Institutionalizing critique: A Problem of Critical Management Studies

Abstract

This paper has as its starting point calls for critical management studies (CMS) to engage more actively with the public. CMS has been relatively successful in gaining an institutional foothold within university business schools, but is criticised from within for a lack of influence outside the institution. We argue that while closer relationships with the public is assumed to be the next phase in the institutional development of CMS, strengthening its position within university business schools is likely only to exacerbate the present lack of public engagement, since this becomes an end in itself. Bigger and better conferences and a proliferation of journals dedicated to the publishing of CMS research takes us further from the everyday world of workplace politics. As part of creating a space in which we can think differently about CMS and the university, we draw on Foucault’s analysis of parrhesia, or fearless speech, which emphasises critique as a personal quality.