increasingly challenging firms to broaden their strategic interests and include more stakeholders and more dimensions of performance in their planning. Other writers go even further and reject corporate social responsibility as failing to go to the root of the problem. Klein (2000), in her book No Logo, is a leading example of this posi tion. She argues that the corporation, and all of modern capitalism in fact, is fundamentally flawed and that a reorganization of global capitalism is (p. 420) necessary to avoid hypercompe tition, poor work, environmental degradation, and the mistreatment of indigenous peoples. Her
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Strategy radical position is equally a critique of the form of strategic thinking that is dominant in the strategic management literature.
An Overview of Critical Discussions of Strategy These more radical critiques of strategic management begin to tackle the sorts of ques tions that lie at the heart of CMS. CMS has developed through the application of a broad range of theoretical perspectives including Critical Theory, poststructuralism, and post modernism to challenge the classic management principles of organizing (e.g., efficiency, rationality, masculinity). As Alvesson and Willmott (1992: 4) argue: instead of assuming the neutrality of management theory and the impartiality of management practice, [critical management studies] challenges the myth of objec tivity and argues for a very different, critical conception of management in which research is self-consciously motivated by an effort to discredit, and ideally elimi nate, forms of management and organization that have institutionalized the oppo sition between the purposefulness of individuals and the seeming givenness and narrow instrumentality of work-process relationships. CMS challenges the authority of managerialism that saturates modern organizational life and foregrounds heterogeneity and choice as human and political necessities (e.g., Knights and Will mott 1999; Alvesson and Deetz 2000; Fournier and Grey 2000; Parker 2002a, 2002b). Working from this perspective, CMS researchers have written on a wide range of management ideas and practices such as “HRM,” “governance,” “leadership,” “competition,” and “accountability.”
Like these other concepts, strategy has become an increasing focus of attention for CMS scholars (see Table 20.1 for a summary). Where initial work looked at more traditional so ciological themes such as strategy as ideology, the linguistic turn in management studies led to a number of studies that critiqued strategy as discourse. Some researchers, howev er, considered these studies problematic due to the lack of engagement with material con sequences of strategy and strategy making. Strategy as political economy therefore emerged as an alternative critique of strategy. Finally, and most recently, there has been a blending of cognitive approaches to discourse analysis with studies of strategy as prac tice. These micro-level critiques may not fit with CMS's traditional leanings, but they do mark an important pathway in (p. 421) theorizing that has the potential to bridge conven tional and “critical” management studies.
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Strategy Table 20.1 Approaches to critiquing strategy Frames and per spectives
Level of analy sis
Units of analysis
Examples
Strategy as Ideology
Macro
Structures, tradi tion, group/section al interests, some psycho-social processes (e.g. prejudice)
Burrell 1981; Mor gan 1980; Shrivas tava 1986
Strategy as Discourse
Meso/ Micro
Subjectivity, com munication, repre sentations, motifs
Knights & Morgan 1991, 1995; Alves son 1995; Thomas
and other cultural signs, societal poli
1998; Harfield 1998; Ezzamel &
tics
Willmott 2004, 2007
Materiality, goals
Levy & Egan 1998;
and content of strategy, markets,
Marchand 1998; Levy et al. 2003
Strategy as
Macro
Political Economy
epochal shifts Strategy as Practice
Micro
Cognitive process es, linguistics, dis cursive practices, schema and learn ing, social identity
Whittington 1996; Jarzabkowski 2004, 2005; Sam ra-Fredericks 2005; Mantere 2005, 2008
In the remainder of this section, we will focus on a several key texts that give an indica tion of the breadth of CMS discussions of strategy.
Strategy as Ideology Embedding his critique in an analysis inspired by Giddens's (1979) theory of structura tion, Shrivastava (1986) illustrates how the strategy field is inherently ideological and functions at two levels of analysis: the idea systems (e.g., the institutions) and the moni toring of action (e.g., the manipulation of communication). Guiding his exploration of the strategy literature as ideology are five operational criteria: the factual underdetermina Page 8 of 20
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Strategy tion of action norms; universalization of sectional interests; denial of conflict and contra diction; normative idealization of sectional goals; and the naturalization of the status quo. In his analysis, Shrivastava is able to demonstrate the ways the strategy literature serves the interests of practicing managers. That is, strategy understood as ideology illustrates the ways sectional interests are preserved and the balance of power is secured for a few top managers over time. Based on this critique, he calls for emancipation through a high ly modernist solution: the “acquisition of communicative competence by all subjects that allows them to participate in discourse aimed at liberation from constraints on interaction” (Shrivastava 1986: 373). As such, his solution demands “more universal knowledge” about the nature of strategy in (p. 422) organizations (Shrivastava 1986: 374). He argues that through the formulation of critique individuals can be liberated from the binds of ideology and the interests of the few.
Strategy as Discourse Countering this modernist solution to theorizing strategy, more recent contributions have adopted a postmodern critique to evaluate the privileged position of strategy in manage ment studies. Within CMS, Knights and Morgan's (1991) contribution is perhaps the most well known and cited, and has led to a number of critiques of rational and objectivist ac counts of strategy (see Knights 1992; Pye, 1995; Jones 1998; Hendry 2000; Lilley 2001; Ezzamel and Willmott 2004, 2008). In their study, they “considered how strategic dis course has become dominant over the last thirty years in business schools and organiza tions” based on a historical account of the development and dissemination of strategic management from its early roots in the US (Knights and Morgan 1991: 262). Knights and Morgan's paper highlights how strategy is infused with masculinity and ratio nality, and is inextricably connected to the discourses that legitimate market economies. This makes it a powerful signifier of management and business practice worldwide. In deed, as we argued above, it is a managerial trope that is embraced by all types of organi zations: “every organization must have a strategy” (Knights and Morgan 1991: 251). By accounting for the invention of corporate strategy as a discourse, Knights and Morgan go on to outline the power-effects of strategic discourse. By powereffects, the authors re fer to the constitution of new social relations that divide power, legitimacy and status be tween groups and categories of workers. They identify seven such power-effects: provid ing a rationalization for success and failure; enhancing the prerogative of management and silencing alternatives; generating a sense of personal and organizational security; protecting and securing a gendered masculinity for male managers; communicating ratio nality to outsiders and staff; facilitating and legitimizing the exercise of power; and con stituting the subjectivity of workers and managers. Knights and Morgan continue their discussion of strategy from a CMS point of view in a second paper focusing on the subjectifying effects of strategy discourse on workers' iden tities (Knights and Morgan 1995). They illustrate their “arguments … at the sectoral level by examining the development of strategic discourse in banks and insurance companies Page 9 of 20
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Strategy and at the organizational level by providing some case study material on IT strategy in a life insurance company” (Knights and Morgan 1995: 191). By looking at the local and ne gotiated meanings attached to “corporate strategy” in the workplace, Knights and Mor gan demonstrate the way strategy is far from a homogeneous and concrete set of ideas, but instead exists as (p. 423) a heterogeneous, fragile and fractured discourse. As such, their discussion in this second paper represents a move away from theorizing strategy as hegemonic and unitary. At the centre of their argument is a challenge to the way ideas associated with strategy objectify the organization and the environment. Here, corporate strategy's global applica bility is challenged: it can only be thinkable under certain market conditions and within certain cultures. However, the main point of the case study is the fact that changes to how competition was framed in the external market made internal strategic manoeuvres all the more impossible to implement. In their case, as the life insurance market changed, the firm was unable to follow its IT strategy and instead was forced to constantly re-align itself to broader market forces. In this way, Knights and Morgan show how strategy and strategic discourse are fractured and contested practices within organizations. It is made possible under certain environmental conditions (internal and external), however it is not inevitable. More recently, Ezzamel and Willmott's (2008) longitudinal study of “StitchCo” also ex plores the constitutive role of discourse. They examine the disciplinary and power effects of strategic and accounting discourses and show the production and dissemination of strategic discourse as articulated, for example, in the use of new accounting technologies and the introduction of teamworking. Their interpretive findings show how discursive practices served to reconstruct StitchCo and its employees through the introduction of new accounting metrics and teamworking, paying attention to expressions of shop-floor resistance as well as the opposition mounted by senior StitchCo staff.
Strategy as Political Economy Levy, Alvesson, and Willmott's (2003) chapter makes a landmark contribution in terms of offering a new pathway for critiquing strategy. The authors describe strategy as a central organizing trope for deploying discursive, organizational, and economic resources. Most importantly they argue for the inseparability of markets and politics, explaining that strategy needs to be understood in political economic terms if asymmetrical power rela tions are going to be successfully challenged; such challenges they contend must be coor dinated across multiple bases of power. A political economy of strategy illuminates these fragmented resources and by making them visible, offers a possibility of dismantling pow erful orthodoxies and asymmetries. The authors take Shrivastava's (1986) call for an emancipatory critique and frame it with in an analysis of markets. Shrivastava describes the “continuing political battles that proactively shape the structure of competition” (1986: 371), and emphasizes the need to look at “the social and material conditions within which industry production is organized, Page 10 of 20
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Strategy the linkages of economic production with the social and (p. 424) cultural elements of life, the political and regulatory context of economic production, and the influence of produc tion and firm strategies on the industry's economic, ecological, and social environ ments” (1986: 374). It is this imperative that is taken up by Levy, Alvesson, and Willmott (2003) in their summary of CMS contributions to the strategy field. Through a far-reaching and impressive evaluation of strategy research, the authors iden tify three “critical” frames that can be applied to the study and analysis of the field: the processual perspective, critical theory, and historical materialism. The processual school, including works by Mintzberg (1990), offers a critical perspective on established classical and rational perspectives, but is identified as adhering to functionalist approaches and being naively prescriptive about what real strategy is. The critical theory approach is associated with studies of power and emancipation. The critical perspective attempts to redefine what “strategic” means within different contexts, thus reclaiming political and ideological debates. While the authors are sympathetic to this line of query, they find the lack of materialism within Critical Theory frustrating. The third frame of theorizing described, which they are proponents of, is historical mate rialism. Framing their analysis in a Gramscian perspective, they foreground the signifi cance of the economic context and structure to the study of strategy. What is highlighted is the interaction between material and discursive practices (see, Gramsci 1971; Sassoon 2000), what Gramsci (1971: 177) would call, the “structure” and “superstructure.” It is this interaction that opens up opportunities for bases of power to congeal and challenge the hegemony of strategy. Hegemony is never total and complete, however, and it is this inherently fragile structure that frames political struggles. It is through a war of maneu ver or war of position that disparate groups can reclaim and ultimately shift the terrain of contestation, providing new opportunities for long-term change. They conclude by calling for an emancipatory agenda where strategy is taken as a serious method of analysis and action.
Strategy as Practice A more recent contribution from Samra-Fredericks (2005) provides an overview and cri tique of existing studies of strategy, as well as rich empirical data extending Knights and Morgan's (1991) discussion of strategy discourse and its powereffects. Taking a strategyas-practice perspective (see also, Whittington 1996; Samra-Fredericks 2003; Jarzabkows ki 2004, 2005; Mantere 2005, 2008), Samra- Fredericks is interested in understanding how strategy is performed and lived out in organizations through everyday interactions among managers and workers. This marks a new focus in CMS studies of strategy: under standing strategy as practice, rather than as a discursive process as former studies have demonstrated. By using Habermas's critical theory and ethnomethodology, Samra-Fredericks is able to demonstrate how strategic practice is a process, where so-called strategists draw on types of knowledge and validity claims to negotiate cultural meanings attached to (p. 425)
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Strategy strategy that have material consequences for workers and organizations. As such, the an alytical framework is shifted from a Foucauldian genealogy to a Habermasian schema of communicative exchange. This shift provides the grounds from which to understand strat egy as a formulation composed of embodied knowledge and micro-level interactions, and it also provides a space from which to investigate the practices that have legitimating ef fects and construct “strategy.” Samra-Fredericks finds that strategy is composed of a lattice of overlapping discourses: discourses of capitalism (profitability), of strategy (knowledge of competitive advantage; of internal and external environments) and masculinity (control). But more importantly, what is highlighted is the lived experience of strategic practice. Samra-Fredericks ana lyzes interactions among six staff responsible for the IT strategy in a manufacturing firm and demonstrates how their conversations draw on strategic (and other) discourses and is able to show the lasting effects of micro-level communicative practice and subtle varia tions in definitions and identity-work. She shows how strategic management can be seen as having a wide scope of action and significant intended and unintended consequences, providing evidence for how discourses of strategy may change, be reorganized and repro duced in the workplace. It is worth noting that Samra-Fredericks's view of strategy in this article moves the dis cussion of strategy in CMS away from the concerns of top management and the activities surrounding the determination of the direction of the firm. Instead, she adopts a more mi cro view and explores how strategy discourse infiltrates the activities of managers much lower in the hierarchy. While some CMS researchers may be concerned that this moves away from what should be the core focus of CMS research on strategic management (i.e., that IT strategy is not really strategy), we believe that this additional perspective provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of some of the important effects of strategy across the firm.
Summary Looking back at the implications of developing a critique of strategy from a critical per spective, we can see how there has been a great deal of effort to understand the broader social constructionist processes and practices that underlie the architecture of “strategy.” However, much less energy has been put into discovering the material consequences of corporate strategy and also for developing a critical pedagogy for strategy teaching. Knights and Morgan's (1991) contribution signals an important start within CMS towards analyzing the socially constructed roots of strategic discourse. Their (p. 426) emphasis on social processes has led to the development of a strong interest in uncovering how strate gy is discursively constructed in particular institutional settings. Conversely, the nascent strategy as practice critique in CMS focuses much more on the material aspects of strate gic management and the ways in which strategy is performed in organizations. Levy, Alvesson, and Willmott's (2003) chapter provides the theoretical space to connect cri tiques of the current strategy literature with a concern for materialism. Levy et al. argue Page 12 of 20
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Strategy that this can be accomplished by framing the study of strategy discourse with an explicit account of the political economy of strategy. There remains, nevertheless, little critique of strategy that bridges these two research interests (the discursive and the material) with in CMS.
Critical Reflections on Strategy as a Topic in CMS In this section, we will discuss several directions for further research that we believe are particularly fruitful areas of work. While there are many possibilities, we present three di rections that seem to be both manageable research areas and to be significant potential contributions to a critical understanding of strategy. First, there is an opportunity to fur ther develop critiques of strategic management that explore its status as a social con struction rooted in discursive and cultural practices. This would involve an investigation into how strategy is made real and of the institutional settings in which it is legitimated. Second, there is an imperative to explore the material consequences of social and cultur al processes in organizations. This involves understanding how ideology produced by strategy discourse shapes economic structures and relations of power. And, finally, work in CMS could offer new critical pedagogical methods for communicating and teaching strategy in the classroom. This requires developing a deep understanding of the current pedagogy that is used in strategic management education and then uncovering alterna tive and marginalized cases that demonstrate strategy to be a negotiated and plural trope within the workplace and organizational theory. We will discuss each of these opportuni ties in turn in this section.
Strategic Management as a Social Construction While the papers we have discussed above form an important first step in understanding the importance of discursive processes in strategic management, they are (p. 427) only a beginning. Opportunities for further research lie at two different levels. First, the acade mic field of strategic management (as opposed to the practice of strategy by managers) itself deserves much more attention. We understand something about the discursive processes that formed the foundations of the field, but we need to know much more about how strategy as an academic discipline has developed, the interests and power relations that have driven its development, and the relation of strategic management as an acade mic field to other related bodies of knowledge (including corporate social responsibility, globalization, and other discourses of interest to CMS). More critical forms of textual analysis that are commonly applied in CMS research can play a central role in this process as CMS scholars highlight the contextual and socially constructed nature of strategic management. Second, the processes of social construction that bring strategies into being within orga nizations deserve much more attention. The work of Mantere and Vaara (2008) provides a good example of how a these sorts of perspectives can reveal the dynamics of social con Page 13 of 20
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Strategy struction underlying strategic management in organizations. In their work, they “focus on particular effects of discourse: how they reproduce specific conceptions of strategy work and legitimize particular forms of participation (e.g., inclusion and exclusion)” (Mantere and Vaara 2008: 343). This adds a great deal to our understanding of strategy as social action and the ramifications of strategy in an organizational context. It is also important to emphasize that there are a whole range of research approaches from critical ethnography to critical hermeneutics and semiotics that can play a role in further explicating these dynamics (for an interesting application of narrative methods to strategy see Barry and Elmes 1997). While disparate variants of critical discourse analy sis (e.g, Phillips, Sewell, and Jaynes, 2008) have figured prominently to date, there is much to be gained from broadening the methodological toolkit applied to this empirical phenomenon.
Material Consequences of Strategic Management Looking back at the work to date developing a critique of strategy from a CMS perspec tive, we can see how there has been much effort in understanding the broader social con structionist processes and practices that underlie the idea of “strategy,” but less energy has been put into discovering the material consequences of corporate strategy (Froud et al. 2006 being a notable exception). The focus on the ideal aspect of strategic manage ment is not misplaced, but it does need to be complimented with an equal understanding of the material effects of strategy on societies, organizations and individuals. Strategy as an idea supports the institutional architecture that demarcates managers from “the managed” and also as a practice that sustains unequal (p. 428) relations of pow er between employees (ethnicities, genders, ages, subjectivities), organizations (public, private, not-for-profit) and geopolitical locations (North/South, developed/developing, emerging markets / advanced capitalist societies). It acts to normalize inequalities and to legitimate the activities of companies in a way that conceals ethical and moral challenges. Critical research is required that engages with strategy at the micro, meso, and macro level of organizing and uncovers these effects. This does not require any fundamental movement away from existing CMS scholarship, but rather an effort to work with existing critical scholarship, using familiar methods and philosophical frameworks, to uncover the role of strategy in day-to-day life.
Developing a Critical Pedagogy for Strategy Teaching Finally, the nature of strategic management raises the question of how CMS might con tribute to the development of a critical pedagogy. To put it succinctly, how can CMS schol ars engage with strategic management as an educational project? This is a significant challenge for CMS, but one that is fundamentally important. Business is now the largest undergraduate major in the United States and many other countries are seeing rapid growth in the popularity of business programs of various kinds. Simply attacking strate gic management from the outside will have little impact on the material taught in these Page 14 of 20
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Strategy programmes or on the learning experience of the students participating. How can CMS engage in this activity and perhaps change the practice of strategic management to be something more sensitive to power, ethics, and the impact of corporate activity on individ uals, societies, and the environment? The response of CMS scholars to this challenge will depend on both developing and deliv ering a comprehensible and convincing critique of strategic management and supplying a more reflexive and critical alternative. It is not clear to us the degree to which the cur rent tools and techniques of strategic management could be retained within a framework that highlighted its limitations and challenged students to see the naturalizing effects of this powerful discourse. This remains as a fundamental challenge for CMS scholars. One approach that may have great utility is to connect the tools and practices of strategic management to concerns for corporate social responsibility and related issues such as re source consumption and climate change. The increasing interest among students and companies in these issues may provide just the entrée into discussions of strategic man agement, its limits and weaknesses, and provide the evidence for why fundamental changes in how we think about strategy-making is required. We believe there is a tremen dous opportunity here for CMS scholars to increase their relevance and influence by showing intellectual leadership in this area.
(p. 429)
Conclusions and Implications
The importance of strategic management as a topic in CMS becomes clear when one con siders the managerialism that lies at its heart. Parker (2002a) highlights the ways man agerialism is historically rooted in capitalist ideology and free-market economic practice and argues that our understandings of management have narrowed to three basic mean ings: an occupational category that divides the labor force between managers and the managed, creating a new class of undivided managers; a practice which can be applied to any field and in any context; and, lastly, an academic discipline which has its own special location within universities (the business school), producing thousands of case studies, magazine articles, textbooks and journal papers expressing the need for management as well as supplying evidence that supports its existence in the modern and progressive world. What Parker (2002b: 11) finds particularly problematic is that “words like co-ordination, co-operation, barter, participation, collectivity, democracy, community, citizenship, ex change all refer to methods of doing organization, but they have been increasingly erased, marginalised or co-opted by the three senses of management.” Therefore, deeply serious political and ethical problems arise from the proliferation of management as an idea and a practice. The fact that much of this proliferation has its impetus not just in large corporations but also in governmental organizations and multi- and bi-lateral inter national agencies is a stark demonstration of what structures mediate inequality and un just social, political and economic relations. This critique applies equally to strategic man agement as a core part of management thought and management practice and supplies Page 15 of 20
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Strategy the philosophical impetus for CMS scholars to focus squarely on strategic management as a central plank in what Parker identifies as managerialism. We therefore believe that strategy must become a more central topic in CMS research along with strategy education and pedagogy. As we have discussed above, CMS has be gun to engage critically with strategy from a number of theoretical viewpoints but there remain many opportunities for CMS scholars to forge a much deeper engagement with strategic management. These engagements could take the form of contributing to ongo ing discussions aimed at challenging the dominant discourse, as well as adding an impor tant element of informed critique to broader societal discussions of management and the corporation. Strategy is an area of real struggle in organizations and the outcome of these struggles have material consequences for large numbers of people in and around organizations, their lives, and ultimately the choices available to them. A closer engage ment with strategy can provide an important new area of contribution for CMS and a new site on which to impact management thinking and practice.
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Strategy KNIGHTS, D. (1992) “Changing Spaces: The Disruptive Impact of a New Epistemological Location for the Study of Management,” The Academy of Management Review, 17/3: 514– 536. —— and MORGAN, G. (1991) “Corporate Strategy, Organisations and Subjectivity: A Cri tique,” Organisation Studies, 12/2: 251–273. —— —— (1995) “Strategy Under the Microscope: Strategic Management and IT in Finan cial Services,” Journal of Management Studies, 32/2: 191–215. —— and WILLMOTT, H. (1999) Management Lives: Power and Identity in Work Organi zations. London: Sage. LEARNED, E. S., CHRISTENSEN, C. R., ANDREWS, K. R., and GUTH, W. D. (1965) Business Policy: Text and Cases. New York: Richard D. Irwin. LEVY, D., ALVESSON, M., and WILLMOTT, H. (2003) “Critical Approaches to Strategic Management,” in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds), Studying Management Critically. London: Sage, 92–111. —— and EGAN, D. (1998) “Capital Contests: National and Transnational Channels of Cor porate Influence on the Climate Change Negotiations,” Politics and Society, 26/3: 337– 361. LILLEY, S. (2001) “The Language of Strategy,” in S. Linstead and R. Westwood (eds.), The Language of Organization. London: Sage, 66–88. MANTERE, S. (2005) “Strategic Practices as Enablers and Disablers of Championing Ac tivity,” Strategic Organization, 3/2: 157–184. —— (2008) “Role Expectations and Middle Manager Strategic Agency,” Journal of Man agement Studies, 45/2: 294–316. —— and VAARA, E. (2008) “On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Dis cursive Perspective,” Organization Science, 19/2: 341–358. MARCHAND, R. (1998) Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkley: University of California Press. MCWILLIAMS, A., SIEGEL, D., and WRIGHT, P. (2006) “Corporate Social Responsibili ty: Strategic Implications,” Journal of Management Studies. 43/1: 1–18. MINTZBERG, H., (1987) “Crafting Strategies,” Harvard Business Review, 65/4: 66–75. —— (1990) “The Design School: Reconsidering The Basic Premises Of Strategic Manage ment,” Strategic Management Journal, 11/3: 171–195. —— (1994) “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” Harvard Business Review, 72/1: 107–114. Page 18 of 20
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Strategy MORGAN, G. (1980) “Paradigm, Metaphors and Puzzle Solving in Organization Theory,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 25/4: 605–622. PARKER, M. (2002a) Against Management: Organisation in the Age of Managerialism. Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (2002b) Utopia and Organisation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. PENROSE, E. T. (1959) The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. New York: Wiley. PHILLIPS, N., SEWELL, G. and JAYNES, S. (2008) “Applying Critical Discourse Analysis in Strategic Management, Research,” Organisational Research Methods. (p. 432)
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Nelson Phillips
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Strategy Nelson Phillips is Professor of Strategy and Organizational Behaviour at Imperial College London. His research interests include institutional theory, discourse analy sis, technology studies, and entrepreneurship. He has published more than 70 acade mic articles and book chapters including articles in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Management Science, Sloan Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organiza tion, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and Organization Studies. He has also written two books: Discourse Analysis (2002, with Cynthia Hardy), and Power and Or ganizations (2006, with Stewart Clegg and David Courpasson). Sadhvi Dar
Sadhvi Dar is Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics at Queen Mary University of London. She holds a doctoral degree from the Judge Busi ness School, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include international development, third sector organizations, business and society, and critical theory. She is co-editor with Professor Bill Cooke of The New Development Management: Critiquing the Dual Modernization (2008).
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Communication
Communication Stanley Deetz and John G. McClellan The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0021
Abstract and Keywords Depending on how one looks at it, communication is a remarkably simple or a perplexing ly complex issue in organization and management studies. Communication, for instance, is frequently seen as one of the many things present in organizations along with struc tures, decision making, workforce direction, leadership, marketing, and so forth – com munication as a management tool. It is also often perceived as a ubiquitous mechanism by which each of these activities occurs – communication as a primary means of manage ment operation. Increasingly, however, communication is recognized as the fundamental process by which organizations exist and as central to the critical analysis of their pro duction and reproduction – communication as constitutive of organizations and organiza tional life. In the twenty-first century, this latter sense of organizational communication is challenging the centrality of organizational psychology held for much of the twentieth century, providing a new focus for those interested in critical management studies. Keywords: organizational communication, organization studies, decision making, management tool, organizational life, organizational psychology
DEPENDING on how you look at it, communication is a remarkably simple or a perplex ingly complex issue in organization and management studies. Communication, for in stance, is frequently seen as one of the many things present in organizations along with structures, decision making, work force direction, leadership, marketing and so forth— communication as a management tool. It is also often perceived as a ubiquitous mecha nism by which each of these activities occurs—communication as a primary means of management operation. Increasingly, however, communication is recognized as the funda mental process by which organizations exist and as central to the critical analysis of their production and reproduction—communication as constitutive of organizations and organi zational life. In the twenty-first century, this latter sense of organizational communication is challenging the centrality of organizational psychology held for much of the twentieth century providing a new focus for those interested in critical management studies.
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Communication Following this new perspective, communication is not only a phenomenon of interest for critical scholars but the central issue for all critical analysis. Consequently, one can rea sonably ask whether communication should be chapter twenty-one or chapter one of any handbook of critical management studies. Depending on the focus, communication can be critically assessed as a part of organizational life or treated as the essential concern in any critical study. In this chapter we do a bit of both. We begin by identifying four proto typical ways to understand communication as related to management practice. We take a critical look at (p. 434) strategic communication within traditional management practices, participatory forms of communication informed by notions of liberal democracy, the role of communication in cultural management practices, and perspectives of communication informed by notions of participatory democracy. In this first section we aim to show how understandings of communication are closely associated with the management activities they enable and direct attention to communication in critical management studies. In the next section we turn our attention to what we gain by taking a critical interest in communication. We begin by discussing how critical communication scholars explore is sues of control, resistance, and ideology. Reflecting upon insights gained from the “lin guistic turn,” we then consider how critical attention to communication can provide a po litically attentive relational sensitivity for critical work. We also discuss free and open in teractions as a way of overcoming systematically distorted communication and various forms of discursive closures. We conclude this chapter with a reflection on this critical look at communication and an invitation for continued focus on language and communica tive interactions within any critical effort.
Ways of Thinking about Corporate/Organiza tional Communication Studies and practices of corporate and organizational communication arise from different conceptions of meaning and contrasting motives for engagement. In this section we offer a conceptual framework based on idealized conceptions of meaning and interaction mo tives to reveal four prototypical theories of communication often associated with manage ment practice. Firstly, conceptions of meaning can be typified as either person-centered or social constructionist focused. Person-centered theories typically assume meanings are individually formed, relatively stable, and awaiting communication for expression. Gener ally associated with linear models of interaction, these theories view communication as a means to convey meanings to others. Alternatively, social constructionist theories take the production of meaning as of greatest concern and favor more interactive and dynamic models of communication. These theories view communication as a social process through which meanings emerge in relation to others. Secondly, interaction motives can be divided into attempts at control versus attempts to openly reach mutual understanding and decisions. This distinction is akin to Habermas's separation between strategic and communicative action or reciprocal and non-reciprocal (p. 435) interaction. Table 21.1
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Communication provides a matrix of these conceptions of meaning and motives of interaction revealing four common approaches to communication. Table 21.1 Four common approaches to communication Mean ing
Motive
Strategic Control
Collaborative Mutual De cisions
Strategic Communica tion Primary interests: Infor mation distribution; per suasion; influence; and compliance gaining Best examples seen in:
Liberal Democracy Primary interests: Free speech; deliberation; bar gaining; representation; due process Best examples seen in: Town hall meetings; legisla
Campaigns; public rela tions; advertising
tive and judicial processes
Social
Cultural Management
Participatory Democracy
Con struc
Primary Interests: Changing dominant
Primary interests: Assuring all relevant positions are
tionist
meanings; integration; unobtrusive control;
heard; free and open mean ing formation; maintenance
managing hearts, minds and souls
of pluralism and difference Best examples seen in: Win-
Best examples seen in: Culture industries; cor porate culture manage ment
win conflict resolution processes; community col laborations
Personcentered
Source: Adapted from Deetz, S. and Radford, G. (in press). Communi cation Theory at the Crossroads: Theorizing for Globalization, Plural ism and Collaborative Needs. Oxford: Blackwell Publications. In the following sections we review each of these idealized perspectives of communica tion. By placing these constructs in opposition we do not mean to indicate this is the only way to conceptualize meaning, interaction motives, or communication. Rather, we hope that critically investigating these prototypical understandings of communication might help reveal why strategic, participative, and cultural management perspectives of com munication might be problematic for those interested in critical management studies. Our aim is to provide an introduction to the complexity of engaging in a critical perspective of Page 3 of 22
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Communication communication and to show how communication relates to the field of critical manage ment studies.
Management and Strategic Communication Traditional managerial communication strategies typically associated with the “machine” theories of scientific management, classical management, and principles of bureaucracy often embrace both person-centered meanings and a control (p. 436) motive in which the aim of social interaction is to manage behavior to accomplish productive work. Closely re lated to Habermas's notion of strategic communication, communication within traditional corporate, business, and management practice is generally considered a tool for influ ence, coordination, and control (Varey 2000). Organizational communication studies, em bracing these traditional management perspectives, often emphasize the need for effec tive, strategic communication. Thus, attention to communication is often a functionalist effort informed mostly by linear models of communicative interaction. Axley (1984) pro vides comprehensive documentation of this perspective in his classical work on the “con duit” metaphor. Academic interest in organizational communication, conceived in this sense, began dur ing the industrial period and developed gradually during the latter half of the twentieth century, forming the foundation of organizational communication as a distinct area of aca demic study. In the academy, initial interest in communication focused on how communi cation skills can enhance managerial effectiveness. Research efforts in this area often fo cus on understanding correlations between management supervision and methods of communication (see, e.g., Jablin 2006; Sias and Jablin 1995). Communication studies embracing a strategic management perspective often explore is sues of internal compliance gaining (e.g., Sullivan and Taylor 1991), development of lead ership skills and internal information flows (e.g., Beniger 1986; Alexander, Penley, and Jernigan 1991), and external control through marketing and public relations (e.g., Grunig, Grunig, and Dozier 2002). For instance, classic notions of leadership emphasize the need for leaders to effectively establish a vision and motivate others to accomplish that vision. Effective communication skills are embraced as essential tools to fulfill such an objective and the need for successful presentation skills, such as public speaking and the ability to create quality Powerpoint slides, are frequently emphasized. These direct forms of man agement generally attend to communication as a means for persuading employees in some way. Similarly, traditional inter-organizational and external communication strategies treat communication as a vehicle for information dissemination and strategic influence of po tential consumers and various publics. For instance, marketing techniques often consider communication as a means for dissemination of product information for advertising and organizational publicity. And public relations is seen as a way to manage conflicts be tween an organization and its various publics through communicative interactions (Grunig and Hunt 1984; Gower 2006). In public relations efforts, like marketing and other Page 4 of 22
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Communication external forms of interaction, communication is often a persuasive tool for engendering various forms of preferred understandings, acceptance, and organizational identification. A critical look at this perspective of communication reveals how it limits communication to the strategic sharing of information to gain compliance, control, and (p. 437) pre dictability from organizational members and publics. Those interested in critical manage ment studies might critique the inherent control motive of these theories for not allowing open participation in decision making and other management practices by employees and other organizational stakeholders. Thus, those with a critical interest in communication might seek alternative management practices interested in communication as a way to generate mutual understanding and collective decision making.
Liberal Democracy and Participatory Communication Human relations perspectives and other alternative approaches to management intro duce a participatory motive in business activities and offer an alternative emphasis for those interested in communication. Collaborative management practices, for instance, embrace communication as a means to openly reach mutual understanding and make de cisions together at work. This perspective, aligned with Habermas's notion of communica tive action or reciprocal interaction, sees communication as the process through which consensus can be achieved. Retaining most features of expressionist, person-centered theories of meaning, these participative forms of management promote the expression of individual meaning to generate various forms of codetermination, team-based work, bi-di rectional public relations efforts, and so forth (see, e.g., Miller and Monge 1985; Gordon, Infante, and Graham 1988). For example, Miller's (2007: 240) study of compassionate communication among human service workers suggests that a model of compassionate interaction involving “noticing,” “connecting,” and “responding” with others can “lead to better outcomes for the care recipient and more rewarding work for the care provider.” A critical look at this perspective of communication, however, reveals that the emphasis on expressive communication often belies the instrumental intent of communicative inter action to gain compliance or “buy-in” from subordinates. The assumptions embedded in strategic, linear models of communication remain active in these models and result in many participatory management programs displaying high allegiance to liberal democrat ic ideas reducing the complexity of communication to the expression of already formed meanings. Those interested in critical perspectives might critique how the use of such communication models in participation efforts is problematic. Specifically, the appear ance of participation hides two fundamental concerns (see Deetz and Brown 2004). First ly, meanings are assumed to be individualistic and person-centered. The focus on expres sion directs attention away from the social production of meanings, positions, and inter ests that are expressed. While freedom of expression may occur, the social production of ten happens within conditions of considerable asymmetry. Secondly, differences in inter ests are resolved through argument and adversarial processes that choose (p. 438) among known positions rather than through the creative production of unknown and potentially more mutually advantageous ones. Both of these limitations create problems, but the first Page 5 of 22
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Communication is of special concern, as free expression increasingly becomes free expression of mean ings produced and favored by dominant groups. Thus, socially constructionist concep tions of meaning might be of more interest to those embracing communication as a part of critical management studies.
Communication and Cultural Management In the 1960s new ways to conceive of the creation of meaning began to garner attention (see, e.g., Berger and Luckmann 1966). With this came a fundamental shift in understand ing the locus of meaning from individual or person-centered, to socially constructed. As a result, the communicative processes by which meanings are formed became of greater in terest than their expression. Climate and culture studies emerged as a way to better un derstand how communication reflects and creates organizational realities along with the consequences of organizational members' perceptions of communicative activities. This change in perspective about the production of meaning directly targets the social produc tion of values, thoughts, and feelings and coincides with attempts to maintain order and control through socialization to particular organizational values. These normative control processes use communication as the means for creating organizational cultures to achieve particular results, typically associated with productivity and high performance. With communication becoming the principal activity through which collective meanings are created and maintained, many interpretive researchers began envisioning organiza tions as meaning-producing entities that shape particular ways of understanding. Analy ses of metaphors, symbols, myths, rituals, stories, narratives, and discourse are all char acteristic of the central role given to communication in the production and reproduction of organizational cultures (see, e.g., Pacanowsky and OʼDonnell-Trujillo 1982; Trujillo 1987). Much of this, from a management perspective, facilitates new systems of cultural management or unobtrusive, normative control processes (see, e.g., Barley, Meyer, and Gash 1988; Shockley-Zalabak and Morley 1994). The main emphasis of these types of studies is on how communication shapes and main tains particular cultures. By examining various communicative practices, scholars identi fy the ways shared meanings are created and maintained among organizational partici pants (e.g., Donnellon, Gray, and Bougon 1986), focus on the ways communication creates and shapes organizational identities to accomplish particular organizational goals (e.g., Barley and Kunda 1992; Moingeon 2002), and examine how efforts such as corporate branding generate shared corporate values (e.g., Hatch and Schultz 2008). In these cas es, interest centers on the (p. 439) ways communication creates bonds among organiza tional participants to direct behavior and consequently move an organization toward pre defined management objectives. Many of those embracing social constructionist perspectives also became interested in or ganizational discourse as a way to explore how meanings are generated through social in teraction. A focus on organizational discourse directs attention toward the ways organiza tional members engage each other in, as well as the resulting accomplishments of, talk. Page 6 of 22
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Communication Many of these studies describe situated discursive practices and how they shape organi zational meaning formations (see Mumby and Clair 1997). While seemingly similar to in terpretive studies, Alvesson (2004) provides a helpful distinction between cultural (or in terpretive) and discursive approaches. He explains that culture studies focus on commu nication as revealing or expressing relatively stable, collective organizational meanings, while discourse studies attend to communication as a constructive phenomenon constitut ing meanings through discursive acts. Discourse studies thus attempt to identify discours es and examine the effects of such talk on organizational understandings. However, what counts as discourse varies. While some focus on discourse as concrete practices of talk (e.g., Bakeman and Gottman 1986; Fairhurst 1993), many studies aim at revealing larger social formations (e.g., Hardy and Phillips 1999; Heracleous and Barrett 2001). Alvesson and Karreman (2000) provide a useful distinction between discourse conceptualized at the micro level and Discourse at the macro level. Similarly, Fairhurst and Putnam (2004: 7) explain the difference between “discourse that refers to the study of talk and text in social practices and Discourses as general and enduring systems of thought.” Communication scholars interested in discourse typically attend to one level or the other, taking either a micro focus on concrete discussions or a macro focus on larger, social level meaning formations manifest within organizational settings. However, there is benefit from understanding the relationship between both levels (see Broadfoot, Deetz, and Anderson 2004). Boden's (1994) work, for example, explains how interactions among organizational participants are important for understanding the processes by which organizational structures are created and maintained. Arguing that “organizational talk both shapes and is shaped by the structure of the organization it self” (1994: 202), her work directs attention to organizational discourse as “a multi lay ered affair, located and accomplished simultaneously at the structural, interactional and organizational levels of verbal exchange” (p. 203). Boden thus recognizes the complexi ties of organizational talk and promotes the study of interrelationships among “lower case” and “upper case” discourse by claiming that the constitutive character of language does not have a micro/macro distinction. Those with a critical interest in management might see how attention to the social con struction of meaning informs critical perspectives of communication. (p. 440) However, a critical look at this perspective of communication reveals that many studies of organiza tional culture and discourse remain apolitical by not (at least initially) raising significant concern with issues of power structures emergent in communicative activities. Attention generally focuses on how meanings and structures emerge rather than whose interests they benefit or the consequences of acting upon these particular meanings. As some criti cal communication researchers began to critique the managerial bias prominent in much organizational communication research and question the rational and functionalist as sumptions of such work (e.g., Redding 1979; Cheney 2007), many of those embracing in terpretive approaches and an attention to discourse began to apply social constructionist views of meaning production to critique organizational control motives. This type of work
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Communication created space for contemporary critical communication perspectives dedicated to recipro cal interaction to openly reach mutual understandings.
Communication and Participatory Democracy Critical scholars are generally interested in the emancipation of marginalized interests. Those with a critical focus on communication often associate communication with the complex interplay between power, domination, and resistance and often place emphasis on instability, fragmentation of meaning, and a desire for more participation in the com municative activities that shape collective meanings. This type of work embraces the no tion that socially constructed meanings are always political and produced within relations of power. Consequently, communication becomes both a means through which dominant interests are maintained and an opportunity for organizational members to reach more mutually beneficial decisions. This interest in communication for critical investigation correlates with contemporary changes in work practices, the growth of knowledge-intensive workplaces, and the emer gence of new management strategies. And the notion that meanings are socially con structed through communicative interactions inspires critically sensitive management practices aimed at collaborative participation in the social accomplishment of meaning. Such a focus directs attention away from communication as a means to strategically ma nipulate collective meanings toward communication as a way in which particular mean ings emerge in social interaction. Consequently, a critical communication focus attends to the processes and consequences of social meaning formation. A critical look at this perspective of communication reveals a wide range of research ef forts that are often difficult to categorize as varied methods and approaches tend to blend, overlap, and merge. However, taking a broad stroke across the field of communica tion, many critical studies critique various social (p. 441) control mechanisms, provide as sessments of fragmentation, conflict, and resistance to meaning, and reveal the conse quences of ideological meaning formations. Additionally, other studies provide a more re lationally sensitive approach to language and attend to the political quality of organiza tional life. Here communication is not only a part of organizational life but is the inherent ly political and power-laden foundation by which all understandings of organizational life emerge. Consequently, some studies offer guidance for free and open forms of participa tion in the formation of meaning while others direct attention toward exposing systemati cally distorted communication and discursive closures that might preclude the free and open formation of meaning. In the following section we take a critical look at each of these prominent, critical interests in communication.
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Communication
Critical Communication Studies Organizational Control, Resistance, and Ideology Critique Much critical communication work focuses on unobtrusive control processes, forms of re sistance, and the ramifications of ideological meaning formations. Those with an interest in control focus on communication in its relation to normative and ideological control and asymmetry in meaning construction processes (e.g., Tompkins and Cheney 1985). Addi tionally, workplace identities, identification, and decisional logics are seen as communica tion accomplishments central to modern systems of control (e.g., Tracy 2000; Alvesson and Willmott 2002). The aim of this type of critical work is to reveal the various commu nicative mechanisms socializing organizational members to particular values that support dominant managerial interests (see, e.g., Rosen 1985; Alvesson 1987; Knights and Will mott 1987; Mumby 1988). In a similar way, the cultural influence of corporate branding and the production of collective discourses through various media outlets have also been critiqued (e.g, Klein 2000). However, cultural control processes initiated by managers are not the only concern. Control is also seen as actively consented to by individuals and communication-ally ac complished by social groups in organizations. Barker (1993: 411), for instance, explores concertive control mechanisms formed when work groups become self-managing teams who reach “a negotiated consensus on how to shape their behavior according to a set of core values.” Here workers engage in a value-based discourse to “infer ‘proper’ behav ioral premises: ideas, norms, or rules that enable them to act in ways functional for the organization” (p. 412). This type of research reveals (p. 442) how the locus of organiza tional control often shifts from managers to employees through communicative interac tions (see, e.g., Burawoy 1979, 1985; Czarniawska-Joerges 1988; Deetz and Mumby 1990; Kunda 1992). Critical work focusing on mechanisms of consent follows several paths; however all focus on communication as central to the production and reproduction of dominant meaning structures as well as the interaction among them. For instance, scholars following primar ily Gramsci's work explore the relations of power and resistance around these dominant structures (see Mumby 1997). Furthermore, those inspired by Foucault's work look at communication in the processes of self control and self management (see Deetz 1998; Trethewey 1999). For example, Holmer-Nadesan (1997) critically examines the manage ment practice of personality testing. She reveals that such practices serve as disciplinary mechanisms that inform definitions of the “normal” employee and thus constrain alterna tive understandings of the self and the workplace. Others have extended this idea by fo cusing on the development of the “enterprising” or “entrepreneurial” self (du Gay 1996; Wieland, Bauer, and Deetz in press) as it further associates communicative interactions with understandings and practices of self.
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Communication Additionally, many scholars critique the notion that socially constructed organizational meanings are stable and unified and consequently explore the communicative processes of resistance and fragmentation of meaning. Martin's (1992) work, for instance, explains in detail how culture is often fragmented, partial, and in flux. These ideas motivate criti cally oriented communication scholars to explore conflict suppression and issues of mar ginalization. Here the communicative struggle over meaning among organizational partic ipants leads to a focus on moments of resistance and tension (e.g., Sotirin and Gottfried 1999). For example, Murphy's (1998) exploration of resistance among flight attendants highlights the complex, and often hidden, ways organizational participants communica tively construct alternative meanings in response to constraining organizational prac tices. Similarly, another objective of critical work includes finding ways to overcome tak en-for-granted understandings with a desire to expose and reveal alternative meanings. Some studies use deconstruction as a technique for revealing the varied ways a text can be interpreted to expose alternative meanings held within organizational discourse (e.g., Calás and Smircich 1991). Martin (1990), for instance, exposes the ways organizational activities suppress gender conflict by deconstructing (and reconstructing) a story told by a CEO. In this type of work, communication is the primary interest in the critical investigation of organization and management. While critical studies of organizational communication of ten focus specifically on the exercise of power (Deetz and Kersten 1983; Mumby 1988), the increased interest in critical discourse studies inspires others to explicate and make visible the masked ways in which discourse functions ideologically (Fairclough 1995). These critical discourse studies show how dominant meaning formations relate to broad er social and cultural processes (p. 443) and practices and how ideologies, inherent in these discursive formations, legitimize and obscure relations of power. Others, however, informed by contemporary postmodern writing, extend beyond ideology critique and offer different ways for critically engaging organizational discourse (see, e.g., Deetz and Mc Clellan in press). These works focus not only on communication as a means through which a particular ideological world view becomes naturalized, but in language as a polit ical process that simultaneously constitutes the world and the self in relation to that world.
Organizations as Political Constructions In many contemporary critical communication studies, language becomes the principle mediator of experiences as well as the process in which understandings of the world and ourselves are generated, maintained, and changed. In this type of work, conceptions of communication might be best described as a politically attentive relational construction ism (PARC). These works reflect the fundamental sociality of all human activity in which language replaces individual consciousness resulting in communication rather than psy chology being core to understanding management and organizational practice. In this way, critical efforts become sensitive to the political construction of organization and on
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Communication finding ways to engage in productive conflicts emancipating alternative meanings from dominant, yet hidden, forms of knowledge and understanding. This orientation to communication is grounded in a relational understanding of experi ence mediated by language (see Gergen 1994; Hosking, Dachler, and Gergen 1995). Ac cording to this perspective, human experience arises in the relationship between a posi tioned subject and a not yet determined “thing” toward which it is directed. This relation al unity precedes any possible subject/object split and questions the various psychological and objectivist theories common in most non-critical management studies (for develop ment, see Deetz 1992, 2000). In this way, all understandings of other people and the world have a relational intention; the meaning of things becomes defined in terms of its set of relations. Language institutionalizes particular relational intentions and communi cation does not simply represent things that already exist, but is part of the production of the thing, we treat as natural. Consequently, attention is directed toward the inherent so ciality of knowledge and to communication as the principal social phenomenon for investi gation. A significant outcome of this “linguistic turn” is that communication becomes con stitutive in the sense that it simultaneously produces social realities and relations to those realities. In other words, the world and the subject are co-constituted through com munication (Deetz 1992). However, not only are understandings of reality produced so cially, but the ways in which we understand ourselves as individuals emerge through com munication. Based on this view, a (p. 444) constituting subject emerges in the same mo ment as the objects of the world. Language becomes the keeper of social reality, knowl edge, and meaning as well as individual identity. Communication scholars embracing this perspective become attentive to historical mean ings. Because meanings are embedded within systems of language, both our social reality and understandings of self are inherited through communication. When words are used, particular perspectives or values are put into play, and a particular way of seeing the world and its relationship to self is enacted. Additionally, all knowledge and understand ing is created out of the specific instruments, procedures, institutions, goals, and aspira tions available at a particular point in time and these arise themselves out of earlier times. Consequently, both social reality and subject positions are moments within a flow that is defined in the past and moving toward some future. Critical communication scholars embracing these ideas consider both organizational real ities and the perspectives from which to “see” those realities as embedded in particular language systems that are socially and historically created. For example, Trethewey's (2001: 186) study of the experiences of aging among midlife professional women reveals that women often adopt the entrepreneurial attitude of business discourse “toward the performance of their (aged, gendered) professional identities.” This embodied discourse results in an understanding that “it is up to the individual woman to age successfully, largely through consumption (of ‘age-defying’ skin products, hair color treatments, cos metic surgeries, and self-help literature)” (2001:187). This study shows how particular
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Communication meanings about aging become understood in relation to the organization; precluding al ternative understandings of age and aging from being expressed. This focus on language directs attention away from biographical or psychological under standings of self to communicatively based and socially produced understandings of the world and the self in which the “individual” is socially constituted in a particular relation ship with the world. Thus, consciousness is not something inside the heads of individuals to be shared with others but found in the socially and historically generated language of society. In this way, feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions are socio-historical inven tions generated through communicative interaction rather than individual psychological phenomenon (see, e.g., Mumby and Putnam 1992). Consciousness can then be replaced by language and psychology by communication. This type of critical work recognizes organizations as communication-based social con structions that are inherently political and power laden. The constituted subjects and ob jects of the world are not neutral; every experience is a political formation representing and producing the sedimentation of a particular relational intention. From this perspec tive, organizations emerge to accomplish particular objectives and thus promote particu lar values or relational intentions. As a consequence, the world and our relationship to the world are predefined and given (p. 445) to us in the form of language and organiza tion. Additionally, the socio-historical conditions of organizational formation generate par ticular ways of seeing organizational life. As meanings become regularly dispersed among the practices and institutions of organizational life, power relations become more natural and taken for granted. Research embracing this perspective questions predefined under standings of organizational life as being only one particular sedimentation and focuses on revealing that every organizational form could have been otherwise. The ways communi cation situations might allow other relationships to come forth are of primary concern. As a consequence, communication becomes a central component of any critical project as the principal way for understanding how and why some meanings are expressed and oth ers are not.
Normative Guidance for Free and Open Communication Recognizing the fundamental sociality of organizational meaning formations and the polit ical quality of organizing, interest in communication often turns toward mechanisms for countering the predefined understandings embedded in taken-for-granted organizational realities. Because communication is always taking place within relationships of power, balance, and reciprocity in the meaning formation processes become of particular inter est. Critical attention to communication becomes directed at finding normative means for free and open forms of interaction (Varey 2002). Consequently, critical communication studies aim at overcoming both explicit and hidden asymmetrical power relations that vi olate reciprocity. Habermas's (1979, 1984) writings have been important to critical communication work by providing an analytic frame for considering hidden forms of asymmetry and by develop Page 12 of 22
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Communication ing a normative ideal for free and open communication. As such, some communication scholars have developed various critiques of communication systems and structures that produce barriers to open formation and unjustified advantages, as well as descriptions of practices that might enable more open interaction (see, e.g., Clair 1993; Papa, Auwal, and Singhal 1995; Murphy 1998; Ashcraft 1998; Ashcraft and Mumby 2004). Processes of sys tematically distorted communication and forms of discursive closure are two barriers to free and open forms of communication frequently examined by those with an interest in critical communication studies.
Systematically Distorted Communication and Discursive Closure The hope for free and open forms of communication is the establishment of legitimate meanings through participatory formation of mutual understandings. (p. 446) Some criti cal communication scholars, for instance, critique management practices that tout partic ipatory decision-making practices, because strategic forms of communication often re main hidden within presumed open forms of interaction. In these cases, organizational members may believe they are engaged in the formation of mutual understanding but in stead may be practicing disguised strategic action. Organizational members, including managers, are often unaware of the political nature of communication. As a consequence, the persuasive intent of communication is concealed from the interactants, maintaining asymmetrical meaning formations and power relations. The aim of this type of critical work is to call attention to the politics inherent in language use that are often obscured and hidden (see Haas and Deetz 2004). These types of disguised forms of strategic action occur when communication is systematically distorted—when systems of power preclude free and open interaction—or discursively closed—when potential conflicts are sup pressed and rendered neutral. Communication is distorted when moments of contestation are precluded by power imbal ances. In such cases conversational participants are unable to participate, question, or as sert alternative value positions within communicative interactions. Distorted communica tion results in some values being expressed without consideration or recognition of alter native values, ideas, or propositions. While all communication is distorted in some way, most random distortions work themselves out within the to-and-fro processes of conversa tion. However, systematically distorted communication occurs when distortions become embedded within systems of language and treated as part of the natural processes of hu man interaction. In these cases, claims of validity are not upheld and interactions are no longer free and open, strategic reproduction of meaning is latent, and participatory meaning generation is precluded. This results in an inability to discuss, or even think about, particular ideas that might conflict with meanings aligned with powerful interests. Those interested in systematically distorted communication explain how it obscures the politics inherent in language use and renders everyday organizational meanings and un derstandings as natural and unproblematic (see, e.g., Forester 1989, 1993; Cheney 1995).
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Communication While systematic distortions relate to the overall system in which communicative interac tions occur, discursive closures refer to mechanisms employed in conversation that sup press potential conflicts of meaning. Specifically, discursive closures refer to the “quiet, repetitive micro-practices, done for innumerable reasons, which function to maintain nor malized, conflict-free experience and social relations” (Deetz 1992: 189). Many interac tion processes can produce discursive closure. For instance, closure occurs when partici pants are disqualified from engaging in communicative interaction or if particular topics of discussion are avoided altogether. Closure also results when socially produced ideas are assumed a part of the natural (p. 447) world or when subjective experiences are privi leged, precluding any examination of the social formation of experience. Closure also arises when value-laden activities are treated as value-free or when particular meanings are offered within conversation yet denied as meant. Additionally, discursive closure oc curs when higher order explanatory devices are used to rationalize decisions and prac tices without engaging them in discussion. This often results in diverting or subverting conflictual discussion through apparent reasonable attempts to engage in it. Those interested in studying the mechanisms of closure focus on how such mechanisms conceal contradictions and conflict in the communicative process resulting in obscuring or preventing the expression of alternative values, ideas, or proclamations that might challenge existing meanings and possibly result in the formation of new mutual under standings. For example, Thackaberry's (2004) study of an organizational self-study under taken by the US Forest Service to address fire-safety concerns initially revealed the ex pression of alternative safety policies associated with decision making rather than adher ence to strict rules. However, this “discursive opening” was ultimately suppressed and rendered neutral through a variety of discursive closures enacted in the communication among organizational participants. Systematic distortions and discursive closures can be overcome, however, when the cir cumstances of human interaction have legitimate grounding in processes of free and open communication and participants have the ability to contest the claims or ideas of others. Critical communication scholars taking this perspective direct attention toward reclaim ing the inherent politics of meaning formation and enabling open and conflictual dis course among organizational participants. This type of critical communication research examines the processes of communication to identify distortions or closures and exposes the consequences of these disguised strategic interactions with the hope of generating opportunities to reclaim processes of contestation and open conversation. Overall, much critical work informed by the Frankfurt School as well as more recent post modern writings embrace a relationally sensitive conception of communication to investi gate and critique different forms of power, domination, and hegemony with hopes of emancipating alternative meanings through open and free forms of communication. These conceptions of communication concentrate on forms of participatory democracy, providing a more process centered form of critique and fuller development of affirmative responses. This can be seen as a move from communication theories that critique cultural production and management processes to the development of normative guidance to a Page 14 of 22
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Communication participatory democracy. This shift in interest emphasizes the inherently political quality of collective meaning formations and encourages communicative interactions that spon sor free and open engagements among social participants.
Reflecting Upon this Critical Look at Com munication (p. 448)
The aim of this chapter was to bring attention to the role of communication in the critical analysis of organizational life. By exploring four prototypical ways of understanding com munication, as associated with idealized conceptions of meaning and motives for interac tion, we attempted to show how various understandings of communication inform and en able different management practices and how different management practices inform particular ways of understanding communication. Our intent was to explain the complexi ties of communication as an inherently political and power-laden activity that constitutes all of organizational life, requiring critical scholars to be politically attentive to the rela tional construction of organizations and sensitive to relations of reciprocity in commu nicative situations. This critical look at communication also reveals important tensions among these idealized conceptions of communication. While traditional management theories view communica tion as a tool to direct organizational activities, open participation in decision making is often not considered. Yet when moves toward collaborative management practices em brace a more participatory motive for interaction, psychological understandings of mean ing often limit communication as a way to express (and debate) individual meanings to reach consensus. Furthermore, while cultural management practices embrace a social constructionist view of meaning formation, retention of a control motive often precludes the possibility for open participation in the formation of these meanings. Finally, when critical management perspectives embrace a desire for the mutual formation of meaning, recognition that control is an important part of the management of organizations is often lost in the desire for emancipation of alternative values. Consequently, it is important to recognize the inherent tensions involved when attempt ing to investigate the communicative practices that constitute organizational life. In par ticular, whether embracing a control motive or a desire to reach mutual decisions, it is important to recognize the tension between communication as a linear, strategic activity for the expression of meaning and communication as a socio-political and power-laden process of meaning creation. However, any critical attention to communication hopes to reclaim the importance of focusing on the relational production of meaning and thus chal lenge the psychological reductionism often found in traditional management and organi zation studies. Similarly, whether taking a person-centered or social constructionist perspective of mean ing, it is important to recognize that communication is simultaneously a mechanism for control and a means to openly reach mutually beneficial understandings. In other words, Page 15 of 22
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Communication it is necessary to consider that communicative activities (p. 449) both constrain and en able. Taking a critical look at communication appreciates the tensions inherent in commu nication being both a necessary part of the management and control of organizations and a crucial element for the emancipation of hidden, obscured, and taken-for-granted values and interests. However, while communication cannot always be free and open and asym metrical power relations and discursive closers will always be a part of organizational life, the moral obligation of critical work motivates scholars to expose the hidden and tak en-for-granted meanings that guide organizational life. Critical communication scholars are thus generally motivated by a desire to generate moments of reciprocity in the forma tion of social understanding. As a consequence, what we gain by taking this critical look at communication is recognition and appreciation for moments of uncertainty and conflict as these become opportunities to find new understandings that might sponsor alternative values and more creative and mutually beneficial solutions. In sum, as management strategies and practices continue to evolve and adapt in an in creasingly global and pluralistic society, we invite those interested in critical approaches to management to embrace the original insight of the “linguistic turn” and recognize communication as a political, socio-historical, and power-laden practice that creates, maintains, and potentially changes the practices and processes of organization. We invite critical management researchers to continue to explore and perhaps find alternative ways of engaging communication as a constitutive process that simultaneously enables and constrains organizing possibilities. In this way, critical interest in organizational process es involves more than identifying and overcoming systems of domination but includes promoting more democratic forms of communicative engagement resulting in organiza tional participants co-creating legitimate meaning formations together.
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Communication CLAIR, R. (1993). “The Use of Framing Devices to Sequester Organizational Narratives: Hegemony and Harassment,” Communication Monographs, 60: 113–136. CZARNIAWSKA-JOERGES, B. (1988). Ideological Control in Nonideological Organiza tions. New York: Praeger. DEETZ, S. (1992). Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —— (1998). “Discursive Formations, Strategized Subordination and Self-surveillance,” in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds.) Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of Self. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 151–172. —— (2000). “Putting the Community into Organizational Science: Exploring the Construc tion of Knowledge Claims,” Organization Science, 11: 732–738. —— and BROWN, D. (2004). “Conceptualising Involvement, Participation and Workplace Decision Processes: A Communication Theory Perspective,” in D. Tourish and O. Hargie (eds.), Key Issues in Organizational Communication. London: Routledge, 172–187. —— and KERSTEN, A. (1983). “Critical Models of Interpretive Research,” in L. Putnam and M. Pacanowsky (eds.), Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach. Beverly Hills: Sage, 147–171. (p. 451)
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Communication FAIRCLOUGH, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman. FORESTER, J. (1989). Planning in the Face of Power. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1993). Critical Theory, Public Policy, and Planning Practice. Albany, NY: State Uni versity of New York Press. GERGEN, K. (1994). Reality and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction. Cam bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. GORDON, W., INFANTE, D., and GRAHAM, E. (1988). “Corporate Conditions Conducive to Employee Voice: A Subordinate Perspective,” Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 1: 101–110. GOWER, K. K. (2006). “Public Relations Research at the Crossroads,” Journal of Public Relations Research, 18: 177–190. GRUNIG, L. A., GRUNIG, J. E., and DOZIER, D. M. (2002). Excellent Public Relations and Effective Organizations: A Study of Communication Management in Three Countries. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. GRUNIG, J. E., and HUNT, T. (1984). Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rine hart and Winston. HAAS, T., and DEETZ, S. (2004). “The Politics and Ethics of Knowledge Construction in Corporations: Dialogic Interaction and Self Other Relations,” In P. Jeffcutt (ed.), The Foun dations of Management Knowledge. London: Routledge, 208–230. HABERMAS, J. (1979). Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans, T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon. —— (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the rationalization of society, trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon. HARDY, C., and PHILLIPS, N. (1999). “No Joking Matter: Discursive Struggle in the Canadian Refugee System,” Organization Studies, 20: 1–24. HERACLEOUS, L., and BARRETT. M. (2001). “Organizational Change as Discourse: Communicative Actions and Deep Structures in the Context of Information Technology Implementation,” Academy of Management Journal, 44: 755–778. HOLMER-NADESAN, M. (1997). “Constructing Paper Dolls: The Discourse of Personality Testing in Organizational Practice,” Communication Theory, 73: 189–217. HOSKING, D. M., DACHLER, H. P., and GERGEN, K. J. (1995). Management and Organization: Relational Alternatives To Individualism. Aldershot: Avebury. (p. 452)
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Communication HATCH, M. J., and SCHULTZ, M. (2008). Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity through Corporate Branding. San Francisco: JosseyBass. JABLIN, F., M. (2006). “Courage and Courageous Communication Among Leaders and Followers in Groups, Organizations, and Communities,” Management Communication Quarterly, 20: 94–110. KLEIN, N. (2000). No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bul lies. New York: Picador. KNIGHTS, D., and WILLMOTT, H. (1987). “Organizational Culture as Management Strategy,” International Studies of Management and Organization, 17: 40–63. KUNDA, G. (1992). Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in aHigh-tech Corpo ration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. MARTIN, J. (1990). “Deconstructing Organizational Taboos: The Suppression of Gender Conflict in Organizations,” Organization Science, 1: 339–359. —— (1992). Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. MILLER, K. (2007). “Compassionate Communication in the Workplace: Exploring Processes of Noticing, Connecting, and Responding,” Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35: 223–245. —— and MONGE, P. (1985). “Participation, Satisfaction, and Productivity: A Meta-Analyt ic Review,” Academy of Management Journal, 29: 727–753. MOINGEON, B. (2002). Corporate and Organizational Identities: Integrating Strategy, Marketing, Communication and Organizational Perspectives. London: Routledge. MUMBY, D. (1988). Communication and Power in Organizations: Discourse, Ideology, and Domination. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. —— (1997). “The Problem of Hegemony: Rereading Gramsci for Organizational Communi cation Studies,” Western Journal of Communication, 61: 343–375. —— and CLAIR, R. (1997). “Organizational Discourse”, in T. A. Van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Structure and Process: Discourse Studies vol. 2—A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Lon don: Sage, 181–205. —— and PUTNAM, L. L. (1992). “The Politics of Emotion: A Feminist Reading of Bounded Rationally,” Academy of Management Review, 17: 465–486. MURPHY, A. G. (1998). “Hidden Transcripts of Flight Attendant Resistance,” Manage ment Communication Quarterly, 11: 499–535. Page 20 of 22
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Communication PACKANOWSKY, M., and OʼDONNELL-TRUJILLO, N. (1982). “Communication and Or ganizational Cultures,” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 46: 115–130. PAPA, M. J., AUWAL, M. A., and SINGHAL, A. (1995). “Dialectic of Control and Emanci pation in Organizing for Social Change: A Multitheoretic Study of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh,” Communication Theory, 5: 189–223. REDDING, W. C. (1979). “Organizational Communication Theory and Ideology: An Overview,” in D. Nimmo (ed.), Communication Yearbook 3. New Brunswick, NJ: Transac tion Books, 309–341. ROSEN, M. (1985). “Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and Dominance,” Journal of Man agement, 11: 31–48. SHOCKLEY-ZALABAK, P., and MORLEY, D. (1994). “Creating a Culture: A Lon gitudinal Examination of the Influence of Management and Employee Values on Commu nication Rule Stability and Emergence,” Human Communication Research, 20: 334–355. (p. 453)
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Communication TRUJILLO, N. (1987). “Implication of Interpretive Approaches for Organizational Com munication Research and Practice,” in L. Thayer (ed.), Organization ⇔ Communication: Emerging Perspectives II. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 46–63. VAREY, R. (2002). “Requisite Communication for Positive Involvement and Participation: A Critical Communication Theory Perspective,” International Journal of Applied Human Resource Management, 3: 20–35. —— (2000). “A Critical Review of Conceptions of Communication Evident in Contempo rary Business & Management Literature,” Journal of Communication Management, 4: 328–340. WIELAND, S., BAUER, J, and DEETZ, S. (in press). “Destructive Political Communica tion, Careerism and Abuses of Power,” in B. Sypher and P. Lutgen-Sandvik (eds.) The De structive Side of Organizational Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Stanley Deetz
Stanley Deetz (PhD) is Professor of Communication and Director of Peace and Con flict Studies at the University of Colorado. He is author/co-author of numerous arti cles and books including Leading Organizations through Transitions (Sage, 2000), Doing Critical Management Research (Sage, 2000), and Democracy in an Age of Cor porate Colonization (Suny, 1992). His research focuses on corporate governance and communication processes in relation to democracy, micro-practices of power, and col laborative decision-making. His current work investigates native theories of commu nication and democracy and their consequences for mutual decision-making. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar, a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar, and an International Communication Association Past-President and Fellow. John G. McClellan
John G. McClellan is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Boise State Univer sity. His research combines critical and interpretive perspectives to explore the dis cursive qualities of organizing with an interest in issues of knowledge, identity, col laboration, and change. His current work on collaborative change attends to organiz ing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life. His recent collaborative work appears in The Handbook of Business Discourse (University of Edinburgh Press, 2009) and Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies: Re search, Pedagogy, and Practice (Sage, 2010).
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Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management Tom Keenoy The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Human Resource Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0022
Abstract and Keywords This article offers a critical account of the mainstream HRM literature through the medi um of discourse analysis. No singular definition of discourse analysis is possible but, inso far as it is possible to generalize, discourse analysts are interested in the implications of how language (and other signs) are deployed to present and re-present social reality. ‘Critical’ discourse analysis takes many forms and utilizes a very wide variety of method ologies. As an analytic perspective, it offers a variety of social-scientific approaches through which particular ‘discursive constructions’ or – to use Foucault's term – ’discur sive formations’ can be explored in order to expose their underlying assumptions about the projected nature of social reality. More generally, there is a concern with not only al ternative possible readings but also with what particular discourses exclude or marginal ize, and with how discourse may be deployed to shape social subjectivities. In this re spect, the core assumption informing ‘critical’ varieties of discourse analysis is that ‘dis course’ is inextricably implicated in the exercise of social power. Keywords: human-resource management, HRM literature, discourse analysis, social reality, subjectivities, social power
Introduction OVER the last twenty years “HRM” has emerged as a global discourse. During that time it has mutated from its cultural origins in the US into an internationally recognized semiotic for “modern people management.” In terms of conventional usage, “human resource man agement” offers a seemingly neutral framework for the analysis of a wide range of issues relating to management policy and practice, strategic planning and the business process, employee resourcing and development, work and work organization, organizational cul ture, motivation and performance as well employee relations and employment regulation (Boxall, Purcell, and Wright 2007). In consequence, HRM has come to occupy a signifi cant role in the literatures of organizational behavior, strategic management, business Page 1 of 20
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Human Resource Management policy, international management and inter-cultural management. And, as a discourse of change underpinning management practice in the so-called globalizing economy, HRM seems to enjoy unparalleled success. This chapter offers a critical account of the mainstream HRM literature through the medi um of discourse analysis. No singular definition of discourse analysis is possible but, inso far as it is possible to generalize, discourse analysts are interested in the implications of how language (and other signs) are deployed to present and re-present social reality. “Critical” discourse analysis takes many forms and utilizes a very wide variety of method ologies (see Chapter 10, “Discourseand Critical Management Studies”). As an analytic perspective, it offers a variety of social (p. 455) scientific approaches through which par ticular “discursive constructions” or—to use Foucault's term—“discursive formations” can be explored in order to expose their underlying assumptions about the projected nature of social reality. More generally, there is a concern with not only alternative possible read ings but also with what particular discourses exclude or marginalize and with how dis course may be deployed to shape social subjectivities. In this respect, the core assump tion informing “critical” varieties of discourse analysis is that “discourse” is inextricably implicated in the exercise of social power. Since the principal concern of this chapter is to account for the discourse of “academic HRM,” the most suitable analytic narrative to con struct a “critical” account of HRM is to see it as a discursive cultural artifact.
Language, History, and Politics Unsurprisingly, HRM textbooks deploy the term as an unproblematic conceptual metaphor signifying the full range of policies and practices which can be applied when managing “human resources.” At one time—when what we now call HRM was known as personnel management—these were usually confined to the perhaps more routine as pects of managing employment relations: recruitment, selection, and training in the con text of what was then called “manpower” planning; remuneration and wage systems, trade unions and bargaining, and all the various procedures involved in such routines. The arrival of HRM has led to a widening of textbook agendas to encompass a more ex pansive and more detailed concern with employee development and learning—which now self-consciously includes managers—as well as such issues as diversity and performance management, and—and this is perhaps the most significant change—a concern with both the international and strategic aspects of HRM policy and practice. To oversimplify: if “personnel management” addressed the managerial needs of industrial or “Fordist” production and organization then HRM has evolved to meet the perceived de mands on managing human resources in the post-industrial or global economy. Such terms are a brutal characterization of an immensely complex process of continuous change. They refer to two associated changes in managerial practice in advanced west ern societies: first, a presumed shift from mass production to more flexible forms of work organization and, secondly, a presumed change of emphasis in managing the labor re source. Where managers had once sought to directly control what was seen as a reactive Page 2 of 20
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Human Resource Management collectivized labor force they now attempt to engage and motivate what is seen as a more individualized and responsive labor resource. This shift of focus is reflected in the new agendas pursued by HRM textbooks (if not in HR practice) which is signified in the com monplace epithet (p. 456) that “people are our most valuable resource”. However, there are also dangers in such linear historical generalization. While the precise origins of the term itself are obscure—Marciano (1995) claims the term “human resources” was first used by Peter Drucker in 1954—as a tangible academic man agement specialism, HRM appears in the US sometime in the 1960s (Strauss 2001; Kauf man 2007). However, as a culturally embedded discourse, it is Roy Jacques (1996:136– 142) who offers the most compelling and insightful account of the situated meanings which inform our contemporary understanding of HRM. In a ground-breaking discursive analysis of US management thought he argues the origins of “HRM” can be found in the ideas which emerged from the historical conjunction of scientific management, the em ployment managers movement and industrial psychology between 1900–1920.Hedemon stratesthataclearrecognition of what was later to be called “the human side of enterprise” was in place long before the human relations movement. For example, a 1916 textbook in cludes the observation that: “As the engineers, or technical executives, learned to control physical resources by science, it now remains … to control the human factors in industry in accordance with the fundamental principles of human nature” (Jones 1916 quoted in Jacques 1996: 138). Despite the essentialist undertone, such a thought seems to presage more recent concerns with the ineluctable control of employee subjectivities (Rose 1999; Alvesson and Willmott 2002; Collinson 2003), the management of meaning (Gowler and Legge 1983) and the cultural construction of employee identities (Keenoy and Anthony 1992). The elements of this historic narrative are underlined by Kaufman (2007: 23): “If there were two themes that pervaded the 1920s HRM literature, it was that labor must be looked at as a distinctively human factor and that the central purpose of HRM is to foster cooperation and unity of interest between the firm and workers.” The managerialist impli cations of such a statement are self-evident. And it seems plausible that such emphases in US management thought—which reflect both the relatively unquestioned cultural status of “business” in the US as well as the historically more problematic social legitimacy of trade unions (Perlman 1928/1966)—may help to explain why the arrival of the discourse of HRM in Europe was, in contrast to the US, so much more intellectually contentious. As Strauss (2001) notes, HRM developed slowly in the US where it was seamlessly incor porated into management thought. In contrast, it appeared in British universities almost overnight in the mid-1980s and, by the early 1990s, its introduction had effectively trans formed the language deployed to analyze employment relations. It not only presaged the final demise of Britain's culturally distinctive “voluntarism” which had informed employ ment regulation for nearly two hundred years (Fox 1985) but, more generally, the postWorld-War-II pan-European political consensus which had prioritized the maintenance of full employment as a fundamental social “good.” This latter European socio-economic pol icy objective had generated a succession of “corporatist” tripartite initiatives between employers, unions, and (p. 457) the state designed to “manage” their competing and con flicting interests and, in particular, to protect employment levels and wages from the Page 3 of 20
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Human Resource Management worst vicissitudes of the trade cycle (Lehmbruch and Schmitter 1982). Such collaborative institutional arrangements became most extensive in the 1970s. Discourse can only be understood in context and the historical link between HRM and what we might call the “globalization project” cannot be underestimated. Principally through a series of GATT agreements, the 1980ssaw rapid and progressive deregulation of world markets in trade, labor, and—perhaps most importantly—finance. The latter per mitted an increasingly free flow of capital between all continents. During this period, both the UK and the US aggressively pursued neoliberal economic policies designed to recon figure socio-economic life. Utilizing “Chicago School” monetarist economic thinking to in form policy, the singular discursive (and ideological) consequence of “Thatcherism” in the UK and “Reaganomics” in the US was that the discourse of “the market” became the fun damental political and ethical touchstone of socio-economic regulation—trade unions were marginalized and increased unemployment was regarded as an acceptable “cost” of restructuring. Unsurprisingly in such a context, the rhetorical mantra of HRM—“people are our most valuable resources”—was met with a combination of cynicism, ridicule, and disbelief in academia. And not just in the UK: Kelly (2003: 166), in a detailed historical comparison of the impact of HRM in the US, Britain, and Australia, suggests that HRM came to Aus tralasia as “a sharp shock” in 1990.However, she also points out that the discourse of HRM was only one among a number of influences contributing to rise of neoliberal politi cal and managerial polices for “In terms of the transmission of ideas … responses to the advent of HRM in three Anglophone countries were mediated by the disciplinary and aca demic traditions in those countries and the role of public policy.” Significantly, these his toric changes were not replicated elsewhere in the social democracies of Western Eu rope. These societies have—to this day—demonstrated a far greater cultural resilience in protecting their historic methods of employment regulation (Ferner and Hyman 1998). While, in part, this reflects a greater commitment to the ideals of European cooperation through the European Union, it is—more importantly—also the case that none of these so cieties embraced the “neoliberal solution” to economic reform with anything like the con viction displayed in Britain, the US, and Australia. This very brief consideration of the history and emergence of HRM illustrates four impor tant analytic points. Firstly, it should be clear that discourses are best understood as his torically situated and culturally conditioned artifacts. The term “HRM” has been exported to an extremely wide variety of contexts and, in this respect alone, it cannot have a singu lar definition or uncontested cultural meaning. This is why it is best seen as a “floating” or “symbolic” signifier—a generic term with a range of possible culturally situated mean ings. In terms of the argument (p. 458) to be developed here, in general, it is seen as a semiotic reflecting managerial—one might even say, corporate—ambitions in the age of the global economy. One problem with “floating” signifiers is that their social meanings are always “open.” In practice, there is a continuous iteration between the generality (how action is discursively projected or “framed”) and the contingent (how discourse is situationally “enacted”). More graphically, there is always a tension in translating what Page 4 of 20
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Human Resource Management we “do” in terms of what we “say” we are doing. For example, Willmott (1993) explored the nature of corporate culture initiatives designed to empower individuals. What his analysis showed is that there are strong parallels between such initiatives and the “thought-control” exercised in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secondly, it should be clear that the spread of the discourse of HRM appears to be inti mately associated with the political adoption of neoliberal economic policies which, in turn—and, thirdly—is reflected in the undisputed link between HRM and the global ex pansion of corporate capitalism. For example, Brewster, Sparrow, and Vernon (2007: 3), in highlighting the relationship between international corporations and HRM, assert “Multinationals are economically dominant” and note that some 63,000 transnational companies now account for two—thirds of world trade. For such corporations, HRM seems to be a preferred discourse. However, it is also the case that a glance at HRM scholarship demonstrates the term has also been employed to account for employment re lations in almost any country and in almost any workplace across all six continents. Whether it is appropriate or not to use the conceptual apparatus of HRM in the distinc tive cultural contexts of China (Cooke 2005), India (Pio 2007), or Turkey (Ercek 2006) is not the question here: the empirical point is that HRM has, in effect, emerged as the dom inant “discourse of choice” for the academic analysis of employment relations. As such, alternative accounts of how we can theorize or manage the employment—such as those which emphasize the conflict-based nature of the relationship—have been progressively marginalized. Fourthly, what these latter points vividly demonstrate is that “Language controls and structures possibilities for action and the signifier “HRM” is a powerful element in the emerging language of organizing” (Jacques 1999: 200). We now turn to the question of whether or not it is also a “powerful” medium in the process of “managing meaning” and “manufacturing the employee” (the title of Jacques, 1996 book).
The Nature of the Change The consequences of linguistic reconfiguration can be complex. While transplanting a cul turally embedded construct such as HRM from the US will invariably (p. 459) mean some thing is “lost in translation”, the construct is not merely “translated”: in the process of be ing adapted for local use it is also “transformed.” This means that, in usage, it is subject to localized reinterpretations which add new meanings and additional nuances. Hence, re flecting the social action of academics, managers, consultants, publishers, and others who deploy the term in a multitude of localized meanings, the artifact is subject to a con tinuous process of change. While it can secure a relatively stabilized meaning in some in stitutional settings (such as university courses or corporate practice), it has no fixed or “fixable” identity (Keenoy 1997, 1999). This can be illustrated by briefly exploring what happened to “HRM” once it crossed the Atlantic. Of specific interest here is how the global “identity” of HRM has been developed and the implications of this for our wider understanding of how the labor resource is reg Page 5 of 20
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Human Resource Management ulated (and controlled). In 1987 David Guest constructed what was to become an iconic model of HRM and he has subsequently emerged as a key figure in developing the dis courses of HRM. His model drew heavily on US sources and he suggested that: HRM comprises a set of polices designed to maximize organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. (Guest 1987: 503) His prime concern was to identify a range of hypotheses to test the impact of HRM in practice and his prescriptive template offered a very carefully circumscribed set of idealized conditions for the creation of “model” high-trust employment relations. In contrast, John Storey—who was among the first to conduct empirical studies of HRM in practice (outside the US)—adopted a more contingent approach and his nominal definition of HRM is:
a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve com petitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an integrated array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques. (Storey 1995: 5) Using the “implicit models of the managers interviewed” Storey (1992:34) compiled what he called a four-dimensional “ideal-type” model of HRM. This comprised: managers' beliefs and as sumptions, a strategic managerial focus, the role and skills of line managers and a series of key levers which articulate the implementation of HRM.
Both Guest and Storey were concerned to identify HRM as a distinctive approach to man aging employees and both consistently demarcated themselves from the generic concep tion of HRM (that is, as a euphemism to cover any practice related to employment man agement). These two approaches complemented each other for, while Guest prefigured the discourse(s) of “high performance work systems,” Storey's concern with strategy an ticipated the significance of the resource-based view and the discourses around “strate gic” HRM which emerged subsequently. Both “identifications” have proved remarkably resilient for either construction (p. 460) could be widely endorsed as a reasonable descrip tion of the taken-for-granted generic meaning attached to HRM by contemporary man agers. Their wider historical significance lies in the way in which they redefined the ana lytic focus and agenda for the analysis of employment relations. The discursive clues to this lie in the way in which they framed their reinterpretations of the US-inspired conceptions of HRM (e.g., Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna 1984; Walton and Lawrence 1985). Guest commences his definition with “HRM comprises a set of po lices” while Storey refers to “a distinctive approach to employment management” (emphases added). Such characterizations of the floating signifier of HRM were a clear indication that, henceforth, the analytic priority was the managerial “prob lem” of improving employee performativity. More specifically, alongside this privileged managerial concern, both “identifications” emphasized the adoption of integrative, em ployee-oriented management practices. In this respect, they resonated deeply with the neoliberal “solution” to economic recovery and growth. In contrast to the analytical frameworks which HRM came to replace, the fundamental discursive shift involved the replacement of a “pluralist” framing of the issues (in which the employment relationship Page 6 of 20
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Human Resource Management is understood to involve, articulate, and institutionalize differential interests) with a “uni tary” framing of the issues (in which all members of an organization are assumed to have mutual interests). Hence, in neither (re-)construction of the employment relationship is there any space for trade unions or joint decision-making; there is no mention of workers or employee interests; and there is no role for social power—far less the commonplace idea that “legitimate industrial conflict” has to be managed through some form of negoti ation or state involvement. Nor are there any wider concerns about social justice or the distribution of rewards: both approaches privilege individualism and subsume “ethics” within a taken for granted market mechanism. In effect, the new conceptual-theoretic framing offered by HRM—with its semiotic focus on “resourceful human beings” and the projection of “managers” as social actors intent on promoting integration, commitment, employee development, individualism, communi cation and empowerment—fundamentally reconfigured the academic approach to employ ment relations. One important discursive consequence of reframing the issues in this fashion was that, ineluctably, much mainstream academic analysis became subservient to the search for prescriptive solutions. And, as noted above, it is no coincidence that this “internationalized” discursive artefact appears just as a variety of fundamental socio-eco nomic and political changes are being installed to deregulate the world economy. This ne cessitated the liberalization of labor markets, a process which was informed by the simul taneous projection of a seemingly humanistic “philosophy” of HRM to facilitate (and mas sage) the strategic shift from state and collective regulation to the “market” and the man agement of meaning (Peters and Waterman 1982; Keenoy and Anthony 1992; Willmott 1993, Townley 1994; Legge 1995/2005).
(p. 461)
Chasing the Shadows of HRM?
The intellectual consequence of this process of discursive reconstruction has been both insidious and dramatic for it has led to a relentless academic concern with isolating a pre sumptively causal linear relationship between “HRM” and “performance”. Following Huselid's (1995) celebrated analysis, the basic objective is to identify the “bundle” or “bundles” (MacDuffie 1995) of HR practices which simultaneously promote employee “high commitment” and “high performance” in order to ensure, as Paauwe and Boselie (2005: 10) put it, “sustained competitive advantage [for] the organization.” Since it offers management the prospect of optimizing organizational outcomes by treating employees well, this project has obvious normative appeal. In addition—and more importantly for present purposes—it is also appears to be the core “belief” which informs and sustains the contemporary discourse of HRM. For academic adherents it offers the prospect of pursuing knowledge which is of “practical” use—an ob ject much valued by research-funders and those involved in HR consultancy. And for HR practitioners it offers the possibility of empirically demonstrating that HR practices “add value” to the organization to legitimize their claim to a distinctive “professional” contribu tion and underpins their ambition for a “strategic” role in business decision-making. With Page 7 of 20
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Human Resource Management out such endorsement, the HR function might be reduced to an administrative support function of questionable legitimacy. It is little surprise proponents refer to the HR-perfor mance project as the search for the “Holy Grail.” However, it is a project of immense intellectual ambition and ever-elaborating complexity (Purcell 1999; Legge 2001; Wright and Boswell 2002; Purcell et al. 2003; Paauwe 2004). It starts from two highly contestable and deeply ambiguous conceptual metaphors—“HRM” and “performance”—and assumes it is possible to identify precise statistical correlations in the chain of intervening variables which are presumed to link HR practices with em ployee/organizational performance. Thus far, this project has generated upwards of 400 articles (Hyde et al. 2006) and numerous “progress reviews”. In the most comprehensive of these, Boselie, Dietz, and Bon (2005: 80–81) analyzed 104 studies. Disarmingly, they conclude: “no consistent picture exists on what HRM is or even what it is supposed to do” and because of the “sheer variety of methods used for measuring HRM, performance and the relationship between the two, it is not possible to compare results from different stud ies.” Similarly, Wall and Wood (2005:455), in a more targeted review of 25 “high quality” studies, conclude that evidence about the link between HR practices and performance “is promising but only circumstantial” while Purcell (1999) characterizes the intractable dif ficulties confronted by suggesting the complexities involved offer little but a choice be tween pursuing a chimera or racing headlong down a cul-de-sac. Hyde et al. (2006) found 387 papers for possible inclusion and, (p. 462) from these, identified ninty-seven post-1994 “empirical” papers for analysis. The weaknesses identified seem little short of terminal: there is no agreement about the optimal “bundle” of HR practices … More than 30 different elements of HRM were used … and no single element was found to be su perior to another in terms of its impact on performance. More than 30 different performance measures were used … and no single performance measure was dominant. The papers did not generally make explicit the theoretical perspective used … The majority of papers (up to 80 per cent) used methods which enabled them to show that HRM is associated with performance, but could not provide evi dence that HRM causes changes in performance. The papers primarily relied on questionnaire surveys that used the responses of a single person in the organiza tion, usually in management. (Hyde et al. 2006: x) And, critically, they conclude: “There is very little about how or why HRM is linked to performance” (Hyde et al. 2006: 84).
Legge (2001), the leading critical HRM scholar, has deconstructed the project in terms of its own positivist epistemological assumptions. She elaborates the variations and contra dictions evident in how “HRM,” “performance,” and the “relationship between the two” have been conceptualized and operationalized, identifies critical difficulties in assigning the direction of causality, and points out that—particularly in the US studies—little if any attention is paid to direct measures of employee performance. Bizarrely, not infrequently, employee performance—the critical “variable” in the project—is imputed from the finan cial performance of the organization (which, of course, may have little or no necessary causal connection to HR practices). As she concludes: “It is difficult to see how such stud Page 8 of 20
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Human Resource Management ies can test causal relationships, as opposed to making theory-driven inferences about the correlations they find (Legge 2001: 28)”. Given the multiple situated meanings which can be attached to floating signifiers, the findings of all these reviews are unsurprising and predictable. These researchers are chasing the shadows of HRM. That seemingly normative truism— treating people well must lead to better performance?—seems self-evident. All are con vinced the magic “silver bullet” (Legge 2001) is out there somewhere; they can construct fleeting statistical associations between the elements but, on being corralled and interro gated, “HRM” fragments and, somehow, simply disappears from view (into what is now increasingly referred to as a “black box”). While technical weaknesses in specifying the objects being pursued account for some limitations, there are two more fundamental dis cursive problems bedevilling this ill-fated project.
The Discursive Consequences of “Method” One is beautifully, if inadvertently, exemplified in an impeccably conducted and—in its own terms—highly persuasive study by Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan (2003: 22) (p. 463) designed to “shed light on the causal process through which HR practices affect performance.” The researchers' singular advantage was that they could more easily con trol for a wide range of potential sources of so-called “extraneous” variance. The research site was a decentralized corporation comprised of fifty geographically dispersed quasi-au tonomous business units servicing the food industry. Each unit is of a similar size, has the same range of employees and basic products and the IT systems are more or less uniform across all units. The “only” significant variation related to HR “strategies” for “business units were largely free to manage their employees however they saw fit” which presented a “unique opportunity to study the relationship between HRM and performance in a con trolled field setting” (Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan 2003: 27). And, having created mea sures of HR practice (nine items), organizational commitment (five items) and perfor mance (six items), the research process generated a series of powerfully significant corre lations between practices, commitment and performance. But any claim to establish di rect causality is carefully avoided: “the study tends to support the hypothesized relation ships of both HR practices and employee commitment with business unit operational per formance (Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan 2003: 33, emphases added)”. Thus, even under almost entirely favorable research conditions it appears the desired object refused to manifest itself. Why might this be? Their analytic narrative is framed within the discursive template of a positivist epistemol ogy. This key script—which specifies stringent methodological constraints on the research procedures and practices—determined not only how the research objects were to be dis cursively constructed but also, insofar as possible, that these objects were removed from their muddy interactive social habitats, cleaned up and placed under bright lights where they could behave in a statistically more visibly fashion. Indeed, the authors more or less confirm this: the “purpose of research design is to maximise the experimental variance, minimise error variance and control systematic variance” and, while their study “mimics Page 9 of 20
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Human Resource Management a laboratory study conducted in the field,” it remains subject to “the same criticisms that are leveled at laboratory studies” (Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan 2003: 33). Ironically, for the authors, this only means the loss of generalisability. However, the concern here is more with the naïve ontological presumption that a “laboratory study”—which involves creating a sterile, a-social environment— might prove a suitable narrative framing to ex plore the dynamic, situationally contingent and complex socio-political phenomena which are labeled “HRM” and its effects. The narrative constraints of such a “method” not only invoke a complex of unidirectional linear causal relationships between an assemblage of local variables but also require that the semiotics (i.e., the “data”) which represent these variables are distilled into purified statistical artifacts. For example, “organizational commitment”—a complex and highly contested conceptual object (Martin 2001) (p. 464) —was (re)presented as five relatively anodyne—even banal—questionnaire items. These included: “I feel a strong sense of be longing to this organisation” and “I am proud to be working for this company” (Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan 2003: 29). In fairness, the authors do concede they have failed “to actually assess the behavioural constructs we use to hypothesise the relationships be tween HR/commitment and performance” (Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan 2003: 33). However, this is far from acknowledging the excessive degree of oversimplification neces sary to “construct” performative indicators of such complex “research objects.” In effect, the amorphous and distinctly ambiguous cultural artifacts of HRM have been refined and desiccated until they submit to reconstitution and agree to be extruded as malleable sta tistical epiphenomena. It is a discursive process which necessarily filters out all the living breathing human interventions required to enact social phenomena and eliminates all possible individual and collective experiences which give them their various and contest ed situated meanings. Whatever scientized defense might be constructed from the dis course of statistical reliability, the real question here is: is it possible to “capture” a cul tural artifact like “HRM” in almost total isolation from the socio-political interaction through which it is continuously co-constructed by organizational actors? (Paauwe (2004) offers a more situationally sensitive approach.) In other words, one of the main reasons why so many studies in this project end up chas ing shadows is because the myopic observational process required to “fix” HRM into a satisficing statistical form translates it into a shadow of itself. Elsewhere—and this is not an argument against systematic analysis, disciplined observation or even positivist methodology—it was noted of HRM that “to explain it is to destroy it” (Keenoy and Antho ny 1992: 238).
The Discursive Consequences of “Managerialism” My argument is about surfacing the conceptual-theoretic apparatus deployed by acade mics to make sense of social phenomena. In this respect, the other key script informing the HR-performance project is “managerialism.” In the present context, this term refers to research which unreflectively assumes the managerial perspective is the “natural” starting point for the analysis of organizational issues (Grey 1996; Parker 2002; Alvesson Page 10 of 20
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Human Resource Management and Willmott 2003). For example, Wright, Gardner, and Moynihan (2003: 21) introduce their study by remarking: “Creating competitive advantage through people requires care ful attention to the practices that best leverage these assets.” This reads like a matter-offact axiom but it would not be unreasonable to translate it into the theoretical question: “what is the best way to more effectively exploit the labour resource?” For managers op erating in a market economy this is a legitimate question but any answer to it will not necessarily tell us anything—in the social scientific sense—about how HRM “works” (in or out (p. 465) of the laboratory). Linguistic construction matters for, as this “axiom” illus trates, it remains impossible to discursively represent the social world without implicitly theorizing it (Keenoy 1997). In unreflectively privileging the managerial perspective, the majority of these studies have marginalized if not excluded not only the wider context of social action but also the voice of all but the presumed managerial interest. Hence, ana lytically, the managerialist perspective tends to reduce social science to a mere “servant of power” (Baritz 1960; Brief 2000). As noted above, the new definitions offered by Guest and Storey reconfigured a “normal science” intellectual issue—how should we analyze the management of the employment relationship?—into a managerial issue—how can managers better motivate and/or control employees to ensure predictable behavior in uncertain times? In consequence, the idea of a “politics,” an “economics,” or a “sociology” of the employment relationship—all of which necessitate attention to the cultural and structural contexts of social action—were progressively abandoned in mainstream HRM. And—echoing the discourse of “the mar ket” which privileges the “individual”—this shift in focus has been accompanied by an in creasing emphasis on the psychology of the employee with its a-structural focus on such factors as individual motivation, discretionary effort, commitment and organizational cli mate/culture. These days, the contents of that “black box” are presumed to lie in the con struction of HRM “systems” which “ensure that unambiguous messages are sent to em ployees that result in a shared construction of the meaning of the situation” so that “em ployees appropriately interpret and respond to the information conveyed in HRM practices” (Paauwe and Boselie 2005: 23). In other words, it seems, we need “systems” which ensure that employees not only do what they are told to do but also believe what they are told to believe. However, this presumption that “performative” individuals could be “manufactured” in such a linear “stimulus-response” fashion seems not only manipula tive but also naive for it implies that employees are little more than cultural dopes.
HRM and CMS The critical response to HRM has been vibrant and—although rarely anything but a token presence in the mainstream (Keegan and Boselie 2006)—comes from a variety of perspec tives. Foremost among the critics is Karen Legge who has deconstructed almost every as pect of the discourse of HRM (see especially 1995/2005, 2001). Her work is complement ed by that of Watson (2004) who has demonstrated how critical social science can articu late the linkages between geo-economic developments, inequality and the micro-politics of managerial HR choices while (p. 466) Winstanley and Woodall (e.g., 2000) have pro Page 11 of 20
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Human Resource Management duced a sustained ethical critique of HRM. And, in a wide-ranging evaluation, a special is sue of Organization brought together a collection which includes poststructuralist, ethi cal, and philosophical commentaries on the “inhuman” aspects of HRM (Steyeart and Janssens 1999). More recently, there have been highly focused critical accounts of HRM from both the labor process (Thompson and Harley 2007) and critical realist perspectives (Hesketh and Fleetwood 2006) as well as the emergence of a much needed post-colonial approach (Prasad 2003; Cooke, 2004; Tonelli Wood Jr.; and Cooke 2007). What unites all these critical perspectives is a concern with the absence of any meaningful consideration of social power, differential interests, cultural variation and potential value conflict in the HRM literature. However, arguably, the most common approach has been through some form of discourse analysis. This chapter has focused on two key discursive analytic themes. Firstly, the brief histori cal overview illustrates the enduring continuity of the core “HR problem”: in the context of market-relations how do managers control the labor resource through some form of employment relationship? Since market-relations are powerrelations involving variable dependencies, employment contracts are always indeterminate (i.e., an employer can buy labor but specifying precisely how that labor will behave is a matter of persuasion and ne gotiation after the contract has been signed). In consequence, employee relations are rou tinely associated with potential tension and conflict. Hence, both historically and analyti cally, the employment relationship has long been characterized by “three great struggles” over interests, control and motivation (Keenoy and Kelly 1998). In one respect, “HRM” is merely the latest managerial discourse deployed to massage the perennial issue of how to optimize labor costs and ensure employee performativity while simultaneously stimulat ing and maintaining employee motivation to work. Such massage has not been without ef fect and, more specifically, I have also sketched how, over the last two decades, a local US cultural artifact has emerged as a global “naturalized” discourse which informs the social practice of international corporations and refracts the neoliberal political programs which have driven localized economic deregulation (a more accurate term than “globalization”). The social construction of this quintessential managerial discourse is now underpinned by what is being propagated as “the academic management discipline of HRM” (Boxall, Pur cell, and Wright 2007: 4). Secondly, I have summarized the reasons why the search for the fundamental research object pursued by mainstream HRM researchers—that “silver bullet” which will trans form “individualized” employees into contemporary Stakhanovites (Siegelbaum 1988)— has proved unsuccessful (and indicated that this quest is likely to remain futile). It might seem ironic, but this failure to “prove” the seemingly self-evident truism that “the role of human resources can be crucial” (Becker and Gerhart 1996: 779) has had virtually no sig nificant impact on the credibility of the discourses of HRM. Quite the contrary; for the in trinsic “brilliant ambiguity” (p. 467) of its conceptual apparatus (Keenoy 1990)has greased the adoption of every “new” people-management initiative from the learning organiza tion, “boundary-less” careers and knowledge workers (which promote individualism) to a raft of performance measurement initiatives and labor-cost reduction strategies designed to institutionalize the resource-based view of labor (which engender performativity). As Page 12 of 20
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Human Resource Management noted elsewhere, “there is no inconsistency in HRM embracing the logic of the market while—at the same time—‘valuing’ its human resources. They are valued for their ‘resourcefulness’ (and what that costs) not their ‘humaneness’ (and what that might deserve)” (Keenoy 1997: 836). Insofar as it is possible to generalize, this suggests that, as discourse of control, HRM embodies a discipline of “individualized performativity.” What emerges from this is a third analytic theme. That “HRM works” is not in dispute; the real puzzle concerns how it works and, in particular, how it impacts on individual sen sibilities. As Alvesson (2008: 21) has observed: “Arguably, a key feature of much CMS is the interest to relate ‘subjectivity’ to broader institutional and ideological arrangements.” This concern with understanding the nature of individualized performativity has generat ed a wide range of studies. Central to these is the work on Townley (1994, 2004) who of fers a powerfully persuasive and sustained Foucauldian critique of HRM discourse and practice. HRM is seen as a regime of “governmentality” comprised of a wide variety of personnel/HRM techniques such as appraisal schemes and job evaluation which, collec tively, constitute the “disciplinary practices” regulating social behaviour at work. Such “powerknowledge” mechanisms play a discursive role in constituting employee subjectivi ties and ensuring that employee performance(s) can be “managed.” The “discursive for mation” of HRM is seen to act on the body, movement, and even everyday gestures for it “assumes the existence of an alienated individual whose potential lies repressed, waiting to be unleashed or self-actualized when his or her true nature is uncovered. A Fou cauldian conception of the subject emphasizes the constitutive role of practices in form ing an identity” (Townley 1994:109). While such a seemingly over-deterministic interpretation has not gone unchallenged (Newton 1998), the increasing resort to surveillance (Lyon 2001) through public mea sures of performance such as audit (Power 2001) or even such routines as constructing a career (Grey 1994; Alvesson and Kärreman 2007) and managerial attempts to colonize the “person” are evident. Indeed, Costea, Crump, and Amiridis (2008: 670)—in a wide ranging analysis of a raft of managerial initiatives over the last twenty-five years which have focused on the “self”—suggest managerial ambitions now embrace “the subject in its totality as an object of governance”. One example of how this translates into everyday managerial practice is vividly illustrated in Hochschild's (1983) exploration of how emo tional labor is “programed” into the work of flight attendants and bill collectors. Such ser vice work roles involve employees being trained to display particular feelings and—in the extreme—being given detailed instructions about clothing and personal grooming. Their public (p. 468) subjectivity involves acting out emotional displays according to specific dis ciplines. This seeming “invasion” of the self—Rose (1999) depicts it as an attempt to “gov ern the soul”—holds clear implications for the social construction of identity (see Chapter 8, “CMS on Identity”). However, it is important to note that organizational discourses are rarely totalizing and there is also evidence of employee and managerial resistance in the analyses of authenticity, dis-identification and misbehavior in contemporary work organi zations (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999; Fleming and Spicer 2003; Brown 2006; Francis 2006; Reedy 2008). Page 13 of 20
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Human Resource Management This flawed potential of HRM to constitute the subject in terms of “individualized perfor mativity” is elaborated in Carter and Jackson's (2004:473–474, 476) post-structuralist es say on rhetoric which draws together a number of themes informing this chapter. Man agers, they suggest, need rhetoric because “while it may be possible to enforce compli ance, it is not possible to enforce consent.” But, they argue, this is never sufficient be cause our daily experience work invariably falls short of these rhetorical promises and managers are continually impelled to produce new rhetorical artifacts and, in the process, “they become ever more detached from reality.” This highlights the intrinsic limi tations of language as a symbolic system of control and emphasizes that—and this is the best we can hope for—the transient “truths” of any discourse depend upon the historical context in which they are produced (and reproduced by local actors to legitimize action). Following Derrida, they note that in the contemporary “capitalist regime of truth,” rhetorics such as HRM are sustained and legitimized through politics, the media and academia. They summarize their interpretation by suggesting that “Understanding the (Foucauldian) concept of discourse, the analysis and history of particular discourses tell us why a particular regime of truth is developed and sustained. Understanding the mech anisms of rhetoric helps to tell us, not only why, but also how this has been achieved.” Floating signifiers are sometimes called “empty signifiers”—an indication that they are filled with whatever objects or meanings the user (or reader) deems plausible. This “es sential vacuity” of HRM is necessary in order to sustain its discursive legitimacy for it permits managers to adopt any practice which can be projected as “valuing human re sources.” Given this, it is unsurprising that the discourse of HRM both refracts and rein forces the neoliberal objectives of the “new managerialism” in the global economy. The challenge for CMS scholarship is twofold. Firstly, there is a need to further elaborate plausible discourses (or theories) which render the contemporary norm of “individualized performativity” problematic for mainstream HRM thinking. And, secondly—in order to demonstrate clearly that “HRM” is a highly variable enacted social practice—there is a parallel need to expand the range and depth of empirical research which situates the HR phenomena in the context of how managers and employees make sense of, impose mean ing on and act in relation to this essential vacuity of HRM (see also Alvesson 2009). This will be no easy task.
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Human Resource Management FLEMING, P., and SPICER, A. (2003). “Working at a Cynical Distance: Implications for Subjectivity, Power and Resistance,” Organization, 10/1: 157–179. FOMBRUN, C., J., TICHY, N. M., and DEVANNA, M. A. (eds.)(1984). Strategic Human Resources Management. New York: Wiley and Sons. FOX, A. (1985). History and Heritage: The Social Origins of Britain's Industrial Relations System. London: George Allen and Unwin. FRANCIS, H. (2006). “A Critical Discourse Perspective on Managers' Experiences of HRM,” Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Jour nal, 1/2: 65–82. (p. 470)
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Human Resource Management JONES, E. D. (1916). The Administration of Industrial Enterprises: With Special Refer ence to Factory Practice. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. KAUFMAN, B. (2007). “The Development of HRM,” in P. Boxall, J. Purcell, and P. Wright (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–47. KEEGAN, A., and BOSELIE, P. (2006). “The Lack of Impact of Dissensus Inspired Analy sis on Developments in the Field of Human Resource Management,” Journal of Manage ment Studies, 43/7: 1491–1511. KEENOY, T. (1990). “Human Resource Management: Rhetoric, Reality and Contradic tion,” International Journal of Human Resource Management, 3/1: 363–384. —— (1997). “Review Article: HRMism and the Languages of Re-presentation,” Journal of Management Studies, 34/5: 825–41. —— (1999). “HRM as Hologram: A Polemic,” Journal of Management Studies, 36/1:1–23. —— and ANTHONY, P. (1992). “HRM: Metaphor, Meaning and Morality” in Paul Blyton and Peter Turnbull (eds.), Reassessing Human Resource Management. London: Sage. —— and KELLY, D. (1996). The Employment Relationship in Australia, 2nd edn. Sydney: Harcourt Brace. KELLY, D. (2003). “A Shock to the System? The Impact of HRM on Academic IR in Aus tralia in Comparison with USA and UK, 1980–95,” Asia Pacific Journal of Human Re sources, 41/2: 149–171. (p. 471)
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‘High Commitment Management’/Performance Relationship,” in John Storey (ed.), Human Resource Management: A Critical Text. London: Thomson Learning, 21–36. —— (1995/2005). Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities, 10th anniver sary edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. LEHMBRUCH, G., and SCHMITTER, P. C. (1982). Patterns of Corporatist Policy Making. Beverley Hills: Sage Publications. LYON, D. (2001). Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Buckingham: Open Uni versity Press. MACDUFFIE, J. P. (1995). “Human Resource Bundles and Manufacturing Performance: Organizational Logic and Flexible Production Systems in the World Auto Industry,” Indus trial and Labor Relations Review, 48/2:197–221. MARCIANO, V. (1995). “The Origins and Development of Human Resource Manage ment,” Academy of Management Proceedings, 223–227. Page 17 of 20
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Human Resource Management MARTIN, J. (2001). Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain. London: Sage. NEWTON, T. (1998). “Theorizing subjectivity in organizations: The failure of foucauldian studies?” Organization Studies, 19/3: 415–447 PAAUWE, J. (2004). HRM and Performance: Achieving Long-term Viability. Oxford: Ox ford University Press. —— and BOSELIE, P. (2005). HRM and Performance: What's Next? Cornell University, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, Working Paper 09, http:// www.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrs PARKER, M. (2002). Against Management. Bristol: Polity Press. PERLMAN, S. (1928/1966). A Theory of the Labor Movement. New York: Macmillan. PETERS, T., and WATERMAN, R. (1982). In Search of Excellence. New York: Random House. PIO, E. (2007). “HRM and Indian Epistemologies: A Review and Avenues for Future Re search,” Human Resource Management Review, 17/3: 319–335. POWER, M. (2001). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. PRASAD, ANSHUMAN (ed.) (2003). Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. PURCELL, J. (1999). “Best Practice and Best Fit: Chimera or Cul-de-sac” Human Re source Management Journal, 9/3: 26–41. —— HUTCHINSON, S., KINNIE, N., RAYTON, B., and SWART, J. (2003). Understanding the Pay and Performance Link: Unlocking the Black Box. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. REEDY, P. (2008). “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Reflecting on the Ethics and Effects of a Collective Critical Management Studies Identity Project,” Management Learning, 39/1: 57–72. ROSE, N. (1999). Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edn. London: Free Association Books. SIEGELBAUM, L. H. (1988). Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. STEYAERT, C., and JANSSENS, M. (1999) Special Issue on HRM, Organization, 6/2. STOREY, J. (1992). Developments in the Management of Human Resources. Oxford: Blackwell. Page 18 of 20
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THOMPSON, P., and HARLEY, B. (2007). “HRM and the Worker: Labor Process Theory,” in Boxali, P., Purcell, J. and Wright, P. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 147–165 TONELLI, M. J., WOOD JNR, T., and COOKE, B. (2007) “For the New Brazilianization of HRM,” The 5th Critical Management Studies Conference, Manchester Business School, UK. TOWNLEY, B. (1994). Reframing Human Resource Management: Power, Ethics and the Subject at Work. London: Sage. —— (2004). “Managerial Technologies, Ethics and Managing,” Journal of Management Studies, 41/4: 425–445. WALL, T.D., and WOOD, S.J., (2005). “The Romance of Human Resource Management and Business Performance, and the Case for Big Science,” Human Relations, 58/4: 429– 462. WALTON, R.E., and LAWRENCE, P. R (eds.) (1985). Human Resource Management: Trends and Challenges. Boston: Harvard business School Press. WATSON, T. (2004). “HRM and Critical Social Science Analysis,” Journal of Management Studies, 41/3: 447–467. WILLMOTT, H. (1993). “Strength is Ignorance; Freedom is Slavery: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations,” Journal of Management Studies, 30/4: 515–552. WINSTANLEY, D., and WOODALL, J. (2000). Ethical Issues in Contemporary Human Re source Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. WRIGHT, P., and BOSWELL, W. (2002). “Desegregating HRM: A Review and Synthesis of Micro and Macro Human Resource Management Research,” Journal of Management, 28/3: 247–276 —— GARDNER, T. M., and MOYNIHAN, L. M. (2003). “The Impact of HR Practices on the Performance of Business Units,” Human Resource Management Journal, 13/3: 21–36.
Tom Keenoy
Tom Keenoy is Professor of Management at the University of Leicester. He has an abiding interest in understanding the social processes through which the employ ment relationship is managed, controlled and accomplished in the context of work or Page 19 of 20
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Human Resource Management ganization. Current research interests include organizational discourse analysis, the social construction of HRM, time and organization, the co-construction of manage ment in cooperative organization, and the changing temper of sensemaking in acade mic work. Since 1996, he has been a co-organizer of the bi-annual Organizational Discourse Conference.
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Accounting
Accounting Mahmoud Ezzamel and Keith Robson The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Accounting Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0023
Abstract and Keywords This article aims to provide a brief overview of a variety of critical studies in accounting. Each section is concerned with a particular aspect of accounting practice under cate gories we regarded as the most obvious and accessible for non-accounting management specialists and students. The first section focuses upon accounting calculations between organizations and society – financial reporting practices and the regulation thereof. The second section examines critical studies of intra-organizational accounting calculations – management accounting and control practices. The third section discusses critical re search that has studied the organizational and institutional characteristics of the account ing and auditing profession, with particular reference to the professionalization of ac counting, the activities of the large auditing and accounting multinational firms, and the everyday socialization of professional accountants. Keywords: accounting studies, accounting practice, financial reporting practices, financial regulation, everyday socialization, auditing firms
ACCOUNTING calculations matter. The records and forecasts that accountants compile adjudicate economic transactions, remuneration packages and resource allocations among individuals, organizations and state agencies. In performing these tasks accoun tants have managed to envelope themselves in professional associations, state licenses, and abstract bodies of professional knowledge, impressing upon the social world an im age and identity for the professional accountant that emphasize professional neutrality, calculative rationality, and service of the public interest. Aligned with a broader image of the accountant as “grey” and accounting practice as “dull,” accountancy has often seemed to slip from the gaze of sociological, political, and critical inquiry. Critical accounting studies are inclined to be skeptical of the professional accountant's public interest claim, and share sociology's concern with the problem of social order, the practical enactment of organizational and societal control and accountability, the exercise of power both through and by accounting, and accounting's role in producing organiza tional and cultural identity. There is also a subsidiary shared view that seeks to decon struct and critique accounting research inspired by mainstream economics, such as Page 1 of 27
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Accounting agency theory or positive accounting theory (Arrington and Francis 1987). The concept of economic rationality or economic rational self interest as the predominant guide for hu man action has been an object for critique (Mouck 1989, 2004). On the one hand this has led to calls for the contingent, non-rational or boundedly rational aspects of accounting choices and practices to be studied (Burchell et al. 1980; Cooper 1981). Such calls sought to acknowledge (p. 474) the limited ability of human actors to assimilate, comprehend and act upon all elements of information required for economically rational decision-making, even if these were available. On the other, institutional theorists in accounting have been interested in questions concerning the social or cultural construction of the “rational” in organizations and society. Studies of the social shaping of accounting and the dissemina tion of new accounting techniques have highlighted the formative role of changing discur sive practices (Khalifa et al. 2007). How accounting practices inform actors' sense of self and identity, and how these practices function as a medium of power have been strong themes in the cultural histories of management accounting practices (Miller and OʼLeary 1987). The ideological function of accounting in normalizing and legitimizing social struc tures characterized by social and economic inequalities has also been explored in class and gender based analyses of corporate financial statements (Neimark 1992). What else characterizes critical accounting studies? Is there a unity to the practice of “critical accounting research”? Reviewing some of the literature that has commented up on the area—for example, Neimark (1990), Grey (1994a), Bryer (1999), or Tinker (2005)— one might conclude that it is an area riven with rancour, dispute, and intellectual fissures. Debates on the adequacy of particular theoretical approaches have accompanied the de velopment the area almost from its origins (Roslender and Dillard 2003). The concept of “critical accounting” covers a set of research practices that can be divided on issues of appropriate social or organizational theory to conceptualize ideas of, for example, power, domination, class or social structure. In short, critical accounting embraces a diversity of social and organizational theories that are brought to bear up on quite specific account ing issues. Yet in our view critical accounting research shows commonalities centered up on a questioning of the taken for granted “accounts of accounting” offered by profession al accounting firms and their professional associations. Concepts of accounting's service of the Public Interest and non-partisan notions of economic efficiency and rationality characterize many conventional statements of the accounting mission (Sikka and Willmott 1995a, 1995b). It ought to be clear that the majority of accounting research (the “mainstream”) under pinned by mainstream economics adopts a functionalist perspective whereby the role of accounting is held to provide information that helps decision makers make economically rational decisions. In this research tradition, accounting information is deemed an eco nomic good whose production is dependent upon the forces of demand and supply as well as the marginal utility of information compared to the cost of its production (Demski 1972). Further, accounting information is assumed to be objective representations of eco nomic activities. The publication of a pioneering article by Burchell et al. (1980) gave a greater impetus to a debate, which had already been simmering for some time, concern ing the limitations of focusing only upon the economic functions of accounting, pointing Page 2 of 27
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Accounting to the importance of exploring a variety of accounting's other roles in organizations and (p. 475) society, in particular the political, the ceremonial, and the symbolic (Tinker 1980; Cooper and Sherer 1984). A vibrant new research orientation with a critical edge began to consolidate and gather momentum. Although the mainstream functionalist research tradition still remains fairly dominant, particularly in the US, critical accounting re searchers have by now established a strong presence in the research arena and an associ ated body of knowledge that draws upon a variety of critical theories in the social sci ences. With new journals dedicated to publishing, and some, but by no means all, mainstream journals devoting space to publishing critical accounting studies, the literature has be come voluminous and varied. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to review all critical accounting studies, or indeed to cover all critical theories engaged by accounting re searchers. Hence, this chapter will cover examples of this literature by way of illustrating some of the key differences between critical accounting studies and mainstream re search. Our selection has been guided in the main by the extent to which a critical mass of studies has emerged, although of course this is a rather relative measure as some of the areas we address in the chapter have received more attention than others, and in deed it is clear that our choices inevitably reflect our own research interests, priorities, and prejudices, even if we have tried to refrain explicitly from judgment upon theoretical approaches and accounting debates. In order for the chapter to be more informative to readers unfamiliar with this literature, we refer briefly to some of the contributions not reviewed here. Our approach to this review is to organize the material into three main aspects of ac counting with a view to exploring the principal areas of accounting activity. Such a divi sion roughly accords with main areas of accounting teaching and research, and we hope is useful pedagogically for those readers vaguely familiar with the main categories of ac counting practice. Of course, other reviews of critical accounting research have been published and we would refer readers to those also. Roslender and Dillard (2003) provide a useful overview of the historical and institutional origins of the critical accounting “movement” with particular reference to the emergent clusters of critical accounting re searchers in the UK and elsewhere and the key role of specific accounting journals, and also offer “critical” comments on areas and theories they consider neglected or over worked. Roslender and Dillard also review some of the critical debates between radical accounting researchers—in particular on the utility of Marxian and Foucauldian perspec tives (c.f. Neimark 1990; Grey 1994a). Power, Laughlin, and Cooper (2003) adopt a review of that critical accounting research which focuses upon the influence of Habermasian critical theory. Cooper and Hopper (2006) offer a more focused analysis of critical studies in management accounting with particular reference to the recent interest in accounting for “strategy.” The aim of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of a variety of critical studies in ac counting. Each section in this chapter is concerned with a particular (p. 476) aspect of ac counting practice under categories we regarded as the most obvious and accessible for Page 3 of 27
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Accounting non-accounting management specialists and students. The first section focuses upon ac counting calculations between organizations and society—financial reporting practices and the regulation thereof, the second section examines critical studies of intra-organiza tional accounting calculations—management accounting and control practices. In the third section we discuss critical research that has studied the organizational and institu tional characteristics of the accounting and auditing profession, with particular reference to the professionalization of accounting, the activities of the large auditing and account ing multinational firms and the everyday socialization of professional accountants.
Financial Reporting and Regulation In this section we explore critical studies of financial reporting and accounting. Many of these studies concern issues of accounting regulation and standard setting. Financial re porting refers to the production of corporate financial statements for external interests, normally but not exclusively the shareholders of the corporation. Accountants mediate the financial reporting of corporate activities in their dual role as preparers of financial statements on behalf of their corporate employers, but also in their role as the auditors of financial statements. The framework within which corporations must report on their financial performance is structured by two regulatory agencies. The first is the corporate reporting requirement set by statute. Legal instruments, such as Companies Acts in the UK, provide the informa tional structure within which companies report; however, the accounting profession has a key role in both “translating” law into accounting practice and also has its own regulatory role in prescribing appropriate accounting policies contained within financial statements. And in turn the financial statements that result have economic and social consequences for corporations, their employees, financial markets, and society. Regulatory processes have stimulated many critical studies of the politics of accounting regulation and professional practice. Professional accountants have a central role in adju dicating the level of corporate profits reported to shareholders and one key issue is the extent to which their judgments favor financial or productive capital, which may be inter preted as serving management or shareholders interests (Armstrong 1986). For example, many researchers have begun by examining the question of accounting “interests,” mean ing in whose interests do accountants determine accounting policies (Zeff 1978; Thomp son 1986, 1987). Accounting policy (p. 477) choices as to whether to “capitalize” certain costs or expense them as incurred, such as the appropriate treatment of Research and Development, may have a major impact upon reported annual profits. In the 1970s and 1980s many such studies began to draw upon concepts of political power and the deci sion making process (Dahl 1961; Lukes 1973) to model aspects of the policy-making process such as voting patterns and blocks, committee lobbying and regulatory agenda setting (Hussein and Ketz 1980; Hope and Gray 1982; Sutton 1984). In these models “vested interests” act to secure accounting methods that will produce outcomes in their
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Accounting favor. Such studies sought to link interests to consequences in order to answer questions as to who has power. By the mid-1980s, however, writers within critical accounting began to question the as sumptions of political science approaches to power. Issues about the relationship of ac counting regulations and practices to state policies and agencies started to be consid ered. The profit crisis of the 1970s, and the problem of capital maintenance in a period of rapidly rising prices, increased the interest of both the state and business in accounting rules for profit determination, and the link between accounting calculations, deindustrial ization and large scale capital flows (Bryer and Brignall 1986). As Miller (1991) shows, the welfare state was keen to intervene in industry through accounting measures and techniques in order to improve the efficiency of business. Similarly, concerns about oil company profits and possible price gouging in the US lead to Congressional examinations of the possibilities of uniform, or at least standardized, financial reporting (US Congress 1976). The state took an increased interest in accounting standards, seeing them as an important element of industrial and financial policy. For example, Burchell, Clubb, and Hopwood's (1985) seminal study of the emergence of the Value Added Statement (VAS) in the UK during the 1970s adopted an implicitly Fou cauldian approach to explore how industrial relations, macroeconomic policy, and “corpo rate social reporting” structured an emerging problematic that positioned VAS as a solu tion to socio-political problems. In so doing Burchell, Clubb, and Hopwood (1985) helped to introduce the idea of accounting policies and practices as constructing rather than sim ply representing “political” interests. The work of Robson (1991) and Young (1994) devel oped this style of analysis further in studies of the FASB's regulation work n the US, the inflation accounting “arenas” and the establishment of an Accounting Standards Commit tee in the UK further developed the Foucauldian research problematic and introduced concepts of “translation,” “regulatory space,” and “action at distance” to the critical ac counting field in order to explore more fully the intertwining of the political and the tech nical, or “accounting” and “context” (Robson 1993; Young 1994, 1996). Young's work has been extended by MacDonald and Richardson (2004). A related study also conceived the FASB's Emerging Issues Task Force as a garbage can and showed how its decisions are made by a combination of decision processes (Mezias and Scarseletta 1994). By emphasizing the decision processes in standard setting (p. 478) bodies, an in triguing approach to accounting rule making is opened up (March and Olsen 1989; Mouritsen 1994). The standard setting agenda, both internationally and for most of the developed economies, has increasingly been articulated in terms of an institutionalized understanding of the “user” (Young 2003). Further, the concern with the user has increas ingly been narrowed to include only one type of user, the “investor” and accounting regu lation has mutated into a concern with her decision making and “protection.” This natu ralization suggests the dominance of a pro-capital orientation for those who are involved in accounting rule making. As Cooper and Sherer (1984) argued, the general economic welfare for a society as a whole is unlikely to be achieved by the single-minded pursuit of shareholder interests (see also Tinker 1980; Williams 2000; Froud et al. 2006). Yet there Page 5 of 27
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Accounting is now little discussion of the requirements of other groups in society, such as employees or consumer groups, for reliable financial information for their purposes, or how ideals such as organizational and corporate accountability might be usefully conceived and adopted (Gray 2002). The ideology of shareholder value seems to pervade many modern states, even though it might be thought that they have some concern for groups other than shareholders and is sues of investor protection. Arnold and Oakes (1998) have examined the impact of the passage of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 106 on retiree health bene fits in relation to the reduction in employee wealth. Although it was possible to view these reductions as economic costs that businesses were attempting to avoid and to conceive of accounting standards as designed to protect employee rights, the standard was legitimat ed as necessary to recognize “unexpected liabilities.” These liabilities were conceived as threatening the survival of corporations, rather than, for example, as damaging the wealth of shareholders. Tinker and Ghicas (1993) point out a similar disinterestedness when corporations appropriated their employees' pension funds after lobbying to change accounting rules. These studies highlight the importance of “expert” ideologies, takenfor-granted “thinking” and “metaphors” in naturalizing partial or “interested” under standings of the role of accounting institutions, the purposes of regulation and the im pacts of standard setting. Complaints about the preoccupation of accounting regulators with “investors,” rather than other stakeholders, are met with views that naturalize the involvement of the accounting profession in rule making, whilst denaturalizing the in volvement of non- investor stakeholders (Hogler, Hunt, and Wilson 1996; Young 1996, 2003). In this regard the work of Tinker and colleagues has done much to further an ideological critique of accounting functions. Tinker (1980) examines the political economy of ac counting to question the notion of “free market” and argues for the need to explore the political and social realms of society; a theme that further developed in some detail by Cooper and Sherer (1984). Neimark (1992) and Lehman (1992) have both explored the capacity of accounting to mediate and adjudicate social and gender struggles within and between organizations. Arrington and Francis (1989) (p. 479) apply Derrida's deconstruc tion to a paper published by the finance specialist Michael Jensen to demonstrate how it privileges positive accounting theory to other theories and the inherent limitations of such a privileging. Macintosh et al. (2000) draw on the work of Baudrillard to conceptual ize accounting as simulacrum and hyperreality in their analysis of income and capital. Shearer and Arrington (1993) provide a poststructuralist analysis of accounting, philoso phy, and women in their study of sexual identity. Further, Shearer (2002) examines the link between ethics and accountability and suggests that drawing on the work of Levinas would enhance the otherwise limited ethical dimension of accounting reports. Some radical feminist work (e.g., Froud et al. 2006) uses Marxian analysis to examine how accounting practices facilitate financialization practices (making profits by selling and buying subsidiaries and by asset stripping rather than by creating genuine value added) by managers, and Williams (2000) examines the connection between emphasis up Page 6 of 27
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Accounting on shareholder value by modern corporations and present-day capitalism. Bryer (2000a, 2000b) provides a detailed analysis, inspired by Marxian ideas, of the history of account ing and its relationship to the rise of capitalism in England. A significant number of pa pers has been targeted at uncovering the problematic relationship between the state and the accounting profession and questioning the independence of the UK accounting pro fession (Sikka and Willmott 1995a, 1995b), audit failure and mega corporate scandals (Arnold and Sikka 2001). These studies, in common with Marxist-inspired accounting re search, seek to reveal the role of accounting in reproducing inequalities in society and generate proposals to reform accounting regulation. More recently studies of the regulatory process in financial accounting have explored the growing internationalization of the process. The prominence of international regimes of accounting regulation is partly the result of the increasing financialization and intercon nection of the advanced economies, and the crucial role of financial flows, which domi nate, by several orders of magnitude, flows of goods and services. This expansion in fi nancial flows both assists and is predicated upon consistent regimes of accounting disclo sure. Thus international organizations such as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), World Trade Organization (WTO), and International Federation of Accoun tants (IFAC) have become more salient, and are worthy of further serious and sustained study. Wallace (1990) is a useful first attempt to examine the IASB, written by an insider who returned to academic life, but there have been significant changes to that organiza tion since then. There have also been proposals to create an international accounting qualification, to enable professionals to operate without practice restrictions around the world. Covaleski, Dirsmith, and Rittenberg (2003) examine the rise and fall of the XYZ designation and what its proposals would have meant for the regulation of practice rights and jurisdictional conflicts between professional bodies and firms. In addition, the domi nant economic power, the USA has, through IOSCO, taken more interest in the interna tionalization of capital markets, seeking to become (p. 480) the dominant world player both for companies seeking to raise capital, and those governments seeking to privatize state enterprises. The consequence has been that international regimes of regulation, in accounting as well as in other domains, are often dominated by US interests and “share holder” values (Rahman 1998).
Management Accounting In this section, we provide an overview of a number of studies that focus upon manage ment accounting practice both historically and in contemporary organizations. We pay particular attention to accounting studies that have drawn upon structuration theory, ac tor network theory (ANT), and the work of Michel Foucault. We organize the discussion under the themes of discipline and control, and networks and mobilization of alliances; these themes are not meant to be exhaustive but are rather illustrative. Other studies of management accounting practice drawing upon labour process theory (e.g., Ezzamel and
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Accounting Willmott 1998; Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2004) are not discussed here because of space limitations.
Discipline and Control The concern of studies in this area is to explore the role of how accounting systems are implicated in controlling and disciplining employees, and also to examine instances of re sistance to the imposition of disciplinary control in a variety of organizational contexts. This strand of research treats accounting technologies, such as budgets, the balanced score card (BSC), activity-based costing (ABC) or standard costing, as means by which managers seek to instill discipline and control in the workplace. Drawing on some elements of structuration theory developed by Giddens (1976, 1979), Roberts and Scapens (1985), and Macintosh and Scapens (1990) argue that accounting systems entail the operation of relations of domination and power that transform the so cial and material world. It has also been demonstrated that, for example in the context of accounting for supply chain relations, interactions between firms are informed by com plex combinations of power and morally sanctioned modalities, and that accounting can be viewed as an abstract system that is supported in its functioning by other abstract sys tems such as marketing, purchasing, logistics, and quality assurance (Seal, Berry, and Cullen 2004). Other studies, following Foucault's (1972, 1980) lead, have shown how accounting prac tices discipline individuals and populations of individuals, by constructing (p. 481) them as governable subjects through techniques that involve quantification, classification, differ entiation, ranking, homogenization and normalization. This strand of management ac counting research is concerned to emphasize discontinuities, rather than identify linear stages of progress, in the development of disciplinary accounting techniques. The studies show how accounting facilitates the construction of individually prescribed standards of performance that construct employees as accountable subjects, which Miller and OʼLeary (1987) trace back to budgeting and standard costing practices in the 1930s, that normal ize practice and make individuals susceptible to judgment and evaluation, thereby ren dering the individual visible, knowable, and accountable. This makes it possible to differ entiate, yet homogenize individuals through their reorganization into groups of individu als who can be rendered manageable and controllable (Hoskin and Macve 1986; Car mona, Ezzamel, and Gutiérrez 1997), and construct every employee into a governable person, one whose performance is repeatedly quantified and reported on, with deviations from acceptable standards of performance being highlighted with attendant rewards and sanctions (Miller and OʼLeary 1987). Accounting logics interacts with spatial practices to convert organizational space into arenas susceptible to the discipline of accounting tech nologies, as accounting calculations can be inscribed upon factory space thereby render ing such space and the activities therein calculable, reportable, and amenable to disci pline and control. Carmona, Ezzamel, and Guitèrrez (2002) show how space in the newly built tobacco factory of Seville in eighteenth-century Spain was configured in a manner that made each production process visible for surveillance and control in order to pro Page 8 of 27
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Accounting mote strong discipline among factory employees. A new costing system was developed which, using the accounting logic of cost centers, represented factory space as a constel lation of individual, quantifiable centers of calculation that were mapped onto production activities. By allocating spaces to individuals and individuals to spaces, an alliance was forged between spatial knowledge and accounting knowledge that ultimately produced a disciplinary regime in the factory. But discipline is not only imposed from above, for the individual now can assess his/her own performance, internalize norms of discipline and effectively become an auto-regulat ed entity. Roberts (1991) shows how systems of accountability based on accounting tech nologies can instill positive, rather than only negative, feelings of satisfaction in the indi vidual when she/he meets, or better exceeds, target expectations as an important input into the formation and confirmation of individual identity. Miller and OʼLeary (1987) ex tend this argument to the firm by viewing it as a site for the construction of governable employees via the operation of various accounting technologies that, like standard cost ing and budgeting, make it possible to standardize and normalize performance. Further, discipline is seen not only to be a force exercised by senior managers over lower-level managers and employees; rather accounting technologies can operate as a force that dis ciplines the conduct of all (Ezzamel and Willmott 2008). An important implication of such (p. 482) conceptualization of power is that, again following Foucault's lead, it is not simply juridical or sovereign whereby power is conceptualize as a possession of individuals. Im portantly, power is something that resides in networks of relations, rather than being seen as a reflection of formal position. This work also emphasizes the interaction of knowledge of accounting technologies and power relations, whereby each feeds off the other. Various studies also examined strategies of resisting disciplinary accounting practices by recalcitrant employees in recognition of the fact that disciplinary techniques are totaliz ing. Typically, resistance has been studied at the level of shopfloor workers who may en gage in a wide range of tactics, including pretending to follow the prescriptions of behav ior and performance, manipulating records, spending less time on productive activities and sabotage by openly refusing to comply with accounting norms (Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2004, 2008). However, resistance at shopfloor level is not always in evitable, for its potential may be significantly reduced for a variety of reasons. For exam ple, Knights and Collinson (1987) suggest that the all-male shopfloor in their study avoid ed engaging in resistance because they did not want to show reliance for their livelihoods on senior management, and also because they found financial calculations difficult to comprehend and challenge. Resistance to disciplinary techniques could also occur at higher managerial levels, since new techniques could threaten positions of power, identi ty, professional jurisdiction, and material interests (Kurunmäki 2004; Ezzamel and Burns 2005).
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Accounting
Networks and Mobilization of Alliances Much of this research, which is informed by Actor Network Theory, or ANT (Callon 1986; Latour 1987), seeks to examine how human agency (actors) interact with accounting technologies (actants), e.g., ABC in order to enrol supporters or allies, through the forma tion of networks, in order to pursue particular interests. This line of research therefore emphasizes the political nature of accounting in organizations and how human interests shape, or fabricate, accounting systems and information to suit their purposes. This does not only occur after such systems have been introduced, but importantly also when new systems are in the process of being introduced, such as the introduction of budgets and responsibility accounting systems in the UK National Health Service (Preston, Cooper, and Coombs 1992), or ABC in a for-profit organization (Briers and Chua 2001) or supply chain alliances (Chua, Mahama, and Dirsmith 2007). Fabricated accounting systems are assembled in a changing and rather fragile manner, so that they do not become an estab lished fact. In this context, fabrication not only entails fragility, uncertainty, and possible resistance, but also that initiation of accounting systems involves machinations, rhetoric, and appeals to other seemingly legitimate activities (such as (p. 483) accounting and man agement practices in the private sector) as means of legitimacy (Preston, Cooper, and Coombs 1992). ANT suggests that the end product of the fabrication process is that the technology, e.g., the budgeting system, becomes a black box, but this obviously occurs when facts and artifacts are no longer the subject of critical evaluation and are rendered unequivocally accepted and taken for granted. The dynamics of forming alliances, not only between human actors to facilitate resistance in the face of imposed management initiatives, such as budget cuts (Ezzamel 1994), but also between actors and actants, or systems, such as ABC (Briers and Chua 2001) involve several stages, or moments, and machinations of translation and mobilization. Accounting techniques are inscriptions that are mobilized in the process of translating the interests of human agency, and by forging powerful alliances between humans and these systems, specific interests may be served. These, and similar, studies also explore how networks are made to appear stable in the quest for gaining advantage and convincing as many po tential alliances as possible. Translation implies the interpretation by interested parties of ideas in a manner that aims to convince target audience of the credibility of knowledge claims entailed in such interpretation. Inscriptions, such as written texts, charts, and dia grams, are the means through which interpretation of ideas are made. Such inscriptions have characteristics that impact on their success, such as mobility (written texts can trav el to various destinations, see Robson 1991). Translation, as indicated earlier, does not typically end up in closure; this is because the interpretation of language is contestable across time and space. Thus, while accounting terms such as cost, revenues, profits, etc., construct a set of categories, or systems of rel evance that organizational members can draw upon to make sense of what is going on in organizations, their meanings, however, are not fixed once and for all, but are rather sub
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Accounting ject to possible revisions and different interpretations as issues are contested by interest ed organizational participants (Roberts and Scapens 1985).
The Accounting Profession and Professional ization1 In this final section we move away from critical studies of specific accounting techniques towards an examination of some of the critical studies that have examined accountants and accounting bodies. This overview will focus upon critical historical and contemporary studies of the profession, professionalization, and the (p. 484) professional firms. We start with historical studies of professionalization, and then consider the construction of pro fessional identity and contemporary socialization within the modern professional service firms.
The Accounting Profession and the Project of Professionalization In common with the sociology of the professions, critical studies of accountancy have tak en to task the notion that the professional monopoly of particular services is the conse quence of a social contract for which accountants serve “public interest” ideals in return for an occupational monopoly (Willmott 1986; Robson and Cooper 1990). Many detailed historical studies have shown how an occupational grouping providing insolvency work took advantage of their close association with the law to form professional associations in England, Wales, and Scotland. Research on the formation of professional associations in a number of countries (Chua and Poullaos 1993, 1998, 2002; Walker 1995, 2004) has fo cused on the strategies of early accountants to differentiate their craft from that of other occupations (notably lawyers), create barriers to entry, to restrict the market for their services. Many have taken on a neo-Weberian framework related to the quest for occupa tional closure (Walker and Shackleton 1998). Historical analysis and scholarship is now also being applied to study specific themes in professionalization. Cooper and Robson (2006) identified four strands of research: the role of the profession in imperialism and colonization, comparative analysis of the sys tems of professions, focusing on inter-professional and occupational rivalry, the examina tion of the interplay between commercialization and professionalization, and the emer gence of an interest in the marginalized in the story of the development of the accounting profession. On the topic of colonialism and the dissemination of accounting practices and profession al models, Chua and Poullaos (1998, 2002), Macdonald and Richardson (2004), and Carnegie and Edwards (2001) have looked at the formation of accounting associations in settler colonies (such as Australia, Canada, and South Africa). Anisette (2000) and Bakre (2005, 2006) have examined non-settler colonies (Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, re
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Accounting spectively). Caramanis (2005) demonstrates how the Greek profession emerged out of contests between modernizing and traditional local elites. Researches on the issue of inter-professional rivalry and disputes about the control of work (especially monopoly rights to specific markets) has been strongly influenced by in fluential work on “systems of professions” (Abbott 1988). Professional bodies are often heavily involved in turf wars between occupations, and this can be fought not just in terms of rights to practice in specific domains (p. 485) (notably over taxation and insolven cy) but also in terms of educational credentials and requirements. For example, profes sional bodies and accounting firms have been required to set up quasi-autonomous regu latory mechanisms to ensure that accountants have the expertise and legal authority to provide clients with investment advice (Radcliffe, Cooper, and Robson 1994). Of particu lar interest here is the competition and cooperation between professional bodies in ac counting and law (Sugarman 1995; Walker 2004), actuaries, consulting (especially infor mation systems), and personal financial advisors (Radcliffe, Cooper, and Robson 1994). The Big Four business advisory firms have now incorporated many of these occupations within each of their organizations, but that does not end “turf war” issues among profes sional bodies about multidisciplinary practices, the ethics of professional practice, and claims to competence (Suddaby and Greenwood 2001; Dezalay and Garth 2004). There has been an increasing focus on groups of accountants who have not been included in most studies of accounting professionals, workers whose presence in the professional ization of accounting has been largely ignored in conventional historical studies of the profession. Loft and colleagues (1988, 1990, 1994; Kirkham and Loft 1994) explicitly fo cus on non-elite accountants, notably bookkeeping and cost clerks, in professional forma tion. Instead of examining “great men” and prestigious firms and institutions, these re searchers explore how low-status workers were able to form their own professional body, for example by allying themselves with elite accountants and auditors. In one sense, Loft's work can be seen as an extension to traditional histories concerned with the forma tion of professional bodies, but its achievement, subsequently echoed by others, is also to provide a voice to marginalized groups. Cooper and Taylor (2000) bring women and work ing-class people together in their study of the work practices of accounting clerks, and show how Braverman's analysis of the labor process (1974) and his emphasis on deskilling remain applicable to the analysis of contemporary accounting work. They criti cize conventional studies of the accounting profession precisely because such studies see deskilling as inappropriate for understanding the work of professionals, where the intan gible or judgmental components of their work is emphasized. Similarly, Hammond (1997, 2002; Hammond and Streeter 1994) explored the struggles of African-Americans in North American accounting, providing not just the stories of exclu sion and perseverance in the face of extreme prejudice, but also an analysis of the way in which the experience of black pioneers in accounting reproduces a view in the black com munity that “accounting is not for them”: the occupation not being regarded as a sensible path of upward mobility and movement for African-Americans.
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Accounting Hanlon's work on the role of accountants in the Marxian labor process of modern capital ism has raised often neglected questions about the profession as a business that pursues profit, and one that shifts its activities depending on the specific form that capital accu mulation takes in different places and times (Hanlon 1994, 1996, 1997). (p. 486) Hanlon (1994) resurrects an important element in the sociology of professions, namely a concern with the implications of professionalization for an analysis of power and the division of la bor in society. Suggesting that many accountants are part of the service class and are of ten in marginalized activities which are threatened by automation and low wage competi tion, he argues that the accounting profession is segmented such that there is a small elite of accountants who act as the agents of capital, and who obtain very great rewards for their efforts, and the mass, comprising junior accountants, bookkeepers, and others at the periphery (often women or new immigrants) who can be seen as working class. The mass of accountants have poor working conditions, for example low pay, oppressive con trol systems, threats of automation and increasing part time work (Tinker and Kout saumadi 1997). Professional accountants also have a central role in the audit of published financial state ments, and while critical studies of audit practices have been relatively sparse (Power 1992; Humphrey, Moizer, and Turley 1992; Covaleski et al. 1998; Robson et al. 2007), crit ical accounting research has contributed significantly to a critique of the growth of audittype evaluations in private and public organizations during the 1990s (Power 1997). The term audit is now attached to many types of organizational inspection—though to what extent such practices reflect financial audit is much less clear. Nevertheless, many of these studies have raised pertinent questions concerning the scope of the accounting firms and the ability of the accounting profession not only to maintain but also to extend its jurisdiction into areas that have little obvious connection to the skills, knowledge, and professional training of accountants and auditors.
The Professional Firms and the Construction of Professionalization In discussing areas of research on the accounting profession, we have thus far omitted an emerging area of current study—how accounting firms are central to processes of profes sionalization. Recently, detailed studies, typically based on ethnographic research, have explored the construction of the “professional” within accounting firms (Coffey 1993, 1994; Covaleski et al. 1998; Dirsmith, Heian, and Covaleski 1997; Grey 1994b, 1998; Han lon 1994, 1996, 1999). Building on more general studies of socialization in firms (Fogarty 1992), they show that professionalization, and what it means to self-identify as a profes sional, is largely constructed within accounting firms (Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson 1998). We now know a great deal more about how accountants live their daily lives and “enact” professionalism, at least in large multinational accounting firms. From these studies we now understand much more about how the meaning of be ing a professional is seen primarily as a way of behaving: accountants view the idea of “professional” as referring to ways of acting, particularly in front of clients. Attention is given to matters of appearance, dress sense, and personal grooming (Coffey 1993). Relat (p. 487)
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Accounting edly, appearance in terms of ways of talking and writing are important. Time manage ment, eagerness and other forms of overt commitment also mark the aspirant profession al (Coffey 1994; Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson 2001). Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson (2005) consider how processes of socialization and identity construction connect to issues of gender balance and the gendering of large firms. Dirsmith, Heian, and Co valeski (1997) and Dirsmith and Covaleski (1985) have focused on partners and aspiring senior managers in large accounting firms, exploring the relative roles of informal sys tems such as mentoring, and the more formal systems such as MBO, in producing concep tions of what a professional is and does. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interacting with the client in a business like manner seems to be the primary characteristic of the accountants they studied: Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson (2000) demonstrate how the focus on the client is produced in trainee accountants. Hanlon (1994) has linked this to the grow ing commercialization of professional service firms. Much of this emerging focus upon subjectivity and identity within professional service firms has drawn upon the work of Michel Foucault. As Grey (1994b, 1998) and Covaleski and Dirsmith (1998) show, the mechanisms of individuation within audit firms operate in part through appraisal and performance evaluation processes. Anderson-Gough, Grey, and Robson (2000) indicate how the processes of organizational discourse, such as the use of cliché and appropriate language, construct disciplinary conceptions of the individ ual auditor who is deemed to be the “right stuff.”
Expanding Critical Accounting The above overview of critical accounting studies shows a wealth of radical and novel in sights that have been developed from a diverse body of critical theories and covering a variety of research topics on financial reporting, management accounting, and the profes sion. These powerful insights show accounting in a new light: one that is not narrowly conceived as to simply provide information thought to be a mirror-reflection and objective representations of economic activities and aimed at underpinning rational decision mak ing. Rather, this critical literature significantly broadens our understanding of the roles of accounting, moving beyond the purely functional to include political, symbolic and cere monial roles. Accounting (p. 488) is no longer cast as a mechanism for generating the ob jective in the service of the economic. Instead, the complexity and contingency of the roles of accounting as a technology of quantification and valuation is brought to the fore, and the centrality of the accounting technology and its profession to life, both contempo rary and historical, is emphasized. For every study we cite, there are numerous others that have not been mentioned. Sever al critical studies have focused upon the introduction of neoliberalist “reforms” in the public sector, including new public management (NPM) and public/private finance initia tives to draw attention to their impact upon public sector ethos and levels and quality of service delivery (e.g., Broadbent and Laughlin 2003; Edwards and Shaoul 2003). Others (e.g., Ogden and Anderson 1995) have focused upon the privatization of public utilities Page 14 of 27
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Accounting and the impact of such initiative on the functioning of these organizations. Similarly, we have chosen to focus upon academic critical accounting research; this excludes reference to the important social sites in which critical accounting is practiced; for example NGOs (Simms and Oram 2002); the work conducted by Tax Justice Network (Murphy 2006), and the Association for Accountancy and Business Affair's publications (Sikka, Wearing, and Nayak 1999). The critical accounting literature could expand its reach by adding more significantly to some sparsely researched areas, such as NGOs, developments in transi tional economies, and the role of accounting in the context of globalization. Further, the critical accounting community needs to expand its membership significantly, to nurture future scholars, and to demonstrate more clearly its immediacy to a wider constituency that includes not only sympathetic academics but also practitioners and policy makers. Some pioneering examples of engagement with practitioners and policy makers have been alluded to earlier, and we would also add the famous coal board debate that took place in the 1980s (Cooper and Hopper 1988). That said for some our review of critical accounting might seem overly general, failing to hone in on the FrankfurtSchool defini tions of “critical” or by exploring research that has not directly engaged in public criti cism of professional associations or audit firms. With nearly three decades of critical accounting research underway, it would be impre cise to describe the state of the field as embryonic. As the previous overview would have illustrated, significant, sometimes path-breaking, strides have already been made. Yet, it is important to remember that the field is relatively young, and its achievements, as well as its advocates, are not always well received by mainstream researchers, particularly in the USA. Moreover, we have attempted some kind of order in this review but at the ex pense of discussion of social and environmental reporting for example, topics likely to be of increasing importance as the new century progresses. If critical accounting research is to last the test of time, more concerted effort is needed to expand its research agenda and its theoretical base, (p. 489) to further develop its intellectual underpinning in order to contribute more to theorizing accounting specifically and to inject theoretical insights into critical and social theory more generally. The above represents little more than a brief sketch of the diversity of theoretical perspectives that have been adopted by various critical accounting researchers.
References ABBOTT, A. (1988). The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ANDERSON-GOUGH, F., GREY, C. G., and ROBSON, K. (1998). Making up Accountants: The Organizational and Professional Socialization of Trainee Chartered Accountants. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishing. —— —— (2000). “In the Name of the Client: The Service Ethic in Two Professional Ser vices Firms,” Human Relations, 53/9: 1151–1174.
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Accounting —— —— (2001). “Tests of Time: Organizational Time-reckoning and the Making of Ac countants in Audit Practices,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26/2: 99–122. —— —— (2002). “Accounting Professionals and the Accounting Profession: Linking Con duct and Context,” Accounting and Business Research, 32/1: 41–56. —— —— (2005). “Helping Them to Forget: The Organizational Embedding of Gender Re lations in Two Large Audit Firms,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 30/5: 468–490. ANISETTE, M. (2000). “Imperialism and the Professions: The Education and Certification of Accountants in Trinidad and Tobago,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26/7: 631–659. ARMSTRONG, P. (1986). “The Rise of Accounting Controls in British Capitalist Enterpris es,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12/5: 415–436. ARNOLD, P. J. (2005). “Disciplining Domestic Regulation: The World Trade Organization and the Market for Professional Services,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 30/4: 299–330. —— and OAKES, L. S. (1998). “Accounting as Discursive Construction: The Relationship Between Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 106 and the Dismantling of Retiree Health Benefits,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 23/2: 129–154. —— and SIKKA, P. (2001). “Globalization and the State–Profession Relationship: The Case of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26: 475–499. (p. 490)
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Bag: Deconstruction, Privilege and Accounting Research,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 14/1–2: 1–28. BAKRE, O. M. (2005). “First Attempt at Localising Imperial Accountancy: The Case of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Jamaica (ICAJ). (1950s–1970s),” Critical Perspec tives on Accounting, 16/8: 995–1018. —— (2006). “Second Attempt at Localising Imperial Accountancy: The Case of the Insti tute of Chartered Accountants of Jamaica (ICAJ). (1970s–1980s),” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 17/1: 1–28. BRAVERMAN, H. (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. BRIERS, M., and CHUA, W.-F. (2001). “The Role of Actor-Networks and Boundary Ob jects in Management Accounting Change: A Field Study of an Implementation of Activitybased Costing,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26/3: 237–269.
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Accounting BROADBENT, J., and LAUGHLIN, R. (2003). “Control and Legitimation in Government Accountability Processes: The Private Finance Initiative in the UK,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 14/1–2: 32–48. BURCHELL, S., CLUBB, C., HOPWOOD, A. G., HUGHES, J., and NAHAPIET, J. (1980). “The Roles of Accounting in Organizations and Society,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 5/1: 5–27. BRYER, R. A. (1999). “A Marxist Critique of the FASB's Conceptual Framework,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 10/5: 551–589. —— (2000a). “The History of Accounting Transition to Capitalism in England. Part One: Theory,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 25/2: 131–161. —— (2000b). “The History of Accounting Transition to Capitalism in England. Part Two: Evidence,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 25/4–5: 327–381. —— and BRIGNALL, S. (1986). “Divestment and Inflation Accounting: An Unemployment Machine?,” Capital and Class, 30/2: 125–155. BURCHELL, S., CLUBB, C., and HOPWOOD, A. (1985). “Accounting in its Social Con text: Towards a History of Value Added in the United Kingdom,” Accounting Organisa tions and Society, 10/4: 381–413. CALLON, M. (1986). “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay,” in J. Law (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (Sociological Review Monograph 32: 196–233). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. CARAMANIS, C. V. (1999). “International Accounting Firms Versus Indigenous Auditors: Intra- Professional Conflict in the Greek Auditing Profession 1990–1993,” Critical Per spectives on Accounting, 10/2: 153–196. —— (2002). “The Interplay Between Professional Groups, the State and Supranational Agents: Pax Americana in the Age of Globalisation,” Accounting, Organizations and Soci ety, 27/4: 379–409. —— (2005). “Rationalisation, Charisma and Accounting Professionalism,” Accounting, Or ganizations and Society, 30/2: 195–222. CARMONA, S., EZZAMEL, M., and GUTIÉRREZ, F. (1997). “Control and Cost Account ing Practices in the Spanish Royal Tobacco Factory,” Accounting, Organizations and Soci ety, 22/5: 411–446. —— —— —— (2002). “The Relationship Between Accounting and Spatial Practices in the Factory,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 27/2: 239–274.
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Accounting CARNEGIE, G. D., and EDWARDS, J. E., (2001). “The Construction of the Profes sional Accountant; The Case of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (1886),” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26/3: 301–325. (p. 491)
CHUA, W. F. (1995). “Experts, Networks and Inscriptions in the Fabrication of Accounting Images: A Storey of the Representation of Three Public Hospitals,” Accounting, Organiza tions and Society, 20/2–3: 111–145. —— and POULLAOS C. (1993). “Rethinking the Profession—State Dynamic: The Case of the Victorian Charter attempt 1885–1906,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 18/6: 691–728. —— —— (1998). “The Dynamics of Closure Amidst the Construction of Market, Profes sion, Empire and Nationhood: An Historical Analysis of an Australian Accounting Associa tion, 1886–1903,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 23/2: 155–187. —— —— (2002). “The Empire Strikes Back? An exploration of Centre-Periphery Interac tion Between the ICAEW and Accounting Associations in the Self-governing Colonies of Australia, Canada and South Africa, 1880–1907,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, May 27/4: 409–448. —— MAHAMA, H., and DIRSMITH, M. W. (2007). “The Effect of Network Ties on Ac counting Controls in a Supply Alliance: Field Study Evidence,” Contemporary Accounting Research, 24/1: 47–86. COFFEY, A. J. (1993). “Double Entry: The Professional and Organizational Socialization of Graduate Accountants.” PhD thesis, University of Wales College, Cardiff. —— (1994). “Timing is Everything: Graduate Accountants, Time and Commitment,” Soci ology, 28/4: 943–956. COOPER, C., and TAYLOR, P. (2000). “From Taylorism to Ms. Taylor: The Transformation of the Accounting Craft,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 25/6: 555–578. COOPER, D. (1981). “A Social and Organisational View of Management Accounting,” in M. Bromwich and A. G. Hopwood (eds.), Essays in British Accounting Research. London: Pitman, 178–205. —— and HOPPER, T. (eds.) (1988). Debating the Coal Closures: Economic Calculation in the Coal Dispute 1984–1985. Cambridge Studies in Management, 10. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press. —— —— (2006). “Critical Theorizing in Management Accounting,” in C. Chapman, A. Hopwood, and M. Shields (eds.), Handbook of Management Accounting Research, vol. 1. Oxford: Elsevier Press. —— and ROBSON, K. (2006). “Accounting, Professions and Regulation: Locating Sites of Professionalization,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31/4–5: 415–444. Page 18 of 27
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Accounting MOUCK, T. (1989). “The Irony of the ‘Golden Age’ of Accounting Methodology,” The Ac counting Historians Journal, 16/1: 85–106. —— (2004). “Institutional Reality, Financial Reporting and the Rules of the Game,” Ac counting, Organizations and Society, 29/4: 525–541. MOURITSEN, J. (1994). “Rationality, Institutions and Decision Making: Reflections on March and Olsen's Rediscovering Institutions,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 19/2: 193–211. >MURPHY, R. (2006). “Mind the Tax Gap.” Tax Justice Network, London http:// www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Mind_the_Tax_Gap__final__15_Jan_2006.pdf. NEIMARK, M. (1990). “The King is Dead. Long Live the King!” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1/1: 103–114. —— (1992). The Hidden Dimensions of Annual Reports: Sixty Years of Social Conflict at General Motors. New York: Markus Wiener. —— (1994). “Regicide Revisited: Marx, Foucault and Accounting,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 5/1: 87–108. NEU, D., OCAMPO GOMEZ, E., GRAHAM, C., and HEINCKE, M. (2006). “Informing Technologies and the World Bank,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31/7: 635– 662. OGDEN, S., and ANDERSON, F. (1995). “Representing the Customers' Interests: The Case of the Privatised Water Industry in England and Wales,” Public Administration, 73: 535–599. POWER, M. (1992). “From Common Sense to Expertise: Reflections on the Pre history of Audit Sampling,” Accounting, Organisations and Society, 17: 37–62. (p. 495)
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(p. 498)
Notes: (1.) Parts of this section are based upon Cooper and Robson (2006).
Mahmoud Ezzamel
Mahmoud Ezzamel is Cardiff Professorial Fellow, Cardiff University, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Research Unit. His research inter ests focus mainly on critical accounting and management issues drawing on a variety of social theories, in particular the interface between issues of ideology, power, con trol accountability, and corporate governance and accounting regulation in transi tional economies. He has written eleven scholarly books, and published widely in leading accounting and management journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly; Academy of Management Journal; Accounting, Organizations and Society;
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Accounting Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Organization, Accounting and Business Research; and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.
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Challenging Hierarchy
Challenging Hierarchy John Child The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0024
Abstract and Keywords This article first notes the centrality of hierarchy in organizations and asks why it is so persistent and taken for granted. It then briefly considers its organizational and psycho logical contributions before turning to the social costs it imposes. Having set out some parameters, and the problems associated with hierarchy, the article closes by considering possible alternatives to present forms of hierarchy. It concludes that it is a vital task for students of management and organization to examine such alternatives and the evidence for their efficacy so as to challenge the generally prevailing view that hierarchy, despite its faults, is unavoidable. There is today considerable hand-wringing about hierarchy by those who claim that it is a necessary evil, but who actually have their own reasons to maintain it. Keywords: hierarchy, social costs, organizational behaviour, organizational efficiency, management studies
JOANNE Duberley and Phil Johnson note in Chapter 17 that “the intent of critical-emanci patory forms of action research is to challenge hierarchy in organizations and traditional management prerogatives whilst enabling the negotiation of alternative renditions of re ality.” The aim of this process is to make conscious in the minds of people engaged in or with organizations what was previously unconscious or taken for granted. It encourages them to address questions concerning the reasonableness of hierarchical arrangements, the interests that these serve, and the personal and social consequences they have. This enterprise would be consistent with Unger's (1987) argument that people can en gage in the reconstruction of their formative contexts. In other words, that they can imag ine alternative forms of social association to those they presently experience, and conse quently work towards emancipation from contexts that disadvantage them. The critical researcher can in principle powerfully assist this process and do so from a relatively inde pendent standpoint. Such independence is vital in order to reduce the risk that manage ment will redirect discussion away from a critical examination of existing power relations and structures towards fashioning tools for “improving practice” within the existing con text (Duberley and Johnson, Chapter 17). In other words, as Keenoy (Chapter 22) indi Page 1 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy cates with reference to HRM, there is the danger that when management takes charge of the process, it attaches fine sentiments to the status quo which are used to deflect em ployees from imagining an alternative order. Hierarchy is at the center of the organizational status quo. Its many negative so cial consequences should make it a prime focus for critical management studies. Critical ethnography has an important part to play in this endeavor, as Duberley and Johnson also note, in that it is a holistic perspective through which a qualitative researcher can frame questions and promote action to help emancipate the members of a collectivity from ide ologies that are not to their benefit and not of their creation (Thomas 2003). However, while the process of promoting this emancipation has to proceed through participative di alog with the people immediately concerned, I believe that the dialog can be powerfully informed by a broader analysis of the patterns of association between hierarchy and so cial indicators. These constitute a “reality” that may lie beyond the present perceptions of many organizational participants, and which they should be encouraged to consider. (p. 502)
In what follows, I first note the centrality of hierarchy in organizations and ask why it is so persistent and taken-for-granted. I then briefly consider its organizational and psycho logical contributions before turning to the social costs it imposes. Having set out some parameters, and the problems associated with hierarchy, I close by considering possible alternatives to present forms of hierarchy. I conclude that it is a vital task for students of management and organization to examine such alternatives and the evidence for their ef ficacy so as to challenge the generally prevailing view that hierarchy, despite its faults, is unavoidable. There is today considerable hand-wringing about hierarchy by those who claim it is a necessary evil but who actually have their own reasons to maintain it. When considering hierarchy, it is important to recognize that it has two faces. One face is that of an integrating organizing principle intended to enhance the benefits of collective effort through providing control and coordination. Moreover, the manner in which hierar chy attaches people to organized frameworks of social life does not just serve to organize their collective work; it can also give them a sense of where they “belong” and this may meet deeper psychological needs. Insofar as hierarchy helps to create both collective or der and personal sense out of what would otherwise be a chaotic and threatening world, it could be said to make a positive contribution to social capital. However, the second face of hierarchy is one that creates social differentiation through the allocation of power, re ward, and status. This other face potentially detracts from social capital by creating divi sions and relational tensions. The first face of hierarchy provides a functionalist justification for it. The second face is that of hierarchy as an instrument of inequality, which is a political issue. A further general point to bear in mind at the outset is that hierarchy can manifest itself in more than one dimension—not only through formal organizational ranks but also in so cial distinctions. There can be strong social differentiation in organizations that are not so hierarchically structured, such as some professional service firms. There can be relatively egalitarian cultural systems in formally hierarchical organizations like universities. While Page 2 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy a full analysis needs (p. 503) to unpack the concept into all its components of social strati fication, the focus in this chapter will be on the formal and structural aspects of hierar chy. This is not just to economize on space; it is also because formal hierarchy is wide spread and its concomitants are extremely significant. Also, as I shall note, attempts to secure benefits for people at lower levels in organizations by softening the cultural mani festations of hierarchy can divert attention from the continuing realities of differentiated power and reward that are associated with its structural dimensions.
The Organizational Centrality of Hierarchy Hierarchy appears everywhere in human society and has done so throughout recorded history (Mooney and Reiley 1931). Some claim that it is intrinsic to all collective life, ani mal as well as human (Kipfer 2001). Historically, ithasbeen the organizing principle be hind outstanding achievements such as building the ancient pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China, as well as medieval monasteries (Kieser 1987). It has been taken for granted from the very beginning of writings on organization. One of Fayol's (1916) funda mental “principles” of organization was the “scalar chain” of hierarchical command, while Weber (1978) also recognized its centrality to legal-rational authority in bureaucracies. More recently, some writers on organization anticipated the emergence of new organiza tional forms that constitute a clear alternative to conventional bureaucracy and struc tured hierarchies. Such new forms were variously labeled “post-industrial” (Heydebrand 1989), “post-modern” (Clegg 1990), “post-bureaucratic” (Heckscher and Donnellon 1994), and “network” (Powell 1990). These less hierarchical forms were expected to permit greater adaptation and innovation, and their emergence was seen to be driven by a com bination of contextual factors such as the growing premium placed on innovation as a competitive requirement, rapidly changing customer preferences, the growing signifi cance of information and communication technologies, and more knowledgeable work forces (Child 2005). Yet despite these expectations, it has become clear that many fea tures of conventional organization, hierarchy prominently among them, remain both in business and the public sector (Pettigrew and Fenton 2000; Alvesson and Thompson 2005). While some modifications have been made, typically reductions in the number of hierarchical levels, the contextual changes that were seen to render hierarchy redundant have, in the event, often been used to strengthen it. For example, developments in infor mation and communications technology (ICT) were regarded as a means (p. 504) to substi tute for hierarchy by permitting employees to make their own decisions based on commu nication and information now provided directly to them through electronic channels. This alternative approach was seen as particularly well suited to the expectations and compe tencies of the newer generation of better educated knowledge workers. In practice, ICT systems have often been used to maintain existing managerial structures, to centralize control, and to enhance the power of those in positions of authority (Schwarz 2002). Similarly, the intensification of competition, which was expected to undermine hierarchy because of its non-adaptive qualities, has in other ways reinforced it. A currently salient Page 3 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy example lies in the heightened downward pressures for results that accompany the search for shareholder value. These have been very evident in the case of companies ac quired by private-equity firms in which extreme pressures to exceed targets are transmit ted down their vertical chain from the new owners, to chief executives and then onto their employees (Thornton 2007). The drive to secure higher returns has reinforced hier archical command and control in such cases. It is being pressed into the service of this particularly “raw” form of modern capitalism. Nor have moves to secure competitive advantage through the adoption of network forms of business replaced hierarchical relations either. Even “virtual” supply and value chains, far from eliminating hierarchy, have actually transported it from within unitary organiza tions to networks in which leading “network coordinators” like Dell Computers and Cisco Systems retain command and control. This is not only because networks as systems re quire “brains,” but also because it has become clear that public opinion holds these lead ing firms accountable for the conduct of their contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers. What happens is that hierarchies internal to firms become transformed into external hier archies, which are imposed on ostensibly market contract-based relationships.
Why is Hierarchy so Persistent? There are several considerations that may help to explain why hierarchy is so persistent. One is that it continues to offer some organizational functionality. Hierarchy may also serve deep-seated emotional needs even while it restricts people's freedom of action and expression. On the other hand, the case against hierarchy continues to suffer from a poor collation of the evidence about its organizational limitations with indicators of its nega tive effects on social wellbeing., and, not least, the powerful interests served by hierarchy discourage the discussion of alternatives to it. We can examine these considerations more closely. (p. 505)
Organizational Functions of Hierarchy
For organizations, the functionalist justification sees hierarchy as a vertical division of labour that provides a rational basis for allocating differential levels of responsibility and commensurate rewards (Jaques 1956). By distributing roles according to level of respon sibility, hierarchy permits a corresponding allocation of authority and accountability. In so doing, it provides a framework for exercising control and provides a basis for governance within an organization. It therefore offers a structure for specifying accountability that is seen as valuable at a time when effective corporate governance is a high priority (Sun daramurthy and Lewis 2003). In this respect, hierarchy performs an “enabling” function (Adler and Borys 1996) that builds social capital through helping members of an organiza tion to know what is expected of them and do their work more effectively. Set against these potential organizing benefits are the limitations that hierarchy displays in coping with the contemporary organizational needs for adaptation and innovation. Hi erarchy tends to promote downward communication and initiative. It is argued, by con Page 4 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy trast, that the ability to innovate and adapt to environmental change requires a capacity for spontaneous self-organization. This in turn means that authority and initiative have to be delegated to those who have access to information relevant to the issue or problem concerned (Burnes 2005). Such information is increasingly distributed among knowledge workers rather than concentrated centrally, and hierarchy therefore tends to become dys functional. As Beinhocker (2006: 379) has put it, “the inherent rigidities of these struc tures [hierarchical command-and-control organizations] ultimately limit them to being evolutionary fodder in the churnings of markets.” Nevertheless, even in highly innovative organizations, some maintenance of hierarchy may help to avoid a descent into chaos and to preserve a sense of equity among employees (Foss 2003). How far hierarchy actually merits a functionalist justification therefore remains an open question and the answer needs to have regard to the activity and context of the organiza tion (Child 2005). In any case, the critical management theorist would certainly not rest content with simply accepting an argument for hierarchy that derived from the functions it might perform for the achievement of organizational objectives as defined by manage ment. This is all the more so for two reasons, as we note shortly. First, managerial argu ments for hierarchy are also aligned with self-interest. Second, hierarchy incurs major so cial costs.
Personal Functions of Hierarchy There is in addition the question of whether some, perhaps many, people accept hierarchy because it meets their personal needs. This may help to explain why it appears so often to be taken for granted. In other words, hierarchy may persist (p. 506) not just because of the questionable claim that it is a fundamental necessity in modern complex organiza tions and societies, but also because many people actually want to be situated within a hi erarchical order. Stavrakakis (2008) has drawn upon the work of Jacques Lacan to ad dress the question of why we become attached to certain forms of subjugation. He cites Stanley Milgram's famous experiments as well as other evidence suggesting that many people are ready to accept commands emanating from sources vested with authority, on the basis of compliance rather than of compulsion. A Foucauldian view of (hierarchical) power being constituted in knowledge and understandings of what is possible, would sug gest that such compliance is culturally defined, as in the authority that is accorded to per sons who are accepted as possessing superior knowledge. However, the interpretation that Stavrakakis offers from Lacan refers to a profound psychological need. It may be that for many people the absence of hierarchy—having someone in command—means a disintegration of their subjective reality and becomes a threat to their identity. Thus, even if people come to resist and even overturn one hierarchical order because it becomes un bearably oppressive, they will then construct a new one. The aftermath of many revolu tions appears to bear this out. As Stravrakakis concludes (2008:1056), this is “a grim pic ture, but one that has to be seriously taken into account in reflecting our current theoreti co-political predicament.” It implies that a confrontation with hierarchy cannot be sus tained only on the grounds of material interest and rational argument. Rather, if an effec tive challenge is to be mounted to contemporary hierarchy, as this chapter urges, then Page 5 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy the alternative order must be one that meets the psychological needs of those belonging to it, at least to an equivalent extent.
Hierarchy's Social Costs Hierarchy and Managerial Interest Nevertheless, material interest cannot be ignored in an assessment of why hierarchy per sists. There has been strong and persistent resistance by most top managements to mea sures such as organizational participation that may to some degree moderate hierarchy and the information asymmetry it produces (Heller et al. 1998). Thus, as already noted, top managements take care to preserve hierarchical arrangements even though new in formation and communication technologies facilitate less hierarchical alternatives. The reason lies in the ways that hierarchy, and the exclusivity of top managerial behavior which it protects, serves top managers interests, often at the expense both of employees and the organization as a whole. Hierarchical structures are controlled by people who have reasons for trying to preserve them (p. 507) even when they become dysfunctional for adaptation to new circumstances. Those in powerful positions find it convenient to use hierarchy, not just because, as they might claim, it maintains a necessary degree of order but also because it does so in a way that preserves their privileges and power and shields them from close scrutiny. Amongst other things, hierarchy sustains massive and growing income inequalities. Over the past three decades top executive pay has hugely outstripped that of lower-level em ployees. Whereas in the USA, CEO pay averaged between thirty and forty times that of the average employee during the 1970s, by 2007 the CEOs of the Fortune top 500 compa nies were averaging 344 times the pay of employees (Pizzigati 2004, 2008). In the UK, some companies have ratios between CEO total salary packages and average employee salaries of over 500 (Guardian 2008). Moreover, significant rises in top executive pay have often accompanied poor company performance and many failed CEOs have walked away with huge payouts. These practices are literally self-serving in that they usually arise from the recommendations of compensation committees that are beholden to top management. They present a serious problem of corporate governance (Bebchuck and Fried 2006). Westphal and Khanna's (2003) study of the social processes whereby Ameri can corporate elites have resisted pressures from stakeholders to limit top managerial au tonomy provides another example of how corporate leaders seek to serve their own inter ests.
Wider Social Costs of Hierarchy Hierarchy has several wider negative social consequences. It exacerbates the agency problem within organizations. It denies social capital to those occupying lower-level posi tions. It is instrumental in damaging health and wellbeing.
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Challenging Hierarchy The cloaking of self-interest by privileged hierarchical position carries a wider social cost because it damages trust. It exacerbates the inherent agency relationship between man agement and employees, as well as between levels of management itself. The agency problem arises because the people occupying lower positions in a hierarchy do not per ceive a coincidence of interest with those at the top (Child and Rodrigues 2003). The for mer lose trust in organizational leaders, especially if they demonstrate a lack of commit ment to employees, as with layoffs. As a result, employees may distort or withhold infor mation, and take hidden actions, in order to protect their position, to further their case for improved reward, or as a protest. Limited cooperation of this kind will be the more deleterious to the performance of an organization when lower-level organizational mem bers are knowledge workers holding information vital for successful innovation and adap tive change (Zenger 1994). This reinforces the limitations of hierarchy as an organizing mode for innovation. Ironically, a resort to hierarchy as a means to reduce the agency risk associated with control loss (Williamson 1967) may create new agency problems of (p. 508) its own. So the negative social effects of hierarchy contribute to its dysfunctions as an organizing principle. Hierarchy denies social capital to lower-level organizational members in ways that recall historical claims for the superior rationality of management. It is generally the case today that only senior managers have a rich social capital based upon their access to different “circuits of power” (Clegg 1989) including government agencies, politicians, financial in stitutions, and NGOs. This web of social relationships is denied to ordinary employees. The denial of social capital to them is not just a deprivation of power through the exclu sion of voice and other forms of influence. It also denies employees opportunities to en hance their knowledge and understanding of corporate affairs and hence provides a justi fication for the differentiation between thinking and doing inherent in Taylorism and still propagated by the apologists for hierarchy. This pattern of denial also impinges on em ployees' material interests because it defines them as not suited to appointment or pro motion to higher positions. The social capital possessed by hierarchical leaders perpetu ates their exclusive tenure of power—those in power use hierarchy to legitimate the pow er they already have. Third, hierarchy is instrumental in damaging health and wellbeing. Evidence is mounting about the negative effects that the differentials in power, status and income are having on personal health and wellbeing. The way that organizational hierarchies structure such dif ferentials can create a sense of relative deprivation and alienation. From his synthesis of a large body of research, Wilkinson (2005) concludes it is inequalities in society that con tribute to sickness rather than absolute levels of income and wealth. They do so through the low social status, relative deprivation, and poorer quality of social relations that ac company inequality. These are exactly the attributes of extended hierarchies acting through their second “face” as mechanisms for differentially distributing economic and social benefits. Wilkinson comments on “the surprising success of psychosocial variables in explaining differences in morbidity and mortality” (2005: 60). “These variables in clude” “a lack of a sense of control,” “lack of confidence,” “lack of social support,” “bad social relationships,” “stress at work,” “social and material rewards from work that fail to Page 7 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy match work effort,” “job insecurity.” The widespread lack of trust in organizational lead ers seems highly likely to exacerbate these problems. These trends at the micro level impact upon the wellbeing of society at large. The link be tween micro and macro levels stems from the obvious, but sometimes overlooked, fact that most of us continue to work in organizations and/or to be massively affected by the decisions taken by organizational leaders. Hierarchy creates a relational distance be tween people. It lends itself to information asymmetry, lack of transparency, and low mu tual understanding. The agency problem in hierarchies can consequently operate in both directions, with senior management failing to secure the commitment of those in lower positions and the latter not (p. 509) being able to constrain or expose malpractice at the top. The distance between controllers and controlled has increased along with the rise of mega corporations and government departments. It parallels, and is very likely a con tributing cause of, the low level of public trust in organizational leaders that is well docu mented (e.g., Gallup International 2007). As a result, hierarchical differentiation within organizations is helping to create the con ditions for a post-democratic society in which there are growing inequalities of wealth and power, reductions in transparency, a breakdown of trust in leaders, and rising doubts about the value of democracy itself (Fonte 2004; Kurtz 2005). Although “industrial (orga nizational) democracy” is normally treated as an issue apart from political democracy, the health of the latter may well be vitiated by the absence of the former.
Challenging Hierarchy The evidence as to the negative effects of organizational hierarchy appears to be over whelming. At the same time, hierarchy is a persistent phenomenon. Although some of this persistence has to be attributed to the self-interested reproduction of differentiation in power and privilege, the regularity with which the number of hierarchical levels is associ ated with organizational size suggests that there may be inherent drivers towards hierar chy in today's mega-organizations. Realistically, the question we have to ask is not what can be done to abolish hierarchy, but rather what can be done to indicate ways of reduc ing it and/or mitigating its destructive effects. Any responses we can provide to this ques tion should usefully inform those in organizations who seek to participate meaningfully and effectively in debate on the subject. A direct reduction in the structure of hierarchy can come through “delayering.” In recent years, this has been associated with the break-up of organizations into smaller units and the shedding of activities and employment through outsourcing (Pettigrew and Fenton 2000). Additionally, the substitution of horizontal for vertical coordination through team working may also facilitate some delayering. However, while a reduction in hierarchical layers and organizational size may improve the ability of employees to know what is go ing on, if only through informal communication, it does not necessarily alter the underly ing asymmetry of power within organizations; nor does it necessarily reduce senior Page 8 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy management's ability to control parameters such as rewards and employment conditions in its own interests. We therefore need to encourage awareness not only of possibilities for reducing hierar chy but also ways of countervailing it. The latter involve structural reform. Structural re form refers here to the introduction of governance mechanisms that (p. 510) provide for voice and countervailing powers to those vested in organizational hierarchies. They in clude employee ownership, rights accorded to employees (and possibly other stakehold ers), and provisions for upward monitoring (see inter alia: Heller et al. 1998; Child and Rodrigues 2004; Williams 2007). The fact that structural reform is widely and strongly opposed by most organizational leaders suggests that it is not inconsequential. Top managers and their spokespersons claim that such reform would undermine sound management and jeopardize organization al performance (defined in their terms). Actually, and very importantly, the available evi dence indicates that its overall effect on organizational performance is positive rather than negative, especially when carefully designed and adequately supported by training such as in reading financial accounts (Heller et al. 1998; Michie 2007; Williams 2007). Moreover, advocates of a structural approach argue quite correctly that granting rights to organizational members is likely to be more effective, in the sense of having teeth, than attempts to soften hierarchy through a change of language and organizational culture. Examples of the latter are the notions of “empowerment” and “participative manage ment” that are articulated in the HRM discourse of “humanization.” Experience suggests that humanization is a palliative rather than a solution to the problems of employee and other stakeholder relations that are associated with hierarchically created distance. It does not provide a reliable or credible solution to the problems of hierarchical structures (Doughty 2004; Leavitt 2007). As Keenoy notes in Chapter 22, such measures are often in tended to render managerial control more effective and they serve to deflect attention from the underlying problem. Structural reform can draw from the example of the provisions for accountability in the political realm, which have become widely accepted in democratic societies. This immedi ately poses the question: if such provisions are valued as a means of safeguarding good governance in civil society, why should they not perform a similar service in organizations some of which dispose of larger resources than nation states? They would involve the in troduction of structures parallel to those of the executive hierarchy, aimed at promoting a voice in policy-making and the judicial means to limit abuse. Brown (1960), interestingly a business leader, advocated the introduction into companies of parallel and complemen tary “legislative” and “judicial” systems parallel to executive hierarchies. His belief was that what he called the “executive system” (hierarchy) within companies would become more effective if it were not cluttered up with disputes over policy (including distributive justice) and procedural justice. Here is a powerful argument that justifies countervailing systems to hierarchy on functional grounds that managers would find it hard to disown
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Challenging Hierarchy The field of corporate governance is currently grappling with the problem of how to make corporate leaders more effectively accountable, although it generally adopts a limited perspective in which accountability is exclusively to owners (Bakan 2005). In this respect, a broader definition of ownership may be appropriate. Drucker (2001: 8) argued that “knowledge workers, collectively, are the new capitalists” (p. 511) on the basis that, since “knowledge has become the key resource, and the only scarce one,” the knowledge assets owned by knowledge workers now assume as much if not more significance for corporate success as financial assets. Bearing in mind the difficulties that organizational hierar chies can place in the way of knowledge creation, an improved representation of employ ees in hierarchies, or through parallel structures, becomes a highly significant issue both from the standpoint of organizing effectively and meeting social criteria. There are cases of significant employee ownership and representation that warrant closer study because they appear to have facilitated a combination of sound corporate financial performance with employee wellbeing. They have managed to do this even within a context of hostile national corporate governance philosophies, examples in the UK being the John Lewis Partnership (Bradley and Taylor 1992) and the ScottBader Commonwealth (Scott Bader 2008). It is partly the labeling of such approaches as “odd-ball” that has discouraged ade quate study of them, yet they point to a feasible antidote to the worst excesses of hierar chy.
Conclusion It looks as though hierarchy is here to stay and will continue to run the course it has for thousands of years. Attempts to change it from within have not, on the whole, got very far, and so the best hope would seem to be to tame its excesses from without. In this re spect, I have briefly explored the contribution of governance mechanisms that provide for voice and countervailing powers to those vested in organizational hierarchies. The con trol of hierarchical abuses is fairly and squarely a governance issue. The fundamental question is whether ways can be found to bring hierarchy more effec tively within the ambit of a legitimized social order. This has been accomplished, to a sig nificant extent, in the sphere of national politics. It was not achieved without consider able resistance from those in power, as the history of revolutions testifies. The arrange ments that have emerged in political democracies permit the maintenance of hierarchy for the contribution it makes to efficiency and social order, while at the same time insist ing on its accountability and transparency. Independent judiciaries and legislatures, and institutions such as a free press, are incorporated into these systems as countervailing powers that have proved to be absolutely necessary to prevent the corruption of democra cies by those who command hierarchies. These countervailing powers may not work per fectly, but as Winston Churchill famously said every other system of government is worse. The domain of politics at its various levels—international, national, and local— faces much the same challenge as does business of how to reconcile the achievement of performance (desired outcomes at an acceptable cost) with social responsibility in its full (p. 512)
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Challenging Hierarchy sense of social accountability. One of the justifications for having political democracy lies in the sheer scale of the resources that states dispose of—in other words their power. The same applies to many multinational corporations which are as large, or even larger, than nation states, and are becoming larger as time goes on. Those of us who live in democrat ic societies may complain about the way they function, but few of us would opt to trade what we have for an autocratic alternative. So why, then, do democratic societies tolerate resistance to the introduction of comparable arrangements within organizations that are defined to fall outside the field of politics? In fact, if these organizations are of such con sequence to us all, why should they not be brought within the scope of the “polity”? If sys tems of governance have evolved in the political sphere that permit the criterion of per formance to coexist with those of accountability and transparency, and which indeed even enhance performance, then we should be willing and able to learn from them. The only reason for resisting their introduction to other organizations must be due to hubris and a desire to maintain undeserved privilege. We see far too much of both nowadays, as in ma jor companies that handsomely reward top executives for failure. Organization theory has for a long time taken a back seat in discussions of business and society. Organizational analysts have lost a great deal of credibility, and have exhausted themselves with twenty years or so of paradigm wars and armchair pontification. Some have in recent years sought refuge in the relatively innocuous exploration of the minutia of discourse and narrative analysis. It is time that they returned to the big issues, big in terms of social wellbeing, the health of communities, and the use of scarce resources within a pillaged environment. This means applying the undoubtedly more refined methodological tools we now possess (including those of discourse analysis) to the in sights past scholarship has offered us on the structural bases for power, so as to chal lenge the hegemony of hierarchical chieftains that stands in the way of reform. We al ready have sufficient evidence and theoretical understanding to take up this challenge and to address what really stands in the way of reforming hierarchy. Only then will orga nizational theory have come of age as an indispensible guide to the constitution of society and its institutions. Only then will organizational scholars be in a position to help those who suffer from the abuses of hierarchy to articulate a case for challenging the status quo and the conventional wisdom that justifies it.
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Challenging Hierarchy BEBCHUK, L. A., and FRIED, J. (2006). Pay Without Performance: The Unfilled Promise of Executive Compensation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. BEINHOCKER, E. D. (2006). The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radi cal Remaking of Economics. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. BRADLEY, K., and TAYLOR, S. (1992). Business Performance in the Retail Sector: The Experience of the John Lewis Partnership. Oxford: Clarendon Press. BROWN, W. (1960). Exploration in Management. London: Heinemann. BURNES, B. (2005). “Complexity Theories and Organizational Change,” International Journal of Management Reviews, 7: 73–90. CHILD, J. (2005). Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. —— and RODRIGUES, S. B. (2003). “Corporate Governance and New Organizational Forms,” Journal of Management and Governance, 7: 337–360. —— —— (2004). “Repairing the Breach of Trust in Corporate Governance,” Corporate Governance: An International Review, 12: 143–151. CLEGG, S. (1989). Frameworks of Power. London: Sage. —— (1990). Modern Organizations: Organization Studies in the Post-Modern World. Lon don: Sage. DOUGHTY, H.A. (2004). “Employee Empowerment: Democracy or Delusion?” The Inno vation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 9: 1–24. DRUCKER, P. (2001). “The New Workforce: Knowledge Workers are the New Capital ists,” The Economist, 3 November: 8–13. FAYOL, H. (1916). Administration industrielle et generale, trans. C. Storrs as General and Industrial Management. London: Pitman 1949. FONTE, J. (2004). “Democracy's Trojan Horse,” The National Interest, 76: 117–127. FOSS, N. J. (2003). “Selective Intervention and Internal Hybrids: Interpreting and Learn ing from the Rise and Decline of the Oticon Spaghetti Organization,” Organization Science, 14: 331–349. Gallup International (2007). Voice of the People Survey for the World Economic Forum, http://www.weforum.org HECKSCHER, C., and DONNELLON, A. (eds.) (1994). The Post-Bureaucratic Organiza tion: New Perspectives on Organizational Change. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. HELLER, F., PUSIĆ, E., STRAUSS, G., and WILPERT, B. (1998). Organizational Partici pation: Myth and Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page 12 of 15
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Challenging Hierarchy HEYDEBRAND, W. (1989). “New Organizational Forms,” Work and Occupations, 16: 323–357. JAQUES, E. (1956). Measurement of Responsibility. London: Tavistock. KIESER, A. (1987): “From Asceticism to Administration of Wealth. Medieval Monasteries and the Pitfalls of Rationalization,” Organization Studies, 8: 103–124. KIPFER, B. A. (2001). The Order of Things: How Everything in the World is Orga nized into Hierarchies, Structures and Pecking Orders. New York: Random House. (p. 514)
KURTZ, P. (2005). “Is America a Post-democratic Society? How to Preserve Our Repub lic,” Free Inquiry, 25, http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz LEAVITT, H.J. (2007). “Big Organizations Are Unhealthy Environments for Human Be ings,” Academy of Management Learning & Education, 6/2: 253–263. MICHIE, J. (2007). “The Economic Case for HM Treasury to Support the Employee Owned Business Sector Through Tax Breaks and the Reform of the Treatment of Employ ee trusts,” Report for the Employee Ownership Association, November. MOONEY, J. D., and REILEY, C. A. (1931). Onward Industry! The Principles of Organiza tion and their Significance to Modern Industry. New York: Harper. PETTIGREW, A. M., and FENTON, E.M. (eds.) (2000). The Innovating Organization. Lon don: Sage. PIZZIGATI, S. (2004). Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives. New York: Apex Press. —— (2008). “Let's Get Serious About CEO Pay,” 16 September, www.ourfuture.org POWELL, W.W. (1990). “Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization,” Research in Organizational Behavior, 12: 295–336. SCHWARZ, G.M. (2002). “Organizational Hierarchy Adaptation and Information Technol ogy,” Information and Organization, 12: 153–182. SCOTT BADER (2008). The Spirit of Scott Bader, www.scottbader.com STAVRAKAKIS, Y. (2008). “Subjectivity and the Organized Other: Between Symbolic Au thority and Fantasmatic Enjoyment,” Organization Studies, 29: 1037–1059. SUNDARAMURTHY, C., and LEWIS, M. (2003). “Control and Collaboration: Paradoxes of Governance,” Academy of Management Review, 28: 397–415. The Guardian (2008). “Highest Ratio of Average Salary to Best-paid Executive,” 12 September, www.guardian.co.uk/business
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Challenging Hierarchy THOMAS, J. (2003). “Musings on Critical Ethnography, Meanings, and Symbolic Vio lence,” in R. P. Clair (ed.), Expressions of Ethnography. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 45–54. THORNTON, E. (2007). “Perform or Perish,” Business Week, 5 November: 38–45. UNGER, R. M. (1987). Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WEBER, M. (1978). Economy and Society, trans. G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. WESTPHAL, J. D., and KHANNA, P. (2003). “Keeping Directors in Line: Social Distancing as a Control Mechanism in the Corporate Elite,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 48: 361–398. WILKINSON, R. (2005). The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier. New York: The New Press. WILLIAMS, R. C. (2007). The Cooperative Movement: Globalization from Below. Alder shot: Ashgate. WILLIAMSON, O. E. (1967). “Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size,” The Journal of Political Economy, 75: 123–138. ZENGER, T. R. (1994). “Explaining Organizational Diseconomies of Scale in R&D: Agency Problems and the Allocation of Engineering Talent, Ideas and Effort by Firm Size,” Man agement Science, 40: 708–729.
Notes: (1.) This chapter has benefited considerably from suggestions offered by Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott.
John Child
John Child was educated in economics at the University of Cambridge, which award ed him an MA. Ph.D., and ScD. He now holds the Chair of Commerce at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, and is also Visiting Professor at the School of Business, University of Hong Kong. He previously held professorships at the Universities of Aston and Cambridge, and directed the European Commission's management programme in China. His areas of research include international coop erative strategy and acquisitions, new organizational forms, and management in Chi na. He is the author or co-author of 17 books and over 100 articles in learned jour nals. His recent books include Management in China during the Age of Reform,
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Challenging Hierarchy (1994), Strategies of Cooperation (1998), and The Management of International Ac quisitions (2001). e-mail: [email protected]
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies
On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Manage ment Studies Anthony G. Hopwood The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0025
Abstract and Keywords The enormous increase in what has come to be known as critical management studies has clearly been demonstrated. Going from theoretical innovations through to empirical and historical inquiries, the resultant research has transformed our understanding of many aspects of management and its functioning. Although starting with pioneering studies in the areas of philosophy, political economy, and sociology, more critical inquiries have now penetrated many of the traditional areas of management research, creating in the process new understandings and providing very different vocabularies with which to interrogate and analyse a diverse array of management practices. Keywords: theoretical innovations, empirical research, management studies, political economy, management re search, management practice
THE enormous increase in what has come to be known as critical management studies is clearly demonstrated by the impressive array of review chapters in this volume. Going from theoretical innovations through to empirical and historical inquiries, the resultant research has transformed our understanding of many aspects of management and its functioning. Although starting with pioneering studies in the areas of philosophy, political economy, and sociology, more critical inquiries have now penetrated many of the tradi tional areas of management research, in the process creating new understandings and providing very different vocabularies with which to interrogate and analyse a diverse ar ray of management practices. Accounting, my own area of research, provides an excellent example of this, as David Knights makes clear in his discussion of the early development of critical studies (Chap ter 7). Prior to the emergence of critical scholarship in the accounting area it was difficult to relate accounting practices and changes in them to the wider context in which they op erated. Even accounting researchers tended to take much of accounting for granted, ac cepting the characterizations of its functionality that (p. 516) had emerged within accoun tancy and related institutions across time, and virtually all other social science re Page 1 of 11
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies searchers most certainly did. Accounting was indeed seen as a truth machine and re search on it was oriented to the improvement of its functionality in this respect. There can be no doubt that critical inquiry changed that, as Ezzamel and Robson (Chapter 23) make clear. Although it can be argued that a great deal more research needs to be done, we nevertheless can now talk about accounting in very different ways, relating its prac tices and institutional arrangements to wider socio-economic and political circumstances across time. Accounting change is no longer necessarily seen as a process of incremental improvement. Moreover accounting practice and the institutions which seek to further it are no longer perceived as disinterested endeavors. Indeed by being able to provide what is widely seen as a factual basis for economic phenomena (Poovey 1998), accounting is capable of being implicated in the very construction and objectification of interests. As a dominant means of economic calculation in both societies at large and the institutions that constitute them, accounting can now be understood as being centrally involved in the factors that shape the institutional structures in which we live and the relations of power and influence that characterize them. Even some practicing accountants now recognize this intellectual transformation, ongoing though it still might be. In times past, even the micro-political processes associated with accounting change were never acknowledged. The explicit language of change remained one of improvement alone. Critical scholarship has played a role in changing that in regulatory environments as well as in academia. By explicitly recognizing the contested and frequently problematic nature of accounting's processes of change and the functioning of the regulatory bodies often involved in this, critical accounting research has helped to enable a more open admission of the political and thereby interested nature of accounting change. Still marginal though that might be, it nevertheless is a welcome development in a democratic society where we can all gain from understanding that certain actions are legitimately political rather than merely truth revealing. Indeed, perhaps it is because of such wider implications that critical account ing scholarship has had a significant impact outside the confines of management research —particularly in anthropology, history, and sociology—more than other areas of critical management studies. No doubt similar stories can and should be told of the consequences of the rise of critical scholarship in other areas of management inquiry. In gender studies, management histo ry, more sophisticated understandings of the labor process, studies of the international ization of both management and the ownership structures on which it is based and nu merous other areas, real progress has been made. Not only do we know and understand more but we can also talk about such phenomena in very different ways, thereby enabling different linkages to be established and new discourses to emerge. In mapping out signifi cant aspects of these developments, the present volume rightly celebrates what has been achieved. Equally, however, it also has to be recognized that some aspects of the achieve ments have not been unproblematic, and it is on some of these more debatable aspects of critical management studies that I would like to focus. (p. 517)
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies Putting it bluntly, I am not sure how critical many such studies have become. Certainly the pioneering studies on which much critical scholarship was based were indeed chal lenging to prevailing understandings and practices. They had a bite. Having read them, the world not only appeared to be different but the desire to change it became ever stronger. Although there might be no consensus about what is and what is not to be re garded as a critical management study, I think there initially was a view that such studies should and often did not only change understandings but also had a potential to stimulate action. They created at least a sense of unease with the world so seen and often a desire to change it, if not directly then through political action. Much of that challenging edge now seems to have gone. It is as if a great deal of the world of critical management schol arship has become normalized, part of the conventional academic world and functioning in a way that seems largely separated from the world of action. Rather than inducing a tension and unease, yawning often seems a more appropriate response. Increasingly I get the impression that less and less effort is being put into really probing fieldwork. More superficial understandings and even understandings at a distance seem to be getting ever more common. At the same time there is a growth in seemingly endless minor theorizing. I say minor because so much of the theorizing seems to be a repetition of existing theo retical work, summarizing time and time again what is already known and usually doing more to add to the publication listings of the authors than to advance wider understand ings of the managerial craft and its organizational and societal contexts. One illustration of such a tendency recently came to my attention. Having a longstanding interest in the interrelationship between information flows and the spatial nature of orga nizational forms, I was interested to come across Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger's edited volume Space, Organizations and Management Theory (2006). What an exciting theme, I thought, thinking in terms of the changing spatial organization of business, the emergence of business enterprises that span space, the role which business interests play in dividing the world into North and South, the crucial role that business has played in in fluencing the urban form, the fascinating ways in which architecture shapes modes of or ganizational functioning, and so on. Even in my own areas of interest in accounting and information and control systems, the possibilities for spatial understandings to enrich our critical insights are enormous. Both the stock and insurance markets emerged in the United Kingdom in the physical proximity of coffee shops where the sociability engen dered by closeness is seen as facilitating the creation of trust and the resultant exchange of more tacit information. Even now the almost limitless availability of information on the web has been associated with an increase in the concentration of global employment in the financial sector while many expected its decline, the (p. 518) relative importance of ac cess to more informal sources of information seemingly having increased. Managerial su pervision continued to have a physical and spatial dimension even in the early days of the twentieth century. While the manager no longer lived on the factory site, new art deco factories built in the United Kingdom in the 1920s still had a viewing balcony for the fore men. Information flows now play that role, facilitating observations across space, be that of workers, managers, or even academics themselves.
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies The relationship between organizations and space is indeed an exciting platform for the advancement of critical insights. But compared with that potential agenda, the studies re ported in the Clegg and Kornberger volume were profoundly disappointing. There were repeated reviews of existing literature which usually failed to move beyond them, masses of minor theorizing, and frequent appeals to other people's empirical studies. In contrast there was little new empirical or historical research and few attempts to address if not confront an area of inquiry that had been seriously neglected in earlier research. Despite the absolute importance of the topic and the real need for a whole series of inquires be ing conducted through a critical lens, there was little in the volume that really gripped you. It read as if it was operating at a very superficial level, failing to engage with either the complexity of or the critical potential of the issues that it could and should have ad dressed. On my reading, the volume consisted of a rather mundane series of self-reflec tive academic studies that nearly all seemed detached from the world and the issues that they were seeking to probe. Did these people, I wondered, really have much insight into the issues they were trying to investigate? Although I had anticipated a fascinating and critical volume, the reality fell far short of my expectations. Reading many of the chapters in the present volume I got the impression that more and more of the individual studies being reviewed were like those in the Clegg and Kornberg er volume—high in theory, low in empirics; high in claims of critical positioning but low in terms of the reality of it; and high in terms of academic positioning but low in involve ment in and understanding of the empirical domain on which they sought to reflect. Take Saren and Svensson's review of critical marketing studies in Chapter 18. Living in the midst of a consumerist, brand-driven, and fashion-conscious society, this would appear to be an area for very serious critical exploration. But the impression given by Saren and Svensson is that the research potential is emergent at best in the academic management community. For more extensive critical insights we still have to look to the writings of ear ly critical philosophers, the popularizing writings of Packard (1957, 1961), Galbraith (1958), and more recently, Klein (2001), and I would add, a whole series of historical and sociological inquires conducted outside of management studies (see for instance Barthes 1985; Shields 1992; and Miller 1998; Peiss 1998). Even the accounting area has produced a lot more of what I would call bases for the development of a critical understanding rather than real critique. If one were looking for real bite among the mass of studies con ducted, it would be difficult to locate many more than the (p. 519) early Tinker (e.g., Tin ker 1980), Cooper's coal mining involvements (Cooper and Hopper 1988), the continuing concerns and activities of Sikka (see Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs: http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/home.htm), the probing and highly informative work of the Manchester team which includes Julie Froud, Jean Shaoul, and Karel Williams (see, e.g., Leaver et al. 2006), and possibly the less theoretically but certainly practically critical in sights provided by Power's The Audit Society (1997). When the will seems to be great but the achievements more modest, one wonders what is influencing the world of critical management scholarship.
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies Its setting in business and management schools must certainly be a factor. Unlike the ma jority of their American equivalents, many European business schools, most particularly those that are part of a wider university, have provided a facilitative environment for the development of the critical research community. However, I also think that such institu tions provide a constraint on its further advancement. Only so much real criticism of busi ness is likely to emerge in a setting where the vast majority of the student population is intent on entering the present day world of business, where increasing financial contribu tions come from business benefactors, where serious relationships have to be developed with the contemporary business community for the purposes of student recruitment and the sale of surplus creating executive education, and where deep intellectual differences divide the faculty. In most schools the ever influential economists and finance faculty also have a deep sus picion of more qualitative researchers, let alone the critical studies research community. One likely result of this is that despite their profound importance, economics and finance have largely been exempt from critical inquiry in conventional business school settings and that what critical work we do have on finance is now largely emerging from depart ments of sociology (for instance Knorr Cetina and Preda 2005; MacKenzie 2006). Evi dence of this is present in this very volume. Although there would be universal agreement about the power of finance in the modern world, no chapter reviews critical research and scholarship in that area, most likely because there is so little. Even Ezzamel and Robson's informative survey of the critical accounting literature makes virtually no mention of this neighboring field of inquiry, not even mentioning the financialization studies conducted by Karel Williams and his colleagues (Leaver et al. 2006) and the related, very detailed and profoundly critical accounting based studies conducted by Jean Shaoul (see http:// www.manchester.ac.uk/research/mbs/Jean.shaoul/publications). Despite these latter in sights, all the evidence points to the fact that there are a number of very real constraints on the forms of intellectual inquiry that can take place in business school settings. Keep ing largely to theory might be one response to this and keeping away from finance anoth er. Critical management scholarship also operates in the same academic world as other forms of inquiry. As I have said in several other commentaries (Hopwood 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d), the modern academic world is riddled with (p. 520) careerist re search strategies and the pursuit of publication strategies that often owe more to institu tional assessments and rankings than to intellectual curiosity. One would hope that criti cal scholars have a more acute awareness of these pressures than others, but even if they do, they are still subject to those pressures rather than being in a position where they can rise above them. The outpourings of such an involvement in conventional academic re search strategies permeate the chapters in this volume and might go some of the way to explain the concerns with what I have called minor theorizing, the relative lack of deeply empirical and historical involvements, and the limited engagements with the worlds of which they seek to be critical.
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies But real though these constraints may be, I still wonder whether they really need be so inhibiting. There are sufficient more probing and biting studies scattered through the critical management literature to give one some confidence that more could be done. In my own accounting area I would put Michael Power's The Audit Society (1997) in this category despite the fact that its conceptual basis is hardly a critical theoretic one as this is usually understood. Rather it emerges from a critical and questioning observation of the world of practice, with Power delving into what was going on with an increasing sense of unease and striving to relate his detailed observations to a wider understanding of ongoing transformations in the modern world. So providing new insights into the rapid expansion of mechanisms for institutional observation and monitoring at a distance, Power's analysis related to many people's growing sense of unease, while at the same time creating a wider insight into the forces behind the new emphasis on performativity and surveillance. The resultant analysis first appeared in a more accessible publication from an influential think-tank (Power 1994), while the subsequent scholarly monograph (Power 1997) was still written in a way that its significance was recognized by a wide spectrum of the more authoritative media. The analysis reinforced many people's worries about what was happening in the institutional domain, although we have to recognize that it still would be difficult to argue that it has had a longer term practical and political impact. Given the significance of the analysis, one might have thought that people would be clam bering to explore the more overtly critical dimensions of Power's analysis: the factors be hind the expansion of surveillance practices into the public sphere; the role played by firms of management consultants; and so on. But as yet that has not occurred in any ma jor way, something that itself points not only to the lack of cumulative analysis in the mod ern management academic community but also to the impact on the academic community of the very surveillance methodologies that Power studied. However limited the ability and however minor the idea, the careerist strategy is still to look for the seemingly new rather than what is often the more productive cumulative approach. Another series of studies that have an acute critical edge have been produced by Karel Williams and Jean Shaoul and their colleagues in Manchester. Exploring the in creasing “financialization” of the contemporary world (Leaver et al. 2006, 2008), this re search group has operated within an explicitly critical theoretic framework but developed this to provide some challenging insights into the penetration of finance into both the commercial and political worlds and the profound consequences this has had. Theoreti cally informed, these studies are also based on detailed empirical observation thereby producing a real and profound understanding of key aspects of the contemporary world. Recognizing their conceptual and pragmatic positionings in their academic titles, Williams is Professor of Accounting and Political Economy and Shaoul is Professor of Pub lic Accountability. (p. 521)
In this specific area of accounting the critical insights that can be derived from such a de tailed probing of the empirical domain are well illustrated by Shaoul's research. While Page 6 of 11
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies others may have expressed unease with the consequences of privatization initiatives in the United Kingdom and the development of mechanisms for the private financing of pub lic sector projects, Shaoul actually looks at the accounting data in the most detailed way, documenting the differential movements of cash flows consequent upon such institutional changes. Identifying how cash has been transferred from consumers, the workforce, and the public sector to the private sector operators and financiers, she produces the basis for a strong political critique of prevailing policies. Illustrating the difference between public rhetoric and its consequences, Shaoul's investigations emerge from a theoretical stance but go on to illuminate the power of such a lens to redefine, analyse, and critique prevailing institutional reforms. To me, at least, this is one element of real critical re search. A long way from accounting but also providing an illustration of critical research in action is Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System (2007). Written by an international scholar of distinction, albeit not one as sociated with critical management scholarship as normally understood, the book's thesis is that the simultaneous existence of nearly one billion people who are malnourished and nearly one billion who are overweight is the inevitable corollary of a system in which a small number of corporations have been allowed to capture the value of the world's food chain. Patel pays particular attention to the ways in which corporate and governmental pressures for neoliberal policies have undermined local food supplies with the result that 40 per cent of world trade in food is now controlled by a small number of transnational agricultural corporations in strategic partnerships with an even smaller number of seed and pesticide companies. Detailed, theoretically informed where relevant, and full of in sights, Patel's volume makes not only a powerful contribution to understanding the poli tics of food but also goes a considerable way to revealing how contemporary business strategies and structures impact on this fundamental (p. 522) aspect of human life. In this sense it relates to critical management studies but in so doing it also illuminates the em pirical poverty and the absence of a really critical edge to so much of what we call critical management research. Patel's volume is packed full of detail and insights. Reading it gen erates a real empathy for the issues he identifies. It really does have a biting edge. Having so illustrated my unease with a lot of what we have come to call critical manage ment studies, the issue is what can be done about this. Intellectual change is not easy, particularly when the factors influencing prevailing modes of work are deeply embedded in present institutional structures. Perhaps therefore it is more appropriate to identity some desirable directions for change, hoping that slowly the critical management studies community might be encouraged to move in these directions. To begin with, I think that much could be gained by opening up the area to researchers from the wider human and social sciences. Being realistic, I think that we have to recog nize the very real constraints on critical scholarship in business school settings. Being conscious of the more recent rise of a sociology of finance outside of the confines of busi ness schools and the emergent interests in other managerial phenomena in departments of anthropology, history, and sociology, not only do I think such developments should be Page 7 of 11
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies encouraged but I also think that they have the capability to provide a less constraining in stitutional base for research on business and management issues. Perhaps we need to move from critical management studies to critical studies of management. In this context it is interesting to reflect on the fact that all my examples of challenging inquiries emerged from non-business school settings. Power is at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Shaoul, Williams and their colleagues established their research po sitioning before their group moved into a business school, and Patel operates in a region al studies environment. Regardless of institutional location, however, critical researchers should be encouraged to have a much closer understanding of the managerial and business world which they seek to critique. While criticism at a distance works on some occasions, it becomes less and less effective when it is accompanied by endless minor theorizing and repeated ap peals to the empiricism of others. For at least some researchers I would not be surprised if their critical positioning vis-à-vis the business world does not constrain their willing ness to observe it in detail. For some, a repugnance with management certainly might not facilitate their gaining a detailed understanding of it. Ideally, however, the desire to cri tique any subject should result in a fascination with it and an urge to observe, learn, and understand—but not of course to believe in it. Serious critique really does require an ap preciation of what the object of attention is, how it functions and the consequences that it therefore has. But instilling such a viewpoint in the minds of the critical is not always easy, not least when we recognize that there is a more general decline in pragmatic un derstandings in modern business schools. They now seem to function (p. 523) with finance researchers who don't know much finance, accounting researchers who don't know much accounting, and so on. Indeed, the contemporary focus appears to be on the domain of re search rather than practice. Above all I think that it is important to facilitate an internal critique of critical manage ment studies. This should not be of the type of old where those of different theoretical persuasions fight endlessly about the virtues of their respective positions regardless of the consequences of this for the ultimate understandings or the social fabric of the criti cal community. Critical management studies have already suffered too much from such unproductive internal warfare. Rather the aim should be to focus on the adequacy or oth erwise of the relationship between the observed and our understanding of it. At a time when more and more of relevance has been happening in the world of action, we seem to have less and less critical understanding of it. The transformation of venture capital firms targeted at innovation into private equity establishments having more of an interest in as set management and stripping has been little investigated. We know little of the function ing of the increasingly influential sovereign wealth funds. Hedge funds have been virtual ly ignored despite the centrality of their role in recent crises. There has been little critical analysis of incentive structures in investment banks and their consequences for decisionmaking and action. And while there is a sense that modern financial practices and institu tions have been deeply implicated in the transference of wealth, little real analysis has been made of the phenomenon. So much of the world of modern finance remains very poorly investigated, as does the functioning of large yet important sectors of the modern Page 8 of 11
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies economy as Patel's exploration of the global food industry illustrated so well. Increasingly we need to create an intellectual environment that places as much emphasis on what we don't know and the resultant need to know as it does on a satisfaction with the under standings that have been gained. We constantly need to remember that it is the desire to know rather than a familiarity with what is known that drives new explorations and dis coveries. Developing a will to be really critical in a context that does not value it is not an easy task. It presents a challenge to all, be they gifted and talented or more normal commenta tors on the business and management scene. It is, however, a challenge worthy of serious attention and deep thought. The aim has been and still remains one of constructing a body of knowledge that will identify the forces at work in the organizational and societal environments in which we operate, hopefully in a way that in the longer term will facili tate action that will enable the construction of fairer and more democratic processes, be they at the organizational or societal level. To do this theory alone is not sufficient, nor is critical knowledge in general. Rather there is a need for the combined contribution of theoretical understandings, a detailed understanding of organizational and societal func tioning, and the will to act. Critical management studies needs to see itself as operating in this broader context rather than merely a conventional academic one.
References BARTHES, ROLAND (1985). The Fashion System. London: Jonathan Cape. CLEGG, STEWART R., and MARTIN KORNBERGER (2006). Space, Organizations and Management Theory. Koege: Copenhagen Business School Press. COOPER, DAVID, and TREVOR HOPPER (eds.) (1988). Debating the Coal Closures: Eco nomic Calculation in the Coal Dispute 1984–1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. GALBRAITH, JOHN K. (1958). The Affluent Society. London: Hamish Hamilton. HOPWOOD, ANTHONY G. (2007). “Whither Accounting Research?” The Accounting Re view, 82/5: 1365–1374. —— (2008a). “Changing Pressures on the Research Process: Trying to Research in an Age When Curiosity Is Not Enough,” European Accounting Review, 17/1: 87–96. —— (2008b). “Taking the European Accounting Review Forward,” Newsletter of the Euro pean Accounting Association, 21/1: 16–20. —— (2008c). “Schools Must Focus on Ideas Not Research ‘Hits,’” The Financial Times, 21 July: 15. —— (2008d). “Management Accounting Research in a Changing World,” Journal of Man agement Accounting Research. Page 9 of 11
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies KLEIN, NAOMI (2001). No Logo. London: Flamingo. KNORR CETINA, K., and PREDA A. (eds.) (2005). The Sociology of Financial Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LEAVER, A., J. FROUD, K. WIMAMS, and ZHANG W. (2006). Financialization and Strate gy: Narrative and Numbers. London: Routledge. MACKENZIE, DONALD (2006). An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. MILLER, DANNY (1998). A Theory of Shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press. PACKARD, VANCE (1957). The Hidden Persuaders. London: Longmans, Green. —— (1961). The Waste Makers. London: Longmans, Green. PATEL, RAJ (2007). Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System. London: Portobello Books. PEISS, KATHY (1998). Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. New York: Henry Holt and Company. POOVEY, MARY (1998). A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. POWER, MICHAEL (1994). The Audit Explosion. London: Demos. —— (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. SHIELDS, ROB (1992). Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption. London: Rout ledge. TINKER, ANTHONY M. (1980). “Towards a Political Economy of Accounting: An Empiri cal Illustration of the Cambridge Controversies,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, 5/1: 147–160.
Anthony G. Hopwood
Anthony Hopwood is the American Standard Companies Professor of Operations Management and Student of Christ Church at the University of Oxford. Educated at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago, prior to moving to Oxford in 1995, he held professorships at the London Business School and the Lon don School of Economics and Political Science. Anthony served as Dean of the Said Business School during its formative years, 1999 to 2006. He was also President of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels, from 1995 to 2003. In 2006 he was appointed Chairman of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment. A prolific author, Anthony is also Editor-in-Chief of the major interna
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On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies tional research journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society. He was elected to the USA's Accounting Hall of Fame in 2008.
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management
Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management Steve Frenkel The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0026
Abstract and Keywords This article begins with a commentary on labour-process theory (LPT), particularly Paul Thompson's contribution to the Handbook. This provides historical background to some important divisions within this area of scholarship. A critical appraisal of Fleming and Mandarini's analysis of work follows. Since management organizes labour and most forms of work, the article leaves until last the subject of human-resource management as inter preted by Keenoy. The concluding section advocates tolerance and compromise in the search for a more inclusive, intellectually stimulating, research community in which criti cal management studies might act as a ‘catalytic integrator’. Keywords: labour-process theory, human-resource management, critical management studies, Paul Thompson, forms of work
Introduction ACADEMICS researching work and organizations often inhabit parallel universes and as members of small, isolated, niche communities, our occupational identities are often frag ile. Fragmentation according to discipline and epistemological orientation confuses re search students and discourages our brightest undergraduate prospects from pursuing an academic career. By simplistic labeling (positivists vs constructivists) and superficial criticism based on a very limited engagement with “the others” research, we emphasize difference and maintain fragmentation. Discursive politics attains legitimacy when jour nals publish “debates” that only serve to keep open the wounds of these so-called para digm wars. Can anything be done about this? Is there a particular role for CMS in this process? By examining the claims of contributors to three chapters of this Handbook I shall argue that we need to promote the Habermasian ideal of democratic (p. 526) dialogue, in effect, cre ating a more inclusive community around the themes of work and organizations. This Page 1 of 11
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management should focus on values (ends) and processes (means) with critique being a central motif, leaving open the possibility that this may vary in extent to which research challenges the status quo. We need to cultivate openness to relevant disciplines (sociology, social psy chology, history, economics, etc.) and make explicit a minimum set of common norms des ignating excellence in research (and teaching). In what follows I shall provide some point ers to how this might be achieved. This review begins with a commentary on labor process theory (LPT), particularly Paul Thompson's (Chapter 5, part 1) contribution to the Handbook. This provides historical background to some important divisions within this area of scholarship. A critical ap praisal of Fleming and Mandarini's analysis of work (Chapter 16) follows. Since manage ment organizes labor and most forms of work, I leave until last the subject of human re source management as interpreted by Keenoy (Chapter 22). The concluding section advo cates tolerance and compromise in the search for a more inclusive, intellectually stimulat ing, research community in which CMS might act as a “catalytic integrator.”
Enlivening Labor Process Theory In part one of Chapter 5 of this Handbook Thompson cogently summarizes the theoretical tendencies that comprise LPT. This domain, including the emphasis given by some schol ars to subjectivity and identity, needs however to be understood against a wider canvass of research undertaken by other scholars. Thus, LPT never had much to say about the or ganization of oppositional forms—trade unions and workers' political parties; neither did it add much of significance regarding the operation and impact of markets (financial, product, or labor) on the labor process. A major reason for this is that in the 1970s and subsequently, industrial relations specialists, sociologists, socialist activists, and political economists occupied these domains. This was particularly true of unions inside and be yond the workplace (Beynon 1974; Batstone, Boraston, and Frenkel 1977). Even in the LPT heartland of work, the worker, and worker participation, exemplary research was be ing undertaken by industrial sociologists (Fox 1974; Edwards 1979), sociologists of capi talism (Mann 1973; Korpi 1978;), and socialist activists (Barratt-Brown 1972). This, and later work on gender (Walby 1998), influenced LPT, and importantly, constrained its iden tity, limiting LPT mainly to the themes of technology, control, skill, worker resistance, and relatedly, worker subjectivity and identity (see Knights and Willmott 1990). In short, one reason for LPT's limited influence is that on (p. 527) the one hand, it failed to distinguish itself from extant sociological research, and when the so-called reconstructors—those em phasizing postmodernist, constructivist accounts of organizations—subsequently did so by pursuing subjectivity and identity analysis, few followed. Its scope was threatening to narrow the field of research, encouraging the development of an isolated niche communi ty that in time turned its back on new theorizing in psychology (Haslam, Powell, and Turner 2001; Sluss and Ashforth 2007; Grandey 2008) that speaks to the social construc tion of identity and workers' emotional responses, strategies and relational conse
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management quences. Instead, these scholars have adopted a distinctive epistemology and language that remains largely inaccessible to outsiders. On the other hand, as Thompson notes, subjectivity, identity, and associated practices of cooperation and resistance, are important elements in explaining control dynamics, but they are only part of the story. Here is a willingness to cooperate with, rather than op pose, those who wish to deny the reality of social structure. However, the preference of reconstructors (see OʼDoherty, Chapter 5, part 2) for antagonistic separation partly re flects the tendency by consolidators like Thompson to retain a commitment to so-called core theory, or what I prefer to call “big theory.” This refers to a theory of capitalist politi cal economy that would encompass the globe and include state formations and the strate gies of various actors that influence the labor process and its outcomes. There are three problems with this. First, as the reconstructors might have it, the grand narrative of class conflict has run its course. Second, if we are to build big theory why should the labor process be privileged? This is not to say that the labor process should not be studied but there are arguably stronger candidates—poverty, health, and climate change come to mind. Third, building big theory is a massive, and arguably impossible undertaking. It re quires specialist knowledge across many domains (international finance and trade, inno vation, state and corporate governance, etc.). Instead, we need dialogue and agreement on mid-range problems within the area of work, organizations and management, appro priate theory, and methodologies that might address these issues. Analogous to opensource software development, this appeal should be to LPT consolidators and reconstruc tors and to other interested researchers. The role of CMS supporters in this dialogue would be to argue for reflexive research that can be used by participants to redesign or ganizations to sustain employee fulfillment and thriving at work (see Duberley and John son, Chapter 17 in this Handbook).
Work and Disengagement Turning to Peter Fleming and Matteo Mandarini's (F&M) Chapter 16 on “Work,” I argue that these authors appear to be disengaged from the wider community (p. 528) of sociolo gists and psychologists and that the type of analysis they offer is itself, disengaging. Their exposition nevertheless has some value in reminding us that CMS scholars need to find a way to embrace emancipation as a research goal. The authors assert that work is ubiquitous, important, and central to CMS because it is the main source of politics of everyday life. A prime focus on work “results from the unique historical amalgamation of management and the sociology of work” (p. 330). F&M discuss how CMS research on work has been undertaken and comment on contemporary work research, concluding with some suggestions for alternative lines of analysis. I will confine my comments to their arguments about the nature of work and its context (man agement), methodology, and future lines of enquiry.
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management F&M do not define their key concepts and some key points of their exposition are unclear. Thus, we are told that in contemporary society work is synonymous with “a job.” But work occurs outside of formal employment especially among the sprawling urban migrant underclass in developing countries. Work is thus much more than “a job”; it is activity that yields an economic return. The authors' lack of precision is further illustrated by the claim that “mainstream management has expunged “work” from contemporary analysis” (p. 331) and that mainstream management hold a functionalist view of the orga nization (p. 331). Yet, a close reading of the text suggests that F&M are referring to main stream management researchers and not managers. If this is correct, then whom do they have in mind? Important contributors to research on management such as Steve Ackroyd, Paul Adler, Rose Batt, Peter Boxall, Paul Edwards, Anthony Ferner, and John Purcell would dispute the functionalist label. If the authors are referring to managers, they are out of touch. One of the most critical management problems is workers' limited engage ment with their work and employing organization (Rampersad and El-Homsi 2007). This is underscored by instability arising from hyper competition and its consequences, partic ularly downsizing, and mergers and acquisitions. It would thus be remarkable if there was evidence (none provided) supporting the authors' apparent assumption. In short, fac ing tensions with multiple bases—resources, control, status, and team or subsidiary affili ation—managers are unlikely to subscribe to a functionalist view of the enterprise, how ever much they might in theory wish to think otherwise. The “engagement problem” seems to endorse F&M's view that the study of work is im portant and clearly politics around work is integral to changing organizational arrange ments. But the assumption that work constitutes the key site for achieving emancipation is historically doubtful and especially contestable today. As noted earlier, the more impor tant question is whether there are alternative problems and sites for CMS to focus its main research agenda. Regarding methodology, the authors are critical of rigor displayed in sociology (no refer ences are provided), claiming that this “has largely been abandoned in CMS for a more journalistic approach.” (p. 333). Are these propositions justified, (p. 529) including the de scription of CMS research as “bastard empiricism” (p. 333)? Arguably, methodological rigor is vital to justify research as scholarship in contrast to journalism, and we need agreed criteria even if these may vary to some extent according to the type of research being undertaken. Secondly, the description does not do justice to the methods used by leading CMS researchers like Alvesson, Townley, and Willmott. The authors acknowledge the debate between LPT consolidators and their poststructural ist reconstructors, arguing in favor of a compromise position deemed “constructive real ism.” This argument echoes Thompson, and is one I agree with, albeit without the bag gage of core theory. So, we must look elsewhere for F&M's contribution. This is apparent ly found in the ideas of the Italian workerist movement (Tronti 1971) and Hardt and Negri (1994, 1999). Firstly, we are introduced to the concept of the social factory. Absent a clear definition, this appears to mean that labor pervades both formal employment and the sphere of non-work: work is now conducted everywhere and at all times. Traditional de Page 4 of 11
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management marcations have broken down. The claim that boundaries between work and non-work time and place are permeable is not new, the key questions are: to what extent? How does this vary across industries, occupations, and societies? And how are different kinds of workers affected? A second concept is immaterial labor. Again, no definition is provided but we are told “This points to the parasitical nature of capital and the importance of a kind of paradoxi cal autonomy” (p. 338). What does this mean? It seems to imply that workers' creative powers are relied upon to assist with innovation and profit making and that autonomy in providing this assistance has the potential to subvert capitalism. More detail would have been helpful here. What creative powers? By which kinds of workers? What key mecha nisms would facilitate a challenge to capitalism? A retrospective on financial market traders and analysts would surely be a prime target. F&M mention, but do not elaborate on the tendency for experts to collaborate in innovat ing outside organizations. These enthusiasts may sometimes be amateurs and collabora tion may occur either through communities of practice (e.g., Linux software) or as loosely connected networks of individuals working with companies (Chesbrough 2006; Howe 2008). This use of social capital has been strongly facilitated by the internet, which en ables organizations to solicit ideas from people who may be formally neither employees nor contractors. Drawing on people's desire for sociability and for intrinsically satisfying work, these network type organizations privilege lateral, collegial relations (Frenkel et al. 1999; Barley and Kunda 2004; Adler and Heckscher 2006). However, the characteristics of control and cooperation, particularly the extent to which laterality substitutes for, rather than complements hierarchy, deserves further research by CMS scholars. So do the complex dynamics of identity formation and development, and the way in which these processes contribute to the changing contours of cooperation and conflict. (p. 530) The cost and benefits, both psychological and material, that accrue to participants is a third area for critical empirical research. Having introduced the two above-mentioned concepts, F&M suggest that work involves tasks, identity formation, and social activity, i.e., cooperation with colleagues, manage ment, and with others formally outside the realm of work. This adds nothing to the litera ture on work. However, their concluding suggestions regarding a key tenet of CMS—the idea of emancipation as it relates to work—is thought provoking. Three lines of analysis are advocated. First, freedom in work, which means conducting further analysis of how workers win personal space through informal custom and practice. The second, freedom through work, refers to workers' appropriating control over their work and the organiza tion. And third, freedom from work, which means examining the way workers' resist the extension of work time, and negotiate limits to work time. These are useful pointers that have already been the subject of considerable research outside of CMS (Green 2001). Nevertheless, CMS scholars could act as “catalytic integrators,” bringing these lines of enquiry together and theorizing how these goals might be developed simultaneously and
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management researched in vanguard workplaces or sectors (NGOs perhaps) in order to facilitate the success of emancipatory initiatives. In summary, F&M have not engaged with the sociology of work literature. This limits their ability to advance innovative ideas regarding issues on which future research might concentrate, particularly from a CMS perspective. Nevertheless, despite lack of clarity, their contribution suggests avenues for research associated with new organizational forms and they make some useful points linking research to emancipation.
Human Resource Management and the Limita tions of Discourse Analysis Tom Keenoy (Chapter 22) invites readers to consider human resource management (HRM) as a “discursive cultural artifact,” his objective being to “account for the discourse of academic HRM.” He believes this to be important because “as a discourse of change underpinning management practice in the so-called globalizing economy, HRM seems to enjoy unparalleled success” (p. 454). Keenoy proceeds by providing an historical account of the development of the HRM concept, situating it in its various sociological and cultur al contexts, emphasizing its association with neoliberal government policies. He claims that HRM dominates the contemporary discourse of employment relations and argues that its major theme—the relationship between HRM and organizational performance—is a chimera, largely (p. 531) because positivistic research proceeds by simplifying and hence inappropriately posing problems and then seeks to resolve these by measuring and quantitatively analyzing variables that are devoid of their likely contested meanings gen erated in complex sociological settings. He asserts that this research program privileges a managerial perspective at the expense of workers and their organizations, and without due consideration of the broader social and political context in which HRM is enacted. Keenoy argues that the task of CMS-inspired research is to highlight this discourse of control, revealing how it works in practice to influence individual sensibilities and actions relating to performance (p. 467). In addition, such research should “further elaborate plausible discourses (or theories) which renders the contemporary norm of “individual ized performativity” problematic for mainstream HRM” (p. 468). Discourse analysis is about language and how it influences action. As such, Keenoy's con tribution is limited. Moreover, it has deeper flaws that need to be acknowledged and ad dressed if CMS-inspired research of this type is to significantly contribute to our knowl edge of management. Firstly, the author claims that HRM underpins management practice and therefore de serves attention. No evidence is given for this proposition. Indeed, leading US HRM re searchers bemoan the lack of influence of HR managers among senior management (Lawler, Boudreau, and Mohrman 2006), hence successive calls for HR to develop strate gic and analytic capability, leading rather than simply participating in top management team deliberations (Huselid, Becker, and Beatty 2005; Boudreau and Ramstad 2007). Page 6 of 11
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management Moreover, Rynes, Colbert, and Brown (2002) have shown that the gap between HR re search and management practice is wide, with managers paying little attention to rela tively robust research findings. A related point from my current research and teaching is that many line managers seek to avoid association with the HRM function viewing it as an obstacle associated with people who lack business orientation and knowledge. Thus, if much management thought and practice does not reflect HRM, why study this discourse? Leaving this issue to one side for the moment, let us follow Keenoy in his account of acad emic HRM. His narrative is plausible but is it complete? Arguably the rise of HRM has to do with an increase in demand by students for vocationally relevant courses, a tendency related to, but not solely explained by the rise of neoliberalism. And does this trend not have something to do with the appeal of the HRM-performance discourse? Another contestable claim, which further reveals the limitation of Keenoy's analysis, is that HRM dominates the field of employment relations. This proposition confuses the ob ject of analysis and preferred explanations on the one hand, with ideological orientation on the other. Unions have declined dramatically in the private sector of liberal capitalist countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Thus, the study of employ ment relations in these countries has come to focus more on non-union and weakly orga nized settings. This does not mean that researchers have necessarily embraced the uni tarist ideology of HRM as (p. 532) portrayed by Keenoy. Explanations do not feature work ers' organizations or indeed worker resistance because in many cases these are deemed irrelevant. Yet, some of the leading texts in HRM do share a pluralist perspective (Paauwe 2004; Boxall and Purcell 2007). What Keenoy fails to acknowledge and analyze is that HRM may be a convenient domain for many social scientists working in business schools, and that this concept is highly contested. In other words, it is a floating signifier whose content requires systematic, detailed interrogation. While it is true that the research stream focusing on the HRM—performance relationship has generated many studies and is influential among leading HRM academics, the author ignores significant critical analyses within this oeuvre (Ramsay, Scholarios, and Harley 2000; Godard 2001) and adjacent to it (Hodson 2004). Furthermore, he provides no evi dence that this area of scholarship dominates the field. An analysis of key journals and conference proceedings, including a recent Handbook on HRM (Boxall, Purcell, and Wright 2007) would probably show that HRM academics have much more diverse inter ests, particularly as HRM has permeable boundaries with other management disciplines such as organization theory, organizational behavior, and international management. Nev ertheless, Keenoy criticizes the research strategy and methodology of some of its leading exponents. This takes us into the deep waters of epistemology and acceptable modes of conducting social science. It prompts questions about Keenoy's (and others') discourse analysis. Why should we be concerned with academic discourse, in this case HRM, when no evidence is presented regarding its connection with management practice? What methodological rules enable us to distinguish between “good” and “bad” accounts? And how are we to precisely gauge the impact of language on identity and social action? Quantitative researchers may be criticized for claiming too much based on abstracting, measuring, and testing relationships between variables—but can discourse analysts es Page 7 of 11
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management cape the criticism that what they offer is little more than descriptions of language use in highly specific settings? Can generalizable statements or conjectures be developed from this kind of research? And if so, what techniques are available for verification and imple mentation? Answers to these questions will determine the contribution such analysis can make to management knowledge in general and to CMS in particular. Keenoy seems to provide an answer to this last question. It is to subvert the apparent pre occupation of academics with the HRM—performance nexus with an alternative rhetoric. As he recognizes, this will require research on how managers and employees make sense of, and act upon concepts used in the workplace to manage people. This agenda however would seem to provide an opportunity for discourse analysis but only as one tool among many. The key question is what other tools can be brought to bear on this question? How can they complement each other? And is it possible to develop theory that would satisfy those who aim to combine structural and constructivist explanations geared to emancipa tory goals?
(p. 533)
Conclusions
In this review of three contributions to the Handbook I have argued for less exclusivity, reduced antagonism between specialist groups, and a search for common values. This preference for a more inclusive community of work and management researchers derives from a personal view that despite the efforts of some leading researchers, exclusivity re mains a far more powerful force than its opposite. I also believe there is no single path way to the truth and that the consequences of academic tribalism—some of which I re ferred to in the Introduction, and others I noted in the text—are essentially destructive. These include a tendency to ignore high quality research conducted outside the bound aries of one's community, or to treat such work disrespectfully and superficially. Instead, internal debates divert attention from more serious research. Standards of scholarship, particularly regarding methodology, appear to slip, as communities remain hostile to techniques associated with “the other.” While these remarks are made in the context of contributions to this Handbook, they are no less valid in relation to communities that em phasize theory testing and generalizability as the main aims of research. By arguing for inclusiveness I am not advocating that differences should be suppressed and that we promote a unitarist approach to research. On the contrary, meso-communi ties should be encouraged to thrive where these groups subscribe to certain values. These include tolerance of difference, a preference to cooperate, openness to experimen tation and change, and commitment both to democratic dialogue and to a minimum set of common standards of excellence. CMS would remain a meso-community within which there would be disciplinary and subject-area differences. As suggested earlier, CMS might act as a “catalytic integrator” vis á vis the wider work and management research community around key values and concepts. The values I have in mind are constructivist realism, critique, reflexivity, and emancipatory research designs. Two candidate focal concepts are power and authority. These have a long tradition in the management litera Page 8 of 11
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management ture and are associated with many important contemporary issues such as the architec ture of political-economic systems, enterprise governance and design, leadership, en gagement and identity of employees and other economic contributors, and the conse quences of prevailing organizational arrangements (Knights, Chapter 7, this volume; Alvesson and Willmott 2003). For this to occur, leading CMS researchers need to strengthen their participation in mainstream conferences and journals. Greater inclusivity would bring several benefits. These include inter alia: a more exciting research environment; a more cooperative and supportive community that would hopeful ly extend to formal university cooperation, particular in supporting PhD programs; a more attractive milieu for younger academics; stronger student demand for our courses and a consequent increase in funding; a more powerful institutional presence in universi ties and in relation to grant-giving (p. 534) institutions; and finally, greater impact on the world of work and perhaps society more generally. A pipe dream? Perhaps, but surely worth serious consideration and discussion.
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management FOX, A. (1974). Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations. London: Faber & Faber. FRENKEL, S., KORCZYNSKI, M., SHIRE, K., and TAM, M. (1999). On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. GODARD, J. (2001). “High Performance and the Transformation of Work? The Implica tions of Alternative Work Practices for the Experience and Outcomes of Work,” Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 54: 776–805. GRANDEY, A. (2008). “Emotions at Work: A Review and Research Agenda,” in C. Cooper and J. Barling (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Behavior, vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, pp. 234–261. GREEN, F. (2001). “It's Been A Hard Day's Night: The Concentration and Intensification of Work in Late Twentieth Century Britain,” British Journal of Industrial Relations, 39/1: 53–80. HARDT, M., and NEGRI, A (1994). Labor of Dionysus: A Critque of the State Form. Min neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (1999) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (p. 535)
HASLAM, A., POWELL, C, and TURNER, J. (2001). “Social Identity, Self-catego
rization, and Work Motivation: Rethinking the Contribution of the Group to Positive and Sustainable Organizational Outcomes,” Applied Psychology, 49/3: 319–339. HODSON, R. (2004). “Organizational Trustworthiness: Findings from the Population of Organizational Ethnographies,” Organization Science, 15/4: 432–445. HOWE, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. New York: Random House. HUSELID, M., and BEATTY, J. (2005). Managing the Workforce. Boston: Harvard Busi ness School Press. HUSELID, M., BECKER, B., and BEATTY, R. (2005). The Workforce Scorecard: Manag ing Human Capital to Execute Strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. HYMAN, R. (2001). Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society. London: Sage. KNIGHTS, D., and WILLMOTT, H. (eds.) (1990). Labour Process Theory. London: Macmillan. KORPI, W. (1978). The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions, and Politics in Sweden. London: Routledge.
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Critical Reflections on Labor Process Theory, Work, and Management LAWLER, E., BOUDREAU, J., and MOHRMAN, S. (2006). Achieving Strategic Excel lence: an Assessment of Human Resource Organizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. MANN, M. (1973). Consciousness and Action in the Western Working Class. London: Macmillan. PAAUWE, J. (2004). HRM and Performance: Achieving Long-Term Viability. Oxford: Ox ford University Press. RAMSAY, H., SCHOLARIOS, D., and HARLEY, B. (2000). “Employees and High-Perfor mance. Work Systems: Testing Inside the Black Box,” British Journal of Industrial Rela tions, 38/4: 501:31. RAMPERSAD, H., and EL-HOMSI, I. (2007). TPS-Lean Six Sigma, New York, IAP. RYNES, S., COLBERT, A., and BROWN, K. (2002). “HR Professionals' Beliefs About Ef fective Human Resource Practices: Correspondence Between Research and Practice,” Hu man Resource Management, 41/2: 149–174. SLUSS, D., and ASHFORTH, B. (2007). “Relational Identity and Identification: Defining Ourselves through Work Relationships,” Academy of Management Review, 32/1: 9–32. TOWNLEY, B. (1994). Reframing Human Resource Management: Power, Ethics and the Subject at Work. London: Sage. TRONTI, M. (1971). “Il Piano del Capitale,” Operai e Capitale. Torino: Einaudi Editore. WALBY, S. (1998). Patriarchy at Work. Cambridge: Polity press.
Steve Frenkel
Steve Frenkel is Professor of Organization and Employment Relations and Head of the Department of Organization & Management at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales. Steve has published widely in the areas of sociology of work, industrial relations, and human resource management. He is on the editorial boards of Human Relations, the Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Organization Studies, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management. His current research focuses on the organization of service work, and human resource practice patterns and their consequences in Australia and China.
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Critical Management Education
Critical Management Education Alessia Contu The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour, Research Methods Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0027
Abstract and Keywords This article focuses on critical management education (CME), which, in the last fifteen years, has emerged as one of the models/patterns of practices available today in ‘manage ment education’ (ME). ME is the institutional/practical arena of education that comprises an array of courses and programs within universities and, in particular, business schools. ‘Education’, for and of management, is widespread in secondary education, vocational courses, management development, and, more broadly, institutional, situated, and infor mal practices of ‘management learning’. ME is predominantly focused on education in business schools. The article aims to discuss CME and reflects upon its significance for/in critical management studies. The critical discussion of CME mobilizes two metaphors that are apt to this task. Keywords: critical management education, business schools, secondary education, vocational courses, manage ment development, critical management studies
Introduction THIS chapter focuses on critical management education (CME) which, in the last fifteen years, has emerged as one of the models/patterns of practices available today in “man agement education” (ME) (see Holman 2002; Grey 2004; Perriton and Reynolds 2004; Perriton 2007; Korpiahao, Paivio, and Rasanen 2007). ME is the institutional/practical are na of education that comprises an array of courses and programs within universities and, in particular, business schools. “Education,” for and of management, is widespread in sec ondary education, vocational courses, management development and, more broadly, insti tutional, situated, and informal practices of “management learning” (see Fox 1997). ME is predominantly focused on education in business schools. The aim of this chapter is to discuss CME and reflect upon its significance for/in CMS. The critical discussion of CME mobilizes two metaphors that are apt to this task. This first metaphor is that of family; both “family” qua biological classification as in “species, Page 1 of 15
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Critical Management Education genus, and family”; but also family as social bond. This metaphor enables us to grasp the process of the shaping up and the emergence of CME as an academic field in its own right. There are two moments associated with such a process. Identity-creation requires classification and difference to be constructed (p. 537) and underlined, as well as ties and bonds to be strengthened. As we shall see, we have evidence of both moments in the CME “literature.” The other metaphor I use is that of a cartel. The term “cartel” has negative connotations, as in drug or economic cartels. I am not suggesting that CME works as an economic cartel. Cartel has other traces of signification that are useful for intervening in a field such as CME, particularly in the context of a handbook on CMS. After all, the main reason for writing such a commentary in this context is that critical management educa tion is, I contend, of key importance to CMS tout court. CME cannot and, I will argue, should not be assimilated into the mainstream as another management education model or academic specialism called CME. To elaborate briefly, there are undoubtedly important functions associated with CME as a model in management education or as a specific space for reflection on the practices adopted and developed in education. Yet, I wish to underscore and develop what has been suggested in the CMS literature: that education is first and foremost the realm in which CMS has, or can have, practical impact (Alvesson and Willmott 1992, 1996; Fournier and Grey 2000; Parker 2002). Education should, I will suggest, be recognized as the basic and central, if not exclusive, practical terrain for CMS activism. In this sense, reflections and discussions on critical pedagogy and its tactics are not only for scholars who regard edu cation as their main research interest but also for any scholars developing critical studies of work, management, and organizations in business schools. Reasserting the central role of education in CMS is not only vital for CMS, but may also assist in addressing a concern that CME qua specific academic field might have exhausted its role (Grey 2004).
CME in Management Education Various authors have categorized the status of ME by invoking different constructs and heuristics: historical, epistemological, pedagogical, geographical, and political (see Hol man 2002; Grey 2004; Korpiahao, Paivio, and Rasanen 2007; Perriton 2007). In such clas sificatory efforts critical management education is represented as one of the families within the genus of ME. For example, Holman (2002) suggests that critical management education is different from the traditional model of “academic liberalism” with its focus on delivering and obtaining objective, codified knowledge and scientific skills; and it is different from “experiential vocationalism,” which stresses on-the-job development of competence through standardized and practical technical tasks. The main point is that the family of CME is distinctive in subjecting management practice and management knowledge to critical scrutiny and in (p. 538) attempting to develop and engender, to a higher or lesser degree, a critical pedagogy in the curriculum, its design, educative process, and method.
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Critical Management Education The association with critique and critical thinking, however, is not the monopoly of some thing called “critical management education.” After all, what notion of scholarship would be “uncritical”? More generally, in a world obsessed with speed, innovation, and hyper-re flexivity who, scholar or not, would claim to be “uncritical” and, as the chain of synonyms goes, “conformist” and “dogmatic”? There is an instructive and detailed discussion of what “critique” means in the context of ME (Cunliffe 2002; Clegg and Ross-Smith 2003; Mingers 2003; Smith 2003). Noticeably, critical management education is born and becomes “something” (a field, a family) almost uniquely when it is associated with critical management studies (CMS) and named (often) with the acronym “CME.” Stories of the origin of the CME family abound, as do the fathers and mothers of CME— those who have participated in advocating, proposing, and engaging with a critique of management education (Nord and Jermier 1992; Reed and Anthony 1992; Willmott 1994; French and Grey 1995; Grey 1995, 2002, Prasad and Carponi 1997; Grey and Mitev 1995; Reynolds 1998, 1999; Watson 2001; Cunliffe, Forray, and Knights 2002; Elliott and Reynolds 2002, Fenwick 2005; Fulop 2002; Perriton and Reynolds 2002; Zald 2002; Reynolds and Vince 2004; Swan 2004; Sinclair 2007) These accounts of CME configure specific people and specific relationships. It is a family marked by distinctive institutional, emotional, and geographical ties. Some features are predominant—Anglophone, UK-cen tric, but with high involvement of academics from Scandinavia, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.
Writing “CME” In common with CMS more broadly, a CME approach to management education is parti san: it is interested in unraveling and challenging oppressive relations of power and forms of economic, social, cultural, and sexual domination in management knowledge and practice including that of the classroom. Laboring on critical work in education is to be welcomed, particularly when it is subjected to continued critique and discussion. Howev er, there is always the danger of becoming, or assuming the character of, an “intellectual cartel”: The members of a cartel dominate a corner of intellectual life through a system of restrictive referencing (they reference each other), setting standards (they define what the basic assumptions in the field are), regulating access to the market (they review papers in the area and accept only those which play by their rules) and en suring all deviations are punished (through freezing-out, verbal punishment or price war) … a monopoly over a particular (p. 539) area of intellectual endeavor, they are able to demand what economists call “rent” from all those who stray up on their territory … in the form of cultural capital (such as citations). (Spicer 2005: 17)
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Critical Management Education I am not suggesting that CME works as a cartel. But to reflect on this notion reminds us that building “the field” or the “family” does not define or exhaust the scope of CME, nor does it plausibly provide CME's (and even CMS's) very raison dʼêtre. This is to be found, instead, in CME's (and CMS's) openly political agenda and emancipatory aspirations which other academic fields might not have. Moreover, while the threat of intellectual cartelization hangs over all acad emic disciplines, it is exactly because of CME's (and CMS's) emancipatory aspirations that one should be extra vigilant to it. There are also some additional issues that the metaphor of a cartel enables us to mull over …
Critical Management Education: From the Eco nomic Cartel Neoclassical economists indicate that cartels should be broken down because they stifle competition, freeze innovation, and drive down customer service. Destroying or, at least, regulating intellectual cartels may produce better research, more vigorous debate would ensue and more research would be produced (Spicer 2005: 27). One cannot be sure that this would be the outcome. What is certain, though, is that in an economic cartel, labor is not primarily about work itself, the transformation at hand, and how what it produces can be enjoyed by many. Work instead becomes mainly about maintaining and enjoying the privileges established in/by the cartel for the cartel. By questioning CME as a cartel, we can refocus on the issue of work and question the work done within CME and how it re lates to CMS's broader intent. It was with the spotlight on work that Lacan called for “cartels” to be the organizational units of the Ecole he founded in 1964. The cartels (groups of 4/5 people plus one) were self-constituted and designed to produce work which would check hierarchies and doctri naire or imaginary readings. In the case of the Ecole this was dedicated to the advance ment and critique of psychoanalysis. And in the case of CME? The work of CME is to engage in a critique of management education. But if this work is directed at the creation of, and is absorbed as another family in the genus of ME, then its subversive critical force is muted. The danger is that of domestication. If, after resisting and subverting categorizations, CME becomes a category to be used and exchanged in the academic market, something has gone astray. The challenge is to resist the allure of intellectual ownership and possession (p. 540) and the reproduction of CME as a cartel de voted to enjoying the rent of intellectual ownership; a field to which “we contribute to,” which “we understand,” and “possess” (Levinas 2006). Such cartelization can only dis tract us and obscure the struggles in which CME's labor is embroiled—namely those struggles arising in challenging and fighting oppressive relations and economic, cultural, social, and sexual domination. I return to these issues later. Firstly, I consider what more there is to a cartel than meets the eye. This helps in repositioning the value of CME for CMS tout court, and not only for those who see critical education and pedagogy as their main specialism.
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Critical Management Education
… To the Political and Medieval Cartel Openly partisan, the CME cartel is interested in advancing radically progressive research and teaching agendas in business schools. There is, however, nothing cozy, uni-dimension al, and transparent about the CME cartel. As the meditations of those who joined the La canian Ecole and, more recently, economists have indicated (Harding and Joshua 2003): the cartel in the sixteenth century designated a piece of card, on which would be written a text or a charter. It would then carry the coat of arms of a knight, and the card might be exchanged in a challenge to a duel. So, the contemporary mean ing of cartel as an agreement between business partners has covered over signifi cations of cartel as concerned with quarrelling, with necessary continual disagree ment. (Parker 2006, emphasis added) A cartel, then, is the charter as well as the paper, cards, or placards, where the charter is writ ten. As Parker indicates, such cards or placards were exchanged by knights to signify a chal lenge and initiate a duel. Marshalling such signification for CME, we can pose some useful ques tions: if, as a cartel, we are also dealing with antagonism and continual disagreement, what is written on the placards carried by the exponents of CME? What are the cards on the table of CME practice? I now, briefly, indicate what these cards are, and then I am going to develop each of them in turn.
One of the cards to be put on the table is that of focusing, and even celebrating, educa tion as a form of activism. Education as activism suggests that this is not only the domain of a restricted niche of those interested in “critical pedagogy” and management learning qua academic specialism. This also implies that there may be something to be learned by proponents of CMS from these specialized debates within the academic subfield of CME. Notably, there is something to be learned about tactics of engagement in the practicali ties of teaching and learning. (p. 541)
The second card on the table addresses and thematizes some of the struggles
faced in business schools. Arguably, CMS, as a broad movement, confronts anyone and any practice that silences the oppressive and exploitative nature of late capitalism and supports and legitimates the advancement of technocratic, phallocentric, and deeply irre sponsible practices. Those very abstract categories of struggles are wooly and porous in their articulation with the concrete. So it is important to reflect on actual contemporary struggles, one of which is the hegemonic battle for the meaning of education (Bridgman 2007). This, in the everyday practice of universities, is played up, for example, in the ten sion between time and value of teaching versus research; or the dilemmas of having a high volume of students with also an increasingly diverse cultural background who are still, nevertheless, all supposed to learn through a model that needs to be “good for all” and rarely accounts for differences and the inequalities therein generated (Reynolds and Trehan 2003). The final card to be put on the table addresses the tensions in these struggles and the very conceptualization of “struggle.” This card counters a certain attitude of those “with in” CMS towards the value of critical work in business schools. To address this, I will mo Page 5 of 15
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Critical Management Education bilize some of the ideas developed by Harney (2007). I do this, firstly, because Harney's intervention has reached a wider audience including CMS, where it has indeed caused something of a stir. Secondly, because Harney's perspective revisits the notion of “social ization” which is key to (critical) pedagogy.
Education as Activism Business schools are big business today because of, prosaically, the sheer number of mon ey and students involved but also, politically, because of what the very being of business schools, and these growing numbers, stands for, i.e., the managerialization and commodi fication of higher education in the global market: In the United States, admittedly the most extreme example, almost one in four stu dents in colleges and universities now majors in business, while the number of business schools has grown fivefolds since 1957 … some of these leading schools are now run as de facto companies. (Thrift 2005: 35) CMS and the business school mainstream both share a lamentation for a lack of impact and rele vance of their knowledge “beyond academia.” This debate is extremely interesting because it is a “critique” played up in the mainstream of the American A-list journals. In the prestigious pages of Harvard Business Review (p. 542) Bennis and OʼToole suggest that the current model and methods of scientific knowledge used in business schools are:
useful, necessary and even enlightening. But because they are at arms's lengths from actual practice, they often fail to reflect the way business works in real life. (Bennis and OʼToole 2005: 99) This proposition seems akin to what psychology as a discipline experienced in the early 1980s when cognitivism started to be questioned, on a “scientific” basis, for its lack of “ecological” va lidity. The call for real life and real experiences of managers as being vital to proper, relevant management education reverberates in all such critical interventions. Mintzberg (2005) is, per haps, the most famous advocate of this. What is interesting is that when “scientific” method is used to address this issue of lack of relevance and impact, as Pfeffer and Fong (2002) have at tempted, the evidence is, at “best mixed”; one can find studies proposing evidence “for” and some “against.” In other words, there would seem to be no logical inductive guarantor on which one can base such critique and therefore the actions one should take.
If this consideration is something that, in CMS, we mostly accepted as obvious, Pfeffer and Fong (2002) are not about to accept and openly acknowledge such a deadlock, re gardless of stumbling upon it. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) instead move on to make their case for changes in the business school curriculum by summoning a theoretical shift on learn ing and teaching. They refer, among others, to Kolb's model of experiential learning and call for teaching that is based more on “experience, action, and is multidisciplinary.” This is similar to what commentators and CME's educators have been saying and experiment ing with for many years; as has been pointed out, light-heartedly, by Wensley (2005).
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Critical Management Education Why do Pfeffer and Fong stop at Kolb? Why not consider current debates that are shaping learning theory? Mobilizing the notion of situated learning theory would recast complete ly the questions Pfeffer and Fong ask in relation to relevance and impact. When learning is understood as participation in a practice and knowledge is no longer conceived as a thing but as an embodied, lived-in social activity embedded in the socio-historical context, then the questions of relevance and impact are radically recast. In such a perspective, it would be inappropriate to think of, let alone find, solid evidence of “the contention that mastery of the subject matter of business schools, at least as assessed by grades, is relat ed to subsequent performance in business” (see Pfeffer and Fong 2002: 83). Good grades in a management essay can say very little about the actual mastery of management prac tice. Mainly, this is because in situated learning theory individual competency and ability is considerably based on the accomplishments in the actual practice and the numerous forms of recognition other members of that practice offer. If the situatedness of knowl edge were to be taken seriously, it would involve a “paradigmatic” shift that (p. 543) would question the logic, method and validity of the kind of scientific work exemplified by Pfef fer and Fong (2002). This kind of work is not only the norm but even too often what one is expected to mimic when writing for the A-list journals (Eden 2002). What these considerations bring to our attention is the process of legitimation, naturaliza tion and institutionalization present in the reproduction of the stories elaborated to ac count for the successes/failures of business schools and the educative process within them. Pfeffer's critique is acute, pointing out that consulting companies, investment banks and other industrial and service companies are complicit in sustaining the dis course that business students buy into (Pfeffer 2005: 1094). In such a discourse what stu dents buy is not an education but a “pedigree” (Pfeffer and Fong 2002) or “credentials” to enhance their career prospects and salaries (Pfeffer 2005: 1093). One of the key differ ences between Pfeffer's critique and that of CME and CMS is that for these two authors too heavy a reliance upon a market-like ideology means that business schools “may run the risk of losing competitive advantage” (Pfeffer and Fong 2004: 1503). There is minimal attention to the ethico-political issues this ideology generates in education as well as more broadly. Why is this important for education as a form of activism for CMS? The response to this question, developed in CME, is that such ethico-political issues are what animate the critical intent. The argument, which I summarize from CME interven tions, goes as follows. If, as many have suggested, business schools are associated with the birth and reproduction of management qua profession and qua legitimate knowledge (and they are therefore instrumental in perpetuating capitalist relations) then being at a core of such a legitimating machine, it is argued, can aid the struggle to subvert and dis turb that which legitimizes exploitation of anything for profit as its modus operandi. So, traditionally, CME has accepted, by questioning and attempting to subvert it, the ideologi cal role of education and the involvement in the process of students' socialization. Through education, there is the possibility of intervening in such socialization to facilitate a certain “consciousness” or self-identity. Educational work, in this sense, involves a ques tioning of the shrewd, calculative, performance-oriented notion of the individual to engen Page 7 of 15
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Critical Management Education der, instead, reflexive, critical practitioners able to understand and operate in the com plexity of the social world and the political and ethical issues embedded in their manager ial knowledge as well as practice. Obviously, one can debate the standing of such “con sciousness,” and the very possibility we have of intervening in such “consciousness.” Notwithstanding the fine debate on such issues, what is undeniable is that educare is a complex practice and in CME there are a number of practical suggestions on how to de velop such practice. Specifically, there are tactics that critical educators draw upon when working with students in educare qua activism within the political project of both CME and, more broadly, CMS (Adler 2002b).
Struggles in the Business Schools: Tactics from CME (p. 544)
In the field of CME much effort has been put into elaborating ever new forms of peda gogy: critical pedagogy, pedagogy of difference, pedagogy of refusal. The CME literature indicates that tactics of activist education can be realized in five basic, often combined, ways: 1. Subversion of the traditional management curriculum. In such a tactic the tradi tional content (i.e., motivation, accounting systems, control systems) is questioned by activating critical social theories and philosophies that are ignored and marginalized in the mainstream, therefore making it possible to question the taken-for-granted and de-legitimizing the “there is no alternative” trope. 2. Deviation from the traditional business school curriculum. This means a critical fo cus on sexuality, gender, ethics, race, and difference. This enables an enrichment of students' perspectives and their abilities to discern complexities and view points, as well as the dilemmas and paradoxes. 3. Hybridization of the traditional business school curriculum. This favours the inclu sion of critical political economic accounts, broadening views of what counts as man aging, organizing and accounting, or focusing on alternative forms of organizing and experiences beyond capitalism. 4. Experimentation in the traditional design of courses and classroom relations and practices. This includes the re-visitation and critical appropriation of (a) strategies and activities developed in experiential learning, action learning and situated learn ing used with executive MBAs and specialist programs; (b) the various movements that have tried to make the curriculum more “relevant” and enjoyable for students the use of novels, music, comedy, theatre, cinemas, and research. 5. Over-identification with the positions, claims, and behaviors established in the mainstream. This over-identification is designed to unsettle the desire of those in volved and, therefore, question what such desire is about. This is, arguably, an area that is currently under-developed and would benefit from more work. A classic exam ple of over-identification in action is the lectures to American students as well as ex ecutives filmed in the movie The Yes Men. Page 8 of 15
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Critical Management Education Clearly education is not the only terrain in which such a struggle against the logic of profit at all cost and irresponsible, exploitative practices, is enacted. Arguably, in the moment in which the system of advanced, hyper capitalism we have been enjoying in the last decade or so is showing its toll and dislocations are becoming more obvious—for example, in the corporate scandals of amongst others, ENRON and Andersen; the widening gap between rich and poor, within and be tween nations; (p. 545) The credit crunch affecting and even bankrupting many nations; the en vironmental crises we are all facing—then this moment may be critical for CMS. As Adler (2002a) has suggested, CMS may have a key role to play in re-shaping the current crisis and providing frameworks to understand and address the complexities of what we are living through. At this critical moment perhaps the role of the “public intellectual” can be played not only by develop ing sophisticated analyses to be made available to the broader public as well as interested con stituencies, but also by engaging in what Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman (2007) call “critical performativity.” This invites us to intervene actively and pragmatically in specific debates and mobilize interventionists and new research tactics that “radically question management, chal lenge managerialism and re-imagine managerial practices” (ibid.: 4).
Obviously, such a process needs not to be limited to the practice of actual research and scholarly work such as publishing handbooks or journal articles, but may well involve the very way education is done. For example, one can envisage the coordination of teaching activities (talks, students-led research, case studies, films, etc.) with environmental cam paigns, migrant workers' campaigns, trade unions, human rights associations, journalists, social enterprises, cooperatives, and corporations. The point here is not to make a com prehensive list of “what is possible,” but rather to consider how critical performativity can also be associated with practices of education which invite students to engage active ly with working and organizing practices “out there.” But is this enough? Does it actually make any difference? Are such tactics ever even possible?
… and Tensions These questions bring to the fore matters of emancipation and responsibility. Life and work always entail them, and in critical work they become objects of reflection them selves. Watson suggests that “critical management educators must come to terms with the logic of their occupational role” (Watson 2001). This, certainly, means to consider and accept the many tensions and contradictions experienced by management educators and, one should add, by students. One of the tensions, as noted earlier, is between the de mands of research outputs, the growing attention towards the third stream of income based on externally funded research, and the actual time academics have for a growing and demanding student population. This “time” certainly has less institutional and profes sional value and often students pay the price of such tension. The possibility of being rad ical, of embodying and embedding in the educative process what we develop in our re search is not easy. This is without even considering the suspicions, and sometimes opposi tions, many (p. 546) exponents of CME encounter when, for example, they attempt to draw attention to issues of power relations and inequalities and focus on issues of gender, di versity, and ethics. They are often regarded as mavericks of whom we are to be wary, even though they may be interesting. Arguably, it is in such contexts that CMS qua movement, CMS as an academic division within the academy, and CME as legitimate Page 9 of 15
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Critical Management Education model of, and cartel in, ME, can be very helpful in supporting and sustaining such critical identities and practices. It is important to make critical education a collective enterprise. Sharing tactics, strategies, and materials, as well as lending recognition and facilitating identification, within and across institutions can be of considerable help in supporting col leagues in their critical and political endeavor. Moreover, in repositioning education as activism within the CMS project it is important to re-evaluate the very notion of socialization considered earlier. In fact, as Harney (2007) has suggested socialization does not happen only in specific places/time, separate from other places/times when/where it does not happen. Socialization happens everywhere and we are always enmeshed in it. Also Goshal (2005) reminds us that students do not learn ideas and ways of understanding and being only by attending classes in business schools; but, as he puts it with sublime simplicity, these ideas and theories are “in the air” (ibid.: 75, emphasis added). This widespread socialization, rather than inviting a retreat from critical work (as it would seem to be irrelevant), suggests its radicalization. This is be cause students and teachers in business schools are both always caught in a self-expand ing process of socialization of labor and capital where the business school itself is “the site of struggle between the society of producers and social undertakings of capital” (Harney 2007: 149). So if educators go beyond an understanding of themselves as those who socialize students into being “managers,” and, therefore, they traverse the fantasy that critical work enlightens students by creating a more developed critical con sciousness, then it is possible to consider critical work in education differently. For exam ple, the usual distinction that is seen between “interpretation” and “change” would not be tenable because they are not two planes of existence irrevocably separate, particularly for academics in their occupational role or students in theirs. But, rather, they are always one and the same—part of this expanding process of socialization. Labor, including that of “interpreting” and “understanding,” of both educators and students always has an impact and consequence. This is important also for recasting what some insist should be a “real struggle.” This real struggle seems to refer to the quest, but also the nostalgia, for something that will change everything, but that is dramatically postponed to another place that is not here, or another time that is not now. Rather, such a view of socialization invites both acade mics and students to consider that the real struggle is always already happening and we are caught up in it all the time. In other words, the constant quest for radical change as a revolutionary moment to come; or as something that was, or has been, in the past; or as something opposed to “knowledge, (p. 547) understanding or interpretation”; or even as something which is primarily about “knowledge/understanding/interpretation” is a red herring. It would be apt to say that the real struggle is not “to come.” The real struggle is here and now. One is always already called to it. One is always responsible for it, in the acts and decisions made everyday in continuing working or learning in business schools; in what one actually does in such work; and in how both educators and students under stand, react, position, distort and creatively appropriate the logic of their “role” within education. Focusing on students' socialization can be a significant learning experience for academics and provide rich, relevant, and very radical possibilities of articulations of/for Page 10 of 15
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Critical Management Education collective struggles in the direction of CME and CMS values. As many in CME and CMS have suggested, if one thinks in strategic terms, and as Harney put it “depending on the demands of capital” (Harney 2007), the ways to do critical work multiplies so that “whether to insist on role, status or system becomes a purely strategic issue not a norma tive one” (ibid.: 149). What is critical in critical work then is not only elaborating theories, which are often un derscored by strong, normative components, but elaborating strategies tactics, and pro ducing interventions to be enacted in different moments and in different ways. Such strategies, tactics, and interventions are contingent decisions rather than being necessar ily dictated by some abstract category or norm. This brings us away from both nostalgic and normative ways of conducting/evaluating what is critical work and radical work. This is still not enough for some and, in fact, some academics leave academia and go on to pastures new—different “faces” and, hence, dif ferent ethical demands. Nonetheless, to those cynics who cannot act and instead perse vere in working in business schools bemoaning the limited nature of critical work one may just gently agree with them. Of course, our relationships are compromised, tainted, and infected. What would the contrary be? Some kind of imaginary “purist” struggle? If history and leftist political work have taught us anything it is that struggles are always dirty, often bloody; they are never clear cut, let alone “pure”.
Conclusion In conclusion, let me refer to the discussion on what would happen if “CMS won” and the business schools were all deserted and left decaying (Parker 2000; Grey 2002). I must confess that if business schools were confined to history, the buildings adopted for some thing else as a result of a radical and progressive transformation of the relations of pro duction and the way we organized our societies, I would be glad. Yes, our life as we know it would be ended. But that is the point of radical (p. 548) change. Moreover, this would not mean the end of power; and the vicissitudes of values such as freedom and equality would always be open and contested. It is with these considerations in mind that the struggle and our responsibility in it can be considered unending.
References ADLER, P. (with help from CMS IG) (2002a). “Corporate Scandals: It's Time for Reflec tions in Business Schools,” Academy of Management Executive, 16/3: 148–149. —— (2002b). “Critical in the Name of Whom and What?” Organization, 9/3: 387–395. BENNIS, W., and OʼTOOLE, J. (2005). “How Business Schools Lost their Ways,” Harvard Business Review, May: 96–104. ALVESSON, M., and WILLMOTT, H. (eds.) (1992). Critical Management Studies. Lon don: Sage. Page 11 of 15
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Critical Management Education —— (1996). Making Sense of Management. London: Sage. BRIDGMAN, T. (2007). “Reconstituting Relevance: Exploring Possibilities for Manage ment Educators' Critical Engagement with the Public,” Management Learning, 38: 424. CLEGG, S., and ROSS-SMITH, A. (2003). Revising the Boundaries: Management Educa tion and Learning in a Post Positivist World, Academy of Management Learning and Edu cation, 2/1: 85–99. CUNLIFFE, A. (2004). On Becoming a Critically Reflective Practitioner, Journal of Man agement Education, 28/4: 407–426. CUNLIFFE, A., FORRAY, J., and KNIGHTS, D. (2002). “Considering Management Educa tion: Insights from Critical Management Studies,” Special Issue Journal of Management Education, 26/5: 489–495. EDEN, D. (2003). “Critical Management Studies and the Academy of Management Jour nal: Challenge and Counter Challenge,” Academy of Management Journal, 46/4: 390–394. ELLIOTT, C., and REYNOLDS, M. (2002). “Manager-Educator Relations from a Critical Perspective,” Journal of Management Education, 26/5: 513–526. FENWICK, T. (2005). “Ethical Dilemmas of Critical Management Education,” Manage ment Learning, 36/1: 31–48. FOX, S. (1997). in J. Burgoyne and M. Reynolds (eds.), Management Learning. London: Sage. FRENCH, R., and GREY, C. (eds.) (1996). Rethinking Management Education. Thousand Oaks: Sage. FOURNIER, V., and GREY, C. (2000). “At the Critical Moment,” Human Relations, 53/1: 7–32. FULOP, L. (2002), “Practicing What You Preach,” Organization, 9/3: 428–436. GOSHAL, S. (2005). “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Prac tices,” Academy of Management learning and Education, 4/1: 75–91. GREY, C. (2002). “What are Business Schools for?” Journal of Management Education, 26/5: 496–511. —— (2004). “Reinventing Business Schools: The Contribution of Critical Management Ed ucation,” Academy of Management Learning and Education, 3/2: 178–186. —— (2007). “Possibilities for Critical Management Education and Studies,” Scandinavian Journal of Management 23: 463–471.
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Critical Management Education —— and MITEV, N. (1995). “Management Education: A Polemic,” Management Learning, 26/1: 73–90. HARDING, C., and JOSHUA, G. (2003). Regulating Cartels in Europe. Oxford: Ox ford University Press. (p. 549)
KORPIAHAO, K., PAIVIO, H., and RASANEN, K. (2007). “Anglo-American Forms of Man agement Education: A Practice Theoretical Perspective,” Scandinavian Journal of Man agement 23: 463–471. HARNEY, S. (2007). “Socialization and the Business School,” Management Learning. 38: 139. HOLMAN, D. (2002). “Contemporary Models of Management Education in the UK,” Man agement Learning, 31/2: 197–217. LEVINAS, E. (2006). Entre Nous. London: Continuum. MINGERS, J. (2000). “What Is to Be Critical?” Management Learning, 31/2: 219–237. MINTZBERG, H. (2004). Managers not MBAs. San Francisco: Berrett-Koheler. NORD, W., and JERMIER, J. M. (1992). “Critical Social Science for Managers? Promising and Perverse Possibilities,” in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds.), Critical Management Studies, London: Sage. PARKER, I. (2006). “Cartels in Lacanian Psychoanalysis,” http:// www.discourseunit.com/matrix/cartels_in_lacanian_psychoanalysis.doc PARKER, M. (2002). Against Management. Cambridge: Polity Press. PERRITON, L. (2007). “Really Useful Knowledge. Critical Management Education in the UK and US,” Scandinavian Journal of Management, 23: 463–471. —— and REYNOLDS, M. (2004). “Critical Management Education. From Pedagogy of Possibility to Pedagogy of Refusal?,” Management Learning, 38: 458. PFEFFER, J. (2004). “Mintzerbg's Unasked Question: Special Book Review,” Organization Studies, 26/7: 1093–1094. —— and FONG, C. (2002). “The End of Business Schools? Less Success than Meet the Eye,” Academy of Management Learning and Education, 1/1: 78–95. —— (2004). “The Business Schools ‘Business’: Some Lessons from the US Experience,” Journal of Management Studies, 41/8: 1501–1520. PRASAD, P., and CARPONI, P. (1997). “Critical Theory in the Management Classroom: Engaging Power, Ideology and Praxis,” Special Issue, Journal of Management Education, 21/3: 284–291. Page 13 of 15
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Critical Management Education REED, M., and ANTHONY, P. (1992). “Professionalizing Management and Managing Pro fessionalization: British Management in the 1980s,” Journal of Management Studies, 29/4: 591–613. REYNOLDS, M. (1998), “Reflection and Critical Reflection in Management Learning,” Management Learning, 29/2: 183–200. —— (1999). “Critical Reflection and Management Education,” Journal of Management Ed ucation, 23/5: 537–553. —— and TREHAN, K. (2003). “Learning from difference?” Management Learning, 34/2: 163–180. —— and VINCE R., (2004). “Critical Management Education and Action-Based Learning,” Academy of Management Learning and Education, 3/4: 442–456. SINCLAIR, A. (2007). “Teaching Leadership Critically to MBAs,” Management Learning, 38/4: 458–472. SMITH, G. (2003). “Beyond Critical Thinking,” Journal of Management Education, 27/1: 24–51. SPICER, A. (2005). “Conferences,” in D. OʼDoherty and e. Jones (eds.), Manifestos for the Business Schools of Tomorrow, Helsinki: Dvalin http://www.dvalin.org. ALVESSON, M., and KÄRREMAN, D. (2007). “The Unfinished Business of Criti cal Management Studies.” Paper Presented at the CM Conference, University of Man (p. 550)
chester, Manchester, UK, July. STARKEY, K., HATCHUEL, A., and TEMPEST, S. (2004). “Rethinking Business Schools?” Journal of Management Studies, 41/8: 1521–1530. SWAN, E. (2005). “On Bodies, Rhinestones and Pleasures: Women Teaching Managers,” Management Learning, 36/3: 317–333. THRIFT, N. (2005). Knowing Capitalism. London: Sage. WATSON, T. (2001). “Beyond Managism: Negotiated Narratives on Critical Management Education Practice,” British Journal of Management, 12/4: 385–396. WENSLEY, R. (2005). “The Importance and Relevance of Managers not MBAs. Special Book Review,” Organization Studies, 26/7: 1095–1098. WILLMOTT, H. (1994). “Management Education: Provocations to a Debate,” Manage ment Learning, 25/1: 105–136. ZALD, M. (2002). “Spinning Disciplines,” Organization, 9/3: 365–385.
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Critical Management Education
Alessia Contu
Alessia Contu is Associate Professor of Organization Studies in the Industrial Rela tions and Organizational Behaviour Group, Warwick Business School at the Universi ty of Warwick. Her published work has included explorations of resistance and power at work, and their impact on learning dynamics and identity. She is currently writing on new forms of resistance. With the fellowship of the Reinvention Centre, at the Uni versity of Warwick's Department of Sociology, she is researching the learning processes in teaching business ethics to management undergraduates. Alessia is in terested in Lacanian psychoanalysis. She is currently re-reading the Ethics of Psycho analysis, but this time in Italian, as a new revision has recently been published. She is Series Editor of the Critical Management Study Series, Palgrave Macmillan, and author of numerous publications including “Groups and Teams at Work,” in David Knights and Hugh Willmott (eds.), Introducing Organizational Behaviour and Man agement (Thomson Learning, 2007).
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously
Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously Gibson Burrell The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management, Organizational Theory and Behaviour Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199595686.013.0028
Abstract and Keywords In discussing the ‘official history’ of Critical Management Studies (CMS), which in its cap italized form is said to date from 1992, Grey and Willmott engaged in some mixing of their metaphors when they suggested that it had become an ‘identity, badge or brand’ that had ‘chimed with a series of developments within the business and management re search community’. CMS signified, within ‘a receptive climate’, an ‘unfolding of a concep tual umbrella that has been found useful in those engaged in seemingly unrelated projects to recognize some family resemblances’. As a term, its adoption is an ‘embryonic form of institutionalization’ that has provided certain advantages. Firstly, it is not direct ed at any particular management specialism; secondly, it is concerned with studies, not study, suggesting ‘diversity and fluidity’; and thirdly, it may be rendered critical of both ‘studies’ and of ‘management’. This text is a useful articulation of the context, but, if one undertakes multiple readings, one is struck by the valorized imagery quietly drawing up on imaginary rural shelter, family, and babies. Keywords: critical management studies, institutionalization, business research, management specialism, diversity, business development
Introduction INTRIGUINGLY, one meaning of the word “Handbook” is a betting shop, a book-making establishment in nineteenth-century USA, particularly in New York, where gambling could take place on prospective winners and losers of races. “Wall Street” in the early years of the twenty-first century has acted as a Handbook of significant proportions and so too has the “City of London.” These metonyms of place, by standing in the stead of naming organized congregations of bankers, traders, and their professional acolytes, serve only to obscure what has gone on in these spaces. Metonyms allow reification of the system and mask the huge gambles that have been taken by the managers of money with in “casino capitalism.” And yet, these “masters of the universe” seem to have secured their own position, even as their companies went bust. But within the current circum Page 1 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously stances of fiscal and economic crisis, by plundering their own companies in the last dying days of solvency, these institutional executives finally render themselves visible and open to questioning. Henry Waxman, Chair of the House oversight committee, asked Lehmann Brothers (p. 552) CEO, Richard Fuld on October 7, 2008, “Your company is bankrupt; you keep $480 million. Is that fair?” So, as I write this piece in autumn 2008 for one Hand book, it is not totally clear who will under write the losses of those who have populated the other “Handbook.” One suspects it will not be the finance capitalists. Despite the neoconservative doctrine of the sanctity of the market, if the state does not show its immedi ate and generous willingness to bail out all corporate victims, the market within the An glo-American model of capitalism (and beyond) now crashes and renders itself non-func tioning. Surely, the notion of the “market,” in whose ideological shadow critical manage ment studies has grown up (Parker 2002), cannot escape from this crisis un-besmirched? So, then, can this Handbook allow us to critique that Handbook? Is this financial, econom ic, and political crisis about to launch a golden age for critical management studies? On reading these chapters on contemporary issues and topics, one can see that “critical man agement studies” (CMS) has a role to play in the modern world as we confront it. True, Rowlinson et al. in Chapter 14 remind us that “the modern world” is itself a difficult no tion, and Morgan and Spicer in Chapter 12 do point to the importance of not overestimat ing how much change has occurred to it, yet we must stabilize the point from which we begin, however difficult that task is. The origins of the “critical project,” of course, go back into the Enlightenment and, it has to be noted well, to its unremitting anti-clerical stance. Scherer in Chapter 2 does quote Kant's argument that a “lack of resolve and courage” to use understanding “without guidance from another” was a sign of immaturi ty. Yet, Scherer does not make anything of the fact that the source of unwanted guidance was, most often, the priesthood. Religion and the priests were the enemy within. Against them, were pitted Reason and Rationality whose objective was to come to understand how people believed what they did and with what consequences. “Critical” in the tradi tion of “Critique” means inter alia, that our work within the human sciences should be in vestigative, incisive and iconoclastic. It should be revelatory (c.f. Reed in Chapter 3). The University of Leicester School of Management's “Statement of Intent” put the elements of CMS this way: Critique is about power and its distribution. Without a sense of power and its use, and of the politicization of the social world, there can be no serious critique in place. To ask questions about how power is conceptualized, how it is measured, how it is reproduced and how it might be challenged is itself a political act. Critique is about being iconoclastic and challenging the dominant icons and pre vailing sets of imagery of the present day. Potent symbols such as that of the or ganisational “leader,” for example, may well be seen as having an iconic status that needs considerable analytical attention. The intention of this analysis is sub verting the concept itself. No icon is above critique. No symbol is beyond being unmasked.
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously Critique is about knowledge and the bases upon which our knowledge claims are erected. Upon what foundations do claims to scientific and everyday knowledge rest? The critical approach to knowledge has behind it the idea that conventional forms of empirical science (p. 553) are more likely to be locked into superficial ac ceptance of the taken for granted, and less likely to look for ontic depth or episte mological complexity. Critique encourages an approach from the researcher which is investigative. Here, the role and behavior of the ruling elites is subjected to close scrutiny, with the aim of bringing onto the public agenda items the powerful might prefer to re main unexamined. This concern to provide new agendas, and to ignore perhaps the agenda that is laid out by the “establishment” because it is seen as deeply sus pect, is a crucial part of the investigative role played by the “critic.” Critique is also about some vision, call it Utopian if you will, of a better, more hu man future. Of course, critical theorists will differ about the nature and parame ters of such a better world but they do at least possess one. The creation of a Cri tique of what currently exists as paramount reality, perforce has behind it an im age, however vague, of a world that is better on the dimensions identified in the critique. To criticize implies that it could be better. To critique creatively is only possible if one has at the back of the mind a hazy image of a utopian world. Critique, if done properly, is also driven by a sense of intellectualism. That is, the power of the set of ideas being used has had some revelatory effect upon the user. Of course, it would be foolish to believe that every student or reader would have the same liberatory experience as the author when confronting new ideas and methods and frameworks for the first time. But “critique” is driven in part by the desire to teach, to spread the word, to engage in debate and contestation and to proselytize. It believes in education. Critics believe that education means e-duc ere: to lead out by the illumination of new ideas. Critique, above all then, was and is “oppositional.” The concept that ties all these six strands together is that of continual challenge to the powerful, the orthodox, the iconic, the Panglossian; in short what Deleuze and Guattari called “Royal Science.” Of course, this leads to a nice paradox in that the concept of “critical management studies” itself has to follow such a path and therefore has also to be critiqued and opposed. The critique of our critique has to be welcomed and cele brated as a part of permanent opposition. (2004: 6) This position of permanent opposition is one that hopefully informs the rest of this chapter.
In Search of Permanent Opposition In discussing the “official history” of Critical Management Studies, which in its capital ized form is said to date from 1992 (although those like Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman Page 3 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously (forthcoming) and Wood and Kelly (1975) might disagree), Grey and Willmott (2005: 3–5) engaged in some mixing of their metaphors when they suggested that CMS had become an “identity, badge or brand” which has “chimed with a series of developments within the business and management research community.” It signified within “a receptive climate” an “unfolding of a conceptual (p. 554) umbrella that has been found useful in those en gaged in seemingly unrelated projects to recognize some family resemblances.” As a term, its adoption is an “embryonic form of institutionalization” which has provided cer tain advantages. Firstly, it is not directed at any particular management specialism; sec ondly, it is concerned with studies, not stud y, suggesting “diversity and fluidity”; and thirdly, it maybe rendered critical of both “studies” and of “management.” This text is a useful articulation of the context but, if one undertakes multiple readings, one is struck by the valorized imagery quietly drawing upon imaginary rural shelter, fami ly and babies. Contra Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärreman's (forthcoming) contention that CMS enjoys darker metaphorical constructs, it is the sheer homeliness of the metaphori cal range in Grey and Willmott (2005) that is quite striking. In and through this imagery, CMS is domesticated. On the other hand, Parker's imagery of the CMS field is much more urban and post-water shed. Management is “fucking” or at least to be stood “against.” True, the epithet within critical management studies of “management” is undoubtedly problematic, but for me (and methinks Parker) CMS does not mean “we hate managers.” Several factors might be pointed out in rejection of this easy identification of the Other. Firstly, managers are often as much victims of the system as are the laborers. Secondly, management is an activity that most of us undertake sooner or later, and we tend to turn our faces against selfloathing. Thirdly, managers themselves engage in (uncapitalized) critical management studies. Keenoy, in Chapter 22, offers the view that when it is said within corporate-speak that “people are our most valuable resource” this is met with “cynicism, ridicule, and dis belief.” They are met with such scorn, of course, not only by knowing academics but also by managers and employees alike. Ask yourself what are the best-selling management texts of the last ten years? They are in fact the Dilbert books by Scott Adams. He uses his own MBA to market and control the cartoons, certainly, but what he provides is a “truth” about US and Western European management which resonates with his middle manage ment readership. This demand for realistic insight as to how management itself is hierar chically controlled is enormous. Middle managers in large numbers read Dilbert and know that their organizations are and can be like those that Adams (and Ricky Gervais in The Office) depicts. Johnson and Duberley in Chapter 17 opine that CMS will be judged to the extent to which it enables freedom from oppression within organizations. As part of the “criteriology” for which these authors search, perhaps the life-affirming sardonic hu mour that Dilbert represents is a sparkling fragment of just such a critical management studies. The academic community of CMS could surely build more upon this folk under standing of life in the organizations of late capitalism. Critical management does not have to be sold cold to an unwilling mob of otherwise “occupied” MBAs. In this view, as Karen Legge so beautifully puts it, one is merely throwing real pearls before real swine. On the contrary, however, CMS can resonate constructively with an interested and possibly re Page 4 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously ceptive audience. There (p. 555) is discernible upwelling of critical concerns within the managerial audience (as well as in those more managed-against than managing), not least because of the individuated consequences of the collapse of the money markets at the time of writing. In moving on, let us please note that it is always easier to write something that is differ ent, than it is to do something that is different. Of course, “writing” is always a form of “doing” (Fleming and Sturdy 2003) and if done properly it remains a difficult task, even at the level of the 4, 000-word article. Yet, it should be recognized that as academics, we in habit privileged positions, stoutly bounded by the notion of academic freedom from which it is possible to say and write much without dread fear of retaliation. This privilege, how ever, needs constant defence. My institution's previous Chair of University Council opined: “Academic freedom? That's a much over-rated concept, Gibson.” In the light of such attitudes to university values, one unrecognized yet salient issue for the prospects of CMS within Britain is the structures, systems, and administrative staff locked into and be hind university councils. No doubt, there will be an equivalent institution in perhaps all nation states with established university systems. As employed members of a university, critical management scholars, like their opposite numbers, tend to know remarkably little of how their organizations are actually run. Senates have increasingly become overshad owed, in the vast majority of British institutions of higher education, by the power of councils, usually made up of local worthies, often from the business community and the legal, property development, and accounting professions which serve it. For scholars of my hoary generation, councils increasingly flex their muscles compared to how it was in the “glorious” early 1970s when the academic community made its own decisions. Yet Shattock (2006) has shown how we are returning to something closer to the situation in the early twentieth century when local commercial involvement in universities was the norm and was highly successful in having “provincial” universities recognized by the State. The power of the Wills tobacco family and the Fry chocolate dynasty in getting Bristol established as a university in 1904 is but one example. Irrespective of the rele vance of long-term historical cycles here, CMS now faces a problem that we, currently employed in the profession, have not faced before. Namely, closer and closer linkages of power with the business and commercial sector are being mooted which Knights touches upon in Chapter 7. The British Treasury, through its regime of funding of HEFC and be yond, ensures closer mimicry of American university/commercial practices, and all the re search councils, including ESRC and thence AIM, follow in train. It was the University of which Shattock was Registrar, of course, that pioneered this (re)turn to commercial con nectedness, adopting the guise of “Warwick University Ltd.” Now this may not be surpris ing news to anyone within the business school community, but I hope they are aware that it is precisely this commercial connectedness which has led to the appointment of those members of university councils with particular business skills to specifically enhance this (p. 556) university/commercial networking. At the same time, as noted above, the power of council has overtaken that of senate. Our work in schools of management is increasingly accountable to local and regional business. However, it is important that we note here that university vice chancellors cannot be expected to delight in this shift in power to Page 5 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously councils, for whilst VCs often carry the respect of their senates, they find local and re gional businessmen and -women less likely to share in the values of international re search, academic freedom, and the fine honing of a critical edge. In relation to this set of organizational changes, going on largely unnoticed around us, let me speak here briefly about some problems encountered in attempting to develop a com munity of scholars committed specifically to research and teach “critical management studies.” I used elements earlier from Leicester's “statement of intent” in its attempt to develop CMS, but now is time to look at the outcomes. At the same time as we were re cruiting to this project, Willmott (2006) and Grey and Willmott (2005: 10–12) were dis cussing the institutionalization of CMS within the business school community. They argue that this “success” comes in part from the norms of academia (with publication in peer refereed journals) being met by CMS scholars who, for their deans, may “compensate” perhaps for the “trade” orientation of their other research inactive, consultancy-orientat ed colleagues. They maintain that whilst “CMS relies for its existence upon the business schools which it critiques,” in contradiction, “they are also the place from which CMS is most likely to exert whatever influence it may be capable of having” (Grey and Willmott 2005: 11). Before dealing with the internal university reception of our collective efforts “within the business school,” let me just mention the “external view” of building a department around notions of critical management studies. What we attempted at Leicester was recognized in print in the June 2007 issue of Long Range Planning, where a piece by Don Antunes and Howard Thomas entitled “The Competitive (Dis)Advantages of European Business Schools” (pp. 382–404), spoke in supportive terms of what our departmental aims and ob jectives were. Elsewhere in the system, however, who-knows-what-gossip passes between colleagues about any other sister institution. Gossip keeps the wheels of interest moving of course, and the only thing worse than being gossiped about perhaps, is not being gos siped about. Nevertheless, we might remember that Professor Robin Wilson said of his fa ther, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, that “he used to joke that there was too much back-stabbing in academia, so he went into politics instead.” And so there is, even within the CMS project. Within the university however, in the face of the everyday ontology of being in “a business school,” it was considerably harder to do critical management than to write about critical management. “Doing” is different from writing because it is about day-to-day administra tion and living with and through (and contrary to) “critical management” tenets. As WrayBliss argues in Chapter 13, individual (p. 557) managers (and their staff) draw upon a wide range of competing ethical demands in their striving to be morally acceptable to themselves and their colleagues. A head of a university department is fully implicated in this moral maze, and should contemplate the horror of the tensions regularly. Not least, tensions might arise because some critically orientated staff seem to want to treat their own work colleagues in quite conventional (i.e., punitive and hectoring) managerialist ways. Whilst Newton in Chapter 6 talks of the problematic nature of an “idealized view of nature” one often finds that colleagues have eschewed such idealized notions of humanity Page 6 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously by the end of their first academic staff meeting. In my own institution, despite a vice chancellor who was broadly supportive, there was a huge threat perceived in one of “their” departments being attached to “the critical project.” This threat was seen to be both financial and ideological. Our financial performance was constantly monitored for signs that the project was adversely affecting recruitment. Our agents abroad were en couraged to question the effect that the word “critical” might have on MBA recruitment in, say, “the Middle East.” There was constant surveillance of the school's website for hints of rude or challenging words and intense scrutiny of the internal workload model which created space for younger probationary lecturers (“you are not getting enough out of them”). There was brutal, unsophisticated politics in confrontations with council and its senior members, who tended, even today, to identify themselves with Thatcherism. There was pressure, through a constant drive to increase income, to ride roughshod over deep departmental concerns about working with companies with highly questionable ethics (c.f. Wray Bliss in Chapter 13). There was an intemperate relationship with the pro fessoriate in economics, which, in its interdepartmental struggle with us, constantly char acterized the school to university committees as anti-management. Yet, in some ways this pressure made some staff feel that the project could only be worthwhile if it was generat ing such hostility from such sources. Our struggle to secure resources, of course, is the conflict where the school was and is most vulnerable. One can have clear lines of argu ment in institutions built upon the foundations of the Enlightenment project, namely rea son and rationality, but after the debate is over and closed committees make their finan cial decisions, then “critique” loses its force. Notwithstanding McClellan and Deetz in Chapter 21, power stands outside of debate and dialogue when it suits it. This is why, for British scholars, there is an investigative possibility. There is a case for much more research to be done on the role, within a network of formal and informal arrangements, of the British Treasury in contemporary institutional life. Here within its newly designed open-plan offices, decisions are made about the past, present and future Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), about university funding across Britain, through the mechanism of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC) on one hand, and the re search councils on the other; about student support and the level of student/parent con tributions, about population targets and the role of higher education in the economy. Yet, as scholars what do (p. 558) we know about the Treasury's structure, staffing and strate gies? How does it fit within a wider regime of educational, financial political and business structures? Critical management studies should investigate that which affects its activi ties and that which governs the lives of British citizens: and the Treasury seems like a good place in which to carefully insert an iconoclastic inquiry. The opprobrium I face here, of course, is one based on the charge of parochialism and of starting from the narrow, self-interested concerns of academics. Howcroft in Chapter 19 argues that IS research is marked by a distinct parochialism and that this is an everpresent danger. Surely, might say the critic, these institutions of higher education and their funding from the state are minor themes in the scheme of things? Just look at the broad and significant topics discussed here in this Handbook. Surely, they might contin ue, it is the issues of global capitalism that CMS should be addressing, rather than gaze Page 7 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously at its own institutional locus. Of course this is correct—but only to a point. Thomas in Chapter 8 talks of the absent dialectic between the “self” and the “social,” so that CMS faces a situation in which individuals allegedly do not connect their own lives lived in “private” to global events “broadcast” on the 24-hour news channels. What mechanisms link the world economy to our own doorsteps, and analytically, can they be traced? Thomas goes on to remind us that those excluded from the ontological security of the world may be so because they lack a clear identity. I would wish to make the point that security often comes from obscurity rather than identity. Individuals hide behind many masks. Some institutions seek public obscurity in order to secure their power., and if we were to investigate the British Treasury in some concerted way, it might be possible to uncover the meso-level connections between the macro and the micro, the self and the state, our home and the globe, the secure and the obscure, between discourse and mate riality (Grant et al. in Chapter 10), between human life and the world's environment (Newton, Chapter 6). Institutions that network with the Treasury might all be rendered more open to investigation. The priestly caste of Whitehall mandarins, with their origins, education, networking, and habitus, all darkened in club-ish obscurity, might be the focus of our anti-clericalism.
Living Dangerously However, returning to the history of management studies, and the “embryonic institution alization” of CMS that Grey and Willmott identified, what worries me about “doing” in the context of “critical management studies” is the real temptation for us to establish yet an other new but empowered class of priests who defend a nativity story, a litany and a set of beliefs in the time-honoured way. As pointed out (p. 559) earlier, in Grey and Willmott (2005: 3) there was an effort to identity the moment of birth of the “capitalized phrase Critical Management Studies” placing it in ad 1992. If I may say so, as a contributor to that particular edited collection and to the Studying Management Critically book that built heavily upon its foundations, it seemed to me then that this was not so much the originary point of a “movement” but more part of an ongoing problematization of the in stitutions and the curricula in and with which individuals worked and continue to work. Beginnings are notoriously difficult to identify in the world of social science, for such a notion of “a point of origin” is a product of the valorization of stasis rather than of dynam ics; it is the overvaluing of “structural” rather than “processual” thought, and if identify ing points of origin is dangerous, so too is the way in which we begin to treat criticism of the “movement.” That is to say the new clerics tend to establish a church (perhaps even Establish a Church) that gradually inures itself to outside criticism and then, once sealed off, turns inward to weed out the heretics. If you ask me for concrete examples of this, as Mats Alvesson has done in his comments on my first draft of this article, I think we, the church elders, came too close to that unreflexive and establishment position when deal ing with published reviews of Studying Management Critically (c.f. Ferdinand, Muzio, and OʼMahoney in Organization Studies 2004: 25, 1451–1465 and Willmott's response in the same journal, published as “Muddling with CMS” in 2005: 26, 1711–1714). Page 8 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously The problem of turning inward is that it displaces desperate political struggles with the enemy into a bickering politics of the hearth. Thus, Ezzamel and Robson in Chapter 23 speak of critical accounting as “an area riven with rancour, dispute and intellectual fis sures.” OʼDoherty and Thompson entitle one of their sections in Chapter 5 as “Territory, Tensions and Tantrums.” And Banerjee et al. in Chapter 9 talk of the “philosophical parlor games” characterizing the study of global capitalism. Thus, the debates that are generat ed inside the community and adjudicated upon by the senior priests are often at the cost of investigation, incision, and iconoclasm. These debates may still be able to deal with Fournier and Grey's three interrelated core propositions for CMS, namely, de-naturaliza tion, anti-performativity, and reflexivity (Fournier and Grey 2000) but these propositions, however important to theorizings, can sometimes appear more to be intellectual moves of the senior common room than the yare actions in the face of the enemy (Thompson 2004). They prepare us not for confrontation with those who would see CMS forced outside the institution and “onto the cobbles” but merely produce “minor domestics” between us. The “othering” process by which our enemies should be identified and addressed becomes limited to a selection of only those closest to us. Also worrying as a prospect is the point made in Chapter 10 by Grant et al. (in quoting Thrift 2004) that under capitalism, “the field is periodically restructured into a new con figuration of profitability.” The field, of course, to which the current Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University here refers, is that of the ever-changing (p. 560) actions and strate gies of those in business and management positions (cf. Morgan and Spicer in Chapter 12). But what if this observation again refers to ourselves? Spicer, Alvesson, and Kärre man (forthcoming) argue that: Although CMS was seen as an esoteric and marginal project fifteen years ago, it has recently achieved the status of an institution (Willmott 2006), with a strong presence in at least UK academia. It has a bi-annual conference, specialist confer ence streams, text books, and collections of classics. (Adler, Forbes, and Willmott 2008) Does this commodification not faintly suggest that we are attempting to restructure the field in order to provide a new configuration for ourselves to exploit? Re-branding of industrial sociology and industrial relations, and active branding of labor process theory and Marxian political econ omy, have all taken place. Changes have been forced upon colleagues, as in, for example, the bloodless and consensual changes at Warwick from “industrial relations” to “employment rela tions,” or the very public and bloody attempts at restructuring “management studies” at Keele University in 2008. Life in the “ivory” tower perforce transforms when the precious stuff of which the tower is built is subject to an effective and heavily policed international ban. New ma terials, new markets, new products, new price structures, new international conferences, new concepts, new posts are all sought for our updated wares. Saren and Svensson in Chapter 18 are more alive to these issues than many of us perhaps, when they point out the need for self-cri tique. As in marketing, it is our own systems of categories that should themselves be treated with suspicion. Can we take the time for the terms de-naturalization, anti-performativity, and re flexivity themselves be denaturalized, rendered non-performative and reflected upon? We must critique the critique for, by not doing so, we fall back on the myth of progress (WOBS 2001: Page 9 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously 1592) Is it not possible that our own labors of division, our own categorical imperatives, get rather more in the way of analysis than they aid it? Might it be that we are not offering a new Enlightenment, a new form of progress, a freedom from the accursed priests? Should we not merely offer “negations” (Marcuse 1968) whereby the challenge is to question the present and provide permanent anti-clerical opposition.
Swarms and Handbooks As Ashcraft says in Chapter 15, trends that appear incontrovertible to us whilst seated in the safety of an academic office, in actuality, “swarm with variation.” In other words, like everyone else's, our concepts are reductive and represent oversimplifications. I end this small piece, not in offering an appreciation of what the Handbook contains in its entirety, but in reflecting upon the charming (reductive, (p. 561) over-simplifying) notion of “swarm” which has stayed with me. The Handbook contains not one coherent projection of one single project carried on into the future but, instead, a swarm of possibilities (En gestrom 2006: 1784–6). Depending on the observers' point of view, the swarm could be seen as in search of the “same thing.” One observer of the Handbooks swarm will note the unidirectional appearance of the group moving en masse as if it was a “smart mob.” Another will see the multitude adopt a tell-tale characteristic movement as their congre gation engages in simultaneous followership of a “runaway object.” A third will be able to spot no central command, no leadership to this assembly, only that it appears crowded and throng like. Yet another observer will recognize that the dense crowd is held together by a faint whisper through which it strenuously suppresses its differences. Tension fills the air. Outside the summery collective throng, individual organisms would happily as sault each other. The swarm disperses., and then they do. So the Handbook is a swarm, but so too are the gambling dens we call financial markets and so too are academic departments. None are subject to Reason and Rationality—ex cept as ideology. Collective efforts are sometimes rewarded, but on other days individual organisms will happily assault each other and feast greedily on the bodies. If you want to see this phenomenon in the United Kingdom, just wait until the RAE results come out. The issue, we are told by those in the Wall Street and Canary Wharf Handbook, is the col lapse of “trust.” Handbooks of whatever kind are built on trust, and therefore, we should be grateful that the authors and editors have worked together thus far to make such an en masse movement around Critical Management Studies possible. In some ways, this swarming behind what is, after all, a runaway object is even graceful and pleasing on the eye.
References ADLER, P., FORBES, L., and WILLMOTT, H. (2008). “Critical Management Studies,” in J. WALSH and A. BRIEF (eds.), Academy of Management Annals, 1. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously ALVESSON, M., and WILLMOTT, H. (1992). “On the Idea of Emancipation in Manage ment and Organization Studies,” Academy of Management Review, 17/3: 432–464. ENGESTROM Y. (2006). “From Well-bounded Ethnographies to Intervening in Mycor rhizae Activities,” Organization Studies, 27: 1783–1793. FERDINAND, J., MUZIO, D., and OʼMAHONEY, J. (2004). “Book Review: Studying Man agement Critically,” Organisation Studies, 25: 1451–1465. —— —— —— (2005). “A Reply to ‘Muddling with CMS,’/,” Organisation Studies, 26: 1714– 1716. FLEMING, P., and STURDY, A. (2003). “Talk as Technique: A critique of the Words/Deeds Distinction in the Diffusion of Customer Service Cultures in Call Centres,” Journal of Man agement Studies, 40/4: 753–773. FOURNIER, V., and GREY, C. (2000). “At the Critical Moment: Conditions and Prospects for Critical Management Studies,” Human Relations, 53/1: 7–32. (p. 562)
GREY, C. (1999). “We Are All Managers Now: We Always Were. On the Development and Demise of Management,” Journal of Management Studies, 36/5: 561–585. —— and WILLMOTT, H. (eds.) (2005). Critical Management Studies. Oxford: Oxford Uni versity Press. MORGAN, G. (1997). Images of Organization, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. PARKER, M. (2002). Against Management. Cambridge: Polity. —— (ed.) (2003). Utopia and Organization. Oxford: Blackwell. University of Leicester School of Management (2004). Statement of Intent. Leicester: Uni versity of Leicester School of Management. SHATTOCK, M. (2006). Managing Good Governance in Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press. SPICER, A., ALVESSON, M., and KÄRREMAN, D. (forthcoming). “Critical Performativi ty: The Unfinished Business of Critical Management Studies,” Human Relations. THOMPSON, P. (2004). “Brands, Boundaries and Bandwagons: A Critical Reflection on Critical Management Studies,” in S. FLEETWOOD and S. ACKROYD (eds.), Critical Real ism in Action in Organisation and Management Studies. London: Routledge. —— SMITH, C., and ACKROYD, S. (2000). “If Ethics is the Answer, You are Asking the Wrong Question. A Reply to Martin Parker,” Organization Studies, 21/6: 1149–1158. WILLMOTT, H. (2005). “Muddling with CMS: Response to Special Book Review of Study ing Management Critically,” Organization Studies, 26: 1711–1714. Page 11 of 12
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Handbooks, Swarms, and Living Dangerously WOBS (2001). Organization Studies: Critical Perspectives, vol. 4. London: Routledge. WOOD, S., and KELLY, J. (1978). “Towards a Critical Management Studies,” Journal of Management Studies, 15/1: 1–24.
Gibson Burrell
Gibson Burrell is Professor at the University of Leicester, UK. He is about to finish his 40-year stint as a full-time paid academic with some reluctance. He looks back upon a time when research-led indolence marked British academic life—and was the better for it. He submitted his first academic article to a journal seven years into a Lectureship which is inconceivable today, even if more of us should remain silent for longer. And with that nostalgia possessed by the old, he says of his time that he wouldn’t change a thing. How smugly Panglossian is that?
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Index
Index The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies Edited by Mats Alvesson, Todd Bridgman, and Hugh Willmott Print Publication Date: Jan 2011 Subject: Business and Management Online Publication Date: Sep 2009
(p. 563)
Index
Note: page numbers in italic refer to figures and tables. AASCB (Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business) 197 Abbott, A. 195, 312, 484 Abrahamson, E. 258, 295 Abugattas Mailuf, L. 395 Academy of Management: CMS Division Domain Statement 15, 17 accounting 41, 473–89, 515–16, 521 ANT 482–3 feminism and 479 financial reporting and regulation 476–80, 485 management accounting 480–3 Marxian analysis 479 and power 156 professionalization of 484–7 structuration theory 480–1 accounting research 77 Acker, J. 309, 311, 317, 318 Ackroyd, S. 63, 77–8, 105, 237–8, 468 identity 171–2, 173, 174 actor-network theory (ANT) 116, 136, 161 n. 7, 194, 397, 482–3 Adam, A. 399, 400, 404 Adams, S. 554 Adler, P. S. 105, 258, 505, 529, 560 CME 543, 545 CR 52, 62–3 IS 402–3 Adorno, T. 31–2, 35, 270, 373 affect 224–7 Agamben, G. 259 agency: Page 1 of 42
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Index identity and 169–70 agency theory 418 Ahmad, A. 246 Albright, D. 40 Aldrich, H. 307 Allen, B. J. 305 Althusser, L. 83, 85, 86 Alvesson, M. 208, 216, 233, 439, 560 CME 545 CT 35–6, 39, 40–1, 348, 350–1, 352 emancipation 87, 332, 382 gender issues 314 hierarchy 503 HRM 456, 464, 467 identity 168, 169, 172, 175 IS 392, 402 marketing practice 381 organizational change 252, 254, 255, 256, 260 poststructuralism 81 strategy 415, 420, 423–4, 426 work 334, 339–40, 381 Amin, A. 258 Amiridis, K. 467 Al-Amoudi, I. 88 Anderson, J. 46 Anderson-Gough, F. 486, 487 Andrée, P. 139 animal rights 204 Annisette, M. 484 Ansoff, H. I. 416–17 ANT, see actor-network theory Anthony, P. D. 234, 456, 460, 464 anthropocentrism 127 anti-colonialism 244 anti-essentialism: poststructuralism and 80–1, 87–91 anti-globalization movement 207 anti-performativity 10, 11–12, 117 Antunes, D. 556 archaeology 217 Archer, M. 58, 60, 64, 65–6, 68 Arendt, H. 281–2 Armstrong, P. 79, 476 Arndt, J. 372, 386 Arnold, P. J. 478, 479 Arnould, E. J. 382 Arrington, C. E. 473, 478–9 Arthur, B. 206 Page 2 of 42
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Index Ashforth, B. E. 237 Ashkanasy, N. M. 235 (p. 564) Ashman, I. 272 Ashmore, M. 109 Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AASCB) 197 Astley, W. G. 78 Aston School 150 Austin, J. R. 258 autonomy 148, 337–9 Avgerou, C. 393, 400, 401 avian influenza (bird flu) 204 aviation carbon emissions 131–2 Axley, S. 436 B2B relationships 377 B2C marketing 377 Baack, D. 79 Bacharach, M. 147 Backhouse, J. 404 Baert, P. 69 Bagozzi, R. P. 371, 372 Bain, P. 63–4, 104, 105 Bains, G. 338 Bakan, J. 202, 510 Bakhtin, M. 269 Bakre, O. M. 484 Ball, K. 256 Banerjee, S. B. 15–16, 45–6, 187, 209 n. CSR 159–60 culture 244, 245, 246 environmental issues 126, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139 ethics 270 globalization 189, 208 Bansal, P. 127, 139, 208 Baran, P. 373 Baratz, H. 147 Barber, B. 199 Baritz, L. 465 Barker, J. 40, 172, 256, 441 Barley, S. R. 256, 295, 309, 335, 529 Baroudi, J. J. 397–8 Barrett, M. 256 Barsoux, J.-L. 234 Barthes, R. 82, 83 Bartky, S. L. 158 Bataille, G. 375 Baudrillard, J. 158, 361, 373 Bauer, J. 442 Baum, J. A. C. 57 Page 3 of 42
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Index Bauman, Z. 135–6, 259, 298 ethics 269, 270, 276 identity 166, 167, 179 Beatty, R. 531 Bebchuk, L. A. 507 Beck, U. 45, 129, 192, 193, 204 Becker, B. E. 466, 531 Beinhocker, E. D. 505 Beji-Becheur, A. 376 Belk, R.W. 378–9 Bell, E. 279, 317, 358 Benbasat, I. 394, 404 Bendix, R. 295 Benhabib, S. 158, 269 Bennett, M. 40 Bennis, W. 541–2 Benson, J. K. 37, 38, 39 Benson, T.W. 241 Berg, M. 292, 293 Berger, B. L. 38 Bergström, O. 170 Bernauer, J. 278 Berry, A. 480 Bevan, E. 273 Beynon, H. 109 Bhabha, H. 173, 245 Bhaskar, R. 54, 55, 61, 177, 358–9 Bijker, W. E. 397 Billing, Y. D. 312, 314 biofuels 137 biotechnology 139 Bird, F. 276 bird flu (avian influenza) 204 Blaikie, N. 54, 60, 61 Blau, P. 58 Blum, A. 109, 118 Blumer, H. 109 Boal, K. 55 Bochner, A. 362 Boden, D. 439 Boggs, C. 202 Böhm, S. 91, 252, 258, 260 Böhme, G. 373 Boje, D. M. 221, 294, 295 Boland, R. J. 393, 399–400 Boltanski, L. 258 Bolton, S. 104 Bon, C. 461 Page 4 of 42
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Index Bookchin, M. 127 Borgerson, J. 380 Borys, B. 505 Boselie, P. 461, 465 Boudreau, J. 531 bounded rationality 151 Bourdieu, P. 251 Boxall, P. 454, 466 Boyce, M. E. 221 Boyer, R. 68 (p. 565) Bradley, K. 511 branding: consumer identity and 378–80 Braverman, H. 80, 154, 256, 292–3, 334 Brewiss, J. 272, 279 Brewster, C. 458 Bridgman, T. 176, 177, 223, 224, 256, 541 Brief, A. P. 465 Briers, M. 482, 483 Brignall, S. 477 Brint, S. 151 Bristor, J. M. 372 Britton, D. M. 312 Brooke, C. 394, 396, 399 Brown, A. D. 234–5, 256–7, 260, 276, 468 Brown, K. 531 Brown, M. 221 Brown, R. H. 39 Brown, S. 91 Brown, W. 510 Brownlie, D. 372, 385–6 Bryer, R. A. 477, 479 Bryman, A. 279 Bryman, B. 358 Buffet, W. 21 Burawoy, M. 101, 109, 110–11, 340 Burchell, S. 473, 474, 477 Burnes, B. 505 Burningham, K. 129 Burns, T. 150, 253 Burrell, G. 5, 13, 37, 87, 220 critical management history 296 history 293, 297–8 LPT 107 organizational theory 287, 297–8 business ethics 270–1 business schools 17–20, 194, 519, 555–6 education as activism 541–3 Page 5 of 42
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Index Butler, J. 173, 179 Byers, D. 272, 273 Calás, M. B. 236–7, 240, 245–6, 317 Caldwell, R. 91 call centers 187, 198 Callaghan, G. 104 Callinicos, A. 290 Callon, M. 136, 138, 482 capitalism 330, 331 Caramanis, C. V. 484 carbon markets 138–9 career structures: and identity 171 Carmona, S. 481 Carnegie, G. D. 484 Carpentier, N. 176, 177–8 Carr, D. 299 Carroll, C. E. 294 Carson, R. 126 cartels 538–41 Carter, C. 295, 468 Carù, A. 376 Casey, C. 65, 79, 104, 171, 172, 255 Castells, M. 67, 225 Catterall, M. 382 CDA (critical discourse analysis) 217–19 CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) 18 CDSs (credit default swaps) 18, 21 Cecez-Kecmanovic, D. 394, 396, 399 Cederström, C. 260 Certeau, M. de 88 Chakrabarty, D. 245 Chan, A. 236 Chandler, A. 251, 296, 416–17 Charles, M. 315, 318 Chen, W. 398–9, 400 Cheney, G. 318 Chesborough, H. 529 Chia, R. 80, 88, 89, 115 discourse 220, 222 organizational change 251, 253 Chiapello, E. 258 Chiaramonte, P. 312, 314 Child, J. 150, 253 Chio, V. 187 Chittipeddi, K. 253 Chong, J. 403 Chua, W.-F. 482, 483, 484 Page 6 of 42
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Index civil society 44–5, 191 Clair, R. D. 219 Clark, P. 63, 64, 65, 287, 289 Clark, T. 257 Clarke, J. 67 Clawson, D. 293 Clegg, S. 136, 191, 295, 334, 335 CR 63, 65, 66–7, 68 CT 37, 39 ethics 274, 276, 281 hierarchy 503, 508 organizations and space 517–18 power 151, 161 n. 7 Cliff, J. 307 climate change: mediatization of 133–4 Cloud, D. 316 Clough, P. T. 159, 226 Clubb, C. 477 CME, see critical management Education CMS, see critical management studies Cockburn, C. 173, 256 (p. 566) Coffey, A. J. 486, 487 Colbert, A. 531 Coleman, D. C. 291 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) 18 Collier, A. 61 Collins, D. 257 Collins, H. 272, 280 Collins, J. 419 Collins, P. H. 319, 320 Collinson, D. 111, 167, 173, 238, 255, 456 colonialism 201, 244 communication 36, 220, 306–9, 348, 433–49 critical studies 441–7 and cultural management 438–40 and discursive closure 446–7 four common approaches 435 Habermas on 33–4, 35, 40, 42 ideal speech situation 33, 35, 40, 42 management and strategic communication 435–7 and meaning 444, 446–7 normative guidance for 445 organizational 40 organizational control 441–3 participatory, and liberal democracy 437–8 and participatory democracy 440–1 poststructuralism and 42–3 Page 7 of 42
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Index systematically distorted 446, 447 theories of 434–41 communicative reason 33, 34 competitiveness 10 conflict resolution 40 constructionism 129–30, 290, 291 constructivism 58–9, 60 consumer boycotts 41 consumer identity: and branding 378–80 consumer sovereignty: and freedom of choice 374–6 consumerism 35–6 consumption: and power 156–7 contingency theory 150–1 control theory: neo-Weberian 57 Contu, A. 69, 91, 113, 177, 215 conventional work 339 Cooke, B. 195. 209 n., 355–6, 466 Coombs, R. W. 482–3 Cooper, C. 485 Cooper, D. 41, 518–19 accounting 473, 474–5, 478, 482–3, 484, 485 Cooper, G. 129 Cooper, R. 78, 116, 220, 361 corporate agency 69–70 corporate culture 233–5 corporate governance theory 40 corporate social responsibility (CSR) 159–60, 192, 273–4 corporate strategies: internationalization of 189 corporations 45 Corvellec, H. 273 Costa, J. A. 41 Costea, B. 467 Cotter, D. A. 315 Courpasson, D. 65, 66–7, 68, 256 Cova, B. 376 Covaleski, M. A. 171, 479, 486 CR, see critical realism Crane, A. 136, 138 credit default swaps (CDSs) 18, 21 Creed, W. E. D. 258 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 217–19 critical ethnography 350–3, 502 critical management education (CME) 536–48 Page 8 of 42
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Index and business schools 544–7 and cartels 538–41 and ME 537–9 critical management history 295–8 critical management methodology 345–63 action research 353–7 critical ethnography 350–3 critical theory 346–57 knowledge and 345–6 methodological alternatives 357–61 critical management studies (CMS) anti-performativity 10, 11–12 business ethics and 270–1 business schools and 17–20 CDA and 217–19 characteristics of 7–11 concerns of 14–15 CR and 358–9 CT and 29–31, 37–41 de-naturalization 9–10, 11, 15 discourse and 213–28 emancipation in 332 epistemological subjectivism and 347–8, 358 ethics, context in 269–70 feminism and 358 historic turn in 294–5 HRM and 465–8 identity and 170–6 LPT 154 moral philosophy and 271–5 ontological realism and 347–8, 358 origins of 4–7 postmodernism and 360–1 power and 153–8 (p. 567) reflexivity 10–11 work and 330–5 critical marketing studies character of 385–7 global distribution 383 marketing education 384–5 marketing practitioners 383–4 critical performativity 12–13 Critical Perspectives on International Business (journal) 187 critical realism (CR) 23 n. 9, 52–71 and causal mechanisms 56–7, 58–62, 69 and CMS 62–4, 358–9 future developments in 64–7 neo-Weberian control theory 57 Page 9 of 42
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Index critical social analysis 33 critical theory (CT) 5–6, 29–46, 346–63 central themes/methods 35–7 and CMS 29–31, 37–41 critiques of 41–4 definition of 30 and feminist theory 44 Frankfurt School 5, 31–2 Habermas and 32–5 methodology of 349–57 philosophical commitments of 346–9 postmodernism and 348 power 147 recent developments 44–6 critical theory methodology 349–57 critical-emancipatory action research 353–7 critical ethnography 350–3 critique 552–3 CRM (customer relationship management) 377 Crossley, N. 41 Crouch, C. 257 Crowdy, P. 237–8 Crowston, K. 399 Crump, N. 467 CSR, see corporate social responsibility (CSR) CT, see critical theory Cullen, J. 480 Cullen, S. 395 cultural management: communication and 438–40 culture 232–46 corporate 233–5 methodology 235–6 organizational 235–40 popular 240–3 and postcolonialism 243–6 theory 245 customer relationship management (CRM) 377 Czarniawska (Czarniawska-Joerges), B. 221, 241, 256, 288–9, 316 Dahl, R. A. 147, 477 DʼAmelio, C. 252, 256 Danermark, B. 58, 60, 61 Darier, E. 128 Davies, A. 105, 173–4, 175, 255 Davies, C. 313 Davis, G. F. 258 Davis, M. 201 Dawson, P. 255 Page 10 of 42
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Index de Certeau, M. 88 De Cock, C. 91, 252, 260 Deal, T. E. 234, 235, 338 deconstruction 290–1 Deem, R. 64 deep ecology 127, 130 Deetz, S. 39, 40, 79, 220, 335 CT 348, 351 identity 168, 169, 172, 179 IS 392, 402–3 deforestation 203 Dehler, G. E. 63 Delbridge, R. 63, 103, 105, 107, 255 Deleuze, G. 83, 333 Della Rocca, G. 173 Dellinger, K. 310 Deloitte & Touche 198 Demski, J. S. 474 de-naturalization 9–10, 11, 15, 117 Department for Transport: The Future of Aviation (UK government White Paper) 131, 132 Derrida, J. 83, 86, 87, 89 Derridean philosophy 272 DeSanctis, G. 394 Desmond, J. 374 Deutsch, F. M. 308 Dewey, J. 359 Dey, P. 91 Dezalay, Y. 485 Dholakia, N. 372 Dicken, P. 189 Dickens, P. 126 Dietz, G. 461 Dillard, J. 474, 475 DiMaggio, P. 151, 257 Dippo, D. 352 Dirsmith, M. 479, 482, 486, 487 disasters: man-made/natural 204 discourse and affect 224–7 (p. 568) and CMS 213–28 Laclauian approach 223–4 micro-approaches to 215–16 postmodernist approaches to 220–3 strategy as 422–3 discourse analysis 454–5 HRM and 530–2 Page 11 of 42
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Index ‘Discourse Ethics’ (Habermas) 33, 34, 40 principle of discourse 34–5, 37, 45 principle of universalization 34, 37, 45 dis-identification 173–6 domination 54, 68, 147–8, 174 Donaldson, L. 37, 58 Donnellon, A. 503 Doolin, B. 255, 256, 392, 399 Doughty, H. A. 510 Douglas, M. 373 Down, S. 288 Drazin, R. 78 Drory, A. 158 Drucker, P. 510–11 Dryzek, J. S. 126, 128, 130, 133, 135, 349 du Gay, P. 243, 295, 336, 374, 442 identity 167, 171, 172, 176 Duberley, J. 169, 172 Dukerich, J. M. 174 Dunkerley, D. 37, 39, 295, 334 Durand, R. 258 Dutton, J. E. 174 Dworkin, A. 269 ecocentrism 127, 130 ecofeminism 130 ecological modernization 131, 134 ecology: power and 159–60 eco-modernisation theory 130 economic ethics 40 Eden, D. 543 Edge, D. 397 Edwards, J. E. 484 Edwards, P. 173 Egan, D. 133, 134, 135, 137 Egri, C. P. 127, 130 Eikhof, D. R. 405 El-Homsi, I. 528 elemental communism 339, 340 Elger, T. 64, 68, 108 Elias, N. 126, 136 Elliot, R. 378 Ellis, N. 377 Elmes, M. 132, 134 Elster, J. 42 emancipation 87, 332, 340–1, 363, 382 emancipatory knowledge 36 emotionality 309–11 Page 12 of 42
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Index empiricism 333 energy: geopolitics of 126, 137 energy production 126 Engestrom, Y. 561 Engwall, L. 257 Enron 194–5 environmental degradation: and global social inequality 136–7 environmental movement 208 environmental problems 203–4 epistemological subjectivism 347–8, 358 EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) 197 Eribon, D. 92 Ernst and Young 16–17 Escobar, A. 209 n. essentialism 80–1, 87, 90 Esteva, G. 209 n. ethics 267–82 business 270–1 context in CMS 269–70 as organizational practices 275–8 in research 279–81 European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) 197 existentialism 272 Exxon 133–4 Ezzamel, M. 102, 113, 172, 173, 350, 423 Fair Trade movement 376 Fairclough, N. 60, 63, 64, 442 discourse 217, 218, 219 Fairhurst, G. T. 439 Fama, E. F. 418 Faria, A. 376–7 Fay, B. 289, 290, 363 Fayol, H. 503 Feenberg, A. 256 Feldman, M. A. 253 feminism 6, 269, 272 and accounting 479 and CMS 358 and CT 44 and identity 173, 174 and power 158, 159 feminist standpoint theories (FST) 319–20 Fenstermaker, S. 308, 319 Fenton, E. M. 503, 509 Ferner, A. 457 Fernie, S. 157 Page 13 of 42
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Index (p. 569)
Feuchtwang, S. 352
finance: sociology of 138–9 financial markets: internationalization of 189 financial reporting/regulation 476–80 financial sector: and power 156–7 financial systems 190 Fineman, S. 136, 138 Firat, F. 372 Fischer, E. 372 Fleetwood, S. 77–8, 254, 405, 466 CR 58, 60, 63, 64 Fleming, P. 46, 468, 555 identity 173, 174, 177 LPT 105, 113–14 organizational change 254, 255 work 527–30 Fligstein, N. 258 Flipo, J.-P. 375 Flores, L. A. 316, 318 Fondas, N. 317 Fong, C. T. 197, 542, 543 Fonte, J. 509 Forbes, C. 52, 62–3 Forbes, L. 105, 136, 560 Ford, J. D. 252, 256 Ford, L. W. 252, 256 Forester, J. 39–40, 348, 350, 351–2 Foss, N. J. 505 Foucault, M. 6, 42, 116 and accounting research 77 anti-essentialism 88 death of man 83 discourse 215, 217 ethics 269, 270, 277 and history 295 identity 171 and LPT 77, 334–5 language 83 and poststructuralism 77, 84–5 power 147–8, 154–8, 160 and structuralism 84–5 and subject 86 Fougère, M. 380 Fournier, S. 381–2 Fournier, V. 9, 23 n. 9, 79, 205, 260 Page 14 of 42
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Index broader organizational constituency 15 CMS 559 ethics 279 IS 392 non performative stance 10, 11–12 reflexivity 10, 81 Fox, A. 149–50, 456 Francis, H. 468 Francis, J. R. 473, 478–9 Franketal, P. 159–60 Frankfurt School (Frankfurt Institute of Social Research) 31–2, 147, 399 freedom: from/in/through work 340–1 freedom of choice: consumer sovereignty and 374–6 Freer, B. 294 French, H. 204 French, W. 40, 63 Fried, J. 507 Friedman, A. 103 Friedman, N. 382 Friere, P. 354 Fromm, E. 41, 270, 373 Frooman, J. 205 Frost, P. 237 Froud, J. 258, 518–19 FST (feminist standpoint theories) 319–20 Fuller, L. 103 functionalism 37–8, 58, 60, 331, 333 Fung, A. 45 Furusten, S. 257 Future of Aviation, The (UK government White Paper) 131, 132 Gabriel, Y. 221 Gaffikin, M. J. R. 41 Gagliardi, P. 234 Galbraith, J. K. 373, 518 Galliers, R. D. 394, 400, 406 Gao, J. 127, 139 Gardner, T. M. 462–4 Garfinkel, H. 109, 112 Garrett, L. 204 Garsten, C. 216 Garth, B. G. 485 Garud, R. 256, 257 Geertz, C. 384 gender issues 23 n. 9 challenges for 320–2 depicting labor 316–17 Page 15 of 42
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Index and diversity 304–22 dividing and doing labor 313–16, 318 feeling and desiring 309–11, 318 interacting 306–9, 318 organizing and institutionalizing 311–13, 318 genealogy 217 genomics 139 Gerencser, S. 45 Gergen, K. 78, 222 Gerhart, B. 466 Gherardi, S. 308, 310 (p. 570) Ghicas, D. 478 Gibson, R. 201 Giddens, A. 45, 115–16, 167, 168–9 Gilbert, D. U. 40 Gillard, H. 400, 404 Gilligan, C. 269 Gills, B. K. 202 Gioia, D. A. 253 Giuffre, P. A. 310 Glenn, E. N. 318 global accounting 195–6 Global Justice Movement 15 global management ideas industry 193–5 global managerialism 16 global media 189 global political economy 189 global postcolonial trade 200–3 global production: circuits of 190 global social inequality: environmental degradation and 136–7 global warming 125–6 global work/workers 197–8 globalization critical perspectives 205 definition of 188–9 global systems 191–8 Habermas on 45–6 HRM and 199 and identity 190, 199–203 imperial formations of 187 management of 186–208 modeling 189–91, 190 resistance to 207 of rights 199–200 and sustainability 203–5 Goffman, E. 109, 112 Page 16 of 42
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Index Goldsmith, E. 205 Gore, A. 129 Gorz, A. 341 Goshal, S. 546 Goulding, C. 382 Gouldner, A. 53, 58 Gouldson, A. 127–8 Gower, K. K. 436 Gowler, D. 456 Gramsci, A. 134–5, 201, 424 Grant, D. 256 Grant, R. M. 418 Gray, R. 477, 478 greed 10 Green, F. 530 Greenpeace 204 Greenwood, D. 360 Greenwood, R. 195, 252, 485 Grey, C. 9, 23 n. 9, 39, 63, 79, 205 accounting 486, 487 broader organizational constituency 15 CME 537 CMS 553–4, 556, 558–9 culture 233, 234, 239 discourse 216 ethics 279 HRM 464, 467 identity 171 IS 392, 394 non performative stance 10, 11–12 organizational change 251, 260 reflexivity 10, 81 work 330–1 Grice, S. 205 Griffiths, M. 404 Grimes, A. J. 38, 40 Grundy, S. 354, 356 grunge economy 198, 206 Grunig, J. E. 436 Grusky, D. B. 315, 318 Guardian 16–17, 507 Guattari, F. 83 Guess, R. 363 Guest, D. 459–60 Guillen, M. 295 Gummesson, E. 376 Günther, K. 44 Gustavsen, A. 356, 360 Page 17 of 42
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Index Gustavsson, E. Gutiérrez, F. 481 Habermas, J. 36, 38, 43, 147 civil society 44–5 communication 33–4, 36, 42, 445 CT 32–5, 39, 347–8, 356 environmental issues 135, 139 ethics 36–7, 269 globalization 45–6 ideal speech situation 33, 35, 40, 42 lifeworld 33, 34 system 33–4 see also ‘Discourse Ethics’ (Habermas) Hacking, I. 129 Håkansson, H. 376 Halford, S. 159, 172 Halfpenny, P. 359 Hall, P. 191 Hall, S. 216, 217 Hammond, T. 485 handbooks 551–2 (p. 571) Handelman, J. 382 Hanlon, G. 195, 339, 340, 485–6 Harding, C. 540 Hardt, M. 339 organizational change 256, 258 work 337, 339, 341, 529 Hardy, C. 167, 215–16, 217–19 Harley, B. 103, 466 Harney, S. 541, 546, 547 Harquail, C. V. 174 Harrison, B. 67 Harte, G. 127, 133, 134, 138 Hartsock, N. C. M. 158 Harvey, D. 67, 202, 203, 204, 208, 258 Hassard, J. 78, 79, 222, 240–1 Haunschild, A. 405 Hayes, N. 256 Hays, S. 70 Hearn, J. 313 Heckscher, C. 258, 503, 529 Hedmo, T. 197 Hegel, G.W. F. 290 Heian, J. B. 486, 487 Heidegger, M. 108 Held, D. 45 Held, V. 269 Heller, F. 506, 510 Page 18 of 42
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Index Helms-Mills, J. 174, 255 Hemment, J. 356 Hensmans, M. 258 Heracleous, L. 256 Hermsen, J. M. 315 Herrbach, O. 171, 174 Herrmann, R. O. 381–2 Hesketh, A. 64, 466 Hetrick, W. P. 372 Hexter, J. H. 291 Heydebrand, W. 503 Hickson, D. J. 253 hierarchy 9, 356–7, 501–12 challenges to 509–11 and critical ethnography 502 and ICT 503–4 organizational centrality of 503–4 organizational functions 505 persistence of 504–6 personal functions 505–6 social costs 506–9 structural reform 509–10 Hillyard, S. 64 Hinings, C. R. 252 Hirschheim, R. 398–9, 400, 404 Hirschman, E. C. 374 Hirst, P. 68 history in CMS 292–4 critique of 290–2 HIV/AIDS 204 HM Treasury 555, 557–8 Hochschild, A. R. 314, 373, 467 Hodgson, D. E. 156–7 Hoedemaekers, C. 260 Hofstede, G. 234, 236 Hogler, R. L. 478 Holland, C. 395 Holliday, R. 240–1 Hollingsworth, R. 68 Holman, D. 537 Holmer-Nadesan, M. 175, 176, 177, 223, 442 Holocaust 298 Hond, F. D. 136 Honneth, A. 46 Hope, A. 161 n. 8 Hope, T. 477 Hopper, R. 41 Page 19 of 42
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Index Hopper, T. 475, 518–19 Hopwood, A. 477 Horkheimer, M. 23 n. 6, 31, 35, 373, 374 ethics 269, 270 and Frankfurt School 31–2 Hoskin, K. 156, 481 Hoskisson, R. 416 Houghton, J. T. 125–6, 133 Houlihan, M. 104 House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee 131–2 Howarth, D. 170, 177 Howcroft, D. 399–400, 404 Howe, J. 529 HRM, see human resource management Huczyinski, A. 257 Hudson, R. 191 human resource management (HRM) 40, 454–68 approaches to 458–60 and CMS 465–8 and discourse analysis 530–2 and globalization 199 history of 455–8 and managerialism 464–5 and method 462–4 and performance 461–5 and power 156–7 Humphrey, C. 486 Humphries, M. 205, 256–7, 260 Hunt, F. 297 (p. 572) Hunt, H. G. 478 Hunt, J. 55 Hunt, T. 436 Huselid, M. 531 Hussein, M. 477 Hyde, P. 461–2 Hyman, R. 457 Ianello, K. P. 312 IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) 479 Ibarra-Colado, E. 276–8 ICT: hierarchy and 503–4 identity 108, 111–12, 166–79 and agency 169–70 CMS and 170–6 construction of 175–6 feminism and 173, 174 globalization and 190, 199–203 and insecurity 112 Page 20 of 42
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Index new directions 176–8 ontology of 168–9 organizational change and 254–5 subjectivity and 108, 109–10, 111, 113–16, 117 identity control 172 identity regulation 171–3 identity resistance: and dis-identification 173–5 identity work 169, 339–40 ideology: strategy as 421–2 IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) 399 illegal immigrants 198 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 136, 202 immaterial labor 337–9 imperialism 202 incrementalism 151 industrial economics 416, 417 inequality 159, 202–3 informal sector activity 198 information systems (IS) 392–407 conferences 400 further work suggestions 404–6 and interpretivism 397–9 journal special issues 400 overview 393–5 positivism and 398 research methods 400–2 research review 395–402 and technological determinism 396–7 information technology 156–7, 198 innovation 225 insecurity: identity and 112 institutional entrepreneurs 257–8 institutional theory 151–2 institutions 218 instrumental rationality 34 integrationism 289 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN 125, 133–4 International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) 479 International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) 399 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 136, 202 interorganizational collaboration 218 interorganizational fields: organizational change and 257–8 interpretivism 58–9, 60, 397–9 intertextuality 218 Page 21 of 42
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Index Introna, L. D. 274, 399, 400 IS, see information systems Isherwood, B. 373 Ives, B. 404 Iyer, E. 208 Jack, G. 278 Jackall, R. 167, 276 Jackson, B. 257 Jackson, C. 315 Jackson, N. 468 Jacobs, J. A. 315 Jacques (Stager Jacques), R. 79, 456, 458 Jain, S. 256, 257 Janssens, M. 466 Jaques, E. 505 Jaros, J. 102, 108 Jaros, S. 55 Jarzabkowski, P. 419 Jaya, P. S. 245 Jenkins, K. 292 Jenkins, R. 167 Jenkins, S. 105 Jermier, J. M. CT 348, 351 environmental issues 126, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138 Jessop, B. 64, 67 Jessop, L. 398–9 Jones, C. 63, 64, 91, 176, 223 ethics 270–1, 272, 273, 275 Jones, E. D. 456 Jones, M. 198, 398–9 Jordan, S. 353 Joshua, G. 540 Kabbani, R. 352 Kallinikos, J. 167 (p. 573) Kallio, T. J. 127–8 Kane, P. 338 Karabel, J. 151 Karger, D. 414–15 Kärreman, D. 216, 381, 439, 467, 545, 560 organizational change 252, 254, 256, 260 Kashyap, R. 208 Katila, S. 174 Kaufman, B. 456 Kaulingfreks, R. 274 Keegan, A. 465 Keenoy, T. 214, 216, 221, 530–2 Keil, M. 403 Page 22 of 42
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Index Kelemen, M. 272, 275 Kelly, D. 457, 466 Kelly-Holmes, H. 383 Kemmis, S. 354–5 Kennedy, A. A. 234, 235 Kennedy, C. 63–4 Kennedy, P. 63–4 Kersten, A. 442 Ketz, J. E. 477 Key, M. 338 Khalifa, R. 474 Khanna, P. 507 Khurana, R. 63 Kieser, A. 287, 289, 293, 294, 295, 503 Kilbourne, W. E. 372 Kimberley, J. R. 253 Kincheloe, J. L. 353, 362, 363 Kipfer, B. A. 503 Kipping, M. 257 Kirby, E. L. 314 Kirkham, L. M. 313, 485 Kjonstad, B. 271 Klare, M. 137 Klein, H. K. 394, 396, 399 Klein, J. G. 41 Klein, N. 373–4, 419–20, 518 Kleinman, S. 312 Knights, D. 39, 112, 113, 205, 218 identity 170, 171, 173 LPT 80–1, 101, 102, 112, 335 organizational change 255, 256 poststructuralism 78, 79, 80, 88 strategy 422–3, 425–6 knowledge 43, 189, 197 and power 155, 156–7, 217 Kolakowski, L. 347 Kondo, D. 79, 173, 174, 336 Korczynski, M. 374–5 Kornberger, M. 276, 517–18 Kosmala, K. 171, 174 Koutsaumadi, A. 486 Kozinets, R. V. 382 Kreiner, G. E. 237 Kress, 218 Kristeva, J. 83 Kumaraswamy, A. 256, 257 Kunda, G. 172, 255, 295, 309 culture 238, 239 Page 23 of 42
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Index work 335, 529 Kurtz, P. 508, 509 Kvasny, L. 399–400, 402–3, 404 Kwek, D. 209 n. labor process analysis 109, 333 labor process debate 100–3, 106–7, 109–10, 334–5 labor process theory (LPT) 6, 77, 80–1, 99–118, 292–4, 334, 526–7 and CMS 105–8, 154 core theory 101, 102, 107, 108, 110, 115, 117 further development 103–5 OʼDoherty on 108–18 and power 154 scope of 100–3 Thompson on 100–8 Lacan, J. 82, 83, 91, 539 identity 176–7 and subject 85, 86 Lacey, H. 61 Laclau, E. 114–15, 176, 177, 179, 215, 222–4 lamination 221 Landes, D. 293 Langton, N. 307 language 222 poststructuralism and 78–9, 83–4 structural linguistics 82 Lant, T. K. 253 Lash, S. 258 Latour, B. 116, 333, 482 Laughlin, R. 41, 475 Law, J. 116, 220 Lawler, E. 531 Lawrence, P. R. 150 Lawrence, T. 218 Lazonick, W. 293 leadership 307, 308, 310 Learned, E. S. 416–17 Leaver, A. 519, 521 Leavitt, H. J. 510 Ledoux, J. 220 Lee, A. S. 399 Legge, K. 456, 460, 462, 465 Lehman, C. R. 478 Lehman Brothers 16–17 (p. 574) Lehmbruch, G. 456–7 Leidner, R. 104, 105, 373 Leonard, P. 159, 172 Letiche, H. 272 Lévi-Strauss, C. 82, 83, 85 Page 24 of 42
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Index Levin, M. 360 Levinas, E. 91, 272, 274, 280–1, 539 Levy, D. 45–6, 258 environmental issues 133, 134–5, 137, 138 strategy 423–4, 426 Lewin, K. A. 253 Lewis, D. 288 Lewis, M. 505 liberal democracy: and participatory communication 437–8 Lieberthal, K. 202 Lien, M. E. 373 lifeworld 33, 34 Light, B. 395 Lin, A. 404 Linstead, A. 175, 244, 245, 246 Linstead, S. 39, 45–6, 78, 189 Lodh, S. C. 41 Loft, A. 313, 485 Lorsch, J.W. 150 Lounsbury, M. 257, 258 Lowe, A. 399 Lowrie, A. 384–5 Lozada, H. R. 372 LPT, see labor process theory Luckmann, T. 38 Luhmann, N. 42 Luke, T. 127 Lukes, S. 147–8, 477 Lyon, D. 467 Lyotard, J.-F. 83 Lyytinen, K. 393, 399 Macdonald, L. D. 484 MacDuffie, J. P. 461 Macintosh, N. B. 479, 480 Mackenzie, D. 138, 139 Maclaren, P. 382 Macve, R. 156, 481 Maguire, P. 356 Mahama, H. 482 Mahon, M. 278 Malik, Z. 414–15 management accounting 480–3 management and organization studies (MOS) 125, 287–9 Management by Objectives (MBO) 171 management consultants/consultancies 194, 257 management education (ME) 536, 537–9 management gurus 194, 257 Page 25 of 42
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Index management knowledge: international credentialing bodies 197 managerial power 223–4 managerialism 270–1, 377, 429, 464–5 Manchester School 109, 118 Mandarini, M. 527–30 Mandelson, P. 137 Mani, L. 208 n. Manicas, P. 55, 56, 60, 67 Mantere, S. 427 March, J. 151, 477–8 Marciano, V. 456 Marcuse, H. 136, 269, 373, 560 CT 32, 35, 36, 40, 41 Marglin, S. 292, 293 marketing 40–1, 371–87 consumer identity and branding 378–80 consumer resistance and activism 381–2 consumer sovereignty and freedom of choice 374–6 critique of 371–4 marketing practice and work 380–1 and power 156–7 relationship marketing 376–7 markets 9–10 Markoff, J. 199 Marks, A. 105 Marquis, C. 258 Marsden, R. 54, 61 Marshall, J. 317 Martin, J. 135, 442, 464 Martin, R. 188 Marx, K. 6, 82, 90, 169, 293 capitalism 139, 330 power 146, 154, 160 work 329, 331 Marxism 146, 272 mass media 199 Massumi, B. 226 MBA degrees 17, 194, 196–7 MBO (Management by Objectives) 171 McAfee, K. 203 McCabe, D. 102, 113, 173 McCall, L. 315 McCarthy, T. 347 McCloskey, D. N. 299 McCormick, S. 41 McDonald, T. J. 289 McGrath, K. 401 Page 26 of 42
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Index McHugh, D. 169, 235–6, 336 McKelvey, B. 55, 253 (p. 575) McKenna, C. 257 McKinlay, A. 295 McLaren, P. L. 353, 362, 363 McNay, L. 174, 269, 270, 278 McSweeney, B. 236 McTaggart, R. 354–5 ME (management education) 536, 537–9 Meadow, M. 400, 406 Medhurst, M. J. 241 media 189, 199 Meek, V. L. 237, 240 Meisenbach, R. J. 40 Meizas, S. J. 253 mentoring: and identity 171 Meriläinen, S. 174 Metcalf, D. 157 Meyer, J. 253 Meyerson, D. E. 174, 338 Mezias, S. 477 Michie, J. 510 Mick, D. G. 372 micro-emancipation 382 micro-political resistance 173–4 Mies, M. 358 Miles, R. H. 253 military capabilities 193–4 Miller, D. 136–7 Miller, P. 196, 474, 477, 481 Mills, A. J. 174, 239, 312, 314 Mills, C. W. 54 mining industry: cyanide use 204–5 Mintzberg, H. 415, 419, 542 Mir, R. 187, 209 n. Mitev, N. 400 modern systems theory: and CT 41–2 Moghadam, V. M. 199–200 Mohrman, S. 531 Moisander, J. 381 Moizer, P. 486 Monbiot, G. 137 Monin, P. 258 Montuori, A. 127 Mooney, J. D. 503 Page 27 of 42
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Index Moore, K. 288, 404 moral philosophy: and CMS 271–5 Morgan, G. 5, 156, 171, 218, 236 CT 37, 41 marketing 372–3, 375 strategy 422–3, 425–6 Morrill, C. 257 Morris, M. 395 Morton, A. D. 135 MOS (management and organization studies) 125, 287–9 Mouck, T. 473 Mouffe, C. 114–15, 176, 177, 179, 223 Mouritsen, J. 477–8 Moynihan, L. M. 462–4 Mufti, A. R. 245 multicultural diversity 199 Mumby, D. K. 39, 218, 219, 309, 312, 442 Muniesa, F. 138 Munir, K. 256, 399 Munslow, A. 290, 294, 295 Murgatroyd, S. 239 Murphy, A. G. 442 Murphy, B. O. 307 Murphy, J. 16 Murray, F. 149, 156–7, 158, 256 Murray, J. B. 372 Musson, G. 169, 172 Mutch, A. 63 Nandhakumar, J. 398–9 natural environment, see organizations and the natural environment natural sciences 36 naturalization 9–10 Negri, A. 256, 258, 337, 339, 341, 529 Neimark, M. 474, 478 neocolonialism 201, 244 neoliberal globalization: principles of 202 neo-Marxism 154, 169 neo-Weberian control theory 57 new institutionalism 151 New Social Movements (NSM) 207 Newell, P. J. 134, 137, 138 Newsome, K. 117 Newton, T. 79, 158, 172, 467 organizational history 294, 295, 299 Ngugi wa ThiongʼO 201 Ngwenyama, O. K. 399 Page 28 of 42
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Index Nichols, T. 109 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 41, 191 Nord, W. 38 Nordberg, P. 127–8 NSM (New Social Movements) 207 Nye, R. A. 146 Oakes, L. S. 478 OʼConnor, E. S. 257 OʼDoherty, D. 63, 79, 103 O&E, see organizations and the natural environment oil production 126 (p. 576) Okoye, I. S. 383 OʼLeary, T. 196, 474, 481 Olsen, J. 477–8 one-dimensionality 35–6 Ong, A. 208 ontological dualism 59, 60 ontological realism: CMS and 347–8, 358 Ooi, C. S. 294 OP (organizational politics) 158 operaismo (workerism) 337–8 organization: and LPT 115–16, 117–18 organization theory 40, 512 organizational analysis 187 organizational change 251–60 and identity 254–5 and interorganizational fields 257–8 and organizational processes 255–7 and social dynamics 258–9 theories of 252–4 organizational communication 40 organizational history 286–99 alternative approaches 295–8 in critical management studies 292–5 critique of 290–2 in mainstream management and organization studies 287–9 organizational politics (OP) 158 organizational processes: organizational change and 255–7 organizational strategy 218 organizational symbolism (OS) 237 organizations 443–5, 517–18 organizations and the natural environment (O&E) 125–40 aviation industry and 131–2 biotechnology 139 carbon markets 138–9 Page 29 of 42
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Index climate change mediatization 133–4 constructionism and 129–30 environmental degradation and global social inequality 136–7 Exxon 133 genomics 139 geopolitics of energy 137 global warming 125–6 nature, perception/characterization of 128–30 and power 150–1 pragmatic accommodation 130–1 realism and 129–30 review of 134–6 Orlikowski, W. J. 256, 397–8, 399 Orsatto, R. J. 136 Orwell, G. 278 OS (organizational symbolism) 237 Other 272–3, 274–5, 277, 278, 280–1 OʼToole, J. 541–2 Overseas Development Institute 137 Ozanne, J. L. 372 Ozcaglar-Toulouse, N. 376 Paauwe, J. 461, 465 Packard, V. 373, 518 Palazzo, G. 39, 42, 44, 45–6 Palmer, J. 63 Park, C. 127 Park, P. 360 Parker, B. 188 Parker, C. 40, 64 Parker, I. 214, 540 Parker, M. 77, 154, 294, 429, 464 CMS 552, 554 culture 233, 235–6, 239–40, 242–3 ethics 267, 270–1, 272, 275 parrhesia 278 participatory communication: liberal democracy and 437–8 participatory democracy: communication and 440–1 Patel, R. 521–2 Pawson, R. 55 Payne, A. 202 Payton, F. C. 403 Peltonen, T. 272, 275 Peñaloza, L. 381–2 Penrose, E. T. 418 performance appraisal: and identity 171 Page 30 of 42
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Index performativity 10, 11, 12–13 Perlman, S. 456 permanent opposition 553–8 Perrow, C. 295, 296 Peters, B. 44 Peters, J. D. 135 Peters, T. 233, 235, 338, 460 Petrella, R. 206 Pettigrew, A. 68, 253, 503, 509 Pfeffer, J. 151, 197, 253, 542, 543 PFIs (private finance initiatives) 196 phenomenological sociology 108–9 Phillips, N. 256 CR 65, 66–7, 68 discourse 217–19 Pinfield, L. T. 127, 130 Pizzigati, S. 507 Plato 146 pluralism 152–3, 153 political economy (p. 577) global 189 strategy as 423–4 Pollert, A. 109, 173 Polley, R. W. 41 pollution 191, 203, 204–5 Pondy, L. R. 393 Poole, M. S. 252 Poovey, M. 516 popular culture 240–3 population-ecology research 57 Porter, S. 61, 63, 359 positivism 30, 37–8, 55, 58, 60, 398 Positivismusstreit (positivism debate) 32 postcolonialism 173, 187, 243–6 Poster, M. 156–7, 205 postmodernism 269, 272, 348, 360–1, 363 poststructuralism 76–93, 269, 272 and anti-essentialism 80–1, 87–91 in CMS 77–81 and communication 42–3 and language 78–9, 83–4 possible future of 91–3 reception of 91 struggle and resistance, analyses of 113–14 and subject 79–80, 84–7 Potter, J. 216 Poullaos, C. 484 Poverty Report (World Bank) 206 Page 31 of 42
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Index Powell, W. W. 257, 503 power 144–61, 191, 192, 218, 224–5 accounting and 156 alternative approaches 158–60 CMS and 153–8 contingency theory 150–1 domination and 147–8 ecology and 159–60 feminism and 158, 159 historical overview of concept 145–8 inequality and 159 institutional theory 151–2 knowledge and 155, 156–7, 217 LPT and 154 managerial 223–4 OP and 158 organization studies and 148–53 pluralism 152–3 resource dependency theory 151 stakeholder theory 152–3 Power, M. 41, 195–6, 467, 518–19, 520 accounting 475, 486 practice: strategy as 424–5 pragmatism 43 Prahalad, C. K. 202 Prasad, A. 187, 201, 209 n., 244, 466 Prasad, P. 132, 134, 209 n. Prasch, T. 79 Preece, D. 253 presentism 287–9 Preston, A. 482–3 Price, L. L. 381–2 Pringle, R. 310 private business firms 45 private finance initiatives (PFIs) 196 privatization 196 Priyadharshini, E. 244 protectionism 207–8 Pryke, M. 243 Pugh, D. S. 150, 253 Pulver, S. 130, 138 Purcell, J. 454, 461, 466 Purser, R. E. 127 Putnam, L. L. 309, 362, 439 queer studies: and identity 173 Quinn, J. B. 151 Page 32 of 42
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Index R&D 189 racial issues 306, 318 Radcliffe, V. S. 485 Rahman, S. F. 479–80 Rajchman, J. 173–4 Rampersad, H. 528 Ramstad, P. 531 Rancière, J. 92 Randeria, S. 202 Rao, H. 257, 258 Rasche, A. 40 rational choice theory 57 Ray, C. A. 234 realism and natural environment 129–30 scientific 54, 55, 57 theoretical 54, 55–6, 57 see also critical realism (CR) Reason, P. 354, 355, 362 reconstructionism 290, 291 Reed, M. 40, 77–8, 79, 219 CR 57, 58, 59, 63, 64, 65, 67 Reedy, P. 274, 468 reflexivity 10–11, 109, 117 reform environmentalism 130, 131, 132, 134 Rehn, A. 241–2 Reiley, C. A. 503 relationship marketing 376–7 Renner, M. 203 rent-seeking 192–3 (p. 578) reorientationism 289 repetitive change syndrome 258–9 research ethics 279–81 resource dependency theory 151 retro-organization theory 297–8 Reynolds, M. 541 Rhodes, C. 225, 256 culture 240–1, 242, 243 ethics 272, 273, 276 Richards, D. 216 Richardson, A. L. 484 Richardson, H. 395, 396, 399–400, 402–4 Ricoeur, P. 292 Rifkin, J. 202 Rittenberg, J. 479 Ritzer, G. 188 Roberts, J. 223 accounting 480, 481, 483 Page 33 of 42
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Index ethics 272, 273–4 identity 176, 179 Robey, D. 394 Robinson, B. 395, 396, 399, 402, 404 Rodrigues, S. B. 507 Rollins, J. 318 Romm, T. 158 Rorty, R. 43 Rosa, E. A. 134 Rose, N. 79, 456, 468 Rosen, M. 238, 239, 401–2 Rosenau, P. M. 360 Roslender, R. 474, 475 Ross, A. 338 Roth, K. 127 Rowan, B. 253 Rowell, A. 133, 134 Roy, W. G. 296 Royal Society 133 Ruddick, S. 269 Rumbo, J. D. 382 Rumelt, R. 415, 419 Russell, S. 392, 397 Rynes, S. 531 S11 anarchists 207 Sahlin-Andersson, K. 197 Said, E. 173, 201, 209 n., 244–5, 269, 352 Salaman, G. 257 Salanick, G. 253 Salencik, G. 151 Samra-Fredericks, D. 424–5 Sandelands, L. 78 Saren, M. 386 Sassen, S. 198 Saussure, F. de 82 Savage, M. 66, 312 Sawyer, S. 399 Sayer, A. 57, 58, 60, 61–2, 64, 359 Sayles, L. R. 150 Scapens, R.W. 480, 483 Scarseletta, M. 477 Scheeres, H. 225 Schein, E. 234 Scherer, A. G. 552 Schmitter, P. C. 456–7 Schneider, S. C. 234 Scholte, J. A. 201–2 Schroeder, J. 380 Page 34 of 42
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Index Schultze, U. 399–400 Schwarz, G. M. 504 Schwarzkopf, S. 381 scientific realism 54, 55, 57 SCOS (Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism) 237 SCOT (social construction of technology) 397 Scott, J. 53, 54, 65, 66, 68 Scott, L. M. 372 Scott, W. R. 257 Scott Bader 511 Scully, M. A. 174, 258 Seal, W. 480 Seddon, P. 395 Sedgwick, E. K. 173 Seidman, S. 221–2 self-identity 169: see also identity selfhood 176 Selznick, P. 418 Sen, J. 208 Sennett, R. 167, 179, 259, 260, 352 service proletariat 187, 197–8 Sewell, G. 157, 255, 335, 350 identity 171, 173, 174 sexual harassment 310 sexuality 310–11 Shackleton, K. 484 Shaoul, J. 518–19, 521 Shattock, M. 555 Shearer, T. L. 479 Shenhav, Y. 294 Sherer, M. J. 474–5, 478 Shildrick, M. 269 Shipilov, A. V. 57 Shrivastava, P. 39, 40, 128, 421–2, 423–4 Shuler, S. 316 Sibeon, R. 61, 66 Siegelbaum, L. H. 466 Sikka, P. 16–17, 474, 479 (p. 579) Silva, L. 402–3, 404 Silverman, D. 37 Simmell, G. 139 Simon, H. 151 Simon, R. 352 Sinclair, A. 260 Singer, P. 204 Sirgy, M. J. 378 Siu, L. 138 Page 35 of 42
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Index Skålén, P. 380 Sklair, L. 68, 207 Sköld, D. 241–2 Skoldberg, K. 350–1, 352 Smircich, L. 234, 236–7, 240, 243, 245–6, 317 Smith, A. M. 178, 374 Smith, C. 64, 68, 103, 105, 108 Snehota, I. 376 Soares, C. 274 social analysis 38 social and political theory 42 social construction of technology (SCOT) 397 social constructivism 38, 60–1 social dynamics: organizational change and 258–9 social inequality 153–4 social justice movement 207 social movements 41, 258 social shaping of technology (SST) 397 social theory and methodology 11 social work 340 sociological dualism: limitations of 110–12 Sommers, M. R. 55, 57 Soper, K. 128–9 Sørensen, B. M. 91 Sorge, A. 150, 257 Sorrell, T. 270 Sostike, D. 191 Sparrow, P. 458 Spicer, A. 12–13, 46, 91, 468, 560 cartels 538–9 CME 545 discourse 223 identity 173, 176, 177 LPT 105, 113–14 Spivak, G. C. 84, 173, 245, 269 Spybey, T. 207 SST (social shaping of technology) 397 Stablein, R. 38 Stager Jacques, R., see Jacques, R. stakeholder theory 40, 152–3, 153 Stalker, G. M. 150, 253 Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS) 237 Starkey, K. 63, 136 Stavrakakis, Y. 177, 506 Steel, M. 288 Steffy, B. D. 38, 40 Page 36 of 42
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Index Stern, B. 372 Steven, G. 253 Steven, V. 253 Stewart, A. 65 Steyaert, C. 91, 466 Stones, R. 60, 65, 70 Storey, J. 459–60 strategic management 39–40, 426–8 strategy 414–29 agency theory 418 approaches to critiquing 421 critical discussions 420–6 critical reflections 426–8 critical theory approach 424 as discourse 422–3 historical materialism approach 424 and identity 171 as ideology 421–2 industrial economics 416, 417 as political economy 423–4 as practice 424–5 processual approach 424 research overview 416–20 TCE 416, 418 teaching 428 Strauss, G. 456 Streeter, D. 485 structuralism 77, 82–3, 84–6 structuration theory 115–16 Sturdy, A. 194, 196, 251, 257, 555 Sturdy, S. 251 subject poststructuralism and 79–80, 84–7 structuralism and 84–6 subjectification and identity regulation 171–3 ‘missing subject’ 101, 105, 109, 116–17, 171 subjectivity 103, 108, 111, 156–7, 180 n. 1 and identity 108, 109–10, 111, 113–16, 117 manufacturing of 171–2 Suddaby, R. 485 Sugarman, D. 485 Sundaramurthy, C. 505 Suokannas, M. 381 supplementarism 289 sustainability: globalization and 203–5 sustainable development 130, 131, 132, 134, 187, 190–1 Page 37 of 42
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Index Sutton, P. 130 (p. 580) Sutton, T. G. 477 Sveningsson, S. 175, 255, 415 Sweezy, P. 373 system 33–4 Tapia, A. 403 Taylor, B. C. 294 Taylor, J. R. 214, 221 Taylor, P. 63–4, 104, 105, 485 Taylor, S. 511 Taylorism 293 TCE (transaction cost economics) 416, 418 technical performativity 12 technocracy: critique of 36 technology 189 ten Bos, R. 270–1, 272, 274, 275 Thackaberry, J. A. 447 Thatchenkery, T. 78 theoretical realism 54, 55–6, 57 theory culture 245 Therborn, G. 189 Thomas, H. 556 Thomas, J. 350, 502 Thomas, R. 105, 255 Thompson, G. F. 476 Thompson, P. 11, 68, 77, 559 culture 235–6 Fournier and Grey, critique of 11–12, 23 n. 9 hierarchy 503 HRM 466, 468 identity 167, 169, 171–2, 173, 174 LPT 526–7 organizational change 258 work 336 Thornton, E. 504 Thrift, N. 225, 227, 254, 258, 541 Tilley, N. 55, 66 Tinker, A. M. 474–5, 478, 486, 518–19 Tiratsoo, N. 63 Tonelli, M. J. 466 Torfing, J. 177, 223 Tosh, J. 291 Total Quality Management (TQM) 171 Townley, B. 79 globalization 193 HRM 460, 467 identity 171, 179 Page 38 of 42
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Index organizational history 294–5 and power 156–7 TQM (Total Quality Management) 171 transaction cost economics (TCE) 416, 418 transnational corporations 189, 191, 192–3, 198 Trauth, E. 398–9, 400 Trehan, K. 40, 541 Treleavan, L. 361 Trethewey, A. 444 Tronti, M. 337, 529 Tsoukas, H. 251, 253, 292 tsunami (2004) 204 Turley, S. 486 Tzokas, N. 377 UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) 133 Ulrich, P. 39, 40 UN: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 125, 129, 133–4 Unermann, J. 40 Unger, R. M. 501 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) 133 universalism 43, 287–9 University of Leicester School of Management 552–3 Urry, J. 258 Üsdiken, B. 287, 289 Useem, M. 68 Uzzi, B. 253 Vaara, E. 427 Van de Ven, A. 252 van Dijk, T. 214 Van Every, E. J. 214, 221 Van Maanen, J. 239 Van Witteloostuijn, A. 257 Vanneman, R. 315 Varey, R. 436, 445 Varnam, R. 41, 375 Veblen, T. 373 Venkatesh, A. 372 Venkatesh, V. 395 Ventresca, M. 63 Vernon, G. 458 Vidaillet, B. 91 Vurdubakis, T. 79, 148, 155 Wajcman, J. 405 Walker, S. P. 484, 485 Wall, T. D. 461 Wallace, R. S. 479 Walsh, W. G. 289 Page 39 of 42
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Index Walsham, G. 256, 399, 400, 401 Ward, R. (Bob) 133 (p. 581) Warhurst, C. 405 Warwick Organizational Behaviour Staff (WOBS) 332, 560 Waterman, R. H., Jr. 233, 235 Waters, J. 276 Waters, M. 137 Watson, T. 275–6, 465, 545 Watts, M. 137 Webb, J. 105, 167, 179 Weber, M. 53, 149, 295, 334, 503 Webster, B. 131 Wedlin, L. 197 Weedon, C. 173–4 Weick, K. 216 Weitzner, D. 91 Welford, R. 127–8, 135 Welsh, M. A. 63 Wendt, R. F. 310 Wernerfelt, B. 418 Wessler, H. 44 West, C. 308, 319 Westphal, J. D. 507 Westrup, C. 395, 400 Westwood, R. 78, 240–1, 245 Wetherell, M. 216 White, H. 290, 291, 298 Whitley, R. 2, 64, 68 Whittaker, L. 399, 400 Whittington, R. 415, 419 Whyte, W. 251 Wieland, S. 442 Wilkinson, B. 157, 171, 335 Wilkinson, R. 508 Willcocks, L. 395 Williams, A. 358 Williams, C. L. 310, 315 Williams, K. 66, 479, 518–19, 521 Williams, R. 202, 232, 392, 397, 510 Williamson, O. E. 418, 507 Willis, P. 111, 173 Willke, G. 42 Willke, H. 42 Willmott, H. 113, 208, 239, 394, 560 accounting 474, 479, 481, 482, 484 CMS 62–3, 553–4, 556, 558–9 CR 52, 62–3, 69 CT 35–6, 39, 40–1, 350 Page 40 of 42
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Index discourse 215, 223, 224 emancipation 87, 332, 382 ethics 271, 272, 277–8 HRM 456, 458, 460, 464 identity 169, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 179 identity work 339–40 LPT 101, 102, 103, 105, 112, 335 ME 384–5 organizational change 255, 256 poststructuralism 79, 80, 81 power 147, 149 strategy 420, 423–4, 426 work 330–1 Wilson, D. 256 Wilson, E. O. 129 Wilson, P. A. 478 Winiecki, D. 156–7 Winner, L. 397 Winstanley, D. 272, 466 Witz, A. 312, 313 WOBS (Warwick Organizational Behaviour Staff) 332, 560 Wodak, R. 217, 218, 219 Wolkowitz, C. 158 women's rights 199–200 Wood, A. 206–7 Wood, S. J. 461 Wood, T., Jnr. 466 Woodall, J. 466 Woodward, J. 150, 253 work 328–41 and autonomy 337–9 and CMS 330–5 conventional 339 cooperation 338–9 discourse framing 335–6 and disengagement 527–30 and emancipation 332, 340–1 epistemological status of 331, 332, 336 identity 339–40 and immaterial labor 337–9 ontology of 331, 332, 335–6, 335–7 politics of 331–2, 336 poststructural analysis of 335–6 social 340 social factory 337–40 workerism (operaismo) 337–8 World Bank 16, 136, 137, 202, 206 World Social Forum (WSF) 207, 208 Page 41 of 42
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Index World Trade Organization (WTO) 200, 202 Worthington, F. 102, 113, 173, 482 Wright, P. 454, 462–4, 466 WSF (World Social Forum) 207, 208 Yapa, L. 403 Ybema, S. 259, 260, 377 Yeomans, D. 353 (p. 582) York, R. 134 Young, J. J. 477, 478 Zald, M. N. 257, 287–8 Zammuto, R. 78 Zavestoski, S. 382 Zeff, S. 476 Zenger, T. R. 507 Zimmerman, D. 308 Žižek, S. 113–14, 333, 341 identity 167, 174, 176 Zmud, R. W. 394, 404 Zorn, T. 307 Zuboff, S. 399
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