The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies provides an overview of theoretical approaches, key topics, issues, and subject specialisms in management studies, as well as a set of reflections ...on the progress and prospects of Critical Management Studies (CMS). CMS has emerged as a movement that questions the authority and relevance of mainstream thinking and practice. Critical of established social practices and institutional arrangements, it challenges prevailing systems of domination and promotes the development of alternatives to them. CMS draws upon diverse critical traditions. Of particular importance for its initial articulation was the thinking of members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. From these foundations, CMS has grown into a pluralistic and inclusive movement incorporating a diverse range of perspectives ranging from labour-process theory to radical feminism. In recent times, a set of ideas broadly labelled ‘poststructuralist’ has been developed to complement and challenge the insights of Critical Theory, giving new impetus for scholars seeking to challenge the status quo and articulate a more inclusive and humane future for management practice. The authors are all specialists in their respective fields and share a concern to interrogate and challenge received wisdom about management theory and practice. The CMS movement has grown rapidly – its ever-increasing theoretical and geographical diversity and its outreach into the public sphere. In addition to UK contributors, where CMS has developed most rapidly, there is strong representation from North American contributors, as well as from areas where CMS has taken hold more recently, such as Australasia.
We trace the development of neo-institutional theory in Organization Studies from a marginal topic to the dominant theory. We show how it has evolved from infancy, through adolescence and early ...adulthood to being a fully mature theory, which we think is now facing a mid-life crisis. Some of the features of this mid-life crisis include over-reach, myopia, tautology, pseudo-progress and re-inventing the wheel. To address these problems, we argue that institutional theorists should limit the range of the concept, sharpen their lens, avoid tautologies and problematize the concept. By doing this, we think institutional theorists could develop a narrower and more focused conception of institutions.
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Developing and evaluating scientific knowledge and its value requires a clear – or at least not too unclear – understanding of what ‘theory’ means. We argue that common definitions of theory are too ...restrictive, as they do not acknowledge the existence of multiple kinds of scientific knowledge, but largely recognize only one kind as ‘theory’, namely explanatory knowledge. We elaborate a typology that broadens and clarifies the meaning of ‘theory’. Consisting of five basic theory types – explaining, comprehending, ordering, enacting and provoking theories – the typology offers a framework that enables researchers to develop and assess knowledge in more varied ways and for a broader set of purposes than is typically recognized, as well as providing a more level playing field within the academic community.
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The use of concepts is a vital part of the research process. Many researchers overexploit popular concepts by adding more and more vague and poorly defined meanings to them, thereby making their ...boundaries unclear and the concepts increasingly unwieldy. We will refer to these types of concepts as hembigs – an acronym for hegemonic, ambiguous, big concepts. The article demonstrates the problem in three domains: leadership, strategy and institution. It suggests ways to mitigate the problems with dominant scientific concepts, overloaded with more or less incoherent meanings.
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Despite the huge increase in the number of management articles published during the three last decades, there is a serious shortage of high‐impact research in management studies. We contend that a ...primary reason behind this paradoxical shortage is the near total dominance of incremental gap‐spotting research in management. This domination is even more paradoxical as it is well known that gap‐spotting rarely leads to influential theories. We identify three broad and interacting key drivers behind this double paradox: institutional conditions, professional norms, and researchers' identity constructions. We discuss how specific changes in these drivers can reduce the shortage of influential management theories. We also point to two methodologies that may encourage and facilitate more innovative and imaginative research and revisions of academic norms and identities.
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This article explores middle managers in the professions from their position in the sandwiched middle. Based upon interviews with senior academics in management roles and their subordinates in UK ...business schools, we investigate this experienced middle through a metaphor that informs one particular subject position: to be an umbrella carrier. This position entails protecting subordinates from what is seen as unnecessary and/or damaging initiatives and information from top management above, in order to allow for good professional work to take place below. This form of countermanagement, which aims to weaken hierarchical pressure rather than enforce or uphold it, is informed by a stronger identification with the profession and subordinates below than with the leader role or the superiors above, and aids the middle managers in their identity work.
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Pre-understanding – our presuppositions of reality – underlies all research. Many researchers probably also draw productively on their pre-understanding in their studies. However, very few rationales ...and methodological resources exist for how researchers can enrich their research by mobilizing their pre-understanding more actively and systematically. We elaborate and propose a framework for how researchers more actively, systematically and visibly can bring forward their pre-understanding and use it as a positive input in research, alongside formal data and theory. In particular, we show how researchers, in dialogue with data and theory, can mobilize their pre-understanding as an interpretation-enhancer and horizon-expander throughout the research process, including stimulating imagination and idea generation, broadening the empirical base, and evaluating what empirical material and theoretical ideas are interesting and relevant to pursue.
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The article argues for theorizing and studying the significance of how so-called leaders and followers converge or diverge in their views and understandings of the leadership/followership relations ...they may be part of. Divergence or misfits may be common yet missed by the researcher who takes only one party’s view of leadership into account and/or assumes that people involved define the relationship in a similar way. The article identifies and illustrates four typical forms of shared/diverse meanings regarding leadership: high-alignment leadership (shared meanings), value misfit (diverse assessment), construction misfit (different views of what goes on), and multiple breakdowns (high level of confusion of what goes on and how to assess it). Given variations in views of leadership, this article makes a case for considering “divergent relationalities”—in some opposition to common ideas about “smooth” leadership/followership relations based on convergent meanings.
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Existing accounts of leadership are underpinned by two dominant approaches: functionalist studies, which have tried to identify correlations between variables associated with leadership; and ...interpretive studies, which have tried to trace out the meaning-making process associated with leadership. Eschewing these approaches, we turn to an emerging strand of literature that develops a critical approach to leadership. This literature draws our attention to the dialectics of control and resistance and the ideological aspect of leadership. However, it largely posits a negative critique of leadership. We think this is legitimate and important, but extend this agenda. We posit a performative critique of leadership that emphasizes tactics of circumspect care, progressive pragmatism and searching for present potentialities. We use these tactics to sketch out a practice of deliberated leadership that involves collective reflection on when, what kind and if leadership is appropriate.
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This paper contributes to the understanding of relational aspects of leadership and followership. Our in-depth empirical study of the leader/follower relation uncovers how and why assigning team ...members into ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ positions may sometimes be a double-edged sword and lead to unintended consequences undermining both the team’s potential and member satisfaction. We report on a multi-voiced story of one team that at first looked like a well-performing one with effective, ‘good’ leadership and satisfied team members. However, a closer investigation revealed frictional understandings, unresponsiveness and dynamics of immaturization as the followers overly relied on the elected leader. Leadership seen as ‘good’ may indeed backfire and encourage satisfied, trustful followers to relax and focus on limited roles. Our study further shows the need to conduct rich empirical studies that capture views of all parties in a relation.
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