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Teaching critical management studies in business schools: does it matter?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Geppert, Mike |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | Critical studies in business and management (referred to as critical management studies: ‘CMS’) have spread widely in last two decades and become a serious academic field of research. The new CMS handbook, which Martin reviews in his essay, is a clear sign of this development (Parker 2010). CMS as a movement, intellectually and in terms of scholarship, was largely shaped by Scandinavian and especially British academics. As Martin rightly reminds us, CMS is mainly represented in the fields of organizational behaviour (OB) and human resource management (HRM). I would add that is primarily limited to business schools in UK. We know that many of the CMS founding scholars in Britain have moved to business schools, leaving their former ‘home’ departments which were mainly situated in the social sciences. As a result, subjects like work, organization, and industrial sociology together with industrial relations have disappeared from most British sociology departments. These developments have not been mirrored outside the UK. For example, in both the USA and Germany, where I have research and teaching experience, all the subjects listed above are still situated in sociology departments. When visiting US universities and talking to colleagues, it becomes rapidly obvious that the chances for CMS to gain similar institutional support and status1 in US business schools as in the UK are quite slim. Most US business schools, with a few exceptions, are highly committed to mainstream rationalistic theories and positivist research methods. What is more, many business schools are run very much like businesses, producing and selling Masters and MBA degrees, and teaching future managers to ‘play’ with models and numbers instead of critically reflecting on the social nature of management and applying participatory ways of organizing businesses (see, for example, Mintzberg 2004). The situation in Germany is quite similar. However, compared to the USA (and also the UK) we find a much smaller population of business schools in Germany. The study of business and management (called Betriebswirtschaftslehre, or BWL) is usually a part of economics departments, which again makes it rather unlikely that CMS will be able gain a similar influence and status as it does in Britain. Similar to the United States, in Germany we find critical scholars in sociology and social science departments, but not in business and management schools or departments. One might ask, however, does it really matter, if you are employed in a sociology department or a business school, or work in Germany, the USA or the UK? |
| Starting Page | 425 |
| Ending Page | 427 |
| Page Count | 3 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1080/19460171.2010.525971 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/232492/2/Geppert_Teaching.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2010.525971 |
| Volume Number | 4 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
