Springer 2011

Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 94:227237

DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-0753-9

Critical Management Studies and Business

Ethics: A Synthesis and Three Research
Trajectories for the Coming Decade

ABSTRACT. Critical management studies (CMS) has

emerged as an influential paradigm for organization and
management researchers in the last three decades. While
various strands of CMS have been adopted to conceptualize or empirically investigate a myriad of organizational phenomena, researchers in the field have yet to
substantively apply this paradigm to the study of business
ethics. This is unfortunate inasmuch as CMS potentially
offers important analytical tools from which to address a
range of germane issues pertaining to business ethics. As
such, the aim of this article is to broadly introduce CMS to
the business ethics scholarly community, underscoring
particularly its central ontological and epistemological
commitments. This article further identifies several
important CMS-inflected research trajectories that scholars
may pursue to explore pressing questions related to business ethics. In sum, the authors underscore the utility of
CMS to the study business ethics and call for increased
inquiry in this intersectional domain.
KEY WORDS: critical management studies, business
ethics, reflexivity, denaturalization, performativity

The moral foundations of the free society are

[rooted in] the theory of rights which is the
theory of private property, broadly understood that
underpins and epitomizes the free society, justifying
the capitalist economic order in the process. For that
theory describes our basic moral and legal relationships, and shows as well that capitalism, unlike
socialism, is a fundamentally moral system (Pilon,
1982, p. 29).
Horkheimers Critique of Instrumental Reason
asserted that business goals once achieved become
instrumental means to new goals, and that this progression is without ethical moorings (Boje, 2008,
p. 10)

Ajnesh Prasad
Albert J. Mills

Prologue
Since its inception, capitalism has been associated
with a myriad of unethical behaviors, whether seen
as a departure from the norm (Pilon, 1982) or as
constituting its very core (Boje, 2008). The former,
for example, can be seen in accounts of the Wall
Street Crash of 1929 (Leuchtenburg, 2009), more
recent discussions of the 2008 economic crash
(Woods, 2009) but also in Jackalls (1988) characterization of corporations as moral mazes. On the
other hand, the anti-capitalist perspective can be
seen in such works as Bravermans (1974) account of
Taylorism, Hobsbawms (1969) history of capitalist
development, and Mignolos (1991) analysis of the
making of Latin America.
Nonetheless, discussion of business ethics has
had an uneven history within management and
organization theory and its more recent incarnation
has developed over the past two decades1; aided in
part by the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and
accelerated stories of widespread corruption and
fraud; the Association of Advanced Collegiate Schools
of Business (AACSB) emphasis on business ethics
and its dissemination through accredited business
schools; and increasing interest in business ethics as an
area of scholarly interest. It is into this discursive space
that we seek to engage with the intersection between
Critical Management Studies (itself a discursive
product of the past 15 years) and business ethics.
Introduction
Over the course of the past 15 years, we have been
witness to a myriad of well-publicized substantial
breeches in business ethics. Such unethical behavior,

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Ajnesh Prasad and Albert J. Mills

in its various manifestations, has been attributed to

wide-ranging acts of organizational deviance including the highly publicized corporate corruption scandals and the recent global economic meltdown
(Anand et al., 2005). In light of the consequences
engendered by infringements in business ethics,
scholars, practitioners, and public policy-makers have
actively sought to illuminate the underlying causes of
such phenomena (Trevino and Brown, 2005; Trevino
et al., 2006).
From an organizational behavior perspective,
researchers have provided important insights
into understanding the antecedents of (un)ethical
behavior (for reviews see OFallon and Butterfield,
2005; Trevino et al., 2006). For instance, working
from Kohlbergs moral development framework,
several prominent scholars in the field have forwarded theoretical models grounded in various
psychological constructs for conceptualizing the
determinants of ethical behavior (e.g. Jones, 1991;
Trevino, 1986; Sonenshein 2007). This stream of
research reveals how a range of individual and
contextual elements can constitute organizational
environments that foster unethical behavior.2 In a
related vein, other researchers have underscored
how enculturation processes induce the metaphorical social cocoon and, therein, argue that unethical behavior is the corollary of certain hegemonic
group norms that become paramount in intraorganizational settings (Anand et al., 2005, p. 16; for
an excellent discussion on the normalization of
unethical behavior see Ashforth and Anand, 2003).
Taken collectively, this body of literature offers a
plethora of valuable explanations into the etiological
foundation of (un)ethical behavior in organizational
environments. Nevertheless, given the ever proliferating examples of unethical behavior in the business world (Anand et al., 2005), management
scholars are continued to be charged with the task of
understanding the dynamics and the nature of
unethical organizational behavior. With this observation in mind, the aim of this article is to broadly
articulate the nexus between, and encourage for
more engaged research in, the intersectional purview
of critical management studies (CMS) and business
ethics. Indeed, as CMS endeavors to elucidate the
discursive social realities engendered by, and in,
various organizational settings, it offers fertile academic ground from which to consider contemporary

questions pertaining to business ethics. We believe

that CMS provides researchers with theoretical
frames and analytical mechanisms that may be
potentially very useful in addressing and, perhaps
even, curbing ethical concerns that encounter contemporary organizations.
The remainder of this article is divided into three
sections. First, we briefly introduce CMS by underscoring its meaning and scope and, then, by describing
the central pillars that constitute this perspective.
Second, we identify three broad research trajectories
that scholars interested in studying business ethics
from a CMS standpoint might pursue in the future.
We believe that these research trajectories have not
yet been sufficiently investigated by scholars in the
field and will become of increasing relevance over the
coming decades. Finally, in the third section, we
conclude by offering some closing remarks on the
intellectual study between CMS and business ethics.

Critical management studies

CMS possesses a long and rich history, which we
will not, due to spatial constraints, set out to comprehensively discuss here. Several other scholars have
offered excellent overviews that lucidly explain the
political, the economic, the social, and the intellectual events that engendered its rise within the
broader field of management and organization
studies (see Adler et al., 2007; Fournier and Grey,
2000; Hassard et al., 2001). In this section, we do,
however, seek to provide a basic understanding of
CMS, and to summarize the three main pillars that
represent its paradigmatic boundaries.
CMS first appeared in the management literature
as the title of Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmotts
(1992) edited volume devoted to conceptualizing
the efficacy of critical theory for organization studies
(Grey and Willmott, 2005).3 Following the publication of Alvesson and Willmotts edited volume,
the concept eventually proliferated amongt business
school academics, particularly those in Europe
(Grey, 2004), who became [disillusioned] with the
(positivist) model of science that was assumed to
provide the appropriate foundation of business
education (Grey and Willmott, 2005, p. 10). As
Grey and Willmott (2005) observe, it ultimately
imparted a legitimating label for many of those

Critical Management Studies and Business Ethics

management scholars whose research interests did
not reside within intransigent institutional boundaries that privileged functionalist ideals, and those
who sought to identify (radically) alternative ways of
researching and teaching. CMS remains quite
influential in Europe and is, in fact, a hallmark of
certain UK business schools and it appears to be
growing in currency in North America and in other
geographical centers (Adler et al., 2007).
As a collated definition, CMS can be loosely
understood as, a branch of management theory that
critiques our intellectual and social practices, questions
the natural order of institutional arrangements, and
engages in actions that support challenges to prevailing
systems of domination (Cunliffe et al., 2002, p. 489).
This view is further expanded by the domain statement
of the CMS division of the Academy of Management,4
which asserts that it is a forum for:
[T]he expression of views critical of unethical management practices and exploitative social order. Our
premise is that structural features of contemporary
society, such as the profit imperative, patriarchy, racial
inequality, and ecological irresponsibility often turn
organizations into instruments of domination and
exploitation. Driven by a shared desire to change this
situation, we aim in our research, teaching, and
practice to develop critical interpretations of management and society and to generate radical alternatives.
Our critique seeks to connect the practical shortcomings in management and individual managers to
the demands of a socially divisive and ecologically
destructive system within which managers work.

Given that it casts such a wide scope, CMS certainly cannot be classified as possessing monolithic
philosophical or ideological views (Fournier and
Grey, 2000). While grounded most pertinently in
critical theory including, but certainly not limited
to Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, poststructuralist,
and psychoanalytic thought CMS adopts a plethora
of perspectives to critique conventional managerial
practice (Adler et al., 2007; also see Alvesson and
Willmott, 1992). Notwithstanding its internal diversity, the principal aim of this project is to show the
ways in which management research and management practice has focused their analytical gaze on
performance over social welfare (Walsh and Weber,
2002), and to explore the implications that emerge
thereof (Adler et al., 2007).

229

Major pillars of CMS

While acknowledging the plurality in theoretical
traditions that scholars working within the CMS
purview variably draw upon, in their highly cited
article Valerie Fournier and Chris Grey (2000)
identified the three fundamental pillars or, what
they label, boundaries that broadly informs the
CMS mandate: (i) performativity, (ii) denaturalization, and, (iii) reflexivity. They contend that in
addition to providing the intellectual basis for the
CMS project, these three pillars also serve as the
primary fault lines that distinguish CMS from conventional management research. While some scholars
have recently questioned, or have otherwise critiqued, the saliency of these paradigmatic boundaries
(e.g. Spicer et al., 2009), when taken collectively we
believe that they provide newcomers to the field with
a useful foundation from which to acquire at least a
cursory sense of the intellectual ethos that underlies
CMS scholarship. Drawing on Fournier and Greys
synthesized analysis, we describe each of these pillars
and briefly explain how CMS-inflected writers have
addressed them (for an elaborated discussion see
Fournier and Grey, 2000, pp. 1719; Grey and
Willmott, 2005, pp. 56).

Performativity
Fournier and Grey contend that CMS can be
ideologically demarcated from traditional research
produced by management academics by the fact that
it remains bereft from what they refer to as, borrowing from Lyotard (1984), performative intent.
They argue that conventional scholarship in the field
was primarily motivated by managerial interest in
optimizing efficiency; by way of [producing]
maximum output for minimum input (Fournier
and Grey, 2000, p. 17). Stated another way, [t]he
disciplines of management aredevoted to the
(scientific) improvement of managerial practice and
the functioning of organizations (Alvesson and
Willmott, 1992, p. 1). In contrast, CMS lacks performative intent and instead endeavors to reveal the
discursive nexus between knowledge and power as it
manifests in the workplace and, from there, to illuminate how socio-economic systems of inequality

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Ajnesh Prasad and Albert J. Mills

and exploitation are engendered in such settings

(Fournier and Grey, 2000).
Taking some exception to this view, Andre Spicer
et al. (2009) have recently offered an alternative
reading of performativity as it may be posited within
the CMS framework. Rather than wholly dismissing performative intent, they advocate instead for a
conscientious engagement with critical performativity. For them, critical performativity are
expressions of active and subversive interventions
into managerial discourses and practices (p. 538).
They suggest that attentive engagement with this
concept has the potential to explicitly allow the
question of the political to (re-)enter the CMS
domain. Indeed, critical performativity not only
deconstructs the hegemonic institutional structures
that maintain and reify oppressive social systems
which is, assumingly, the exclusive corollary of the
total negation of performative intent but, from this
deconstructionist position, permits scholars to envision and catalyze positive social change (Spicer et al.,
2009). As such, what we find of particular analytical
appeal from this idea is the ability to eschew the
poststructuralist predicament of deconstructing performative intent merely for deconstructions sake.
Critical performativity opens spaces for CMS
scholars to deconstruct with tangible political
objectives that improve organizational conditions for
workers in sight.

Denaturalization
Fournier and Grey describe traditional management
research to be characterized by its perceived naturalness and its habitual dependence on rationality.
They explain how the tendency of such research is
to institute certain metanarratives that define the
ontological nature of work. The reification of these
metanarratives achieve dual objectives. Indeed,
conventional organizational practices, along with
their rationalist-based drivers, become taken-forgranted while, concurrently, alternative visions and
modes of organizing are systematically silenced. The
task of CMS, within this scope, is twofold: (i) to
diligently unmask the fallaciousness of the assumption of the natural by locating the malleable, fluid,
and indeterminate disposition of organizational life,
and (ii) to reveal how certain organizational dis-

courses often those that consolidate the authority

of the status quo are privileged, while others
often those that threaten this authority are relegated to the periphery of our disciplinary knowledge
(see also Grey and Willmott, 2005). In sum, the
central aim of denaturalization is to identify those
phenomena, identity claims, and discourses that
render the ontological coherence of the perceived
naturalness of organizational life in a state of
uncertainty (Fournier and Grey, 2000).5

Reflexivity
Fournier and Grey note that the level of reflexivity
scholars engage with is the final source by which CMS
is distinguished from mainstream management research. They observe that traditionally scholars
working from positivist-orientated perspectives seldom acknowledge or defend their philosophical and
methodological choices.6 This might be the logical
outcome of the fact that as positivism and functionalism have acquired intellectual hegemony in the
field (Willmott, 1993, p. 681), admitting ones own
philosophical commitment appears to be less imperative; indeed, generally speaking, someversion of
positivism is simply assumed (Fournier and Grey,
2000, p. 19). In contrast to the unarticulated suppositions that thread positivist inflected scholarship,
CMS requires researchers to be cognizant and transparent about the philosophical and methodological
predilections that undergird their work and claims.
Reflexivity has become the cornerstone in the
works of many critical management scholars (e.g.
Cunliffe, 2002; Grandy and Mills, 2004). Indeed,
recognizing the myth of Cartesian duality that no
one, including [researchers] can stand outside their
own epistemological and ontological commitments
(Johnson and Duberley, 2003, p. 1294)7 reflexivity
appears to enjoy growing credence among CMS
audiences. Despite its influence, some scholars have
scrutinized the concept in an effort to advance CMS
scholarship. In their thought-provoking discussion
of research ethics, Brewis and Wray-Bliss (2008)
note the importance of reflexivity to CMS traditions
of research, however, ponder the extent to which it
is consistent with achieving CMS political aims.
Johnson and Duberleys (2003) description of
epistemic reflexivity is very conducive to this

Critical Management Studies and Business Ethics

discussion. They argue that epistemic reflexivity
discards notions of the researcher as an objective
observer, while, at the same time, the hope of
achieving some notion of truth is maintained to
be achieved through consensus and/or praxis
(p. 1295). In other words, CMS researchers can use a
concept like epistemic reflexivity to sustain the idea
of researchers as subjective participant, while pursuing their empirical work with salient political
endeavors in view.

CMS and business ethics: thinking about

future research trajectories
Given the contributions imparted by CMS to the
field, it remains of no surprise that it has acquired
much academic influence in certain academic
communities. Interestingly, however, few management scholars studying business ethics have explicitly
posited their research inquiries within CMS ideas. In
an initial attempt to address the lack of engagement
between business ethics and CMS scholarship, we
describe three broad research trajectories on business
ethics that will likely benefit from CMS considerations. We do not claim that these considerations are
wholly novel or that they have not been previously
discussed by other CMS researchers. In fact, some
definitions of CMS suggest that these considerations
are precisely what define it as a unitary theoretical
paradigm (Adler et al., 2007). Our far more humble
objective is to show how the particular study
of business ethics may be well suited from CMS
scrutiny.

Corporate engagement with social responsibility

Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR)
has proliferated in the last few years. While there
remains a lack of consensus regarding the precise
meaning and scope of CSR (Carroll, 1999; Garriga
and Mele, 2004), one common definition of the
concept, which we find particularly useful, describes
it as being:
[A]ctions that appear to further some social good,
beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law. This definition underscores thatCSR

231

means going beyond obeying the law. Thus, a company

that avoids discriminating against women and minorities is not engaging in a socially responsible act; it is
merely abiding by the law.
(McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, p. 117, emphasis in
original)

Reaffirming this definition, CSR is to be read as

corporate engagements to do social good that is beyond
the interests of the firm.
Notwithstanding its laudable intent, CSR is often
obfuscated in, and with, discourses over corporate
branding and corporate image (Frankental, 2001;
Werther and Chandler, 2005). In a poignant example,
it was shown that some tobacco companies expended
greater financial resources in promoting their philanthropic efforts than they did on the philanthropy
itself (Coalition Quebecoise Pour le Controle du
Tabac, 2003). This led one observer to conclude:
The tobacco company has only one overall aimto
make as much profits for the stakeholders as they
possibly can (OConnor cf. Coalition Quebecoise
Pour le Controle du Tabac, 2003, p. 3). What we see,
herein, is a radical and distressing reconceptualization
of CSR from the one described in the definition
above. Perhaps, the chief executive officer of Unliver
encapsulates this reconceptualization most fittingly:
[Corporate responsibility] isnt philanthropy, its
business. For us, social responsibility is about creating
social benefits through our brands and through our
interactions as a business with society. Its the business
of doing business responsibly. The business case for
corporate responsibility can be summarized in four
ways: sustainable development, building reputation,
growing markets, and fueling innovation.
(cf. Strategic Direction, 2007, p. 21)

In sum, CSR has come to represent, in some

academic and practitioner circles, as a source of
maximizing profits rather than genuine philanthropy (Frankental, 2001, p. 20).
CMS should engage in concerted efforts to
reveal the problematic deployments of CSR by corporations. Some important work has already been
conducted in this area. For instance, Adler et al.
(Adler et al., 2007, p. 144) explain how some
researchers have illustrated the corporate practice of
greenwashing namely, how corporations profess

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Ajnesh Prasad and Albert J. Mills

to do environmental good, yet without applying the

lessons of environmentalism to their business processes. Similarly, Banerjee (2008) presents an incisive
critique into how CSR is invoked as a mechanism by
which to sustain the hegemonic authority of corporations at the expense of disenfranchised stakeholders.
CMS scholars interested in business ethics issues
should extend these arguments and account for the
discursive outcomes of corporate mobilizations of
CSR.8

Contextualizing consequences
Acts of unethical organizational behavior poses
overreaching consequences on both business and
society. The Enron debacle, alone, poignantly highlights the need to understand how organizational
misconduct engenders repercussions that extend far
beyond the collapse of the corporation. However,
large segments of management research have not accounted for the pejorative effects Enron had on a
myriad of constituents who remain outside of the
stringent realm of what we normally classify as
business. That is, while researchers in the field have
discussed the ramifications of Enron in terms of job
loss or the depletion of retirement savings as a result of
it being invested in company stock (e.g. Beston and
Hartgraves, 2002; Sridharan et al., 2002), few have
attempted to analyze the consequences Enron had on
other elements in society. Noting this very point,
Werther (2003) encouraged researchers to move their
scholarly interest beyond key executives and top
management teams and understand the role of midlevel managers, and other similarly classed professionals, in creating, sanctioning, or perpetuating
unethical behavior within Enron that ultimately
ended with its downfall. Further extending this idea,
it is integral to substantively discern how constituents
from outside of the corporation were disenfranchised
because of the unethical behavior committed by
endogenous members of Enron.
Unfortunately, however, few scholars consider
the repercussions such behavior has on individuals
who may not be directly affected by unethical
corporate action. In his 2001 plenary address to
the Critical Management Studies Workshop, Zald
(2002, p. 383) alluded to this concern in the context
of management education:

Management training focuses largely on the meso and

micro levels. It focuses on the firm in its environment
and on the internal deployment of resources of the
firm. Those are the things managers are largely
responsible for. But the firm and even the industry
exist in larger, global and national political economy,
and in a larger society of households, educational
institutions, etc. Yet, neither management education
nor CMS pay much attention to that larger context.

A seminal insight that emerges from Zalds

observation is the necessity for CMS to reach
beyond its borders so as to conceptualize the nexus
between different institutional actors that propagate,
or are affected by, managerial practice. Namely,
CMS scholars should provide a more conscious
recognition of the fact that managerial practice or,
management knowledge construction, for that
matter does not occur in the proverbial vacuum.9
A CMS engagement with this idea would significantly benefit the study of business ethics. It
would allow researchers to more holistically conceptualize the impact (un)ethical behavior has on
tangentially related actors. Perhaps of special interest
to CMS scholars, would be discerning acute insights
into how actions in privileged spaces (i.e. boardrooms, executive suites, etc.), ultimately contribute
to the further disenfranchisement of individuals situated at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder or
at the lowest segment of the supply chain.10
Working from CMS principles, this would begin to
provide a critically performative intent (Spicer et al.,
2009) to the work we as critical-orientated scholars
might pursue in the arena of business ethics.11

Bridging the paradigmatic divide

In their classic 1980 article, Gareth Morgan and Linda
Smircich appealed to researchers for philosophical
coherence when conducting empirical work on social
phenomena. They premised their case for qualitative
research by arguing that scholarly inquiry ought to be
governed by alignment between ontology, epistemology, and methodology; as such, the utilization of
qualitative methods are justifiable under the circumstances that the nature of the phenomena to be
studied call for such a method (Morgan and
Smircich, 1980, p. 499). In many respects, this article
was a watershed for our discipline. Insofar as it chal-

Critical Management Studies and Business Ethics

lenged the quantitative versions of positivism that
reigned supreme at the time of its publication, and to
the extent that it implored for alternatives ways of
imagining how we might study social phenomena,
this article deserves much praise.
Explicitly or implicitly predicated on the assertions
forwarded by Morgan and Smircich, it is of no surprise that CMS scholars adopt interpretive methods
when pursuing empirical research. Indeed, such
methods philosophically coalesce with their a priori
ontological and epistemological assumptions. While
recognizing the monumental contributions offered
by Morgan and Smirich, we equally believe that
students of CMS might have taken their claims much
too seriously. Collectively, as a disciplinary field, we
have come a long way in terms of illustrating the
inherent value in using qualitative and interpretive
approaches to study organizational phenomena (e.g.
Gephart, 2004; Lee, 1991; Sutton, 1997). Accordingly, at this juncture, it is time for CMS scholars to
consider paths of intersection between different paradigmatic perspectives and to revisit the question of
incommensurability (Scherer and Steinmann, 1999;
Weaver and Gioia, 1994; also see special issue on the
subject in Organization [1998]).12 Concurring with
Weaver and Gioia (1994, p. 584), we contend that,
[a]rguments for [paradigm] diversity which depend
upon the incommensurability thesis provide far too
fragile a basis for maintaining pluralism in scholarship. As such, CMS scholars should further consider
the possibilities in drawing on multiple paradigmatic
perspectives to address organizational questions.
The merits in repudiating incommensurability have
been previously considered (for substantive discussions
see Scherer and Steinmann, 1999; Weaver and Gioia,
1994). Lee (1991), for instance, critically appraises prior
literature to demonstrate how organization studies can
benefit from integrating interpretive and positivist
perspectives. From this appraisal, he concludes that,
the two approaches are mutually supportive, not
mutually exclusive (p. 363). In a related vein, Prasad
(2011) conceptually explores how the positivist idea of
essentialism can be strategically appropriated by CMS
researchers and posited in both qualitative and
quantitative research designs to deconstruct the hegemony of positivism. This analysis shows the possibilities
of attributing critiques of positivism, while, at the same
time, functioning in its vernacular. Conscientious
CMS scholars should further ferment the discourse on

233

incommensurability with two, and admittedly, competing, objectives in mind: (i) to identify the junctions
and common threads between different systems of
orientation so as to advance (stagnant) organizational
debates (Scherer and Steinmann, 1999), and (ii) to
diligently show the shortcomings of traditional management research by employing the fields largely
positivist-marked analytical tools.
Concluding remarks
CMS has come a long way from its inchoate beginnings as a label for marginalized scholars in business
schools (Grey and Willmott, 2005). Commencing as a
diverse and somewhat nebulous intellectual movement, its undergirding boundaries have since been
synthesized (Fournier and Grey, 2000), and refined
(Brewis & Wray-Bliss, 2008; Spicer et al., 2009).
Extending from the significant contributions that
CMS has already proffered to the discipline, in this
article we begin to outline the myriad possibilities for
engaging its ideas in questions of business ethics. As the
introductory lines of this article indicate, the field of
management and organization studies has yet to either
fully understand the etiological foundation of
(un)ethical behavior or the substantive consequences
engendered by such behavior. CMS offers, in our
view, novel prospects for critically studying business
ethics; from which alternative ideas and alternative lines
of inquiry will surely emerge. Indeed, CMS can
provide fresh perspectives and impart new analytical
mechanisms that can substantively inform contemporary debates over business ethics.
Notes
1

At one point in time, it was fairly standard to find

a section of a business textbook that was devoted to
business ethics. This continued into the 1960s (see, for
example, Koontz and ODonnell, 1968; McFarland,
1964; Towle, 1964) and then did not revive again until
following the AACSB edit on business ethics the
1990s onward.
2
Nonetheless, reliance on Kolhbergs notion of
moral reasoning has been strongly criticized by feminist
scholars as rooted in a masculine worldview that ignores
the different but equally valid processes of moral
development that women are more likely than men to
be exposed to (see Gilligan, 1982).

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3

Ajnesh Prasad and Albert J. Mills

The term first appeared in the call for a new international conference on Critical Management Studies
in 1991. That conference subsequently became known as
the first International Critical Management Studies conference and has been held biennially ever since. A CMS
Interest Group of the Academy of Management was
established shortly after and became a fully fledged Division in 2008. The term was given further credence with
the publication of Alvesson and Willmotts (1992) edited
volume the following year. Nonetheless, as Adler et al.
(2007) contend, the theoretical and political foundations
of critical management studies rest in earlier critiques of
bureaucracy and corporate capitalism and in labor process
theory. As such, rather than offering an entirely new
conceptual perspective, CMS may more aptly be characterized as an umbrella label, which allowed for certain
scholars who were marginalized for their ontological
and epistemological positions to gather and form a
sense of community (see Grey and Willmott, 2005).
4
That is not to suggest that the CMS Divisions
domain statement can be read as shared by the organizers of the stand alone International CMS conferences
or the disparate number of scholars who subscribe to
some kind of notion of critical management studies.
Like all socially constructed ideas, the character (or potential character) of CMS is broadly agreed but contested at certain critical points. There are those critical
management scholars, for example, who subscribe to
the notion of a more humanized capitalism, while others are strongly anti-capitalist.
5
Denaturalization shares some ontological affinity
with Foucaults (1980) genealogy. The political project
underlying the genealogy was to unearth subjugated
knowledges, which, for him, were those blocs of historical knowledge which were present but disguised
within the body of functionalist and systematizing theory
and which criticism which obviously draws upon
scholarship has been able to reveal (pp. 8182).
Among the intended aims of the genealogy is to illuminate how historical narratives have systematically silenced
certain knowledge claims. As such, genealogical analysis
would likely be a fruitful endeavor for CMS researchers
to pursue (Prasad, 2009).
6
Albeit, Fournier and Grey (2000) rightfully note
that Lex Donaldsons work, For Positivist Organization
Theory (1996), serves as a notable exception to the generally valid assumption that positivism lacks reflexivity.
7
Nonetheless, Johnson and Duberley (2000), in
their exposition of Critical Realism (which arguably
occupies a space under the broad CMS umbrella) go to

great lengths to distance themselves from the wholesale

critique of positivism that characterizes some postmodernist accounts. Instead, they build on positivist insights
to develop their own version of realism.
8
Some of these ideas in this discussion appeared in
Prasad and Holzingers (2008) presentation at the Critical Management Studies Research Workshop in Los
Angeles, California.
9
On this point, Albert Mills and colleagues have
employed historical analysis to show how management
knowledge has been informed, in part, by the political
environment of the day. For example, they vividly illuminate how Maslows theories specifically his conceptualization of the hierarchy of needs was reflective of
the social and political conditions of the Cold War.
Their work underscores the need for management, and
especially CMS, researchers to contextualize their work
within broader ideological currents (see Cooke et al.,
2005; Dye et al., 2005; Kelley et al., 2006).
10
Jackalls (1988) work is one of the few to show
how the moral compass of those at the top can influence the ethical behavior of employees throughout the
organization. Although a dramatic comparison can be
made with the impact of the Nazis on those in the various lower ranks, or the little Eichmanns (Arendt 1976).
See Blacks (2001) account of IBMs role in processing
Nazi death camp inmates.
11
Brewis and Wray-Bliss (2008) appear to underscore
a related point in their article on reflexivity and research
ethics. They write: Our aim is to provide CMS with
further impetus for considering how our political commitments might be enhanced by more attention to research ethics and to the impact that empirical work can have
on our stakeholders especially the disenfranchised groups with
whom we are typically concerned (p. 1524; emphasis ours).
12
This observation shares some affinity with ongoing
research on intersectionality, which underscores the importance of adopting innovative methodologies to understand social phenomena, which are increasingly more
complex (Gopaldas et al., 2009; McCall, 2005).

Acknowledgments
Some of the ideas in this paper were presented at the
Critical Management Studies Research Workshop in
Montreal, Quebec in August 2010. We acknowledge
the helpful comments we received during our presentation from Marianna Fotaki and the other participants.

Critical Management Studies and Business Ethics

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237
Ajnesh Prasad
Australian School of Business,
University of New South Wales,
Sydney, NSW, Australia
E-mail: aprasad@unsw.edu.au
Albert J. Mills
Sobey School of Business,
St. Marys University,
Halifax, NS, Canada
E-mail: albert.mills@smu.ca

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