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[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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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
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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
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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
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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 influ