Abstract
Critical scholars in the business school are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of their research beyond the confines of academia. This has been articulated most prominently around the concept of ‘critical performativity’. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with critical leadership scholars, this article explores how academics engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to their external activities. While proponents of critical performativity tend to paint a frictionless picture of practitioner engagement—which can take the form of consulting, coaching, and leadership development—we show how critical scholars may end up compromising their academic values in corporate settings due to practitioner demands and other institutional pressures. Taken together, these pressures mean that critical scholars often need to negotiate a series of (sometimes insoluble) dilemmas in practitioner contexts. We argue that the concept of critical performativity is unable to contend meaningfully with these tensions because it replicates the myth of the ‘heroic-transformational academic’ who is single-handedly able to stimulate critical reflection among practitioners and provoke radical change in organizations. We conclude with a call for further reflection on the range of ethical dilemmas that can arise during academic–practitioner engagement.
Introduction
In recent years, the concept of ‘critical performativity’ (CP) has gained traction within the business school as both a theoretical lens for thinking about the relevance of critical management research and a call for critically inclined scholars to engage with organizational practitioners beyond academia (Huault et al., 2017; Spicer et al., 2009). The key proposal of CP is that researchers should seek to stimulate an affirmative engagement with managers at close quarters rather than a purely negative—or ‘non-performative’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000)—one based on critique at a distance. Such discussions are also becoming commonplace in critical leadership studies (CLS) (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012), where skepticism toward leadership is tempered by an ethic of care toward individual leaders.
Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with scholars in the field of CLS, this article explores how academics engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to their external activities. While proponents of CP tend to assume that scholars will be able to effect radical change in organizations without hindrance, our empirical material shows that they in fact encounter a series of tensions in the process of acting as change agents. In particular, critical scholars may end up compromising their academic values in corporate settings, not only because of (real or perceived) practitioner demands but also because of pressure from other institutional actors, such as university departments and private-sector consultants, who may have an altogether different set of priorities. This points to the fact that CP in practice is less straightforward and far more complex and ambiguous than the literature commonly suggests. Part of the problem, we argue, is that the concept of CP replicates the myth of the ‘heroic-transformational academic’ who is single-handedly able to stimulate critical reflection among practitioners and provoke radical change in organizations. Our analysis therefore leads us to call for a demythologization of CP, namely, to do away with the concept altogether in favor of a more descriptive term such as ‘practitioner engagement’. This, we hope, will make the business of engaging with practitioners less risky for critical scholars of all stripes.
The article is structured as follows. We begin by outlining the notion of ‘relevance’ in management studies before examining the concept of CP. We then describe our method before presenting the empirical section of our article, which explores the way business school academics experience the pursuit of ‘relevance’. We then conclude by discussing the implications of our empirical material in relation to CP.
The question of ‘relevance’ in critical management studies
In recent years, critical scholars in the business school have begun to doubt their own ‘relevance’. They worry that they are producing an endless stream of highly ranked publications that fails to have any meaningful impact on the organizations they research; that their critique, while radical and emancipatory, is unlikely to be read by practitioners; that all their hard work, in other words, counts for nothing—apart from the obvious career advantages. Although critical management studies (CMS) has become institutionalized as a legitimate subfield over the past decades, the fruits of its labor are still failing to reach those who apparently need it the most: managers and other organizational members. There is a growing fear that critical scholars have lost their way in an academic hall of mirrors, content to develop abstruse theories and engage in a frivolous ‘glass bead game’ (Parker, 2002: 116). The solution to this impasse is seemingly simple: get out of the seminar room, head to the nearest organization, and start engaging with practitioners.
This concern echoes well-established discussions in the mainstream management literature (Fincham and Clark, 2009; Kieser et al., 2015). As administrative science becomes increasingly sophisticated, so the story goes, its usefulness for organizations diminishes because it gets tangled up in its own recondite debates. Management researchers are at risk of ‘institutionalizing their own irrelevance’ (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005: 100) because they are failing to reach out to practitioners beyond the business school. The task, then, is for scholars to bridge the perceived gap between ‘academic rigor’ and ‘managerial relevance’ (Starkey and Madan, 2001: S8). For proponents of relevance, this can be achieved in a number of ways, including establishing university–business partnerships (Tushman and O’Reilly, 2007), co-producing knowledge with organizational actors (Bartunek and Rynes, 2014), and engaging in forms of practitioner engagement such as consulting, coaching, and leadership development (Pasmore et al., 2008; Werr and Greiner, 2008).
Critical scholars in the business school have responded to this call in their own way by seeking to bring sociological and philosophical insight to bear on the day-to-day lives of those who they study (Cox et al., 2009). In the CMS literature, terms like ‘rigor’ and ‘relevance’ recede into the background; more common are phrases such as ‘real, substantive change’ (Voronov, 2008: 940) or ‘radical forms of social change’ (King and Learmonth, 2015: 355). But the sentiment is the same: critical scholars are accused of focusing on ‘esoteric’ research at the expense of having an impact on the wider world of work and organizations (Alvesson et al., 2009: 14). In response, critical scholars are encouraged to develop ways of unleashing the transformative potential of CMS. For example, Voronov (2008) proposes an ‘engaged critical management studies’ that would aim to ‘embrace the world of practice’ by undertaking participatory research, action research, or consulting (p. 942). Of course, ‘practice’ does not necessarily mean management; it could also mean political activism, trade unionism, or student learning. Yet managers remain at the forefront of debates about the relevance of CMS (Grint and Jackson, 2010; Spicer et al., 2009). On this view, critical scholars are encouraged to strive toward ‘actual engagement with management practice and with managers’ (Murphy et al., 2013: xviii) rather than churning out journal publications.
The critical leadership literature is no stranger to these debates. For example, Grint and Jackson (2010: 352) call upon critical leadership scholars to practice what they preach, eschewing high-impact academic articles in favor of engaging in external leadership activities. They write, We have developed a remarkably sophisticated facility to critique on many levels everything that our existing nominal leaders in business, government, or community say or do. But what would we really have to say to them directly by way of advice to change their ways? […] Instead of singularly devoting ourselves to the pursuit of getting published in top-tier journals, we may have to be prepared to walk away from the publishing production line for prolonged periods to lend a hand in our respective communities and get directly involved in real life, consequential leadership challenges in either a leadership or an advisory capacity.
We find similar views expressed elsewhere. In an exchange of letters, Tourish and Barge (2010) suggest that even if one writes academic texts in a more accessible style, ‘the practical implications for practicing leaders and followers seem rather simplistic and trite’ (p. 340). What is needed instead is a form of engaged scholarship that will serve to ‘improve the lives of leaders and followers’ (Tourish and Barge, 2010: 340) rather than advance the career goals of academics.
It is in this context that the idea of ‘critical performativity’—a term coined by Spicer et al. (2009)—has emerged as a CMS-inflected variation on the relevance theme. For too long, it is said, critical scholars have been reluctant to get their hands dirty in real organizations, preferring instead to criticize from a distance (Huault et al., 2017). Against this trend, CP aims to ‘actively and pragmatically intervene in specific debates about management and encourage progressive forms of management’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 537). Instead of engaging solely in ‘negative’ (unhelpful) critique, critical scholars should seek to develop a more ‘affirmative’ (useful) critique, which—it is hoped—will have some kind of positive impact on organizations. Drawing loosely on the work of J.L. Austin and Judith Butler, CP involves an effort ‘to change management by making incremental incisions into particular processes’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 538) via forms of practitioner engagement. This sentiment is echoed in Alvesson and Spicer’s (2012) call for CP in critical leadership studies, whereby critically inclined researchers should aim to navigate a course between ‘pragmatic engagement
Recent work has developed and extended the notion of CP. For example, Wickert and Schaefer (2015) argue that critical scholars ought to align themselves with managers and support their efforts to change the organization from within. This, in turn, involves the attempt to stimulate reflexivity among managers by engaging in critical dialogue with them. The core assumption here is that managers are moral agents who need only gentle ‘nudging’ from academics in order to enact positive social change in organizations (Wickert and Schaefer, 2015: 109). Elsewhere, Hartmann (2014) proposes to use CP to rethink the task of critical scholarship, namely, to move away from arcane theoretical musings and shift toward a ‘subversive functionalism’. This approach would aim to highlight the critical potential of mainstream discourses and practices rather than dismissing them out of hand. Ultimately, Hartmann hopes this will allow CMS to overcome its detachment from the world of organizational practice while remaining radical (albeit ‘tempered’) in orientation. Finally, Edwards (2017) suggests that the first step toward making CP more concrete is to reflect on the set of potentially divergent interests (e.g. workers, managers) that are involved in any form of organizational intervention. Such a move, he argues, will help to guide a ‘radical agenda for participation’ by critical academics. 1
As we might expect, CP is not without its detractors. Criticism tends to focus on the theoretical weaknesses of CP, exemplified by Cabantous et al.’s (2016) claim that the concept not only misrepresents the work of Austin and Butler but also undermines the political potential of their ideas. In particular, they emphasize the problematic use of the term ‘performative’, which has a number of meanings that are not always compatible with one another (see also Gond et al., 2016; McKinlay, 2010; Spoelstra and Svensson, 2016). While some suggest that CP simply does not go far enough in its proposals for engaging with managers (Cabantous, et al., 2016: 8), others are more circumspect about the possibility of critical scholars acting as change agents in organizational contexts. For example, Fleming and Banerjee (2016: 2) articulate a ‘nagging doubt’ that CMS scholars are able to use the power of language to fundamentally reconfigure managerial priorities and instead urge us to study ‘failed performativities’ in organizations, that is, when the attempt by CMS scholars to discursively intervene in managerial practices goes awry. In addition, proponents of CP tend to have a reductive view of relevance that is in thrall to managerial imperatives, choosing to ignore other forms of practical engagement closer to home such as critical pedagogy and academic activism (Fleming and Banerjee, 2016). By attending to the demands of external organizations, critically minded researchers may find themselves distracted from the more important mission of CMS: to study a society that is dominated by corporate interests and to question the managerial ideology that pervades all aspects of our administered lives (Spoelstra and Svensson, 2016).
CP has generated much discussion in CMS. The irony of this situation is not lost on us. While advocates view CP as a response to the empty sloganeering of CMS scholarship, the nature of ‘performativity’ has emerged as a key area of definitional dispute among critical scholars (Cabantous et al., 2016; Schaefer and Wickert, 2016; Spicer et al., 2016). It might therefore be appropriate to ask whether debates about CP risk becoming precisely the kind of ‘glass bead game’ in CMS that Parker diagnosed more than a decade ago. Part of the problem is that there is a lack of discussion about what CP might look like in organizations. This is evident in Spicer et al.’s (2009: 546) original articulation of CP. Instead of laying out prescriptive guidelines for engaging with practitioners, the authors make vague entreaties to adopt an ‘affirmative stance’, develop an ‘ethic of care’, encourage ‘pragmatism’, focus on ‘potentialities’, and be ‘normative’. But how CP differs from other forms of practitioner engagement—and why it could lead to ‘more liberating ways of organizing’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 555)—is difficult to ascertain. Tellingly, the small number of papers that do engage empirically with CP reflect on the difficulty of applying it in practice, especially to initiate transformative change in organizations (see King, 2015; King and Learmonth, 2015; Leca et al., 2014).
The lack of a systematic inquiry into the interplay between critical management scholars and practitioners is a major oversight, not least because academia and business are often pulling in two opposing directions. For example, scholars who engage with practitioners may feel that they are ‘leading a double life’ that results in a series of ‘infidelities’, not least to oneself (Empson, 2013). In this article, we therefore want to take seriously Fournier and Grey’s (2000: 27) warning that there is an ‘irreconcilable tension’ between academic critique and organizational practice. We do this by examining the pursuit of relevance among critical scholars, highlighting the tensions involved in engaging with practitioners. While critical scholars may feel they are edging closer to ‘relevance’ through CP, there is a risk that they unintentionally ‘orient themselves towards practitioners in ways that may contravene their academic identity and research ethos’ (Butler et al., 2015: 732). This article extends these insights by focusing on the field of critical leadership studies, a subfield that shares some (though not all) of the basic assumptions of CMS (Collinson, 2011). Specifically, this article addresses the following research questions: (1) How do academics engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to their external activities? (2) How does this shed light on the concept of CP in practice?
Method
The empirical material in this study is drawn from a broader project on the conditions of knowledge production in leadership studies. The aim of the project is to examine how leadership scholars experience and negotiate the various aspirations, pressures, and tensions that characterize working life in the university-based business school. Informed by a critical-interpretive approach to qualitative research (Prasad, 2005), we undertook extensive semi-structured interviews with 72 leadership scholars based in North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australasia. We began by conducting seven pilot interviews in July 2011, followed by the main period of data collection between October 2012 and August 2014. For the purpose of this article, we focus on 19 respondents who contribute to the field of critical leadership studies (CLS), 12 of whom explicitly label themselves as ‘critical leadership scholar’ (the remaining 7 either use a more generic term such as ‘organization theorist’ or ‘working lives scholar’ or chose not to label themselves). We selected respondents due to their academic contribution to the field of CLS, membership of the editorial board of the critical journal
All but four of the academics we interviewed have undertaken extra-curricular practitioner engagement, which includes (but is not limited to) consulting activities, executive coaching, in-firm speaking events, and leadership development programs. Several respondents have also had experience working in hybrid institutes at the intersection between academic research and consulting. While some activities are pro bono, scholars—or their university—tend to receive remuneration for these engagements. Scholars differ in terms of how much practitioner work they undertake: some commit several days or weeks at a time to particular projects (e.g. leadership development programs or consulting activities), whereas for others the work is more irregular and sporadic (e.g. one-off speaking events or executive coaching). This article focuses primarily on external forms of practitioner engagement, although many of our respondents also have experience of executive education, which is considered a university-based mode of practitioner engagement (Tushman et al., 2007).
In the interviews, we explored how scholars in the field of CLS make sense of what it means to be critical and how their research and practitioner engagements live up to—or fall short of—this ideal. Although CLS is a relatively broad church, it is united by ‘a concern to critique the power relations and identity constructions through which leadership dynamics are often reproduced, frequently rationalized, sometimes resisted and occasionally transformed’ (Collinson, 2011: 181). To this extent, CLS is opposed to the mainstream positivist approach to leadership that is grounded in hypothetico-deductive theory testing and the development of quantitative measures, which predominates in the United States. In particular, CLS seeks to criticize dominant assumptions that underpin ‘heroic’ concepts such as charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership on a number of grounds. First, these notions attribute too much power to single leaders and so fail to take other factors for organizational success (or decline) into account. Second, these concepts are seen as irrelevant for organizational practice due to their pseudo-scientific pretensions. As such, CLS research differs from mainstream leadership studies by foregrounding the contextual, processual, relational, ethical, and/or discursive ‘lived realities’ of leading and leadership, usually from an interpretivist and constructionist perspective (e.g. Alvesson and Kärreman, 2016; Ford and Harding, 2011; Tourish, 2013). At the same time, CLS research also differs (albeit to a lesser degree) from the more established field of CMS. Although strict boundaries are of course difficult to draw between these two critical traditions in the business school, it is possible to identify distinct, although oftentimes related, lines of intellectual inquiry within CLS scholarship. While CMS tends to focus on exploring power dynamics within organizations and challenging the discourse of managerialism, CLS pays particular attention to the asymmetrical relationship between leader and follower, as well as the seductive rhetorics of leaderism in society (Collinson, 2011).
Our interviews were guided by our curiosity about how respondents are able to negotiate the boundaries between academic norms and practitioner demands. The interviews therefore explored the motivations, experiences, and doubts that characterize this seemingly common, yet largely hidden, aspect of academic work. The interviews were framed around three core questions: What are the motivations for undertaking practitioner engagement? How do our respondents perceive the relationship between critical research and practitioner engagement? What are the negotiations, tensions, and compromises involved in practitioner engagement? These questions emerged in part because we became aware during the pilot phase that critical leadership scholars encounter specific dilemmas when crossing the boundary between academia and practitioner engagement that are not shared by their positivist counterparts. We aimed therefore to capture these challenges in subsequent interviews during the main period of data collection. For example, novel or surprising insights gained in one interview would provide an opportunity to probe more deeply into this topic in subsequent interviews. This inductive process of data collection and analysis is in line with the idea that gathering empirical material and reaching empirical findings often occur simultaneously instead of one after another (Merriam, 2009).
In line with the principles of interpretivist research (Corbin and Strauss, 2008), we are interested in the assumptions, meanings, and judgments attached to academic work and practitioner engagement by our respondents, especially any tensions or contradictions they articulate in relation to these domains. The purpose of interpretivist research is not, of course, to uncover law-like generalities in the social world but rather to understand how social actors make sense of their everyday reality through narrative accounts of context-bound practices (Bryman, 2012). With this in mind, we organized the research process as follows. Having concluded the main period of data collection, the co-authors independently read each transcript and then manually coded the interview in line with ‘thematic analysis’ (Shank, 2006), which seeks to ascertain patterns and regularities within a network of themes. We then collectively discussed each interview transcript on a week-by-week basis, which in turn allowed us to develop a number of sub-themes: ‘academic identities’, ‘impressions of leadership studies’, ‘concepts of relevance’, ‘the role of leadership knowledge’, and ‘practitioner work’. After several iterations and further discussion, we settled on two overarching themes that best capture the breadth and depth of our data: (1) CLS and the pursuit of relevance and (2) negotiations, tensions, and compromises. These two themes form the structure of our empirical section. After we organized the raw data into these two themes, the first author took responsibility for writing the first draft of the empirical section. Following this, the other authors nuanced, clarified, and challenged the analysis, returning when necessary to the interview transcripts in order to check the accuracy of data and to add more texture to the empirical section.
A final comment on our own status as researchers. All the co-authors of this article have contributed to the field of CLS, although (like some of our respondents) we do not label ourselves exclusively as ‘critical leadership scholars’. To some extent, then, we are a part of the field that we are investigating. While we are skeptical of the ‘relevance turn’ in critical management scholarship (Butler et al., 2015; Spoelstra and Svensson, 2016), we are intrigued by the prevalence of practitioner engagement among critical scholars, especially when it threatens to undermine or modify one’s scholarly ethos. It is in this context that we turn now to the empirical section.
Practitioner engagement among critical leadership scholars
In this section, we focus on two main themes. First, we discuss why many CLS scholars value the ideal and practice of being relevant to practitioners. Second, we discuss the negotiations, tensions, and compromises that these scholars experience when engaging with practitioners.
CLS and the pursuit of relevance
During our interviews, it became clear that our respondents are collectively concerned with making a positive impact on organizational practice in one way or another. Echoing the main strands of the CP debate (yet rarely referring to it directly), they expressed considerable doubt whether this impact can be achieved solely through academic articles. Roxie’s comment is indicative in this respect: I want to … provide ideas that are useful for people that help them free themselves up and do good leadership work in ways that are sustainable and enjoyable even. [But] writing journal articles is not that, it is not that.
Many CLS scholars thus share the belief that concentrating on journal publications is inadequate to the pursuit of relevance, as Henry articulates: ‘I’d probably feel like I hadn’t made a big difference … if all I ever did was write stuff that was only ever read by academics’. For some, this feeling is partly related to the kind of leadership research published in academic journals: The field is suffering from a surplus of theorization and it’s become too complex, and [it’s] frankly pretentious drivel heaped upon pretentious drivel in an attempt to appear profound. (Nigel)
While a few of our respondents view the pursuit of relevance as ‘making a contribution to the literature’ and offering ‘independent … knowledge and critique’ (Julia), more commonly the scholars we interviewed view practitioner engagement as an important way to become ‘meaningful and relevant’ (Roxie) and have ‘real genuine impact’ (Michelle) on organizational practice.
When engaging with practitioners, our respondents claimed to stimulate critical reflection on leadership practice and theory. June is typical in this respect. For her, relevance means impacting practice [by] getting leaders to think differently about who they are and what their practice is. […] I see in a way my role as raising questions … about leadership, helping leaders think about issues that they don’t have time to think about in practice, but not giving them any specific way of doing things […] I don’t develop theories; I develop what I call ‘interpretive insights’ that might resonate with leaders.
June makes a clear distinction here between the kind of instrumental rationality associated with mainstream leadership scholarship (i.e. a ‘specific way of doing things’) and a critical approach that is heuristic and reflexive (i.e. ‘raising questions about leadership’). Julia is similarly reluctant about ‘just giving people simple answers or nice little packaged tools’ and prefers instead to contribute to the literature in a way that ‘if people read it … they [will] be able to take something from it that will be of value to them’. This kind of work—properly disseminated—should ideally serve as a ‘resource’ for organizational actors ‘who are trying to lead differently’ (Roxie). This tells us that our respondents see themselves as being relevant to the needs of practitioners by changing minds, disrupting common sense assumptions, and illuminating reflexive ways of leading. This can involve anything from parodying business gurus in front of an executive audience (Deirdre), getting managers to move their bodies and breathe differently (Pearl), or encouraging leaders to break free from ‘heroic scripts’ (Roxie). As Nigel puts it, ‘our job is not to climb into bed with business, it is [our job] to be … a critical friend’.
It is at this point that the strained relationship between CLS and parts of the CMS community becomes clear. Among the 12 respondents who explicitly adopt the label of ‘CLS scholar’, some displayed a degree of antipathy toward CMS scholarship in terms the nature and purpose of critique. Nigel, for example, feels that CMS is ‘too obsessed with critique’ and fails to offer alternatives. Deirdre makes a similar point when she says that her CMS colleagues are ‘great at complaining about what’s shit, instead of saying, “You know, this might be shit, but there are ways in which we might be able to … make a difference as well”’. At times, this impassioned demand for organizational impact can lead to terse exchanges between CMS and CLS scholars, as June recounts: I remember having a debate on this with somebody in CMS who said, ‘You know, what you’re doing is not critical’. […] He said, ‘Do you know basically you’re supporting leaders?’. And I said, ‘You know, that’s not the case. First of all, leaders are not going to disappear …. Then the question becomes, how do you help leaders become more socially and morally responsible?’ (June)
This excerpt suggests how CLS scholars feel a sense of responsibility to be actively involved in shaping the practice of leadership. Of course, being a CMS scholar and engaging with practitioners is not mutually exclusive, but it is perceived as a key intellectual battle line by at least some of our respondents, especially those who align themselves strongly with CLS. We cannot fail to hear the echo of CP in these reflections, namely, the idea that critical scholarship in the business school has so far been unable to offer anything to practitioners other than distant critique. While only two respondents directly mentioned ‘critical performativity’ in relation to CLS, it is clear the scholars we interviewed seek to engage with organizational actors from a broadly critical standpoint, thus resonating with the central concerns of CP. The proximity to powerful figures in leadership positions, however, may also give rise to unexpected conflicts and tensions—to which our analysis now turns.
Negotiations, tensions, and compromises
Our data paint a picture of a field that is struggling not so much with the traditional gap between academic rigor and managerial relevance but rather with the far more complex negotiation between dealing with practitioner demands and other pressures (both external and internal) on the one hand and maintaining a critical academic ethos on the other. This is a challenge because businesses often want ‘a quick fix and a permanent fix’ (Nigel), while our respondents primarily offer the opportunity to ‘think differently about who they are and what their practice is’ (June). Pearl provides a similar reflection: ‘I’m an academic and basically [practitioners] just want to fix it [but] I want [to] talk about it’. Whatever ‘relevance’ means for CLS scholars, it categorically does not mean ‘simply giving the world of practice what it thinks it wants’ (Craig)—which hints at a basic level of academic–practitioner tension.
Some CLS scholars have little difficulty in melding the domains of business and academia in positive and productive ways. For example, Deirdre, a professor in a Russell Group university, finds ‘senior leaders in organizations … quite easy to work with’ because ‘there’s a lot of very intellectually questioning people in those positions’. Even so, she acknowledges that on one occasion a chief executive put her in an uncomfortable position during a consulting assignment: I’d been involved in giving him some feedback from his staff, and he was so incensed by the feedback that he wanted to know who was saying [what], you know, who distorted his score to say ‘all the wrong things’. And I knew from that point on I could never ever use those [consulting] instruments again because they are completely antithetical to anything I could believe.
In Deirdre’s case, a negative consulting experience caused her to re-evaluate the type of tools she uses in practitioner engagements. However, she acknowledges that this involved a slow process of gradual modification rather than a sudden shift—not least because she was compelled to engage with practitioners by her university. As she explained, ‘we did consultancy work as part of our academic jobs’ since her former department in a ‘plate glass’ university had to ‘cover its costs’. The problem, for Deirdre, was that her university insisted that she use a 360-degree feedback instrument to engage with practitioners, which ‘felt like a piece of fiction’ and a ‘straightjacket within which [practitioners] had to fit’. It was only by reflecting on the ‘damage these 360 instruments were doing to people working in organizations’ that she sought to align her consultancy work with her ‘areas of belief’ in CLS—in this case, developing a critically inspired feedback technique for use with practitioners.
Roxie was also encouraged to engage with practitioners by her department in a research-intensive Australasian university, although her ‘initial experiences were generally absolutely terrible, I failed dismally’. She therefore learned how to navigate the precarious boundaries between, on the one hand, what practitioners expect and what institutions demand and, on the other, what critical academics have to offer. She reflects on her own development in this respect: I’ve got better in making sure that the work I do is surrounded by a supported structure so people are expecting something a little more challenging or they’re not expecting quick and easy answers. I’ve got better at making sure I negotiate that and I’m not doing everything that comes across my desk.
In order to reduce the tension between external expectations and academic proficiency, CLS scholars may—like Roxie—accept consulting assignments more prudently and subtly adjust their approach in line with their academic ethos. Others, however, find this tension far more insoluble. For example, Michelle, like Deirdre, also ‘had to do consulting to bring in money for the department’ in her previous department in a ‘plate glass’ university, yet struggled to engage meaningfully with practitioners: ‘I hated it, I loathed it with a vengeance. Who am I to know how to do anything? All I know is academic work … who am I to go out and tell people how to do anything?’. This highlights some of the stark divisions between academia and external organizations that persist even if critical scholars come face-to-face with practitioners and are compelled to engage in consulting activities by their university.
Alex has a similar reflection on a consultancy unit that was established at his previous department in a Russell Group university. He describes his experiences as ‘a bastard combination’ between academic work and consulting work, comprising both scholars and practitioners. While he worked there for over 4 years, his primary experience was that it was ‘the most tremendous waste of my time’. One of the main reasons for his disenchantment is the clash in expectations between what he views as important and what the consultants he is working with prioritize. He elaborates, There is such a gap at the moment that I am unable to convince them, the consultants, that actually what I’m doing
What Alex highlights is less a clash between academics and the practitioners they engage with, but the consultants that academics may need to collaborate with. Of particular note here is that his priority—to stimulate critical reflection among practitioners as part of a leadership development program—is seen as antithetical to the task of consulting by his non-academic colleagues. This suggests that some critical scholars may need to defend their critical ethos not only from the expectations of outside organizations but also from other change agents in a corporate context. Ultimately, Alex was made to feel like an ‘academic that got in the way of [the] project’ rather than a critical scholar who was able to contribute something he sees as ‘valid and valuable’ for practitioners, which highlights some of the unanticipated obstacles scholars may encounter in their external activities.
Some of the obstacles, however, are more internal. For Gary, a professor in a Russell Group university, a week-long consultancy engagement would be ‘very remunerative’, yet he does not feel he has ‘the energy for it somehow, or the desire’. While the practitioner engagement may be ‘intellectually interesting and practically interesting’, he finds he is ‘just a bit tired’ of the whole exercise. Thinking aloud, however, he seems to persuade himself to accept the lucrative consulting assignment: I think I still might do it for other reasons, you know, not just the money side. My wife is very keen to repair the extension to our house, and I could do a week’s work and that would be all of it …. I can do that. Do a week. Very nice people, easy. It’s a week out of my life …. Do I think it’s a great way to spend my time? I’d rather go sailing, to be honest.
What is interesting here is how Gary convinces himself to engage with practitioners due to financial rewards rather than the intrinsic merit of his academic expertise, which emphasizes how quickly one’s critical ethos becomes overlaid by altogether more material motives. It also tells us how the task of stimulating reflexivity among practitioners is perhaps far more demanding and energy-consuming than we might imagine, allowing other incentives for engaging with practitioners to rise to the surface.
Even when scholars do have the drive and enthusiasm to engage with practitioners on their own terms, some of our respondents find it difficult to reconcile seemingly contrary demands. In external organizations, CLS scholars are often working against an image of leadership that is embodied by the figure of the heroic-transformational leader, which can result in a disjunction between what academics practice and what they preach. Tessa, a senior lecturer in a research-intensive Australasian university, articulates this tension poignantly when she reflects on her experience working on external leadership development programs: I look confident and articulate and strong and I have an ability to hold a space. And those actually fit the really traditional leadership paradigm. Yet I … develop particularly a relational [and] democratic kind of leadership, which I don’t embody. And what I’ve seen is those that tend to embody a relational, collective, interpersonally sophisticated leadership are not seen as leadership models. So that’s the irony you’re caught in … I can play to old models whilst talking about new models, but even I can see the hypocrisy and irony of that …. People will listen to alternative discourses of leadership if you show you can handle the old one, you know. Which is not good really, not good at all.
Tessa feels that she acts in accordance with a charismatic model of leadership (i.e. looking ‘confident and articulate and strong’) in order to place emphasis, paradoxically, on post-heroic forms of leadership. This produces an insuperable dilemma: if she enacted her academic principles in line with relational and democratic leadership, she would potentially lose credibility among executives and thus undermine the very platform for developing reflexive leaders. Such is the tightrope that some scholars have to walk and occasionally fall from. Robert, a professor in a ‘plate glass’ university, recalls giving a talk to senior managers when he suddenly found himself lapsing into managerial cliché: I was saying these things at the end … I don’t even know what I said but it was pretty bad basically …. It was almost like that was the script they wanted, the tone they wanted it to take …. So sometimes I find myself saying things that in other circumstances … I wouldn’t say.
Like Tessa, Robert experiences a disconnection between his identity as a critical scholar (e.g. intellectually curious, independent-minded, challenging orthodoxy) and the perceived needs of practitioners. Although he considers himself to be ‘doing a critique of discourses of leadership’ in such practitioner engagements, there is a risk that it can very quickly mutate into the stale dogma found in mainstream leadership studies. The economic relations between the academic and organization are an important regulator too, as he notes: ‘It would have been totally wrong [to be critical or challenging] because they hadn’t signed off the contract yet, so you have to be nice’. Tellingly, neither Tessa nor Robert is compelled, strictly speaking, to modify their own scholarly ethos; they do so willingly, albeit reluctantly. At the very least, this highlights some of the knotty issues around practitioner engagement that the CP literature fails to acknowledge.
Discussion
Our data show that our respondents engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to their external activities. Minimally, this involves ‘getting leaders to think differently about who they are and what their practice is’ (June), that is, not offering technical solutions to organizational problems, but attempting to stimulate reflexivity about the nature and purpose of leadership itself. We find little evidence that such scholars are lost in abstract philosophical debates, far removed from more practical concerns; on the contrary, our respondents consistently highlight the importance of dialogue and reflexivity in external organizations.
The academics we interviewed are well-aware that their critical approach often puts them at odds with the practitioners they engage with. As one respondent put it, relevance does not mean ‘simply giving the world of practice what it thinks it wants’ (Craig), which suggests that there is an inherent tension involved in (critical) academic–practitioner engagement. Such scholars must therefore take care to maintain a boundary between business platitudes and scholarly insight. But this is no straightforward task, especially when practitioners demand ‘quick and easy answers’ (Roxie) to complex problems—problems that some scholars may not be prepared, less still equipped, to resolve. Some, including Deirdre and Roxie, manage to reduce the potential for friction by setting clear expectations at the outset or refraining from using certain consulting tools, while others struggle to find a balance between satisfying practitioner demands and maintaining their intellectual commitment to non-hegemonic forms of leadership. At worst, these scholars may find themselves espousing a set of ideas about leadership they do not hold (in the case of Robert) or performing a mode of leadership they see as highly problematic (in the case of Tessa). In both instances, we note that our respondents are able to reflect in a nuanced way on the difficulty of maintaining a critical academic ethos at the same time as engaging with practitioners.
But external pressures do not derive solely from the perceived needs of corporate actors or executive audiences; the role played by the university itself cannot be underestimated. In a number of cases, these scholars are compelled to engage with practitioners as a normal part of their academic working lives, whether to generate additional income for an academic department (in the case of Deirdre and Michelle) or to provide outreach services to local businesses (in the case of Alex). As we saw, some of our respondents admitted to feeling wholly unprepared or unqualified for such engagements or find themselves using a consultancy tool against their better knowledge—in other words, engaging with practitioners in a way that contravenes their critical ethos. Ultimately, this may give rise to considerable conflict about what kind of intervention is seen as valid and relevant in outside organizations. The struggle to establish expectations, develop critical consulting tools, gain competence and confidence in practitioner contexts, and persuade non-academic colleagues about the value of one’s critical perspective is therefore a further set of pinch-points in the process of academic–practitioner engagement.
Finally, some of our respondents also experience internal pressures or competing motives for engaging with practitioners. In the case of Gary, his desire to make a positive impact on an organization is supplanted by a more pragmatic cost–benefit rationale, such as being able to afford major repairs to his house for a week’s work. Weighing up the pros and cons of a practitioner engagement beyond the merits of the actual intervention points to yet another area of (internal) negotiation among critical scholars.
Such insights, gleaned from our empirical data, are largely missing from the CP debate. Instead of reflecting on the potential difficulties of acting as change agents, proponents of CP tend to paint a frictionless picture of academic–practitioner engagement. Consider, for instance, Wickert and Schaefer’s (2015) proposal that CMS researchers should engage with ‘middle managers … in order to bring about transformational change’ (p. 118). It all sounds so easy, and there is no mention of any tension that may occur between academic interlopers who wish to raise the critical consciousness of managers and organizational actors. Similarly, Alvesson and Spicer’s (2012) plea for CP in leadership studies offers no consideration of the complications that scholars may face in external organizations. Instead, the academic is somehow able to steer the manager (half-jokingly called ‘Goodman’) toward potentialities that he is not capable of seeing without critical guidance, for example, thinking less in terms of leadership and more in terms of organizing. What is absent from these discussions is any sense of the negotiations, tensions, and compromises that critical scholars may encounter in the process of engaging with practitioners. This set of potential conflicts ranges from feeling compelled to moderate one’s critical ethos in front of a corporate audience, having one’s scholarly motives superseded by altogether more material concerns, being forced to consult in a certain way to certain clients by university departments, and having to work alongside organizational actors with very different kinds of assumptions, priorities, and guiding principles.
Of course, it could be argued that the CP debate is normative rather than descriptive. On this view, its proponents merely suggest that it is desirable for academics to step down from their ivory tower, jettison their bias against managers, and help get the job done in a critical and reflexive manner. That such an enterprise comes with obstacles and tensions would take nothing away from the ideal of CP. This is the lesson, for instance, that King (2015) and King and Learmonth (2015) draw. In our view, however, our data also casts doubt on the usefulness of the concept of CP for understanding what happens to critical scholars as they engage with practitioners.
When the heroic-transformational academic meets the good man(ager)
Instead of asking what critical questioning can contribute to organizational practice, we may ask what critical questioning can contribute to the idea of CP. From this perspective, we suggest that the figure of the critical academic in the CP literature is remarkably similar to the figure of the heroic-transformational leader as criticized by CLS scholars, including work by some of the main proponents of CP in the debate (e.g. Alvesson and Kärreman, 2016; Alvesson and Spicer, 2012). Like the heroic-transformational leader, the critical academic is deemed capable of instigating transformational change in organizations that would somehow lift them up to a higher ethical plane (see Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999). In other words, the CP literature portrays the academic as a ‘hero bringing knowledge and wisdom to current and future generations of managers’ (Ford et al., 2010: S78).
The symbolism of Alvesson and Spicer’s (2012) titular ‘Goodman’ cannot be overlooked here: the everyday manager is fundamentally good in the same way that humans—created by a loving god in his own image (in the Christian tradition)—are good. Goodman can be transformed into a force for the greater good when the critical scholar (as savior) enters the scene. The result is the same as any mainstream response to the crisis of capitalism (e.g. social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, or ethical leadership): business is redeemed, but in this case it is not the social entrepreneur, the responsible manager, or the ethical leader who saves business from its sins, but the critical academic. Such heroic imagery is also evident in Grint and Jackson’s (2010) suggestion that critical leadership scholars should be guided by the academic equivalent of ‘military doctrine’, a guide to dedicating one’s resources to practical organizational problems as either a consultant or a leader.
It is a common argument among critical scholars that the images of leadership propagated by the mainstream literature are potentially dangerous for organizational practice. If leaders start to believe too much in their own ethicality, authenticity, or capacity to radically change organizations for the benefit of society, they may end up living in a fantasy world that could do more harm than good (e.g. Alvesson and Kärreman, 2016; Ford and Harding, 2011; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992). Judging from our empirical material, some scholars are aware of this danger—yet sometimes find themselves caught in insuperable dilemmas in a practitioner context. This is most explicit in Tessa’s account, where she acknowledges the pressure to act as if she were a transformational leader in external organizations in order to gain legitimacy, but we also find it in Alex’s account of having his academic expertise as a critical scholar subtly undermined by his non-academic consultant colleagues. Such risks are notably absent from the CP literature. We fear that the CP literature may encourage critical academics to reflect less upon their practitioner engagements, rather than more, by reproducing the myth of the heroic-transformational academic who is able to effortlessly generate critical reflection among practitioners and enact radical change in organizations.
Demythologizing critical performativity
What is needed, therefore, is a demythologization of critical performativity. Put simply, what does CP look like when we no longer approach it through the lens of heroic-transformational leadership? In the first instance, this requires acknowledging the limits of one individual’s agency and impact as well as the complex forces (historical, social, economic, and political) that shape what is possible within an organizational context (Fleming and Banerjee, 2016). Such humility may also encourage scholars to consider the ethics of practitioner engagement. For example, how might a critical intervention harm the worker’s employment situation? What are the dangers of getting too close to manager ‘Goodman’? In other words, we should question the assumption that critical scholars know ‘what’s best’ for managers and other workers. This would encourage reflection on the compromises involved with practitioner engagement.
Second, perhaps we need to cease speaking of ‘critical performativity’ altogether. The problem with the term is similar to the issues that critical leadership scholars identify with mainstream concepts such as ‘transformational leadership’ and ‘authentic leadership’ (e.g. Alvesson and Kärreman, 2016; Spoelstra and ten Bos, 2011). The concept is never to blame even if a supposedly transformational leader does something unethical; the transformational leadership enthusiast can always say that we have not witnessed ‘real’ transformational leadership in action (a classic example is Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999). The same goes for CP: the concept has an in-built defense mechanism as non-radical interventions—or ‘failed performativities’ (Fleming and Banerjee, 2016)—would automatically fall outside of the remit of CP. We would thus do well to stick to more descriptive labels such as ‘practitioner engagements’. At the very least, this would allow us to focus on the empirical realities of external activities rather than the romanticization of a theoretical construct. Moreover, CP has come to be associated with a few scholars who have taken to policing its tight boundaries in ways that shut down alternative perspectives (see, for example, Spicer et al., 2016). Turning our backs on the concept of CP would therefore go some way to undermine the occasionally sectarian tone of the debate and open up a broader discussion about the nature and purpose of practitioner engagement in CMS in general and CLS in particular.
Finally, it is important to reiterate the value of a non-performative stance. When critical academics are busy trying to solve organizational problems, they are inevitably distracted from the crucial task of studying organizations and their role in society. As Spoelstra and Svensson (2016) write, ‘The world of management and business is full of solutions …. What the world needs (indeed a question of relevancy) is perhaps not more solutions but problematizations and critical scrutiny of the industry of solutions already operating’ (p. 75). It is our contention that CP may become precisely a part of this ‘industry of solutions’. The risk, for all of us working within the critical sociological tradition, is that the discourse of CP comes to limit what ‘relevance’ means, thus eroding alternatives to the impact agenda prevalent in the contemporary business school (Martin, 2011).
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored the empirical accounts of leadership scholars who are committed to a critical ethos in both their research and engagement with practitioners. In doing so, we reveal the tensions and concessions that scholars navigate in their desire to change organizations. Such insights are largely missing from the CP literature. Our data show that the attempt to ‘do’ critical work with practitioners is not nearly as straightforward as the literature suggests and oftentimes fraught with hidden dangers and unexpected obstacles. The critical scholar’s voice and presence are shaped by the expectations of the external organization—as well as other institutional actors such as university departments and private-sector consultants—in ways that may well contradict their critical ethos. At the very least, our study urges proponents of CP literature to attend more carefully to the complexities and compromises of engaging with practitioners.
But we go further than this. Our study also casts a shadow on the very ideal of CP. The concept in its current form is marked by an inherent contradiction. On one hand, CP is meant to challenge harmful and dominant discourses, institutions, and identities, such as ‘heroic and idealistic notions of leadership’ (Spicer et al., 2016: 236). On the other hand, CP is fast becoming one of these ‘harmful and dominant discourses’ by promoting an image of the critical academic as the hero-savior for business. In other words, in the effort to do CP, scholars may well end up reproducing an image of heroic-transformational leadership that their scholarship is fundamentally opposed to.
So what does this mean for the future of critical performativity? If the concept has any future, we would urge proponents of CP to do to their ideas what they wish to do to management, that is, ‘getting rid of some of the more harmful myths’ about CP and ‘decluttering’ the concept of its ‘confusing and contradictory crap’ (Spicer et al., 2016: 236; 241). Another option is to cease talking of CP altogether and instead use a less romanticized term that reflects the CMS community in all its diversity; ‘practitioner engagement’ would be one obvious and descriptive alternative. Of course, this suggestion is meant to serve as a provocation to scholars who might otherwise use the term ‘critical performativity’ in a casual and unreflective way, rather than a realistic hope that the concept will suddenly disappear from view. Yet this article does have the ambition of eroding some of the appeal of CP as a theoretical construct and, analogously, making a case for empirically informed studies of practitioner engagement among critical scholars. Ultimately, we seek to encourage research that explores the tensions and concessions of engaging critically with practice—where practice is defined more broadly than just managers and leaders. Such research would consider the impact this engagement has on academic labor and reflect on ethical dilemmas that arise as well as appreciate the constraints of individual action within a given context, whether inside or outside the walls of the university.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is funded by Handelsbanken’s Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Research Foundation (project no. P2011-0240:1).