Reconstituting relevance: exploring possibilities for management educators’ critical engagement with the public

Abstract

This paper considers the possibilities of, and threats to, the performance of a critical public role by business school faculty, based on an empirical study of UK research-led business schools. Its reference point is recent debate about the ‘relevance’ of management education to management practice - a debate which has become polarised around nodal points of ‘critical’ and ‘engaged’ with the implication that engagement with external constituencies requires the suspension of critique and conversely, that critique of received wisdom is of little relevance to stakeholders. The notion of a critical engagement with the public asserts that business schools can serve a valuable democratic function as scrutinisers of organisational activity. This role is largely marginalised in prevailing conceptions of an increasingly commercialised business school, but the empirical study suggests there is some cause for optimism. The demonstration of ‘relevance’ does not have to involve the pursuit of a narrow commercialisation agenda where the business school propagates a strictly managerialist view of the world.