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Scholars have long held that the emergence of the human resource management (HRM) as a science, has spelt the effective demise of the domain of industrial relations (IR). Likewise, (core) HRM has faced challenges to its academic legitimacy from the multiple adjoining domains of Critical HRM, Critical management studies and Strategic Human resource management. Through a mixed methods historiography, this study aims to demystify the paradigmatic developments and diffusions around this discourse. The Scopus database is used to systematically retrieve 293 peer-reviewed articles. These are subjected to bibliometrics and content analysis techniques. It is observed that the Critical HRM paradigm has lately become most impactful as concerns citation data, while IR has waned in influence by the same indicator. The USA and UK emerge as the two countries that are leading scholarship in the HRM discourse overall. An institutional theoretic explanation is offered for the paradigmatic diffusions observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review I consider the 20 years that have passed since the publication of my book Against Management. I begin by locating it in the context of the expanding business schools of the UK in the 1990s, and the growth of CMS in north western Europe. After positioning the book within its time, and noting that the book is now simultaneously highly cited and irrelevant, I then explore the arguments I made in the final chapter. If the book is of interest for the next two decades, it because it gestures towards the importance of alternative forms of organization, which I continue to maintain are not reducible to 'management'. Given the intensifying crises of climate, ecology, inequality and democracy, developing alternatives must be understood as the historical task of CMS within the business school and I propose a ten-point manifesto in support of that commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My argument in the Speaking Out essay is, first, that in the European Union Referendum vote, Critical Management Studies found itself on the same, anti-Brexit, side as big business and mainstream management studies, making it hard to sustain itself as something separate from these. Second, I argue that this reflects a wider set of issues about the liberal-left and the European Union, which, third, means that British Critical Management Studies now finds itself located within what is regarded on the pro-Brexit side as 'the establishment elite', and that to work effectively against Brexit, British Critical Management Studies will need to work as part of that establishment elite. My conclusion is that this may mark the end of British Critical Management Studies as it has hitherto existed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of ‘excellence’ has become widespread in the modern university, in part due to UK assessment exercises such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). As a result, academic careers are becoming increasingly oriented around publications in highly ranked journals. For critical management scholars, this poses a particular difficulty: how to negotiate the demand for excellence at the same time as maintaining a critical ethos in relation to one’s work. Our study, which is based on interviews with members of the editorial board of Organization, examines this tension by outlining the ‘secrets of excellence’ according to some of the most excellent critical management scholars in the field. Although our tone is at times ironic and provocative, the paper arises from a genuine concern about the risks involved in playing the publication game. Ultimately, we argue that the game of excellence tends to master its players, rather than the other way around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is it that a collection of working class drifters, sociology graduates, and ex-leftist politicos have ended up teaching in UK business schools? Understanding the predicament of these ‘critters’ helps to explain the ironic contingencies that provide the conditions of possibility for institutionalizing critical management studies (CMS), in particular the historic ‘defeat of the Left’ and the lack of more practical activities for radical management academics. Unlike labour process theory (LPT), CMS has come to terms with its institutional location within business schools and has taken the opportunity provided by the continued expansion of research oriented UK business schools to institutionalize itself as a recognized business school constituency. This has even led to the creation of one or two critically oriented business schools in the UK, where the contradictions of CMS are played out. One such contradiction is that having provided an opening for a wider academic and leftist intellectual community to enter the business school, CMS now finds itself faced with an autonomist critique which insists that the mainstream management curriculum is ‘worthless’ and calls for nothing less than the abolition of business schools. Consideration of this critique provides an opportunity to explore the identity of critters and the cultural performativity of CMS in providing a sign for their disaffiliation from the business school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]