Spinning Disciplines: Critical Management Studies in the Context of the Transformation of Management Education

Abstract

Critical Management Studies has taken on an institutional embodiment in the last four years, but builds on earlier developments in the intellectual culture of academia and of professional schools. This essay traces the development of CMS in the context of American professional schools. It draws upon recent thinking in the sociology of science and the sociology of professions. In particular, it examines processes internal to disciplines and professions and external to them in the larger society, across disciplinary boundaries, and in intellectual discourse. Attention is paid to those processes that hold disciplines and sub-disciplines in their orbits or trajectories, and those processes and events that shock and redefine orbits. The paper concludes with a discussion of two alternative trajectories for CMS-one where it remains relatively marginal to management education, another where it becomes central.