Critical Management Studies

A catch-all term used to describe a pluralistic and diverse field of work or intellectual movement, critical management studies (CMS) challenges and offers alternatives to received wisdom about management. CMS is differentiated from mainstream research by (a) its unorthodox treatment of established topics (e.g., motivation, strategy), or (b) its attention to marginalized issues (e.g., postcolonialism, environmentalism). This challenge includes contributions to management specialties like marketing and strategy, and to management techniques, such as total quality management and the balanced scorecard. CMS includes epistemological critiques of established methodologies, feminist critiques of management, and critical examinations of the relationship between slavery and management knowledge. Forged primarily within business schools, the immediate aspiration of CMS is to transform what is researched and taught within these institutions and, beyond that, to contribute to a transformation of practice in directions that remove avoidable forms of suffering and disempowerment.

The phrase “critical management studies” came into use during the 1990s. Critical commentaries on management appeared intermittently before this time but did not attract any equivalent identifying label, and these were not construed as forming part of a common field, tradition, or movement. A number of features and also ambiguities of CMS have served to facilitate its expansion. First, CMS is not directed at any particular management specialty or collection of topics. It addresses all areas of management, both established and innovative. Second, it is concerned with studies, not study—which implies a willingness to accommodate diverse perspectives as well as different specialties and disparate topics. Third, the “critical” in critical management studies can be directed at current manifestations of “management,” or it may be directed at its “study.” The advent and influence of CMS is evident in its growing presence in established journals, in the creation of specialist critical journals (e.g., Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Critical Perspectives on International Business), and in the publication and appearance of nonsubscription journals (e.g., Ephemera, Electronic Journal of Radical Organization Theory, M@n@gement, and Tamara). The biannual Critical Management Studies Conference provides a focus and medium for development of the field, but the arrival of CMS is perhaps most clearly signaled by its presence as a very large and mostly international interest group within the (American) Academy of Management.