What type of change are we seeking to do? A response to Martin Parker auto-critique

Abstract

In this piece, I discuss what type of critique we are seeking to do as CMS scholars as a response to Martin Parker auto-critique published earlier this year.

I remember the first time I came across the red cover of ‘Against Management: Organization in the Age of Managerialism’ (Parker, 2002). I started teaching in Brazil an undergraduate module on ‘Organizational Theory’, and I was searching for references and readings for my students. I remembered I immensely enjoyed the book content, especially the part on culture industries that Martin now says to doubt it should be in the book (!!!) and thought the ‘red book’ offered a very insightful critique of management and managerialism.

However, given the book was published in English, I gave up on including it on my module reading list (sorry, Martin!). In Brazil, the command of English is a social class mark that is gifted to very few people. Even people from the elite who had English classes throughout their lives struggle with the lingua franca – I included. Englishization is a very elitist and inequality making machine (Boussebaa and Brown, 2017). That is the position from where I read Martin Parker’s book and his auto-critique (see Parker, 2021): as someone from the Global South who is privileged enough to read in English and publish in an ‘international’ journal such as this one. My reaction to Martin’s auto-critique will reflect on how it is to do Critical Management Studies outside the Anglo-Saxon world. I am particularly concerned with CMS Ambiguities and if CMS ‘can get anything done’.

CMS Ambiguities

On his auto-critique (Parker, 2021), Martin very well stresses the discomfort of doing critical work in management but gaining all the benefits of being a prolific academic in a business school. I have shared this feeling throughout my career. I remember attending a CMS conference in the UK, discussing all day about inequalities and oppressions but ending the day dining in a rather posh location, being served by working-class and migrants, who undoubtedly were victims of all sorts of exploitations. The same happened in the CMS division at the Academy of Management (AoM) when we ended up the evening paying a lot of money for a crap beer served by a black woman in one of the most luxurious hotel chains which rejects unions in the USA. Not to mention I get my office cleaned by someone who had to wake up before 5 am to be at work on time in the business school I work for.

To be an academic in a Business School is to have many personal and institutional privileges, especially if you are in one of the world’s most unequal countries. Maybe academics from strategy take no issue to all our continuum encounter with inequality, oppression and exclusion in our everyday life. Still, I believe a CMS scholar who tries to keep any sense of mental coherence is impossible. If we can attend international conferences, publish in international journals, get travel allowances, be paid a good salary and have our voices heard across different countries, we are part of a global elite. We need to recognise our position of extreme privilege whose lifestyles heavily rely on a lot of what we criticise in our scholarship. I see Martin self-critique of ‘writing stuff no one reads’ as a manner to voice that with all the privilege we have, we should be doing more to change the world. Point taken!

Furthermore, workers, academics and students of colour always face challenges in racist environments such as business schools (Dar et al., 2020). I consider CMS to be somewhat inclusive in its practices compared to other academic areas in management and other academic fields; however, we all know that prejudice also exists within the CMS community. How many of the ‘CMS stars’ are non-male and non-white and are not working in the West? Despite the presence of the postcolonial (e.g. Prasad, 2012) and the decolonial (Wanderley and Barros, 2019) approaches in CMS, they are still in their infancy in management, and they are of paramount importance if we want to make changes in the business school. It should not mistake – being from the Global South limits our possibilities in the global academia.

Moreover, if CMS became a prevailing way of criticising Business Schools in the West (Fournier and Grey, 2000), that is far from the case in Brazil. The country has its own tradition of critical scholars in organisations (Paula et al., 2010) and association with CMS has been seen for a long time with contempt by critical academics in the country. CMS was perceived as a form of colonial epistemology (Ibarra-Colado, 2006) and of not doing the ‘real critique’. On the one hand, if we fight against neoliberalism and colonialism, on the other, they are part of the world, and we have no easy escape from the reproduction and consequences of these regimes of oppression. That leads to my second point on my reaction to Martins’ auto-critique I will explore next.

Can CMS get anything done?

In the original book, Martin is somewhat sceptical about the university as a place from which social change can emerge. In his own words

‘The idea that they [universities] are the natural inheritors of radical tradition, beacons of enlightenment in a lengthening McUtilitarian shadow, is simply romanticism taken to the extreme. Individual academics, or movements like CMS, might do something to radicalise the edges of the B-school but will be unlikely to change the world on their own’ (Parker, 2002: 132–133)

The concerns about if ‘CMS should get anything done’ (Faria and Hemais, 2021) has been around the approach since its early inception. The idea of micro-emancipation (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007), the subsequent debates around critical performativity (Spicer et al., 2009) and the more recent calls to intellectual activism to have (CMS) business scholars ‘making a difference’ (Contu, 2020) and ‘walk the talk’ (Contu, 2018) are clear signs of the discomfort of some CMS scholars with what they do to impact ‘the real world’. Martin is very incredulous about his book and possibly his contribution to ‘make a difference’ in the world in his auto-critique. However, are we not making a difference?

As CMS scholars, I consider we spend too much time criticising ourselves and our own community, sometimes in a rather destructive way, and I believe we should focus on the enemies ‘out there’. Could CMS scholars have been doing more? Certainly! However, undoubtedly, CMS makes a difference for our academia or critical scholars who have a place with global status to be. We should never underestimate the importance of the ‘international’ for legitimising people in academia, especially for those outside the centre.

Moreover, we should not believe that impact solely or mainly occurs through our writing. Our critical perspectives help us to offer a different perspective to our students. Much before the current fashion on ‘environment and sustainability’ or ‘diversity’ took the mainstream agenda, CMS scholars had been discussing how management is gendered, unstainable and unethical, not only in our writing but more importantly, in our teaching. CMS has advanced many themes that are clear concerns today. Furthermore, Critical Management Education has been fundamental to problematising management education content (e.g. Zulfiqar and Prasad, 2021).

Moreover, when we do research, we produce versions and the realities of the topics we research (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). For example, research on reflexivity has caused researchers to think and problematise their practices (Cunliffe, 2002); critical organisational history has made us unveil the past of management and organisations in a more profound manner (Durepos et al., 2021); research on the compliance regimes in global production networks indicate how deplorable working conditions are sustained in the Global South despite the corporate discourse of change (Alamgir and Banerjee, 2019), to name but a few. CMS has impacted what topics we can study in a business school, making the Business School research agenda far more open to power, inequality, exploitation, corporate abuse, etc.

Currently, I am researching Police work in Brazil (e.g. Alcadipani, 2020). This is a very challenging topic and organisation given the country’s high violence and police brutality, especially against the poor and black population. My CMS background has allowed me to discuss how issues of power, resistance and identity impact how police officer perform their role in the Brazilian society, to problematise police organisations in the media and to influence the police to discuss issues related to racism, internal gender bias and various other problems that usually are not part of the internal police debates. I have even given an honorary teaching position in the police academy where I can influence course content, people invited to teach, and I have prolific discussions about police problems with organisation leadership. Most CMS scholars do not end their engagement with the ‘real world’ in their books and papers (see Contu, 2018). The books and papers are part of understanding organisations to foster change and getting the academic credentials that allow change.

After reading Martin’s auto-critique, I think the central question is what type of change are we seeking to do? Are we comparing ourselves to management gurus who write ‘influential books’ or management pop-star consultants? Maybe the white Western male grand eloquent desires should not cloud our vision of what types of changes we can deliver as CMS scholars. I remember Martin for various significant acts of solidarity towards me and many other scholars and young academics from Latin America. He edited with great care, respect and attention my first co-authored paper published in a renowned international journal. He actively supported very strongly a special issue on the Global South I was among the organisers. His scholarship has been a source of inspiration to many young people like I was 1 day. We can change the world by having acts of solidarity. Martin, your book may not have made the impact that you wished for, but your solidarity and inspiration towards people like me, I am sure, has made the world better.