An Introduction to Critical Management Research

Mihaela L Kelemen, Nick Rumens, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412901871, 9781412901864
• eBook ISBN: 9781473903852
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione
• Index: Business

`This book offers a lively and readable account of how scholars and students might engage with some of the more unusual critical theories associated with the critical management research project. Supported by a wealth of empirical and theoretical material, this book will introduce readers to the complex issues surrounding how to carry out critical management research rather than simply providing prescriptive answers? - Heather Höpfl, University of Essex

`Kelemen and Rumens have done management scholars a great service in reviewing a huge amount of disparate knowledge and compressing it into a succinct, lively and provocative book on the current state of Critical Management Studies. This is a "must-read" for those both inside and outside CMS? - Keith Grint, Cranfield University

`Management is a critical term for contemporary politics, but getting to grips with managerialism requires research methods that can deal with contemporary and controversial topics. This book provides the tools for that project, and will be invaluable for scholars and students who wish to challenge the conservatism of management academy at the present time? - Martin Parker, University of Leicester

Why have certain theories shaped management research? Where do research theory and practice meet, if at all?

To ask these questions is to think critically about management research. Mihaela L Kelemen and Nick Rumens explore the fundamentals of critical management theory and their influences on management research, and in doing so offer the student an illuminating introduction to what is often a disparate and complex array of issues.

10 expressive chapters examine theoretical foundations, including those most often sidelined in mainstream management theory; from postmodernism and deconstruction to American pragmatism, along with methodological choices and the intellectual issues each of these presents. Also provided is a timely consideration to the consequences and ethical concerns now inherent to any research issue.

Part I

Theory and Paradigms

1

Critical Theory: An Introduction

Introduction

Knowledge of alternative ways of theoretically underpinning critical management research requires an understanding of the role of theory and what makes theory critical. Indeed, since we have already placed much emphasis on the importance of critical theory for generating anti-oppressive, emancipatory and self-critical forms of management research, it seems fitting to begin this book by exploring in a little more detail what theory is, why it matters and to whom. Different conceptions and typologies of theory abound within organisational studies and it is not always easy to detect a general consensus among academics about, for example, what constitutes ‘critical theory’. In shedding light on some of these issues, this chapter (the first of two chapters in Part I) performs a crucial role in establishing the background against which the discussion developed in later chapters is set.

The chapter begins by outlining the role of theory in management research. We then briefly discuss the types of theory commonly found in organisation studies: predictive and interpretive theories. Since it is critical theory that concerns us most here, the rest of the chapter unpacks the notion of critical theory. We start by providing a short history of critical theory by pointing out its association with the Frankfurt School and subsequent developments that paved the way to postmodern critical theories. We also provide an illustration of critical theory applied in a management context, before sketching out in more detail how we understand critical theory. Next, we examine some of the conceptual features of critical management research. We do this in three ways. First, we discuss the influence of CMS for furthering critical forms of management research. Second, we examine how scholars have made distinctions between ‘non-critical’ and ‘critical’ theories. Third, we argue that being a critical management researcher does not equate to someone who is anti-management. Here we elaborate a nuanced version of what critical management research entails. We then summarise the chapter’s main themes and draw out the implications for thinking about paradigmatic approaches to management research.

The role of theory

Popular perceptions suggest theory to be abstract and detached from the ‘real life’ everyday concerns of people. This conception of theory has often led to criticisms that academics, paid to theorise for a living, have little knowledge of the world around them. At worst, common perception suggests that academics occupy ivory towers in which they produce theory that has little relevance for practitioners. It is worth commenting upon this in more detail (see also Kelemen and Bansal, 2002). Numerous commentators have argued that management researchers’ interests are different from practitioners’ and that is why some researchers pursue ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ (Huff, 2000). These researchers are less interested in how knowledge is used and more concerned with pursuing a line of enquiry. In most cases, such pursuits do not match the concerns and real problems of the practitioners and are perceived as esoteric and irrelevant (Astley and Zammuto, 1992). Other researchers, for example ‘critical researchers’, make a deliberate choice not to contribute to improving the efficiency of managerial practice in terms defined by current management orthodoxies. Instead, they redefine what counts as best managerial practice in line with the concerns of multiple stakeholders and the society at large (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992, 1996). In so doing, they challenge the ‘technical neutrality’ of management practice, shifting the research focus on its social and political aspects (Grey and Mitev, 1995), in particular on the moral preferences and commitments inherent in what managers say and do.

From another perspective, academic theorising may not permeate the world of management due to poor dissemination channels (Willmott, 1994), and the lack of communication between researchers and practitioners, particularly once research findings are in the public domain. We do not doubt that many researchers engage successfully in communicating with both managers and other organisational actors during the research process. Many researchers are also very successful in relaying the essence of very complex social science research in the classroom to practitioner audiences of middle and junior managers. However, given that researchers are expected to publish their findings mainly in academic journals, they have no choice but to follow academic writing conventions. These may prevent the practitioner from fully grasping the essence and practical implications of their theoretical insights. This is not to say that practitioners are to be treated as an undifferentiated mass; they vary tremendously, not least in their willingness and ability to handle social science abstractions and management theoretical jargon.

Without needing to develop the argument any further, it is already clear that the relationship between theory and practice is vexed. The crucial point we wish to draw out is that we do not see theory as having little or no relevance for practitioners. After all, any managerial act is influenced by past events or expectations about the future. These serve as theoretical anchors that make individuals (be they managers or workers) think and behave in a certain way. While the tensions arising out of the relationship between theory and practice are very complex and require extensive analysis, we do wish to outline a framework for the role of theory that may inform our readers about the value of theory for management practice.

Here, we draw upon Alvesson and Deetz’s careful (2000) assessment of the function of theory. Accepting the idea that theory is better viewed as a way of seeing and thinking about the world around us rather than as an opaque abstract representation of it, theory may have certain roles to play. Alvesson and Deetz contemplate the function of theory in a threefold manner. First, theory is good at ‘directing attention’. By that, they mean that theory has a guiding characteristic for it draws our attention to details that are important. Theory helps us to note key differences that assist us in making sense of the world. The problem here is that some differences are presumed to be ‘natural’ and unproblematic, obscuring other ways of seeing. For example, the interrelationship between sex, gender and sexuality has often been explained and analysed along the lines of human biology. But, noting differences and ascribing them importance is a perceptual matter. Theory can help us to recognise this, prompting us to ask what comes into view and what we can think about if, for example, we could re-consider the linkages between sex, gender and sexuality as culturally constructed.

Second, theory is good at ‘organising experience’. In other words, theory helps us to present our observations of the world around us to others. We can then locate our observations as being part of a wider pattern of how humans structure and make sense of the world. The importance attributed to the identification of certain patterns will vary historically, culturally and across time. But the impulse to identify patterns that can help us to specify what things are and how they might be related to other things is a key driver of much social science theorising.

Third, theory ‘enables useful responses’. In making this assertion Alvesson and Deetz pinpoint a pragmatic motive behind theory. Theory can be extremely useful for certain individuals or groups of people in helping them to satisfy their needs, as well as designing and building future organisational worlds. Nevertheless, how the pragmatic motive of any given theoretical response is weighed up and decided upon will vary enormously. Issues of importance, as they might pertain to managers, for example, are likely to diverge from those issues considered important by their subordinates. For instance, the useful theoretical responses to management dilemmas of engendering employee motivation, leadership and commitment may well have different features and implications than those orientated towards an employee’s point of view.

Just as theory may be conceived of as having different functions, so different types of theory will give different emphasis to the functions of theory outlined above. Before outlining how critical theorists might envisage the role of theory, it is worth discussing the most popular types of logic (deductive and inductive) commonly found in management theory; namely, predictive and interpretive theory.

Deductive logic and predictive theories

Deduction presupposes the testing of theories through the observation of the empirical world. The deductive approach argues that what is important in social science is not the sources of theories or hypotheses that researchers start out with. Rather, it is the process by which those ideas are tested and justified. For example, one may read previous work in the field of leadership and hypothesise that charismatic leadership is positively correlated with organisational commitment. Also, one may gain a similar insight by observing day-to-day organisational practices. In addition, one may simply speculate that this is the case based on past experience and immediate expectations. Indeed, human behaviour rests upon assumptions about what has happened and conjectures about what will happen. In other words, it rests on some sort of theory.

Deductive methodologies were initially employed in the natural sciences, but the social sciences were quick to follow suit. Deductive theories take the shape of hypotheses or propositions that link together two or more concepts in an explanatory/causal fashion (Gill and Johnson, 2002). Concepts are abstract ideas that are used to classify together things sharing one or more properties. Deductive logic entails the development of a conceptual and theoretical structure prior to its testing through empirical observation. Gill and Johnson (2002) discuss four stages of the deductive process that the reader may regard as a useful summary:

1. The researcher decides upon the concepts that represent important aspects of the theory or problem under investigation. These concepts are abstract and cannot be observed empirically.
2. The operationalisation of a concept: the researcher creates rules for making observations so that he/she can determine where an instance of a concept has empirically occurred.
3. The creation of standardised procedures for undertaking observations that can be followed by any other researchers.
4. The comparison of assertions put forward by the theory with the facts collected by observation.

In deductive logic, theory is taken to be representational of experience. Often associated with a positivistic philosophy of science, deductive logic has informed countless studies undertaken by scholars within mainstream management theory. For example, research carried out by Bansal and Clelland (2004) which tests propositions regarding organisations’ environmental legitimacy exemplifies poignantly the logical process by which theory is tested in the deductive tradition.

Inductive logic and interpretive theory

Induction is the process of moving from the realm of observation of the empirical world to the construction of explanations (namely, theories) of what has been observed. According to this approach, explanations about the world are relatively worthless unless they are grounded in experience. Human behaviour cannot follow a causal model simply because human actions are infused with values, intentions, attitudes and beliefs. Human action has an internal logic of its own which must be understood in order to make action intelligible. As such, the imposition of an external logic upon human action is inappropriate. The starting point of inductive theorising is the immediate reality; observing, reflecting upon it and constructing explanations about what has been observed are the main methodological steps. Interpretive theorising has no concern for classifying objects, whether they are human or otherwise.

This is a rather unstructured approach for it allows the researcher to get inside situations and reflect upon the way in which individuals and groups construct, negotiate, enact and challenge meaning. Resulting theories may be developed in propositional or story-like form. In the former case, theories provide causal explanations of what has been observed and can be subsequently tested via processes of deduction. In the latter case, theories take a story-like shape and serve as meaning-making devices rather than predictive ones. Two inductive strategies popular in management studies include grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and theory from case study research (Eisenhardt, 1989).

Critical theory

As we have already stated, this book is positioned within the realm of critical theory. Critical theory, however, is a contested term. As we outline in some detail over the remainder of this chapter, how critical theory is understood to be critical among academics varies considerably. First of all, we mentioned in the introduction to this book that critical theory is often deployed as a label denoting a particular school of thought. More specifically, the term ‘critical theory’ has been heavily associated with the collective works of those scholars affiliated at various times during the twentieth century with the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University. These scholars (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas, to name but a few) have been gathered together under the banner of ‘The Frankfurt School’. The scholarly works produced by the Frankfurt School scholars is characterised by its Neo-Marxist flavour: the academics within this school of thought sought to develop the ideas and theoretical insights derived from Karl Marx. The theories emerging from the Frankfurt School do not feature in Part II of the book, so it is not our intention to repeat previous detailed accounts provided by organisational scholars on the impact of the Frankfurt School on organisation theory. Readers are directed to Alvesson and Deetz (2000) for a solid overview of the relationship between the Frankfurt School and organisational research. Nonetheless, it is vital to acknowledge the importance of the Frankfurt School for promulgating a type of critique that has become familiar within critical management research.

As a process of emancipatory and self-critical critique, critical theory has an important point of origin in the Frankfurt School. As Carr (2005) points out in an incisive overview of the contributions of the Frankfurt School to organisation theory, Max Horkheimer is credited as the first to use the term ‘critical theory’ in this way. Running counter to positivism as a scientific methodology and as a philosophy, Horkheimer (1976, cited in Carr, 2005) argued that the social world could not be studied in the same way as the natural world. For Horkheimer the notion of the researcher as an all-knowing subject was very troubling indeed. As Carr (2005) duly notes, Horkheimer’s insistence on tackling the epistemological questions surrounding the researcher’s claims to knowledge, especially claims to know the ‘truth’, was pivotal in generating a major turn in critical theorising. From this turning to address epistemological questions, critical theory could be seen as a catalyst to change reality through enlightenment and emancipation. This conception of theory as ‘critical’ radically departed from what Horkheimer and other members of the Frankfurt School saw as ‘traditional theory’: theory that claimed to accurately mirror reality. Bearing more than a faint resemblance to orthodox Marxist ambitions to emancipate those enslaved by ideology, the idea of critical theory as an emancipatory and enlightened form of knowledge was central to a great deal of the scholarship to emerge from the Frankfurt School. Notably, the concept of critical theory advanced by Horkheimer and others within the Frankfurt School found resonance with other theories such as those developed by Freud, as well as with later (postmodern/poststructuralist) theorists such as Michel Foucault (1983a: 200), who once praised the work of the Frankfurt School in enthusiastic terms.

While the form of critical theory developed by the Frankfurt School fuelled a critique of ideology and consciousness, the idea of critical theory as an emancipatory project has found fertile ground in which to take root within organisation theory. Needless to say, the targets of critique are not confined to matters of ideology or consciousness, as many postmodern and poststructuralist theorists would point out. Discourse, knowledge and language, for instance, have become prominent targets of critique ever since the postmodern turn within the social sciences.

With the above in mind, we see critical theory as providing a wide umbrella for an array of theoretical perspectives including those drawn from the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, critical realism, postmodernism and feminism, to name but a few. What is more, these theories might be located within broader frameworks – namely, paradigms (see Chapter 2). We can take two examples to illustrate the point. First, our gathering of critical theories may fall under Guba and Lincoln’s (1994) ‘critical theories and related positions’ paradigm. In broad terms, theoretical perspectives within this paradigm assert that reality is constructed by social, political and cultural factors, solidified into structures that, although not ‘real’, have material effects on individuals. Second, many of the same theories may find accommodation within Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) ‘radical humanist’ paradigm. Generally speaking, theoretical perspectives within this paradigm take the view that science is a socia...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I THEORY AND PARADIGMS
• PART II THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MANAGEMENT
• PART III METHODOLOGIES OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH
• PART IV CONSEQUENCES OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH
• Bibliography
• Index