Dealing with Power in Organisational Intervention: The Place of Methodology

The findings of this study point to issues of power and coercion being addressed through critical social theory. For intervention in business organisations, management science has used this as a foundation for the development of critical systems thinking, which, since its commencement in the early 1980s, has relied almost entirely on the theories of Habermas, and more particularly his theory of knowledge constitutive interests. Such approaches can be demonstrated as having a limited domain of application, with participatory action research, human inquiry, and diversity management offering a possible way forward.