Management as Negotiation at the Interface: Moving Beyond the Critical—Practice Impasse

Abstract

The seemingly marginal contribution of management theory to management practice has been commented on in different contexts. Specifically, critical management studies (CMS) seems suspended in an impasse between the aim to critique dominant management practice and discourse, and the expectation to facilitate transformative management action. This paper argues that the theory—practice impasse may, in part, be a result of reductivist perspectives discursively produced by both mainstream and critical management studies. To illustrate this argument, the paper refers to a case study exploring middle management practice in the higher education context. It demonstrates that academic middle management practice as constructed by polarized and polarizing discourses of either managerial or critical orientation is counterproductive to a full understanding of this practice and the contribution it can make to organizations if properly understood, and proposes an alternative reading aimed to `cross the divide' between discourses and between theory and practice. It is proposed that a more constructive engagement with multiple rationalities can move towards a more comprehensive understanding of currently marginalized management activity, and, from there, towards a more productive link between theory and practice.

Critical marketing studies: logical empiricism, ‘critical performativity’ and marketing practice

“…This is in keeping with a feminist approach to consumer research 'which emphasises identification, trust and empathy, which brings out a relationship between the researcher and researched based on cooperation and collaboration' (Bettany and Woodruffe-Burton, 2006: 229). From my perspective, an 'experimental' (Gibson-Graham, 2008) view of research practice involves being willing to learn from marketing actors how they perceive their role in society, exploring the 'multiple rationalities' that guide their activities (Hotho and Pollard, 2007). Implicit here is the idea that we register where practitioners' self-understanding does and does not conform to the stereotypical images found in certain strands of the Critical literature, thereby pluralizing our understanding of what constitutes marketing action (Tadajewski, 2010).…”

HRM and Performance: A Plea for Reflexivity in HRM Studies

“…They currently appear not only to search for other ways of critique but also to move towards reconstructive reflexivity, engaging with alternatives (Parker et al., 2007). For example, in a suggestion to cross the critical‐practice impasse, Hotho and Pollard (2007) plea for a more constructive engagement with multiple rationalities and for reading local practices as a form of negotiation between these rationalities. Similar, in their empirical study, Keegan and Francis (2007) pay attention to how often oppositional and polarized discourses are sought to be balanced, documenting that in the practice of HRM and how it is performed various (oppositional) discourses are related, combined, resisted and translated.…”

“…While there are many more suggestions towards an affirmative, engaged and practical ethos with regard to HRM (Barratt, 2003; Hotho and Pollard, 2007; Sinclair, 2007), we think it is crucial that critical HRM approaches let go of their mere ‘anti’ performance stance and develop different, alternative forms of reconstructive reflexivity. This also requires reframing the notion of HRM and actively searching for the Human in HRM (Bolton and Houlihan, 2007; Legge, 2007; Steyaert and Janssens, 1999), as we will discuss in the next section.…”

A critical argument in favor of theoretical pluralism: Project failure and the many and varied limitations of project management

“…As a result, despite the general acceptance of the plurality of managerial rationalities (Hotho and Pollard, 2007), the plurality of modes of organization (Morgan, 1997), and the plurality of global politics (Dussell and Labarra-Collado, 2006), critical, but theoretically pluralistic work has been rare, either as an empirical (Hassard, 1991) or review-based (Davila and Oyon, 2007) contribution. And yet, there continues to be a steady, if diffuse, stream of calls for theoretical pluralism, as an aid to reflexive critical thinking across the social sciences (Bohman, 1999;Healy, 2003), as well business-related fields such as critical systems thinking (Bowers, 2011;Mingers and Brocklesby, 1997;Pollack, 2006), which continue to influence project management.…”