Critical Management Studies: A Reader

’Critical Management Studies’ or ’CMS’ has emerged over the last ten years as the term to describe a diverse group of work that has adopted a critical or questioning approach to the traditional concerns of management studies. In this time, CMS has come to exert an increasing influence in Management and Management Studies, and while it has prompted fierce debate about its validity and use, there is no doubt that the rapidly growing interest in CMS has produces a vibrant and exciting body of work. Chris Grey and Hugh Willmott, leading authorities in this area have collected together eighteen readings, which reflect these developments, and show why CMS has become an important field of research. The book is divided into four sections, ’Anticipating CMS’, looking at some of the roots of CMS, ’Studying Management Critically’, ’Critical Studies of Management’, and ’Assessing CMS＂, examining some of the internal and external critical discussions of CMS. Each reading and it’s significance is introduced by the editors, and in their introduction to the reader, they reflect more broadly on the history of CMS. In particular, they consider its institutionalization, both in terms of its becoming an identifiable body of work or approach, and its institutional context within business schools and indeed what it means to produce a Reader of critical work. As an assessment of CMS, the Reader will be of interest to academics, researchers and students of Management Studies. As an introduction to CMS, the book will prove invaluable to students taking courses requiring familiarity with the CMS literature.

Chris Grey is a Reader in Organization Theory at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge. He is a co-editor of Essential Readings in Management Learning (with Elena Antonacopoulou, Sage, 2003), Editor-in-chief of Management Learning, European Co-editor of the Journal ofManagement Inquiry, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Management, Critical Journal of International Business, Philosophy of Management, and Organization.
Hugh Willmott is Diageo Professor of Management Studies at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge. He is a co-editor of Critical Management Studies (Sage, 1992), and Studying Management Critically (Sage, 2003) - both with Mats Alvesson, and co-author with Mats Alvesson of Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 1996). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies.