Defending the idea of critical perspectives on management and organization studies: an epistemological argument.

AuthorAlakavuklar, Ozan Nadir
PositionReport
  1. INTRODUCTION

    Today in the business schools there is a reality of a group of scholars who associate themselves with the movement called "critical management studies--CMS". Even though this position and name is disputed among scholars, it has an attraction and many researches are conducted in the name of CMS. But before that name there were already critical approaches regarding organizations and management theory. Therefore, this paper aims to acknowledge that critical tradition and mention the characteristics and main assumptions of critical perspectives including CMS in order to defend the necessity of them in management and organization studies (MOS). Therefore the brief history of MOS will be given in order to show the differences in the field.

    Considering the definitions of organization and management we can say that both organization and management are as old as the human history. During that long period there have been the states, armies and different human groups who experience problems of bringing resources together, keeping people together and directing them towards an aim. However, as a discipline and as a sort of scientific activity since the end of 19th century management and organization (studies) have been evolving (Clegg, 1990; Reed, 1996).

    Beginning with the scientific approach, MOS continued with human relations, contingency approaches, neo-institutional perspectives, population ecology theory especially in the United States of America (USA) with a much more positivistic and scientific approach (Usdiken & Leblebici, 2001). Each theory might be considered as a kind of reflection and critic of the previous approach in addition to reflecting the historical context of the "zeitgeist".

    Particularly after 1945 MOS are attached to the values of "commitment to science, faith in rationality and the search for efficiency" (Smircich & Calas, 1995, p. xiv) in order to create a scientific field of knowledge rather than serving to field of practice. During that term interests of the strategic constituencies (e. g. Ford and Carneige foundation) to manage the scientification of management had a great effect on structuration of the management education in the universities in order to meet the needs of businesses. USA, having the ideas of empirical, functionalist and positivist disciplinary perspectives in addition to the committed values of democracy and capitalism, became the main country where scientific study of administration and social organization is realized and journals turned out to be the scientific actors. Besides, such an approach of positivist, value-free model of science in USA marginalized the other approaches (Adler, Forbes, & Willmott, 2008; Zald, 2002). Therefore, US became the model for many countries (e.g. Wharton business school as the oldest for research program) in addition to disseminating the capitalistic spirit for development. Thus, management knowledge mostly coming from USA became a type of colonization where industrial psychology and sociology contribution came from United Kingdom (UK) and Western Europe (Smircich & Calas, 1995, pp. xvii-xviii).

    However, especially after 1970s the positivist hegemony in the social sciences began to face challenges of other approaches--varieties of Marxism, hermeneutics, and pragmatism- that also directly had effect on organization studies (Adler, Forbes, & Willmott, 2008). In addition to theoretical plurality (Koontz, 1961; 1980) and discussions in the organization theory (Donaldson, 1985) search for new explanations of the complexity of organizations continued (Smircich & Calas, 1995, p. xvi). Thus, since 1980s there is a huge variety of organization studies benefiting from different theoretical backgrounds especially with the philosophical and sociological traditions coming from Europe (Jones & Munro, 2005). Accordingly for at least three decades different epistemological and ontological discussions direct the organization studies either by the effect of cultural studies or by the postmodern thought--and there is a plurality of organization and management theories right now. However, (caused by the expectation of scientific approaches in the early times) positivistic and quantitative perspectives mostly employed and defended by the USA based universities seem the locomotive of organization and management theory today. The basic approach and assumption about these studies are based on taking the natural science as a basis with a positivistic orientation for studying organizations. The reason mostly comes from the needs of business schools to be legitimate with analytical, scientific focus with positivism and more applied approach. This scientific perspective provided legitimacy to business schools and to the degrees given by these schools that would provide status and prestigious to businessmen in the perception of the society (Grey & Willmott, 2005, pp. 7-9). This organic relationship between businesses and universities gets stronger with the expectation of integration of business schools to corporations in these neo-liberal times (Monbiot, 2000).

    On the other side of the Atlantic, though, in UK and in some European countries there are different approaches--anti-positive, (Knights, 1992)--detaching themselves from concrete and clear-cut positivistic and realistic understanding of science due to contextual and historical differences compared to USA (Fournier & Grey, 2000). Such a plurality and fragmentation enriched the nature of MOS where critical approaches are a part of it.

  2. PLURALITY & FRAGMENTATION IN MOS

    In such an institutional environment MOS currently seems fragmented and benefiting from varying theoretical differences with ontological and epistemological discussions. Different paradigms (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) and metaphorical usages (Morgan, 1986) are representing the organization studies right now. In this fragmented version of MOS there is also CMS which it is highly disputed as a label, name, identity, badge or brand (Grey & Willmott, 2005, p. 3; Thompson, 2004). Nevertheless, institutionalized with that name CMS has been a huge discussion topic among the scholars who have a critical tradition. Considering these (internal) discussions as out of the scope of this paper and since this label is a bit problematic, critical perspectives in general will be used instead of CMS. Because there are different ontological and epistemological assumptions under CMS. However, despite its all varying and sometimes contradictive assumptions we can also name these critical perspectives on the basis of their theoretical traditions. These include Marxism/neo-Marxism, Critical Theory/Frankfurt School, Post-structuralism, post-modernism, feminism and recently post-colonialism, environmentalism, queer theory and etc. It is also defended that CMS may cover all these different traditions (Adler, Forbes, & Willmott, 2008; Alvesson, Bridgman, & Willmott, 2009) therefore, in the following some characteristics of CMS will also be mentioned in the name of critical perspectives. Each critique tradition has its own assumptions and realities but eventually they are critical of the current understanding of organizing and managing presumed by USA based, positivistic and conventionalist MOS (so called mainstream).

    In this study, having said that there are differences, critical perspectives in general will be defended on the idea of that mainstream MOS is insufficient to reflect the dark sides and political aspects of organizations and management as institutions. In order to explain the basis of this claim, main stream MOS assumptions will be given and then the assumptions of critical perspectives will be provided with their own critique.

    2.1 Assumptions of Mainstream MOS

    In order to understand the mainstream assumptions in general terms it is important to mention the basic and ground idea about modernism and MOS relationship. Since the current organizations are seen as the products of modernism (Clegg, 1990; Reed, 1992) and the progressive understanding of science is the basic motivation for the mainstream MOS, it was claimed that the betterment of the organizations can be managed just by the scientific approach coming from the natural science model. Just reminding the name of "Administrative Science Quarterly" would reflect the symbolic understanding how MOS should be -it has to be "scientific". Even the beginning of MOS historically starts with "scientific management" (Taylor, 1947) that is initiated by an engineer and primarily based on quantification and rationalization of workers' movements. When we examine the following theories such as open systems approach (Katz & Kahn, 1978) everything is an organizational problem and just can be solved by organizational scholars and organizational knowledge (Smircich & Calas, 1995) with management expertise and scientific technique. Such conceptualization of management has reflection on means-ends relationship, maintains current social order and predominant goals on the basis of efficiency and effectiveness (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992, p. 11). In such a context modernism in the organization studies is meaning

    "instrumentalization of people and nature through the use of scientific-technical knowledge (modeled after positivism and other rational ways of developing safe, robust knowledge) to accomplish predictable results, measured by productivity, and technical problem solving leading to the good economic and social life, primarily defined by accumulation of wealth by production ..." (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000, p. 13).

    Therefore modernism and scientific progress were hand in hand in order to bring wealth and productivity for all the societies. And in general, MOS would be a tool for understanding organizations and for taking them (and societies) towards much better positions by solving potential technical (!) problems. Thus, there is the advancement and progress assumption in the modern management and...

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