Organization theorists have predominantly studied identity and organizing within the managed work organization. This frames organization as a structure within which identity work occurs, often as a means of managerial control. In our paper our contribution is to develop the concept of individuation pursued through prefigurative practices within alternative organizing to reframe this relation. We combine recent scholarship on alternative organizations and new social movements to provide a theoretical grounding for an ethnographic study of the prefigurative organizing practices and related identity work of an alternative group in a UK city. We argue that in such groups, identity, organizing and politics become a purposeful set of integrated processes aimed at the creation of new forms of life in the here and now, thus organizing is politics is identity. Our study presents a number of challenges and possibilities to scholars of organization, enabling them to extend their understanding of organization and identity in the contemporary world. Vignette 1: An introduction to the Midtown alternative sceneOn a cold and windswept evening in March we gathered at a small organic wholefood co-operative shop amongst insalubrious takeaways in one of the scruffier parts of Midtown. As we arrived, greetings were called, mugs of tea made, and soon 25 people were crammed into the room. Although a public meeting, many participants already knew each other. The 'formal' part of the evening began when those who had initiated the meeting, including Author 2, explained that they wanted to bring likeminded people together to forge closer ties and foster joint action. Each of us explained who we were, why we were there, and what group we belonged to (if any). This was 1 recorded on flip charts and minuted for later distribution. Although membership overlapped considerably, there were around twenty groups including environmental organizations, radical political parties, local activist groups, alternative food and craft retailing, arts and music groups; many belonged to several of these groups simultaneously.Most were young (between 25 and 40) and their appearance often reflected alternative youth sub-cultural norms -a 'hippyish' look for women, dreadlocks and goatee beards for men, although older attendees wore jumpers, t-shirts and jeans. Everyone seemed happy at a slightly ironic self-description of 'alternative', though deciding what this meant became a major debate. All agreed that it implied non-commercial and non-consumerist values with social/political/ethical aims and consensual democratic organizing. Concerns emerged about how difficult this was in practice, often due to lack of money or time.Despite the need for money, some argued that paid work or grants undermined autonomy and self-sufficiency. Whilst a few had full time jobs (usually in the public sector or with charities), many kept paid work to the minimum, desiring to live entirely 'off-grid'. Most wanted to engage with 'the community' to further political aims and t...

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Business education tends to reinforce the neo-liberal view that the best, perhaps the only desirable model of organization is the managed corporation. Furthermore, in competing to attract students, business schools frequently stress that lucrative careers and personal success can be achieved through management qualifications. All this arguably encourages the competitive and individualistic pursuit of wealth, status and power that reflects the dominant values underpinning much of contemporary western society. Our article suggests an antidote to these developments by proposing the more prominent study of `alternative organizations' within business schools. Alternative organizations pursue very different ends, in different ways from mainstream business corporations, so studying them has the potential to stimulate debate and raise questions about the individualistic and instrumental attitudes implicit in much business education and research. Importantly, the study of alternative organization also suggests a range of possibilities for radically rethinking organization(s)—including business schools—and the place of managers, along with others, within them.

It has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners. However, there is a lack of systematic inquiry into how such engagement might be undertaken, which this paper redresses. We propose activist ethnography as a suitable methodological framework for critical organizational scholarship, drawing on organizational ethnography, militant ethnography, and participatory action research, to construct a theoretical framework which we use to analyse four ethnographic vignettes of our own experiences of research with activists. Our contribution is to 1), assess the methodological challenges and opportunities of engagement with activism, 2) give an account of our own experiences as activist ethnographers for others to learn from, 3) propose strategies whereby the challenges of academic activism might be negotiated, and the opportunities maximized. Through such calls, critical performativity promotes organizational scholarship as a form of academic activism, seeing engaged research as a route to transformative change (Kieser & Leiner, 2012). Yet, despite these aspirations, there are few examples of systematic inquiries into how such engagement might be carried out (see King, 2015). Questions therefore remain concerning the theoretical and practical issues that might be faced by those wishing to take critical organizational scholarship into the field. Our primary contribution, therefore, is to provide methodological principles for the nascent critically performative researcher. We do this in two ways: firstly, we evaluate other methodological traditions that have sought to bring about positive change through the research process, namely organizational ethnography (OE), militant ethnography (ME), and participatory action research (PAR). We synthesise these approaches into a new theoretical framework for an activist ethnographic methodology. Our proposal is that a fruitful activist ethnographic methodology may be constructed from a synthesis of the procedural virtues of OE, the activism of militant ethnography and the democratic learning of PAR. Whilst the term activist ethnography is not new (see Bisaillon, 2012; Craven & Davis, 2013; Emihovich, 2005 for examples, as well as our discussion below), we offer a more systematic set of principles for undertaking such a methodology. 4Secondly, we contribute to a distinctive "activist ethnography" by reflecting on our own engagement with activist organizations, presenting our experiences for the guidance of others. Using four vignettes to illustrate different methodological issues, we explore the personal, ethical, and practical dilemmas that arise from attempts to combine the roles of critical organizational researcher and activist and suggest practical strategies for working through these issues, which we summarise in table 2 and its accompanying discussion. We conclude that procedural virtues, derived from organizational ethnography, provide the critical organizational researcher with a way of n...

This article explores the relationship between the identity of critical management studies (CMS) academics and that of managers. The article argues that, as a result of the way in which CMS identities are pursued, managers often become represented as culpable dupes. This instrumental 'othering' of managers tends to work against an empathetic understanding of their lives. The article suggests that this raises ethical problems as it runs counter to the espoused aims of much CMS work. The article fi rst considers the nature of CMS through a number of key 'positioning' articles that suggest an identity attractive to many of its members. It goes on to analyse how this identity positions the managerial other, using a theoretical framework derived from Sartre, Heidegger and Ricoeur. The article concludes with a discussion of how CMS might address the implications of the interdependent identity projects of academics and managers.