The use of fiction in management education, as described in recent management publications, implies the employment of a `common-sense' model of reading and interpretation. If fiction is not to be employed merely as the expression of what can be perceived as an outmoded desire for certainties and consistency and rules, management education needs to reject this model and seek how individual expression and interpretation may be accommodated within a flexible and open teaching framework. The analysis of fiction within management education offers the possibility of exploring a form of literary criticism that may support a management education that (among other attributes) questions its own content and context. In this paper the author describes some of her own uses of fiction within the management classroom and concludes that the management educator needs to employ a bold and imaginative approach to `literary criticism' with students, if the use of fiction is to be fully exploited.
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