Critical Management Studies [Paperback]

The book examines: the relations between power and discursive practices in the modern corporation; the construction of pleasure as a potentially subversive and emancipatory force in organizational life; the double-edged role of a critical social science for managers; and doing critical management research. It also analyzes the nature and consequences of current practices in accounting, operational research, marketing, personnel and organizational psychology and information systems. Key issues of power//knowlDrawing on a range of influential contemporary movements in the social sciences, particularly Critical Theory, this volume introduces a critical analysis for the study of management and the various management functions.

The book examines: the relations between power and discursive practices in the modern corporation; the construction of pleasure as a potentially subversive and emancipatory force in organizational life; the double-edged role of a critical social science for managers; and doing critical management research. It also analyzes the nature and consequences of current practices in accounting, operational research, marketing, personnel and organizational psychology and information systems. Key issues of power//knowl`Aspires to provide a more focused, explicit and coherent representation of a `critical theory' perspective on management that draws its ethical, ideological and intellectual inspiration from, mainly, Habermas and Foucault. In this respect the underlying rationale for this book is based on a highly ambitious intellectual project insofar as it attempts to pull together the highly diverse, not to say disparate, theoretical stands which go to make up `critical#g