On life, death and radical critique: A non-survival guide to the Brave New Higher Education for the intellectually pregnant

This paper joins the call to arms against the domestication of critique in organisation studies. It argues that we have become too pre-occupied with our professional survival to stand firm against the normalising pressure of the new higher education and its publish-or-perish machinery. We trade away too much radicalism in exchange for legitimacy, which results in widely accepted but toothless forms of critique. The paper draws on two contrasting metaphors of Huxley's Brave New World and intellectual pregnancy to illustrate some of the challenges faced by early-career academics entering the world of the Brave New Higher Education as academic ‘savages’. It discusses the almost imperceptible socialisation of the savage into the ‘rationalised myths’ of the brave new world to the point that alternatives become literally unthinkable. The paper suggests that we can fight this slippage and the associated domestication of critique by giving up our obsession with survival and by remembering/envisioning alternative realities, such as that of intellectual pregnancy deriving from the fragile idealism of the savage's doctoral world

Brexiting CMS

Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern history. It is also part of a larger phenomenon – the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing politics within Europe, the United States and beyond. Bringing in its wake the worrying manifestations of racism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, Brexit and its consequences should be a core concern for Critical Management Studies academics in helping to shape post-Brexit societies, organisations and workplaces, and in fighting and challenging the sinister forces that permeate them. In this paper, we consider how CMS can rise to the challenges and possibilities of this ‘phenomenon-in-the-making’. We reflect on the intellectual tools available to CMS researchers and the ways in which they may be suited to this task. In particular, we explore how the key positions of anti-performativity, critical performativity, political performativity, and public CMS can be used as a starting point for thinking about the potential relevance of CMS in Brexit and post-Brexit contexts. Our intention is to encourage CMS-ers to contribute positively to the post-Brexit world in academic as well as personal capacities. For this, we argue that a new public CMS is needed, which would 1) be guided by the premise that we have no greater and no lesser right than anyone else to shape the world, 2) entail as much critical reflexivity in relation to our unintended performativities as our intended ones, and 3) be underpinned by marginalism as a critical political project

[Review] <i>Organizing Words: A Critical Thesaurus for Social and Organization Studies</i> by Yiannis Gabriel, 2008

A book review of Organizing Words: A Critical Thesaurus for Social and Organization Studies by Yiannis Gabriel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 368 pp. ISBN 9780199213221 (hbk); ISBN 9780199213214 (pbk)

Why the epistemologies of trust researchers matter

In this thought piece we take stock of and evaluate the nature of knowledge production in the field of trust research by examining the epistemologies of 167 leading trust scholars, who responded to a short survey. Following a brief review of major epistemological perspectives we discuss the nature of the prevalent views and their geographical distribution within our field. We call on trust researchers to engage in epistemological reflection, develop their own awareness of alternative epistemologies, and ensure their work draws on and cites relevant research contrary to their preferred epistemological approach. To support this we ask editors of relevant journals to foster pluralism in trust research, publishing work from a range of epistemologies

Riding Populist Storms: Brexit, Trumpism and beyond, Special Paper Series Editorial

In this editorial we aim to introduce the diverse set of 21 papers we have curated over the past two years, to review their collective contribution to the knowledge base in CMS and organisation studies, and to reflect on how they add to and challenge existing debates within our field. These papers speak about populism in a wide range of voices from multiple perspectives. The geographical reach is wide with populism discussed in relation to the contexts of France, India, Latin America, UK and US, and authors working in Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. The papers cross disciplinary and theoretical boundaries drawing on political science, history, sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Methodological approaches include ethnography, historical narrative, discursive approaches and autoethnography. As such these papers raise important questions and offer perspectives and ways forward that are in urgent need of attention and discussion by critical management and organisation studies communities, challenging readers’ understandings of populism at macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. Here we tie the whole series together by highlighting emergent themes and identifying future research directions that these papers have opened up

Asymmetries of Leadership: Agency, Response and Reason

Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power relations of leadership unfold in asymmetries of agency, response and reason: Leaders both expect and experience more responsibility than control; more blame than praise; and interpretations of failure - both their own and others’ - based more on personal fault than on situational or task complexity. We focus, therefore, on power asymmetry not in the sense of structural inequality between leaders and followers, but rather, as constellations of incongruity, imbalance and unevenness which circumscribe leaders’ actions, choices, relationships and feelings about their work. From this perspective, privilege and disadvantage are not polar opposites reflecting the powerful versus the powerless; instead, they are intimately interwoven within leadership experience. The asymmetries of police leadership involve an intermingling of the necessary and the impossible; a decoupling of failure from irresponsibility; resilience at the prospect of being blamed for success as readily as for failure; and containment of society’s unresolved crises of responsibility, anxiety and risk. We crystallise this as a paradox of transparency and occlusion - of openness and closedness - in which police leaders are scrutinised by, and answerable to, those whom they must also protect, including from having to bear the full burden of knowledge of the dangers of the world. We reflect on the implications of this not just within policing, but for critical understandings of the power of leadership more generally

What was, is and will be critical about journal publishing?

Responding to the call of this special issue, I consider the past, present and future of criticality in journal publishing. In particular, I ask what ‘being critical’ has meant over the ages in journal publishing and play with two senses of the word ‘critical’ – that of critique and that of being essential. I consider how these two aspects of criticality have evolved in relation to each other, interweaving and intertwining, through past into the present, and in what directions they might evolve in the future. I conclude that academic journal publishing has always been critical in both senses of the word, but that what matters for the future of critical publishing is the nuance of criticality. I argue that the current context is an opportune moment for a more radical reimagining of journals, and for their remaking as simultaneously more and less critical by moving beyond critique-as-censure and towards new modes of being essential. In this remaking, the nuance of ‘being critical’ needs to be negotiated through an open and reflexive politics of critique directed towards social, political and organisational action, and infused and tempered with a politics of care and marginalism

Evidence-based Practice and the Ethics of Care: ‘What Works’ or ‘What Matters’?

This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of EBP, and the ways in which EBP’s seductive catchphrase ‘what works’ is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate ‘what matters’ with ‘what works’, and ‘what matters/works here’ with ‘what matters/works everywhere’. This approach recognises relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for EBP in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of security, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particular, recasting it from something uncomfortably discretionary (the maverick cop) and shameful (an individualised blame culture) into something which underpins and enhances police professionalism. Whilst developed in a policing context, these reflections have a broader relevance for questions of professional legitimacy and credibility, especially within the ‘new professions’, and the costs of privileging any one type of understanding over others

Paradoxes of organisational learning in policing: ‘The truth, but not the whole truth, for everyone’s sake’

This article examines the complex and often contradictory dynamics of organisational learning through the lens of paradox. Based on a 4-year action research programme in policing, our findings reveal two key tensions relating to knowledge control (codification-discretion) and knowledge disclosure (transparency-occlusion). Casting paradox as an ‘either/and’ relationship, we use these themes of control and disclosure to explore the interplay of learning (where actions either enable and inhibit learning) and emotion (where actions either reduce and increase anxiety). We consider how knowledge and learning are entangled in issues of emotional and institutional security, which operate at the threshold between public-service and public-served. In the psycho-politics of this relationship, the police attempt to safeguard either themselves from the anxiety of unwarranted blame and their communities from the anxiety of unmediated disclosure of the dangers of the world. From this perspective, we theorise organisational learning in policing as a paradox of either success and failure, either care and self-care and either potence and impotence. While grounded in policing, our reflections have a broader relevance for the ways in which knowledge tactics both shape and reflect relations between organisations and their key stakeholders, especially those based on the contingent and incongruous logics of service

Success in Challenging Times: Generating Social Capital [Summary Report]

Prompted by findings from the 2012 Kingston Smith funded national survey, Success in challenging times: Key lessons for UK SMEs, this new study focuses on the ways in which SMEs use and benefit from social capital is created through both offline activities such as networking events, and online activities including social media use. Offline and online networking activities are not mutually exclusive alternatives for SMEs. Successful SMEs network with a number of different communities, integrating a combination of both offline and online methods. SMEs’ websites are crucial and need to be optimised to improve search engine positioning. Social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn are used widely to both showcase the business and build relationships with customers, but are not considered a substitute for face-to-face networking. The most popular reason for SMEs using social media is to develop their business image or to market products. The fast, easy and low cost access to people and businesses provided by Web 2.0 and social media helps them do this better. Online networking can enable SMEs to overcome the drawbacks of traditional face-to-face contact, such as limited numbers and diversity, and the associated high costs. SMEs that proactively engage with social media can systematically raise their profiles to successfully compete with larger organisations. Few SMEs claim to be experts in social media use. IT and social media are regarded as necessary evils and SMEs consider that there is no choice other than to engage very proactively in these areas. However, there is a need to manage this engagement strategically, along with traditional networking, to avoid a disproportionate amount of resource being dedicated to this area. Face-to-face (offline) networking events remain the most important form of all types of SME networking with roughly two thirds of SMEs devoting one to six hours per week to this activity. In general, locally oriented SMEs without a scalable business offering prefer face-to-face networking events, whereas globally oriented non-scalable SMEs put significant effort into social media. Networks included customers, associates and former employees who had moved on to become independent contractors. Networking is about making contacts, outside the SME, who can offer feedback or advice or be used to outsource work. These networks are regarded as a ‘community of people’ who might join in with a new business proposal or be used to provide external expertise. The methods SMEs use to increase social capital, must be fit for purpose and appropriate to their business model. Social media are complementary to, rather than a substitute for, traditional networking and events. The challenge facing SMEs is how best to integrate their online and offline activities to complement their business and generate social capital