Three Moves for Engaging Students in Critical Management Studies

Abstract

The intellectual and substantive resources of Critical Management Studies are difficult to use in the typical managerialist undergraduate classroom. Their emphasis on power, exploitation and subordination often `jar' with conventional curricula. In this article I offer a `three moves' approach to teaching critical management studies that provides a means of `smoothing' the `entry' of these resources into undergraduate teaching. The `three moves' involve (1) distinguishing between different forms of knowledge, (2) locating organizational politics at the centre of work organizations, and (3) using dramatic, empirically based, scripts as the basis for engaging with organizational problems. The approach locates management practice in `real world' management dilemmas and provokes students to consider, as they come to grips with critical analytical resources, not just how they might perform as managers, but how they might best engage as organizational participants.