Abstract
This collection’s 13 chapters are written by 17 authors. They provide a comprehensive overview of the current stage of critical management research (CMR). The editors have divided CMR into four parts: approaching the field, in the field, out of the field, and reflections on the field. Following the editors’ introduction, the chapters discuss ‘mystery creation, learning from experience, negotiations, being native, asking until it makes sense, research online, qualitative research, over-interpretations, elusive facticity, what can be said’, and finally ‘reflexive ethics’. The editors’ introduction starts by stating, ‘the idea for this book emerged from a number of conversations among colleagues’, mentioning ethics, fairness and giving voice (with the voice of workers, for example, being stunningly absent!), equity, autonomy and collective responsibility, as well as ‘Jürgen Habermas [who] has termed emancipatory knowledge interests’ (p. 3). His key reference (Knowledge and Human Interests 1987) is missing, as is a critical application of Habermas’s knowledge-creating interest to CMR. Even though Habermas is initially mentioned, this collection is not written in any understanding of Habermas, nor of Horkheimer’s (1937) key writing on ‘Traditional and critical theory’, nor on the application of Horkheimer and/or Habermas to CMR (e.g. Morrow 1994).
Despite the editor’s announcement – ‘a further antecedent of CMS [Critical Management Studies] is critical theory itself’ (p. 5) – and the implied claim that the collection is dedicated to critical theory and Habermas, the CMR collection carries some connotations to advancing Habermas’s technical-empirical control and his historical-hermeneutical interest. But CMR seems to avoid Habermas’s critical-emancipatory interest that highlights domination with the telos of human emancipation. The Jeanes/Huzzard collection does none of this (Klikauer 2011). Instead, CMR represents management research with the prefix ‘critical’ attached to it. For the most part, it appears to stabilise management, rather than challenging the dominant and domineering managerial paradigm. Perhaps it might even be supportive of some aspects of management’s key ideology: managerialism (Clegg 2014; Klikauer 2013; Locke & Spender 2011).
The objective, not of critical theory but of CMR, is ‘to develop new ideas and theoretical contributions’ as Alvesson and Sandberg recognise while also mentioning ‘Marxism’ (p. 25). Perhaps the two references to Marx in the entire collection indicate that management as well as managerialism remain largely unchallenged by CMR. Perhaps the non-challenging character of CMR is exemplified in Alvesson and Sandberg’s claim to be attempting ‘to make research more interesting and influential’ (p. 38). In line with being non-challenging, Jeanes et al. don’t contest the UK’s ‘research excellence framework – REF’ (p. 43) but offer ‘how to do’ advice with no discussion on the fact that managerial instruments like REF have the potential to destroy solidarity by enhancing competition among academics. The political implications of REF as support instruments of neoliberalism ‘vanish into thin air’, as an old friend of mine would have said.
Perhaps equally ground-breaking is Nyberg and Delany’s claim that ‘we argue that most ethnographies have … political impacts’ (p. 63). Many have known that research has political implications, ever since the Catholic Church showed the instruments of torture to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) in order to shut him up roughly 400 years ago. Thankfully, research, Enlightenment and modernity are not confined to CMR’s ‘micro-emancipation’ (p. 81, 97) but support full and comprehensive emancipation from religious-ideological asphyxiation. Not surprisingly, for Skrutkowski, ‘there is an interpretive bias in the core stream within the CMS research tradition that draws on critical theory and the Frankfurt School’ (p. 115). It seems as if Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and many others are seen as having provided no more than an ‘interpretive bias’. Case closed.
Given this, perhaps not even Ekman’s ‘notion of compassion can help us’ (p. 132), and perhaps neither do Bertlisson’s ‘social media vehicles such as blogs, chat rooms, forums, Twitter and Facebook’ (p. 136). But what might help us is the rather detailed description of Ashcraft and Ashcraft’s stunning achievement of an ASQ publication. Wow! But the collection’s overall focus on ethnographic research not only testifies to CMR’s asphyxiation as a result of its historical-hermeneutical research interest, but also lays bare CMR’s detestation of Habermas’s critical-emancipatory research interest. CMR has firmly locked itself in research methods that remain asphyxiated by the Greek god Hermes – the originator of hermeneutics. Hermes interpreted the words of the gods; CMR interprets the words of management. As a consequence, Svensson tells us that ‘the aim of the ethnographer is often to translate everyday and mundane phenomena into meaning and significant aspects of the ongoing construction of social reality’ (p. 173). Hermes couldn’t have said it any better. CMR seems to be about interpretation, not emancipation.
But CMR’s anti-emancipatory elements are also highlighted by Willmott when noting, ‘management research … pays insufficient attention to the practice of reflexivity … in my career as a management researcher, reflexivity was initially promoted … by a hiatus in producing an empirically based doctorate thesis’ (p. 205). This might be a ‘see, I did it’ approach to research, but it is neither critical nor emancipatory. Martin Parker’s chapter on ‘writing’ (p. 211 ff.) is without doubt the critical-intellectual highlight of the entire collection. The collection concludes, ‘We tried to present a range of tales’ (p. 227). This is exactly what CMR has achieved: it tells tales in the absence of critique. Instead of research in the spirit of critique or critical theory, CMR is largely interpretive storytelling. The collection concludes with CMR’s most stunning achievement: ‘We feel that CMS has now become a relatively mature sub-domain within the broad management field’. After more than twenty years of CMS/CMR (Alvesson & Willmott 1992), to be a ‘sub-field of management studies’ is surely an outstanding achievement.
While CMR may be interpretive storytelling in the absence of critique, Martin Parker’s chapter on ‘writing’ is neither, delivering an insightful and thorough critique on ‘writing’ that challenges management, managerialism, and perhaps even CMR. While not written in the philosophical-theoretical spirit, nor in the at times dense, heavy critical theory style (Freyenhagen 2013), it remains the most valuable contribution of the entire collection. Martin Parker takes academic writing and publishing to task in a most exquisitely executed way. He starts with one of the flagships of management studies – the Academy of Management Review (AMR) – on which Parker notes, ‘a paper, say, [in] the AMR means that you are playing with the big boys (and girls)’. Perhaps when the AMR (Clegg 2014) reviews your book (Klikauer 2013), they might just play with you. But indeed many of my peers have congratulated me. Perhaps because ‘high citations could suggest that the work was good’; but this might just be the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ (p. 214): McDonalds must be good, because millions eat it every day. In what is perhaps Parker’s key section, he writes:
most of these highly ranked journals publish very little work which is engaged with issues which are of central global importance. For example, there is no explicit instruction to authors to ignore ‘the relationship between business/corporate practices and war, violence and/or the displacement of populations’, yet only 37 management articles out of over 2,300 surveyed mention this. (p. 218)
In short, management research, and to some extent CMR, are reflective of what Marcuse (1966) once called ‘one-dimensionality’. When Parker examines management textbooks (p. 220) this becomes even more obvious. But despite the one-dimensionality of management, Parker remains hopeful, suggesting to readers, ‘armour yourself, which is what all writers of all kinds do, and get rejected in style. At least you will then feel you have said what you wanted to say, written for people you care about, and perhaps even enjoyed the writing … your words properly won’t change the world, but at least they will feel like your words’ (p. 224). Parker concludes, ‘it is a practice which exists on the edge of possibilities, unless the only thing we want to do is to get to the centre as quickly as possible, like burrowing a maggot’ (p. 225). A general overview of non-challenging hermeneutics of story-telling CMR aside, it is Parker’s chapter that makes this collection a worthwhile enterprise.