homemessagespreviously
critique

I still have difficulty understanding 'critique', especially when dealing with quality. 'Making Quality Critical' seems to me to lack any sympathy for the idea that anything positive could come from quality activity. Although published in 1995, I'm not sure the ideas in 'The New Economics' were fully represented in the way Deming is described.

Trying to read 'Making Sense of Management', I can get as far as the 'four means of progressive reform' in the chapter on 'Critical Theory and Management Practice'. After that I'm lost again as to where the 'practice' comes in. TQM is admitted as possibly encouraging for limited forms of teamworking, but also limited and manipulative. 'Making Quality Critical' is shown as a reference for this last point but actually I don't think the case studies in the book would all evidence this.

The first 'Management Theory at Work' did not reach much of a conclusion about learning organisations that could be useful for practitioners. Chris Grey repositioned 'relevance' in a new way that seems to appeal to some academics. I do accept there is a connection between learning and forms of critique. However I find it hard to see any form of practice that follows from the way 'critique' is described.

Recently I have found an article in Management Learning that deals with the 'subjectivity' of management students and their experience of 'critique' as taught. The library is shut over Easter so I am working from the web on the terms I can remember. 'Anti-performativity' is one that sticks in the mind. Google turns up a first page of journal articles that need a subscription. The only description I can find is a 'provocation' from Yiannis Gabriel (Organisational Studies Jan/Feb 2002) . This describes 'anti-performity' as "a deep-seated aversion towards any type of theorizing which may directly or serendipitously find some practical implications in the hands of managers". This seems a fair comment as far as I can see. He continues ," (a-p) is an important feature of many of those theories now referred to as critical management studies (Fournier and Grey 2000). This is consistent with an ironic

postmodern twist, which seeks to denaturalize concepts and ideas and promote reflexivity through a deconstruction of managerial buzzwords and practice. The majority of theorists with this tendency have asserted the primacy of discourse, either viewing theory itself as practice (theoretical practice) or arguing for a total discontinuity between theory and action (Knights and Willmott 1989; Burrell 1990; Parker 1992; Carter 1995; Jackson 1995; Parker 1995)."

I think Tara Fenwick was prepared to consider forms of practice but I could not understand what they might be. When next in a library I may try again.

On Guardian Talk I have contributed to a topic on Auricle as a weblog university. I have given up on 'mode 1' and 'mode 2' as they are defined by academics and hard for practitioners to make use of. I have started using 'search engine constructed' for the kind of knowledge most people can find and 'research assessment friendly' for whatever it is that academics are working on. I wasn't sure about this at first but looking up 'anti-performative' confirms there may be something to it. 'critique' may have a political base but also fits in with a view of academics having a special form of knowledge that others cannot understand. Maybe there is some explanation of 'anti-performative' designed to be widely available but I have yet to find it.

Tara Fenwick

Ethical Dilemmas of Critical Management Education: Within Classrooms and Beyond

Management Learning 2005 36: 31-48.

So far 'Leadership' seems not to have been regarded as a topic for critique. Can't find anything recent.