Critical Management Studies / Edition 1

by Mats Alvesson, Hugh Willmott

Overview

‘Alvesson and Willmott have compiled an interesting and provocative collection on the application of Critical Theory (CT) to the study of management and organization' - Management Learning

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857023759
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	05/25/2011
Series:	SAGE Library in Business and Management
Edition description:	Four-Volume Set
Pages:	1680
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mats Alvesson is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Bath, and also affiliated with Lund University, Stockholm School of Economics and Bayes Business School, City, University of London.

Table of Contents

VOLUME ONE: CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES: OVERVIEWS, ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENTS AND DEBATES
Origins and Early Developments
The Servants of Power - L. Baritz
Organizations: A Dialectical View - J.K. Benson
Introduction - S. Clegg and D. Dunkerley
One-Dimensional Management Science: The Making of a Technocratic Consciousness - T. Tinker and T. Lowe
Towards a Critical Management Science - S. Wood and J. Kelly
On the Idea of Emancipation in Management and Organization Studies - M. Alvesson and H. Willmott
Overviews
Critical Theory and Postmodern Approaches to Organizational Studies - M. Alvesson and S. Deetz
At the Critical Moment: Conditions and Prospects for Critical Management Studies - V. Fournier and C. Grey, C
VOLUME TWO: CRITICAL ORGANIZATION STUDIES
Organizational Structure
Developing a Field with More Soul: Standpoint Theory and Public Policy Research for Management Scholars - P. Adler and J. Jermier
Organizations: From Substance to Image? - M. Alvesson
Organized Dissonance: Feminist Bureaucracy as Hybrid Form - K.L. Ashcraft
Glass Cages and Glass Palaces: Images of Organizations in Image-Conscious Times - Y. Gabriel
Demystifying Organizations - C. Perrow
Communication and Unobtrusive Control in Contemporary Organizations - P.K. Tomkins and G. Cheney
Organizational Culture
Negations and Ambiguities in the Cultures of Organizations - A. Batteau
Ideology: Tech Culture Codified and Conclusion - G. Kunda
Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and dominance - M. Rosen
The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland - J. Van Maanen
Strength Is Ignorance; Slavery Is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations - H. Willmott
Organizational Behaviour
Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual - M. Alvesson and H. Willmott
Discursive Formations, Strategized Subordination, and Self-Surveillance - S. Deetz
Working at a Cynical Distance: Implications for Power, Subjectivity and Resistance - P. Fleming and A. Spicer
On Fieldwork in a Habermasian way: Critical Ethnography and the Extra-Ordinary Character of Ordinary Professional Work - J. Forester
Ideological Fantasy at Work - J. Glynos
Career as a Project of the Self and Labour Process Discipline - C. Grey
Looking up and Looking around - R. Jackall
Power and Subjectivity at Work: From Degradation to Subjugation in Social Relations - D. Knights and H. Willmott
Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The Failure of Foucauldian Studies? - T. Newton
Beyond the Surrogate of Motivation - B. Sievers
Gender and Ethnicity
The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication - K.L. Ashcraft and B.J. Allen
"Engineering Humour ": Masculinity, Joking and Conflict in Shop-Floor Relations - D. Collinson
Hidden Gendered Assumptions in Mainstream Organization Theory and Research - J. Martin
The Emperor Has No Clothes: Rewriting "Race in Organizations" - S. Nkomo
Serving Hamburgers and Selling Insurance: Gender, Work and Identity in Interactive Service Jobs - R. Leidner
Organizational Democracy and Industrial Relations
Corporations, Democracy and the Public Good - S. Barley
Whence Democracy? A Review and Critique of the Conceptual Dimensions and Implications of the Business Case for Organizational Democracy - P. Johnson
All Quiet on the Workplace Front: A Critique of Recent Trends in British Industrial Sociology - P. Thompson and S. Ackroyd
Reflections on the High Performance Paradigm's Implications for Industrial Relations as a Field - J. Godard and J. Delaney
VOLUME THREE: MANAGEMENT SUBSPECIALISMS
Information Systems
Information Systems and Critical Theory - K. Lyytinen
Michel Foucault in the Study of ICTs; Critique and Reappraisal - L. Willcocks
Operational Research
Technical, Practical and Critical OR - Past, Present and Future? - J. Mingers
Beyond Methodology Choice: Critical Systems Thinking as Critically Systemic Discourse - W. Ulrich
Entrepreneurship
'Against 'Enterprise' (But Not against 'Enterprise', for That Would Make No Sense) - P. Du Gay
The Sublime Object of Entrepreneurship - C. Jones and A. Spicer
Accounting and Finance
Manufacturing Shareholder Value: The Role of Accounting in Organizational Transformation - M. Ezzamel, H. Willmott and F. Worthington
Accounting and the Construction of the Governable Person. - P. Miller and T. O'Leary
Auditing and the Production of Legitimacy - M. Power
Marketing
Rethinking Critical Marketing - A. Bradshaw and A. Furat Fiat
The Cult(ure) of the Consumer - P. du Gay and G. Salaman
The Point of Selling: Capitalism, Consumption and Contradictions - M. Korczynski
Marketing and Critique: Prospects and Problems - G. Morgan
The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising - R. Pollay
Environmental Management
Greening Organizations: Critical Issues - J.M. Jermier and L.C. Forbes
Environmental Management as Political Sustainability - D. Levy
Limits to Anthropocentrism: Towards an Ecocentric Organization Paradigm? - R.E. Purser, C. Park and A. Montouri
Strategic Management
Corporate Strategy, Organizations and Subjectivity: A Critique - D. Knights and G. Morgan
Critical Approaches to Strategic Management - D. Levy, M. Alvesson and H. Willmott
Human Resource Management
Representing People at Work - K. Legge
Foucault, Power/Knowledge and Its Relevance for Human Resource Management - B. Townley
Critical Management Education
Grasping the Nettle: Possibilities and Pitfalls of a Critical Management Pedagogy - M. Reynolds
Management Education : Provocations to a Debate - H. Willmott
Spinning Disciplines: Critical Management Studies in the Context of the Transformation of Management Education - M. Zald
Ethics and Corporate Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - S.B. Banerjee
As if Business Ethics were Possible, ‘within Such Limits... - C. Jones
Corporate Governance and the Ethics of Narcissus - J. Roberts
VOLUME FOUR: DEBATES, (SELF)CRITIQUES AND REFLEXIVITY
The Future of Critical Management Studies - M. Alvesson
Reflecting on Reflexivity: Reflexive Textual Practices in Organisation and Management Theory - M. Alvesson, C. Hardy and B. Harley
Still Servants of Power - A.P. Brief
Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories Can Become Self-Fulfilling - F. Ferraro, J. Pfeffer and R. Sutton
Critical Management Studies: Towards a More Mature Politics - C. Grey
On Striving to Give a Critical Edge to Critical Management Studies - A. Hopwood
Organization Theory in the Age of Deconstruction: Dualism, Gender and Postmodernism Revisited - D. Knights
Critical Performativity: The Unfinished Business of Critical Management Studies - A. Spicer, M. Alvesson and D. Kärreman
Brands, Boundaries and Bandwagons: A Critical Reflection on Critical Management Studies - P. Thompson
Theorizing Contemporary Control: Some Poststructuralist Responses to Some Critical Realist Questions - H. Willmott

Editorial Reviews

‘Aspires to provide a more focused, explicit and coherent representation of a ‘critical theory' perspective on management that draws its ethical, ideological and intellectual inspiration from, mainly, Habermas and Foucault. In this respect the underlying rationale for this book is based on a highly ambitious intellectual project insofar as it attempts to pull together the highly diverse, not to say disparate, theoretical stands which go to make up ‘critical theory' and to assess their interpretive and explanatory potential in the field of management and organization studies.' - The Occupational Psychologist

‘It is interesting because it shows how several areas of management, long known as bastions of positivism, could be reformed to address the emancipatory interests sought by Jurgen Habermas's approach to critical theory. The book is useful because it proposes a strong scholarly agenda for applying critical theory to diverse areas of management studies and for potentially integrating these areas.... The book's depiction of a route to a truly general, multidisciplinary field of ‘management' is one of its key contributions... the book is definitely interesting and useful.... The book makes a solid case for a strong program of research involving critical management studies and provides clear directions in terms of proposed research agendas to carry out the program. The book can be safely and usefully employed to carry out this agenda by scholars with a grounding in critical theory and interpretive perspectives.' - Academy of Management Review

‘Offers a stimulating and, in some ways, biting commentary on the current status of management research... the authors certainly attempt a more interesting analysis of organizational management than is nornally the case.... Overall, it has to be said that this volume is a stimulating read.' - British Journal of Management

‘The topics are well chosen, and the contributors well-versed in their field... the content and arguments of the contributors are highly thought-provoking' - Journal of the Operational Research Society

‘I enjoyed reading this book. To the credit of the editors, both its general conception and its implementation are excellent. Not only was their selection of authors adequate but also, it is apparent, they managed to get individual contributions well in line with the global purpose of the book. Each contribution succeeds in adding relevant insights and making apparent critical research issues. The authors show how management cannot be seen simply as a neutral, ‘technical' function concerned with the production of certain goods and services. Rather it is a highly complex and significant social phenomenon which can and should be the subject to serious examination. Of special interest to the OR-community is the paper of J Mingers. He shows that the history of OR can be seen to reflect a movement from the technical (Wagner), through the practical (Checkland) towards the critical (Jackson).... For me, this book is a must as a reader for students and practitioners of management sciences, operations research, and systems sciences.' - European Journal of Operational Research

‘Alvesson and Willmott have compiled an interesting and provocative collection on the application of Critical Theory (CT) to the study of management and organization' - Management Learning

‘This is a useful contribution to the management literature and should be obligatory reading for management students. What makes it particularly attractive is its structure. After an introductory chapter by the editors, there follows nine contributions addressing different aspects of management. Some deal with specific functional issues - OR, accounting, marketing, human resource management, systems - and others with more general concerns such as power, pleasure, production and proselytization of knowledge. The advantage of this approach is that it introduces students to the idea that all aspects of management, as a practice, as a body of knowledge, and in terms of education, are problematic and that, though they are disparate issues, they are amenable to a common critique' - Systems Practice

‘A key contribution of the volume is that the authors try to communicate abstract, jargon-laden critical theory in language accessible to business school types.... A strength of the volume is the breadth of coverage. The editors and authors avoid the usual fragmentation of scholarship by business scholl departmental organization.... The editors achieve another aspect of breadth by including European and American writers. Together, these chapters provide a rich overview of challenges to the mainstream.... many of the chapters go beyond criticism. They make a number of positive contributions to a less-biased, more reflective management scholarship' - Administrative Science Quarterly

From the Publisher