Verandah Discourses: Critical Management Education in Organizations

The small but thriving Critical Management Studies community has so far confined its interest in education to that delivered in university settings. This paper identifies a framework for recognizing and understanding critical education as it is enacted within organizational settings. It analyses a portion of the data collected for a research study into alternative identities within organizational management education in order to suggest that critical management education (CME) fails to take account of the individualistic conventions that shape critical practice in organizations. The organizational version of CME works through a disruption of the ability of the manager to sustain managerialist narratives of the self. Two types of alternative practice are used to illustrate the ways in which this operates and are compared to an 'orthodox' performance of management education.     

Beyond Managism: Negotiated Narratives and Critical Management Education in Practice

A pragmatist conception of critical management education and learning is first set out. This accepts a degree of 'functionality' between management study and management practice. It is, however, a non-managerialist and non-technicist functionality. The criterion for judging critical management learning cannot be how well it reveals truths in any absolute or foundationalist sense. The only possible criterion is how well, relative to alternative types of learning, it informs the practices of people involved in managerial situations (regardless of whether these are managers or not). Next, one way of applying pragmatist critical management principles is outlined. This works through negotiated narratives and stands as an alternative to orthodox management education approaches – ones to which the critical concept of scholarism is applied. The outline is then developed through an ethnographic style account of an instance of such a practice. Central to this piece of teaching and learning practice is the critical concept of managism . Managist discourse and its role in framing managerial thinking and practices is examined and debated by the management class in the process of attempting collectively to make sense of stories brought to the class by both the students and the teacher. The basic 'story' that the paper tells is rehearsed at the end in the form of a fairy tale. This is done as an alternative to concluding or 'closing' the paper. The story of critical management education and learning and what is done in its name continues to unfold.     

Politics and Power within Multinational Corporations: Mainstream Studies,Emerging Critical Approaches and Suggestions for Future Research

Given the increased public interest in the use and misuse of power in multinationals in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it is notable that power relations in multinational corporations (MNCs) have not gained enhanced attention in the academic community. What is missing so far in the study of MNCs is a systematic examination of how power and politics within MNCs have been addressed in mainstream international business (IB) and sociological research studying the MNC. This paper starts by critically reviewing these two mainstream approaches in the study of MNCs as organizations and seeking to understand the shortcomings of former research. Next, it reviews new emergent critical perspectives, which the authors call socio‐political studies of MNCs, where power and politics are addressed not just more prominently, but also differently, from a more bottom‐up and actor‐centred perspective. After reviewing this emergent stream of research, the authors propose that future studies should take a more micro‐political perspective and focus in more detail on the micro‐foundations of power relations. In the concluding section, the authors show how future studies of MNCs can learn from both critical interactionist and discursive theories when analysing organizational politics and power relations. A framework is proposed for the study of micro‐level political game‐playing in MNCs, based on a three‐dimensional framework for organizational power (episodic, rules of the game and domination), and some key research questions for future studies are suggested.     

西方管理教育的审视与借鉴

目前西方管理教育存在的争论可归纳为5个方面:从研究取向而言,严密至上还是实用至上;从学术评价而言,使用价值还是交换价值;从学院定位而言,教学为本还是研究为本;从培养目标而言,陶冶知性还是市场导向;从国际化而言,标准化还是多元化.基于对上述争议的分析,认为对于中国商学院而言,未来应注重兼顾严密性与实用性,发展本土管理研究;改革学术研究评价体系;树立教学优先理念;传承与重塑人文精神;营造差异性竞争优势.     

Gender and Management: A Critical Review of Research

This article selectively reviews gender and management research. A flavour of what it can be like to research in this area is offered alongside a more substantive account. The article maps the many strands of work potentially relevant to exploring gender and management. It covers aspects of the field such as its diversity, emerging development, potential marginality and increasing clarity of definition, and considers implications for researchers. The appropriate integration of gender awareness into mainstream theorizing, alongside its separate development, is advocated. Major themes and issues in gender and management research are summarized and briefly addressed. Dilemmas about seeking to promote change but needing to speak within current conventions of management and academia are noted.     

On the Power and Poverty of Critical (Self) Reflection in Critical Management Studies: A Comment on Ford,Harding and Learmonth

Ford, Harding and Learmonth in their paper in the March 2010 special issue of the British Journal of Management ask ‘who is it that would make business schools more critical?’ Commenting on their paper, I argue that although they raise a very important question they do not deliver rigorous answers because their critical reflexive gaze fails to fall upon the mechanisms of hierarchy and exclusion that operate within the critical management studies (CMS) community. First the reflexivity debate in CMS and Ford, Harding and Learmonth's contribution to this debate is explored. Next institutionalized orthodoxies in CMS, such as the tendency to close ranks for those with different perspectives and the lack of demographic diversity, are problematized, and Ford, Harding and Learmonth's contribution is situated across these orthodoxies. Finally, the commentary offers some alternatives and solutions for CMS to take the step further from verbalism to critical praxis. It is suggested that the solution lies in exercising critical self‐reflection which acknowledges the embeddedness of CMS in structures and relations of power and hegemony and recognizes the role of CMS scholars in sustaining and reproducing these structures in their own institutions and communities.     

科学管理原理:理论反思与现实批判

泰勒的《科学管理原理》发表100年来,科学管理的理论和实践得到不断发展和创新。无论《原理》作为一种思想体系或管理哲学,还是对制度经济学的推进,以及作为现代管理理论的发轫,其理论和技术的生命力都不容忽视。由此,探讨泰勒科学管理的本质所在,揭示科学管理在过去100年对人类组织管理行为的深刻影响,批判性地分析我国科学管理的思想传播和实践过程显得十分重要。故提出一个核心观点:科学管理原理是科学精神在人类管理行为上的反映,是现代产业文明的哲学基础和行动原则。重新发现和挖掘泰勒管理哲学和技术的现实意义在于坚定管理理论和实践创新的科学精神,这对中国管理理论和实践的发展与创新具有方向性价值。     

An Integrative,Experiential Approach to Production Management Education

This paper addresses the important relationship between production and operations management (POM) and information technology. An approach to POM education is presented in which information technology is used to create an experiential learning environment that integrates the topics taught in POM courses. Results of an implementation of the proposed approach are presented and implications are discussed for POM education.     

Critical Turns in the Evolution of Diversity Management

This paper seeks to extend and invigorate existing critiques of the aims and claims of diversity management. Four overlapping turns – demographic, political, economic and critical – akin to the broader and critical 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences are identified. When existing critiques are reconsidered through the framework offered by these four turns, then diversity management can be seen to: perpetuate rather than combat inequalities in the workplace; diminish the legacy of discrimination against historically repressed minorities in the workplace; continue to prescribe essentialist categories of difference and present problematic dualisms for effecting organizational change.     

Statistics in Management Education

Results of two surveys are presented and indicate the statistical knowledge of past students from Master of Business Administration programmes, their usage of statistics together with their opinions about the statistical content of Master of Business Administration degree courses. These views are contrasted with the results of a second survey of academic staff who teach statistics on such programmes. We find that past students recommend a greater statistical content than is currently taught but, paradoxically, most of the academic staff associated with teaching the subject believe that the statistical content of their programme will decrease in future years.     

Critical Realism,Managers and Information

Many accounts of contemporary management raise the issue of the effective use of information, but little is said about how this is to be achieved. This paper sets notions of ‘information literacy’, drawn from higher education, against the reflections of a small group of managers. This indicates that there are a number of dimensions, notably the relationship of information use to organizational power, that are not adequately catered for in current conceptions of information literacy. It is argued that existing accounts focus excessively on the construction of meaning without taking into account the constraints on such construction. Drawing on resources from critical realism, these constraints are taken to relate both to the individual's embodied nature and to the structural dimensions of their practice. Exploration of these constraints is felt to require attention to the temporal dimension of social analysis and to an examination of the interrelationships between structure and agency.     

后实证主义视角下的管理理论、实践与观念

包括管理学在内的社会研究既是对人们观念的反映,同时也改变人们的观念,通过理论建构塑造新观念下的社会实践.由于行为、观念与时空依赖性的存在,管理学研究只能达到“似规律(law-like)”和“半规律(demi-regularity)”的理论.对严谨性的苛求会导致大量显见的、常识性的研究结论.以建构实在论的视角来看,管理研究应着重于建构起一套能付诸于实践的“有用的”理论框架;以批判实在论的视角来看,管理研究应着重于探寻现象背后的观念、机制及其错综复杂的关系,而非构念之间的表面相关性.在后实证主义看来,本土管理研究是对本土管理观念和本土管理文化及其变迁的研究,而非简单的外部情境化.后实证主义应该成为管理学研究的主流范式.     

Beyond New Public Management. Answering the Claims of both Politics and Society

New Public Management held the promise of changing traditional bureaucracies into a results-oriented and transparent form of government. Though many of the principles of NPM are being implemented as a way of thinking about government it has been largely discredited. This paper gives examples from Switzerland and The Netherlands where the premises of NPM have either explicitly or implicitly been rejected. The paper concludes by suggesting reasons that led to the decline of NPM and concludes by offering a conceptual restart of public administrative reform. This is based on a constructive mix between aspects of NPM and traditional administration, leading to a New Public Administration.     

基于PERT/CPM的关键链管理

网络规划技术是现代项目管理技术的重要组成部分。本文在对传统PERT/CPM网络规划方法分析的基础上,针对PERT三点估计在应用上的缺陷,引入Theory of Constraint(TOC),并对PERT三点估计给出一种全新的解释。在新的解释下,TOC思想在项目规划中的运用被称为关键链管理(CCPM),强调在项目实施过程中加强对关键链的管理。为此,本文提出了一个基于三点估计的关键链管理的新方法,并通过实例论证关键链管理作为一种新的项目管理方法可以接近或者超过PERT/CPM的平均效果。     

Decentralization,Partisan Politics,and National Development in Ghana

Public Organization Review - This study examines the relationship between decentralization reforms and political parties from the perspective of citizens. It is based on a national sample survey of...     

Grasping the Nettle: Possibilities and Pitfalls of a Critical Management Pedagogy

The focus of the paper is a review of the more problematical aspects of introducing a critical perspective into the practice and content of management education. As an introduction, the author summarizes the arguments for critical reflection in the education of managers, the characteristics which distinguish it from ‘reflection’– the more familiar concept in the literature – and ‘critical thinking’. The ways that a critical perspective can be reflected in educational method as well as in the content of the curriculum are also elaborated before describing the problems and complications of implementing such an approach from accounts in the literature of adult and management education. The paper outlines the reasons why critical reflection might be resisted, the mental or social disruption which can result from its application and the implications of both for the practice of management teachers.     

关键链动态缓冲监控方法研究

缓冲管理是约束理论的一个重要管理方法,重要的监控机制和管理手段。本文针对项目执行的动态环境,提出了动态缓冲监控法。它根据项目的实际执行情况,来动态计算缓冲大小,动态设定监控点,动态调整两个监控触发点的高低,从而实时衡量项目实际进度和初始计划之间的差异,以便让项目经理及时采取正确的行动使得项目最终按时完工。最后,通过一个算例,将本文方法和CCPM中的绝对缓冲监控法和相对缓冲监控法进行了比较,验证了本文所提方法的有效性和实用性。